Vienna to Wettingen (1998)
In January 1998 I found myself flying to Vienna to take a position in a firm called ITE (International Technology Exchange) I had responded to an Ad seeking agents to work from Vienna dealing with customers from all of north America. The interview took place in The Kensington Garden Hotel and was quite informal. I was having misgivings fairly early on as it bore all the hallmarks of a dodgy operation but they said my room at the Nordbahn Hotel would be paid for 3 months and a small salary for the first 2 months by which time they fully expected me to be earning from customers. I had been having a relationship with Ursula a Swiss girl for about 9 months before this and it had fizzled out, “for her” but not for me and I needed to get away and sort myself out so this seemed perfect.
Upon arrival in Vienna I found my hotel was near the large Ferris wheel made famous in the film “The Third Man” the whole area was quite lovely and not far from the Danube not the “blue one”! This was a murky mud Danube and on the other side was the UN building. I was going to enjoy this place. Cultural paradise. Sachertorte, Wiener schnitzel, Strauss, Opera, Flashy nightclubs amazing shops and beautiful architecture and a chance to try and use some of the German I had spent 3 months learning in Switzerland.
The night I arrived I was told to go to this office a short walk from the Hotel; I was told around 9pm would be ok. I found the building up a side street just off the main Nordbahn Strasse. It had a steel door and no indication of any activity. I pushed one of the buttons and someone asked who I was- then the buzzer went and I entered. It was bare, with a staircase leading up to another door. I walked up and entered the room to find what looked like an office but it looked hastily put together, not quite what I was expecting but then I don’t really know what I was expecting. I was shown to a cubicle and given a ream of papers which explained in detail what ITE was about. The room was set up like a call centre with those big padded dividers screening everyone off from each other. It didn’t screen the voices though and there were half a dozen guys busily talking to “customers” on the phone. I started to read the papers I had been given and sunk down into my chair. “Oh God”! It was a bloody sales pitch.
ITE were based in Dublin and was owned by a guy called Ken (who later came to Vienna and took us all out to dinner) you may or may not have seen adverts for ITE on Sky Television. The advert was a comical light bulb glowing in the centre of the screen whilst a voice asked “Got an idea? Want to get it produced…etc. the purpose of ITE was to extract as much money from the poor sap who thought his “Blow-job assistor/ Cloud moving machine/ time travel machine” (actual examples of customers ideas!) would make him a fortune. ITE knew full well most of the ideas sent were complete non runners but the job was to put the customer in a “Pipeline” and slowly extract money from him. It would start with a reasonable $90.00 for a “preliminary report” which consisted of a few sheets of A4 with a hastily drawn cover of the product drawn by one of ITE’s Dublin staff. Inside the cover was a readily available description of how to patent an idea. After they had been sent this “report” the Vienna office would receive a list of prospective clients with their contact details and best time to call etc. I should explain that prior to this they would have called ITE and left rough details of their idea and ITE would contact them.
The first thing they go from ITE was a few sheets of paper headed “Confidential Disclosure Application” this was supposed to give them the assurance that once the idea had been mentioned to ITE, it was safe from being nicked by same. It was an impressive load of gobbledygook designed to look impressive to the layman but actually wasn’t remotely “legal” ITE could have nicked the idea anytime they wanted.
I laboured through page after page of sales pitch and do’s and don’ts and around 11:30 I went in to see the office manager for instructions. He was impressed that I had a laptop and said that next week I could have my list on disc (3.5 floppy) but for now here was my list on paper. 3 sheets of A4 with dozens of telephone numbers. I was to start at the top and just call each number and say. “Hi (insert any name you like here) Tony here (I decided I would use my real name!) this is just a courtesy call to let you know we have received your idea and we are really impressed, we would like to talk to you in more detail once our technical team have gone over the (invention here) to discuss how to go forward and get your invention to market, that is if you still want to go ahead with it?.........................you don’t need to make any decisions yet but we just wanted to let you know we are very impressed and have decided it is worthy of further investigation” the whole point of this call was to “hook” the customer, make him think he had struck lucky and was on his way to being a millionaire. I am going to confess now that “I didn’t speak to one person in the 2 months I managed to stay there”! Yes, I said the above hundreds of times but never to anyone on the phone J it was quite challenging to start with because you knew the other guys would listen to how you performed but I viewed it like an acting role and soon it just flowed like Honey from a spoon.
What I was in fact doing was getting as much information about this company that I could without causing any suspicion; I had decided the first night it was a con and determined to expose it to a UK national newspaper. I thought about the Police but it was a slick operation and probably very hard to find a specific offence in it, but it was a bloody con all the same, they were preying on the gullibility of ordinary people with dreams, and THAT I really didn’t like. Especially as I saw myself as one of them too!
