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I marveled at the familiar deserts of northern Saudi Arabia. Remembering with a shudder at how I had
sweated and humped those deserts piloting a 737; back in ’85 and ’86.
Then came the Gulf of Aqaba, followed by the Sinai Peninsula (where
Moses and the children of Israel wandered for forty years), and the Gulf of
Suez. Upon sweeping past Alexandria,
Egypt, where the Nile ends its journey, we struck out across the Mediterranean
for Italy.
After flying up the Italian “boot,” we approached the southern border of
Switzerland and the magnificent snow-capped Alps. This was the first time I was to see them as
an operating crewmember; they were just as amazing, as I remembered seeing
them, during those few flights I had deadheaded for SAUDIA.
After crossing the Alps we started our descent for Zürich Kloten Airport
(Flughafen Zürich), which rests in the bottom of
a lush-green valley - at an elevation of 1,400 feet – surrounded by
breathtaking mountains.
It was “my leg“ and, despite the sagging
dip in the middle of the runway, I somehow managed to smoothly touchdown on the
thousand-foot markers of Runway One Four (140°/320° magnetic, SE/NW).
Hopefully, dear reader, not spilling a
drop of our passenger’s precious champagne.
Zürich has three main runways, devoid of thousands of feeding
cormorants, or vessels crossing in front of a runway’s threshold. It also possessed customs officers not
interested in nosing through our dirty underwear. God...it’s so pleasant flying back to a
civilized country!
This was where we were separated from our
flight attendants; they were loaded on a bus and whisked away to a different
hotel. As there were four of us in the
operating cockpit crew, we rated two, black, Mercedes sedans that zipped us the
eight miles, on a modern expressway, into the city.
Apparently, Zürich was originally founded
by the Romans in 15 BC. At present it’s
the largest city in Switzerland and sits at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich;
a long, narrow lake stretching twenty-five miles in length and two miles in
width.
SIA put us cockpit crew up at the Sorell
Hotel Rex, a small, three-star hotel at the corner of Weinbergstrasse
and Volmarstrasse, in the north end of the Altstadt (Old
Town). It was a clean, modest hotel of
five-floors and 41 cramped rooms, with a creaky elevator, plus a cold, sterile
bar and restaurant.
Typical low-rent European stuff, dear
reader, like one would find in a black and white French film noir. Unfortunately, there weren’t any sexy, sultry,
mysterious women lurking in the shadows of the dreary lobby; only bored
businessmen in rumpled suits.
And speaking of ”lurking,“ I really enjoyed nosing round the Altstadt, with its narrow, cobble-stoned streets restricted to foot traffic.
No goats feeding on garbage here, dear
reader. The Swiss kept them regularly
hosed down and free of trash.
The shops were totally old world, charming
and full of hidden treasures. As for
communication, although the Swiss spoke the Alemannic Swiss German dialect, everybody that I conversed
with seemed fluent in English.
Not far from my hotel was the Sihl and Limmat Rivers flowing out of the northern tip of Lake Zürich. A triangular-shaped park resided where these two rivers came together, called the Platzspitz (Riverside Park).
I took the narrow foot bridge (Mattensteg) to the pointed tip of this park, giving me a view of both rivers, which were concrete lined and resembled canals. The park, along with the Swiss National Museum resembling French chateaus at the south end, was designed by Gustav Gull in 1898.
One of the highlights of my layover was strolling through this beautifully
designed and maintained park, as well as the museum; the Swiss history I
discovered there being fascinating.
All in all, dear reader, my first
layover in Zürich was most impressive; its social order being clean, safe and
ticking-over like a fine Swiss watch.
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