I've actually been to Zurich before, between taking a bus from Munich and a train to Interlaken. It was a grey day, we arrived in an industrial part of town and I was not a fan. It turns out first impressions aren't everything because I LOVED Zurich.
It started when my plane landed at 8:30pm and it was still light out...
I was indocrinated into a love of light from a young age. My mom loves to comment on the weather. Come May, when spring started (we lived in Wisconsin... spring is late people!) it seemed like every day she would randomly exclaim, 'look, it's still light out!'. When I was in college I'd be talking to her and she's just casually mention, 'It's getting lighter and lighter out'. At the time I thought it was inane. I remember several times telling her something like 'Yea Mom, it's light out, but it was this light yesterday and it will be this light tomorrow, what's the big deal?'.
You know how they say you become your parents?
I am now this person. Spring is my favorite season of the year. I love the optimism in the air; the first flowers blooming, the first day warm enough to wear a dress, and the first night you notice that it's 7pm and not dark yet. And the best part? Spring gets better and better each day; each day there is a bud or two more in the garden, the weather gets a degree or two warmer, and the light lasts a minute or two longer. These banal details (to young Kelsey) that my mom was in tune with have become my daily tether to nature, my moments to pause in gratitude, my snychronicity with the energy of the earth.
If you want to join me (and Mom) in the celebration of daily life it's not difficult, jut call either of us anytime from March - June and you will undoubtedly receive commentary about the status of the light in the sky.
So when I landed in Zurich and felt TWO EXTRA HOURS of light compared to being near the equator in Southeast Asia, my mood instantly lifted. When I woke up the next morning to 65 degrees, sun, and a sparkling lake I was elated. I didn't expect it at all, I had woken up, dressed, ready to go find somewhere to have breakfast, maybe write some of my blog. I made it five minutes before asking myself 'why am I not running right now?'.
It felt so good to be moving. I can't really describe the feeling to people who don't like to run. But I promise you, the people out there doing it, they aren't just bearing the pain until it's over (as I used to think and also experience for many years). They actually love it. For me it's something about feeling the breath in my lungs, the steady pace, the inability to multi-task, the mutually exclusive nature of running and anxiety. In Zurich the breeze, the sun, the scenery, and the cute puppies didn't hurt either.
That's pretty much what Zurich was, I ran both mornings, sat by the lake watching swans and eating strawberries in the afternoon and walked up and down the cute streets in the evening. It was a marvelous interlude and surprisingly one of my favorite places I've been in the last five months.
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