these weeks in the odyssey
8.2.99 -- 8.9.99
zurich, switzerland

At Home With Sid & Kristanne

Ah, this domestic life! Contrary to all appearances, Extreme Telecommuting is not always about dashing off to some exotic locale to cavort with dukes, duchesses, and soccer players in the latest de rigueur night spot. Nor is every day a nonstop movable feast of ancient culture, exotic cuisine, and whatever cheap thrills we can scrape up between the train station and our hotel. Nope, most days are just like you see over there at right -- a positively Rockwellian tableau of workaday domestic bliss. Well, except for the fact that we're usually naked. We just put on clothes for the picture so we could stay cool with Bill Bennett and the Family Values Police.

Still, it's important to dispel illusions about what Extreme Telecommuting is really all about. Among the myriad enduring myths, saws, and old-wive's tales, it seems that many of you believe that neither of us do anything but hang out in cafes, sipping cappucinos and exchanging bon mots with the passersby. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, neither of us is really quite sure what a "bon mot" is. Secondly, the only thing we exchange with passersby is dirty looks after Kristanne sticks out her leg to trip them when they walk past. Passersby piss us off. I mean, why can't they just stay the heck away from us? Stupid locals.

Which brings me to another common misconception -- many people seem to think of us as "friendly" or even "social." Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if you look closely at that picture at the left, you can see that Kristanne is quite clearly leaning out of our apartment window to make an obscene gesture at our neighbors. What did they do to invite Kristanne's wrath? Nothing. She just didn't like the way they were looking at her. See, that's what it's really like on the Odyssey...hardbitten, bitterly cold, and brutally angry. Sort of like Richard Nixon.

Well, no. Not really. Much as we'd like to adopt the standoffish posture of the world-weary traveller who's been there, done that, we just can't. We really like Europe! We genuinely enjoy meeting the locals (really, Kristanne has only tripped one and that was by mistake -- she was trying to kick me). We just can't help it -- we're a little bit cheesy, a lotta bit goofy, and are doing our best to maximize the time we're fortunate enough to have over here in our own good-natured, slightly south of total cool way.

Of course, one of the best ways to maximize your time in any foreign country is by baking banana bread. You probably won't find that tip in Fodor's or Frommer's, but trust me, it's for real. Banana bread just tastes fresher in a foreign country. And check out Kristanne's MacGyver touch on that baby pictured at right! We don't have a cooling rack in our apartment, so she improvised by laying five butter knives across a baking tin. Pretty ingenious, eh? It's exactly that kind of thinking that's an utter necessity for the successful Extreme Telecommuter. By the way, you might want to Klip & Save this paragraph for later reference the next time you're baking banana bread in a foreign country.

So, yeah, we're corny, cheesy, innocents abroad, good-naturedly enjoying each and every new experience that comes our way. And, yeah, you can call me "Mr. Rogers." And, yes, you can call Kristanne "Mary Poppins." Just don't do it to her face. She still might pop you a quick one to the jaw.

Of course, even Mary Poppins has to hug half-naked leather boys in the street every once in a while. And Switzerland is just the place to do it. You may not believe this, but Switzerland is actually an open pit of debauched carnal lasciviousness smack in the heart of Europe. Don't let the fondue fool you -- behind all that cheese and chocolate, the salacious heart of lechery beats to its own libidinous rhythm. I know. I'm a technical writer. Technical writers know all about the seamy side of life.

Still, even with all my years of relevant Technical Writing experience, I was not prepared for the madness that is Zurich's annual Street Parade. The Street Parade bills itself as a one day celebration of peace and togetherness through techno music. Now, I'm not sure if you're real familiar with techno music, but I can assure you that the last things it makes me feel is either peaceful or together. The basic recipe for techno music goes something like this: (1)Take one bass drum and pump it up to about 200 beats per minute. Loop this bass drum and never stop it. (2)Add one ridiculous keyboard noodle, about a single measure in length. Loop this noodle and never stop it. (3)Periodically, add either the sound of moaning women or a chainsaw, depending on the type of "feel" you're going for. (4)Mix well with Ecstasy-fueled dancing kids with painted hair and faces. (5)Never stop it. Presto! You've got techno!

Much as I actively despise techno music, the Street Parade was still an amazing spectacle. Over half a million revelers descended on Zurich's ordinarily staid Swiss streets for rampant frivolity. Perhaps the most intense scene I personally witnessed played out early in the day. And, yes, it did involve the Anti Flirt.

Regular readers of this feature will no doubt recall last week's somewhat frightening introduction to Miss Money Money's evil twin, the Anti Flirt. If Zurich and its Street Parade are all about sex, then the Anti Flirt is the opposite of sex. She's all about stockpiling canned goods and weapons for the coming Y2K crisis (and, hey, maybe you should be too).

