
Zurich Trip Recap
Left home last Monday at 5:00 PM, Eastern time, arrived hotel at 2:00 PM European Time.
– Left sunny and warm, arrived cold and rainy
– Was fed lousy food on the plane
– Knit a lot and met lovely German tatting woman on the plane (see below)
– Worked long days and slept short nights until presentation on Thursday morning and ate pizza, Thai take-away, etc.
– Thursday afternoon, toured old Zurich city for about 2 hours
– Other than the one picture I posted looking out my hotel window, I took no pictures
Left Zurich Friday morning at 8:00 AM, arrived home at 8:30 PM
Travel
Business travel often sounds like a great thing to folks that don’t do a lot of it, but it is usually a long, arduous travel schedule, a lot of work, in an unfamiliar locale, with a different sleeping and eating patterns, and often very little time to enjoy the local flavor.
However, it does expose me to different cultures, for which I am forever grateful. I often pity the American who isn’t able to experience other countries, which usually results in an ethnocentricity that is very unattractive to folks in other countries.
As for my flying companion on the way to Zurich, she was a lovely German woman, who was quite pleased to be sitting next to a knitter. She didn’t knit, but she did some lovely tatting. She pulled out a spectacularly beautiful, fine linen handkerchief that she had tatted a simple, but exquisite lace border onto. Like Buffie, in comments, she also likes the color of the bedspread/coffin cover, and thought it would look quite fine over a nice Italian or Irish linen bed cover. I think I have changed my mind about the color, now that I can visualize it as she describes.
Current Knitting
As expected, long flights and waiting in airports allowed me to get quite a bit of knitting done.

At this point, I’ve completed about 20 inches, and I will need at least another 45 inches before I can consider the main section complete. Suffice it to say, I still have a long way to go.
Readers’ Comments/Questions
Regarding the trip to Zurich, Mel notes, “I’m with Carol on the chocolate thing, but I would also add a recommendation to go have some cheese fondue.”
Our one team dinner where we went out to a restaurant, was to a fondue place, where we had two big vats of cheese fondue for dinner. I’ve decided that, while I like cheese fondue, I would prefer it as an appetizer, rather than a dinner.
Regarding the bedspread, Barb B. asks, “It’s tough to see accurate colours due to monitors etc. Does it have that kind of orangey overtone so much brown alpaca has?”
No, the yarn has no orangey overtone at all. It’s much closer to coffee with just a touch of cream.
Hilde from Germany writes, “If you have some free time, you should try to get to the yarn shop “Hand-art” at Neumarkt 10, and of course to Caf´e Sprüngli!”
Thanks for both recommendations. Our brief tour of old city was with a large group, and surprisingly, not one of them wanted to go to a yarn store. But I did get to hang out in Caf´e Sprüngli and get some of the famous Swiss chocolatier’s wares.
Joe,
Were you able to bring your needles on the plane out of Zurich?
I travel for a living and lately have not been able to bring my needles on board on flts out of Europe especially UK airports.
Hello Joe,
I’ve never seen a man knitting with that passion, I think I’ve never met any man who knitted!
I loved your blog and your knitting, it must have been a bit tricky to knit the block color cardigan! So many colors! But I liked how it ended up!
Best wishes
Chuana 🙂
just to get to be in a foreign country for a few days would be a great gift – while I don’t despise what I do, I often think how it might be fun to go on trips more often then I do with work –
I would definately take more photos though – I have recently been photographing the my WIP’s in the different locations so that there’s a record of sort showing where it was made… it’s kinda fun 🙂
welcome back home though – I am sure you’re glad to be in your own bed!
I once spent two weeks in London on business–you’re right, it’s still work but you do usually get a chance to get out, even for an hour or so. These days, I’d trade Zurich for Reston any time.
But did you bring ME some chocolate? I know, I don’t need it. Heh. And I had more than enough fondue in the ’70s, when we all had fondue pots. A little of that goes a long way.
I think you over simplified a bit on the reasons for the Americans ethnocentricity but you are right about it being quite annoying at times or most of the time to be honest.
I must thank you again for the post about the book: Outwitting History, I find myself reading it slowly so it will not end too fast.
Welcome back!
I’ve also got to thank you for the recommendation of Outwitting History. Just exactly what I was looking to read, and I had no idea until you suggested it.
Joe, instead of a cheese fondue as appetizer, try raclette as the main dinner! It is the other Swiss national dish, the one that is often shielded away from nosey tourists and kept a biiig secret. The Swiss probably fear that other nations do to raclette what they did to fondue – not much resemblence to the original…
Hi Joe,
I too am a gay man who knits, I’ve met a few online gay and otherwise. I knit, crochet, sew and machine knit. Glad you had a great time on your trip. I’ve just gotten into blogging to have a space for my friends to see what I have been working on. You do great work, thanks for sharing.