The eighth day at Swiss

The temperature in Switzerland during our stay was always hovering above 10 c. Though the temp was not significantly low still there was a constant chill in the air. It might be due to Alpine glaciers surrounding us & the wind blows from there.
By late Oct. to Nov the entire place must be getting wrapped up in ice & life should be slowing down considerably. Perhaps the long leisure which people get , over 6 months should help them introspect think and become genius. I suppose Indian life is too rushed to put in real innovative thinking – A rumination.

Well I am on to my commentaries of Swiss life before the memories starts dimming. But here we are on the last day of travel.

We got up at 5.30 a.m got ready & went for breakfast in the ground floor. After breaker ( had a light one) keeping space for one which may be served in Aircrafr. Then checked out of our room in the hotel. Just when checking out a Srilankan tamilian liobby housekeeper spotted us and greeted us warmly in tamil. We found Zurich has lot of Srilankans especially tamilians who have come has refugees more than 15teen yrs back. This lady has migrated to this place 17teen yrs back but still she holds the tamil Srilankan flavour. She had nose ring, gold ear tops & gold chain etc.

After checking out handing back the computer card ( at present key for opening hotel rooms is become obsolete. Every where we were given computer card to open & close which can be modified & duplicated as they want). We started lugging our luggage to the station about 200 yds away. The distance too short for any transport. Hence we dragged the luggage to the station got our tickets to Zurich airport-6F. The 7.40 train was just waiting in platform 13. We boarded the jam packed train to the airport.

Airport is one place you can find lots & lots of people. The swiss airline was fully booked . Inspite of coming to the airport in good time because of the expanse of the airport where we have to move from gate to gate for different procedures like checking luggage, pass port checking, checking hand baggage etc. Hand baggage checking was very stringent one . We had to leave behind the water bottle & the moistener cream which we had in the hand baggage as liquids are not allowed . Any way we learn from experience. We should have packed them in the main luggage.

Again we got the aisle seat only. I suppose people do tele booking. This even though we had come early we found good seat were already booked.
Here we are in the Aero plane when I am writing this settling for the 8 hr travel back to India.

The flight reached India pretty late by 9.50 p.m ( Indian time) . Coming out of the flight, baggage collection, customs check & passport stamping took another one hr.

Then we decided to exchange the remaining Swiss currency at Airport only back to Indian money. After the exchange with Thomas cook we went for a prepaid taxi.
At Bombay there was a stiff downpour of rains. Coming out with our luggage we were back to stark reality of India. No shade to protect us. The taxi standing at some far off corner. Pushing through the crowd we had to search for the taxi to take us back home. However the taxi driver was a upright muslim old man in flowing kurta & white cap. He with patience drove in the night in the pouring rain, crossing near Shivaji park several late Ganapathy moria procession ( late latifs as the immersion was over the previous day. The entire Bombay at the late hr of 11.30 p.m humming with life.

The familiar sights brought in our psyche a sense of belonging in tune with the scene and people around. You feel it is home coming at last.