The hotel was great and I quickly developed a rapport with some of the staff, the lady who ran the bar was a Bulgarian and had some amazing stories of life in Bulgaria under communist rule but that is not for here.
During the day I would sight see Vienna and in the early evenings some of the other conmen er I mean salesmen would go to the bar and have a couple before starting work, usually around 9 9:30 but even 10 was ok. They were an interesting bunch and more than a few were Canadian. There was also a despicable English guy who had worked in the stock exchange and also a nice, yes “Nice” Turkish guy. He knew it was a con too but he had terrible financial troubles and felt he had no other option if he was to pay his debts 1,000,000 and return to Turkey, where incidentally he suggested me returning with him and opening a night club! How he was going to earn a million was beyond me but there were certainly some very large payments being made to some of the better salespeople. I think it was all to do with this “pipeline” they kept talking about. Once someone was in it ($90.00 for the report) they were persuaded to part with ever growing sums for patent applications and a multitude of other so called protection. I was shown once an example of an invention they had actually got into production, it was called “toilet golf”! Which was essentially a plastic mini golf club a ball and a bit of astro-turf which you would put in front of the loo and putt away! Figures like £25,000 $50,000 $100,000 were not unusual and people would re-mortgage their house to get a “technical evaluation” or some other bullshit research carried out on their invention. Once they had been bled dry there would be no more ITE could do and the idea would never go any further. That is my take on the operation anyway. I was told that as they progressed they made more professional “covers” and just put them on a standard set of freely available documents and that everyone got the same thing.
It was quite sickening listening to these guys who would be lying and putting pressure on the client as they developed their relationship. Fact is none of the guys had any more knowledge of the product than they were presented with by ITE. It was fed through in carefully managed fashion to keep the customer hooked. And the salesmen were well educated and very eloquent in most cases that gave them the upper hand.
The Turkish guy sussed me out after a month but had no interest in exposing me; he just asked that I leave him out as he would be off back to Turkey soon as it wasn’t working out for him.
I had taken a lot of stuff over to Vienna as I thought I was going to be there quite a while. Loads of clothes shoes and other personal possessions that would be too much to carry on a Bicycle, “Bicycle Tony”? Um, oh yeah, what this is all about, nearly forgot! Remember Ursula? Well, I couldn’t get her out of my mind and we had spoken a few times whilst I was in Vienna. I still harboured desires to get back with her and foolishly thought that she may change her mind if I said I would cycle from Vienna to Wettingen (where she lived) for her.
It was early March and the snow was still draped over the higher parts of the Tyrol and great duvet patches clung to the lower slopes. Although the route via Salzburg would have meant a flattish ride I thought the Tyrol “Radweg’s” would be more picturesque,
I had determined to buy a bike and luggage panniers and set off in a week. It was nearly the end of my paid for accommodation by then and I had collected all the information I needed to expose ITE.
I spent a few days looking at different bikes and finally decided that although the big knobbly tyre'd mountain bikes looked cool I would be better off with a sports tourer, so I shelled out £1500 on a KTM. I should say here that “Vienna to Wettingen” was originally written on my laptop in 1998 whilst cycling the Radweg through the Tyrol and because it was “of the moment” had a lot of emotion in it. This can only ever be a pale recollection of events and considerably shorter than the original.
I had arranged with the Turkish guy to leave a load of my belongings with him and I would try and return at a later date to collect them, which never happened. There was no way I could put all my things in the panniers and rucksack but I did mange about 60 kilo’s, it only took a few miles before I realised that even half that would have been too much!
I spent a few days cycling up and down the long and quite beautiful road which went from the big wheel and followed the Danube, I forget what it was called now but it was very wide and used mainly for horse riding. It was completely flat and was wholly inadequate for priming my legs for what lay ahead!
I didn’t inform ITE I was leaving, I simply woke one morning and decided today is the day. Oddly, Ursula called me that morning as I was attempting to attach a milometer to the front wheel. She asked how I was and what I was doing, I replied, “Well, at the moment I am just loading the bike up and preparing to cycle to Wettingen” she had no idea up until that moment and blurted “what? You must be crazy”! And anyway, I won’t be here, I am off to Italy for Easter” I said it didn’t matter, I was determined to show what I would do to win her back. After a few more words of discouragement she hung up and I put the last of my gear in the panniers.
Some of the hotel staff came out and tried in vain to dissuade me from this lunacy, but I was resolved. Actually I was crapping myself but couldn’t back down!
