Zurich
When I went to the ticket counter in Zurich's main railway station, the employee behind the window asked me where I wanted to go.
"I don't know!", I said, unthinking.
"Please don't play jokes with me. Where is it you wish to go?", she asked, irritatedly.
"To Europe!", I managed to come up with.
"We are in Europe! Where in Europe? Look at the queue behind you!", she shouted.
"I really don't know!", I stammered.
"Then I'll decide for you. I can give you an Inter-Rail ticket . There are different zones. Which zones would you like?"
"Won't you decide that too?", I answered, somewhat embarrassed.
"Zones C and H, then. As in Confoederatio Helvetica! I am a patriot. With a C and H ticket you will be able to travel in many countries of Europe. Will that be alright?"
"It's fine".
* * *
I wandered through the city, a misdirected letter. I was looking for clues, looking for a destination. I went into a bookshop and bought Martin Suter's book Small World, in the hope this would narrow down the choice of possible destinations. I looked for an internet café, in the hope that I might already have received responses to the letter I had sent out to friends and acquaintances. My friend Francis from Paris wrote:
At forty you fall victim to fusion. Of your past and your future. This causes the loss of your identity. You no longer know whether you should be looking into the past and building upon it, or into the future and starting something anew.
* * *
When I was twenty, life seemed endless. The experiences of the next twenty years changed my vision of the future: I became aware of the finitude of life, and death became a preoccupation.