So, it was with a mixture of dread and sickly fascination that I watched these two polar opposites finally square off in mortal combat. The Anti Flirt came dressed in her usual camo fatigues, combat boots, and sleeveless t-shirt with the "Fun Sucks" slogan emblazoned on the front. The Zurich Street Parade came in about a million different flavors, but can perhaps be best distilled into its essence in the person of a certain fellow who for simplicity's sake we'll call Buttman. That's Buttman pictured there up above (and at right), wearing his signature black suspenders with a spiked g-string. Nice look, eh?

The combat itself was surprisingly brief. Buttman's sole tactic was to walk up to the Anti Flirt and flash his winning grin. Surprisingly, this was all it took -- the Anti Flirt immediately dissolved into paroxysms of giggles, metamorphosing on the spot back into the Miss Money Money we all know and love. In fact, it was a little too quick for my tastes -- it was all I could do to keep Miss Money Money from taking off with Buttman on the spot.

But Buttman's work here was done. Somewhere out there in Zurich, other Anti Flirts lurked, awaiting his able assistance. Back into the madding crowd he went, a dark flash of latex the last we saw of him. Godspeed, Buttman! Fare thee well!

The Street Parade was a visual feast, chock full of brilliantly inventive costumes, bizarre behavior, and, well, me and Kristanne. We were definitely two of the most conservative people making the scene, though I did liven things up a little bit by untucking my shirt tails, brazenly flouting convention. One of the most striking aspects of the whole experience was the inclusiveness of it all. Nobody was copping an attitude -- everybody really seemed to be welcome, from the family with kids with their hair painted green (at left) to the gay couples in jockstraps (not pictured, but well represented) to the topless lady in full body paint calmly sipping a cappucino in a streetside cafe (Kristanne wouldn't let me take that picture). A festival like this in the states would have necessarily been crawling with police to keep the lunatic fringe from bashing each others heads in. At the Street Parade, the lunatic fringe was squirting everybody with giant compressed-air squirt guns and everybody loved it. We even saw a group of five shirtless, squirt-gun toting youths go up to a cop who was directing traffic and thoroughly hose him down, much to the crowd's delight. You see something like this happen in the States, and you figure the next thing that's coming is nightsticks and a whole passel of cops doing their best Rodney King video imitations, followed of course by the requisite lawsuits, appearances by Robert Shapiro, and then a "time for national healing." Here, the cop just good-naturedly laughed at the kids (who, to their own credit, were just goofing around and not doing anything with some sort of "let's show this pig how bad we are" vibe), shook his head at the humor of his plight and kept on directing traffic. Kristanne and I were literally floored by the whole episode, having already dived for cover from the hail of gunfire that we were sure was immediately to follow the squirting. American instincts die hard.

Zurich is a remarkably vibrant and open-minded city. I'm only working from my own observations, but it seems like there has been a huge shift in the city and its attitudes since I was last here ten years ago. Back then, I remember it neatly conforming to the "staid, sterile, boring" stereotype so commonly associated with Switzerland. Not so, anymore. Sure, there's still an underlying politeness and respect for order, but we've found that they're also completely ready to go totally crazy whenever possible, for as long as possible. There seems to be an incredibly vibrant youth culture, combined with tons of public art, public musical performances, and an open all night club scene. Not your father's Zurich, in other words. We're only theorizing, but we think at least part of this might be due to Zurich's short-lived experiment with legalizing drugs a few years back. Though they found that it created more problems than it solved (crime and otherwise), perhaps it was like opening Pandora's proverbial box. The lid on their Swiss reserve once opened may have proved a bit difficult to close back down. At least that's what the banker pictured at right was telling me. Judging from her costume, I'm thinking she definitely received a little visit from Buttman.

The Street Parade was inescapable. Everywhere you went, insistent techno music was thumping its subtle-as-a-pneumatic-drill beat into your frontal lobe. We're not sure Ray Kroc knows about it, but even McDonald's was no safe haven. D.J. Hamburglar and the Fry Guys had set up shop in the front windows of the local Mickey D's, blasting their breakbeats out for the cheeseburger set. We didn't stick around for the follow-up act (The Quarter Pounder Qrew), reasoning that not even the free pair of earplugs packaged with every Happy Meal were enough to fend off the assault on our tympanic membranes.

The bottom line (and there are no ifs, ands, or butts about it), is that even though the Street Parade can be very intense, it's also pretty hard to have a bum time. And, yes, that sentence does complete a lifelong goal of making three puns about rear ends in a single sentence. I thank you for your understanding and patience.

Three or four hours of techno is about all our jaded ears can stand, so after working our way through the swirling throngs of sweaty, dancing humanity, we headed off to grab some dinner and a movie. Yes, we are officially Capital-O Old. Still, the movie theater had a nice special on metamucil-flavored popcorn, so it seemed like a good move. Metamucil is yummy.

Be sure to check back next week as we head to Poland to meet up with Jacek and Loydie. We hope to rent a car and drive out there, checking out parts of Germany and the Czech Republic on the way. Send in any suggestions, if you've got 'em! See you next time on the Odyssey...

Last Week's Front Page Picture

Yep, just another couple orange conehead dudes here on the Odyssey.