I was nearly 40 and hadn’t ridden a bike for over 20 years but my brain told me it would be alright, my knees could have joined in the discussion had they been so inclined and advised me otherwise but they remained silent, well, for a while.
I had a sort of map, it was a “Radweg” guide (Radweg is a cycle route) still have it actually and whenever I look at it, it send shivers down my spine. It is a beautiful piece of cartography marred only by adverts. I mounted the KTM and said Aufwiedersehn to the staff and wobbled of in a direction. I say “a direction” because I wasn’t really compos mentis, my mind was absolutely racing, “what the fuck am I doing? You plonker, didn’t you hear what she said? She won’t even be there, you are going to commit snowycide for nothing, you are 40 for fucks sake, get a plane!” these helpful thoughts subsided the moment I joined the main highway and found out that Viennese drivers are not sympathetic to cyclists. Well, the town drivers weren’t I was hoping for a more considerate attitude from the country lane drivers as there was less traffic. I think that as Austria was used to many cyclists in the summer months they kind of expected their roads back for exclusive use the rest of the year, it wasn’t much better out of town.
When I finally reached the start of the Radweg I had managed to eat all my energy bars and drink all my “Aquarius” drink. I stopped and dismounted the bike and realised my decision to buy the bigger saddle filled with gel was a good decision, one of the only good ones as it happens. I looked down at the milometer and it digitally informed me I had travelled………………………”0”! I was quite annoyed as it was going to be my motivator, I would set myself a distance I wanted to achieve each day and then try and beat it! The bloody instructions were in German and although by then I could speak some I couldn’t read it well enough to figure out how to set the bloody thing. In hindsight I should have taken the damn thing off and launched it, it would have been half an ounce less weight and I was soon to discover my mental optimism was going to be beaten up by my physical ability, not that half an ounce would have made any real difference but at least I wouldn’t have spent anymore time glancing down at it in the vain hope it would suddenly start working.
As I started the Radweg I realised I was going to experience some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe and I should turn off any thoughts of “lunacy” and just absorb the clean fresh air and pristine surroundings, whatever I found when I got to Wettingen I would accept once and for all. I should at least try and view this as an adventure for adventures sake.
About a mile later I started to suspect my bike of lacking interest in the track as it seemed to be determined to get off it. The wheels were large but the tyres were NOT knobbly and they objected to a straight line like a Glaswegian drunk. Instead of riding upright and admiring the scenery I was focussed on the front of the wheel and the track a few feet in front of it, it was very tiring but I had set a relatively short distance for the first day and could see the little hamlet I was going to stay at getting closer every time I lifted my head. It was only midday but I was ready for a rest and the first part of my “writings”. The Hostel was open and a few people were eating and drinking lunch. I ordered some soup and bread (I remember the bread was awesome) and asked if I could have a room? I was told they were not doing rooms as it was out of season! I was a little disappointed but thought the next Hamlet was only around 25 K and I could probably get there before it got dark. I finished the soup paid and set off in a slightly better mood. I burn energy quickly and get ratty when hungry.
A few kilometres later the forest started getting thicker and the sunlight became speckled through the trees, sounds delightful? Yeah but it was getting colder and the track was starting to climb, gently but relentlessly, and what the hell was the snow doing in patches this far down? I didn’t have any means of sleeping out so finding a hostel was vital and the fact that my knees were popping out of their sockets every push down on the pedals wasn’t encouraging. I decided I would have to walk for a while. I came to a fork in the track and there was no mention of this! One went slightly down and the other kept climbing, my propensity to take the easy option lead me “down” and despite it being a completely random choice it was the right one. Although the deterioration in the track caused me some serious doubts it finally opened up onto a fairly well maintained section of track and I could see a town in the distance. Well, I say a “town” it was another chocolate box picture in 3D my guide said there was a cycling hostel there and I prayed it would be open.
There was only one place that looked like a Hostel and sure enough there was a Bicycle in a rack outside but, the place looked closed! I banged on the door and I will never really know if it was open but they let me in and said it would be 150 Shillings, (it was about £15,00 in Sterling) I was probably doing as good an impression of Uriah Heep as any professional actor I was so pleased. I was shown a room at the top; we call it an “Attic”! And despite my delight at being allowed in I wasn’t too impressed with banging my head if I wanted to actually move around. I stripped and had a shower, had there been a bath I am sure I would have been found drowned the next day. My muscles were starting to react to the days ride/walk and they weren’t happy, it was a good move only putting a shower in the room a bath would have sent me to sleep. I stepped out of the shower and banged my head again, I put some clean warm clothes on banged my head and headed downstairs for some nosh.
I was told that I could have bratwurst and bread so I did! What arrived was 3 enormous sausages half a loaf and a large tub of mustard, coupled with a litre of beer I stuffed the lot. I was the only customer and after a sort of chat with the owner about my plan to cycle to Switzerland he looked at me as though I were “English” I told him I would leave in the morning, I thanked him and headed up to write my first days log.
As I said earlier, this is a recollection and sadly doesn’t have the detail that would truly convey the feelings I was having but I can say my mind was not in a very sensible place with regards to Ursula. She was nearly 20 years younger than me and I was totally smitten with her. She had russet hair and freckles a smile that seemed to encompass her whole body and the cutest accent when she spoke English. I met her back in Farnham Surrey when I had taken over a branch of Hays Contract Personnel in Camberley (another story!) and she was studying English in Farnham but also started work at my local “The Hop Blossom”. She was enchanting and the guys in the pub were doing their best to persuade her to go out with them. She was having none of it and I didn’t make any attempt but a mate of mine closer to her age was very interested. At some point I decided to ask her if she wanted to come to the Farnham beer festival with my mate and me, she said yes and I thought cool, Joe (made up name) can try his luck then. What I hadn’t realised was that she was interested in me! All evening at the beer festival I tried to give Joe the space he might need but Ursula kept coming to me. I decided that as Joe had no chance and she was very lovely it would be daft not to see what developed.
Well, it did develop very quickly and boy did she have a story to tell!
To be continued………
Ursula came from a small town near Zurich called Wettingen. It was a pretty little town not far from the river Limmat and the beautiful town of Baden. She had a brother and Mother both living there but her Father had died 2 years prior to her meeting me. He worked himself to death but left behind a good portfolio of property and business in the town which after her mother died would become hers and her brothers.
She had left Switzerland to finish studying English at Winchester and get away from a bad memory. Her boyfriend of many years had left on a trip to Thailand a year before and had become embroiled in a business venture (beach bar) with a local girl whom he developed a relationship with. It didn’t work out and things got bad for him. He called Ursula and she felt he was in a bad way so flew to Thailand to rescue him and bring him home to Switzerland. It was then that he dropped a bombshell on her. He had AIDS. Or he thought he had AIDS. He checked into a local monastery “Rapperswil” and slowly went downhill, despite many visits from Ursula and her desire to stay with him he made a decision to commit suicide and did this by shooting himself in the mouth with a shotgun. Ursula was devastated.
When I met Ursula a year later she was still thinking of doing the same. She had known Hans peter since childhood and thought they would always be together; she was in a reckless place but with typical Swiss resolve seemed to be working with it. Enter me. I wasn’t exactly happy to think I might be a sort of human medicine at the time but these things leave your head as a relationship develops and it soon became clear that she had turned a corner and was keen to stay with me. I was employed at Motorcycle City as national mobile sales manager, race team co-ordinator and fleet sales development, a load of fancy titles for what I was really there for which was “sell motorbikes” I had realised early on that I would not be able to do this job as it had absolutely no ethics in it. and as Ursula was preparing to go back to Wettingen and wanted me to come there, I planned my extraction from “City”
A customer had brought in a left hand drive tricked up mini which had been part exchanged for a motorbike, as City had no interest in cars I managed to buy It for a few hundred pounds, it would be my means of escape. Ursula left and within a couple of weeks I had bundled some things into the Mini and made my escape.
The car was a hoot, it had been re-engined with a 1300 MG but had all the running gear left as a 998, which to the layman means it went like a rat up a drainpipe to about 60 mph but was revving it’s cogs off, not the most relaxing drive to Switzerland but my eagerness to be with Ursula overcame any obstacles, I just hoped that she still wanted me there.
I arrived at her Mother’s house and was introduced to Mother and Brother, Mum was a little unsure and reserved (I was nearly twice Ursula’s age) but her brother was downright rude. He shook my hand and the first words out of his mouth were “hello, how are you going to support yourself”? Well, I say “rude” but maybe in hindsight he had a worse case of Aspergers than me! No, scrub that, he was just rude. Ursula was angry at him but nothing was said. Her mother had not waited long for her husband’s passing before she hitched up with a retired Zurich cop and he was the nicest of the three. I decided it was quite reasonable for the mother and brother to be unsure of me for at least a couple of reasons and I explained this to Ursula. Later that evening the power went off as Mrs Urech was making a “nespresso”. Everything went off; they were completely unable to figure out what to do so I stepped in and said. “Where is the fuse box” I was shown to it and I showed them how to isolate the problem, I had already figured that as the “Nespresso machine was switched on the power went off” so it was likely that was the problem. I turned all the fuses off then put the main one on and one by one turned on the others, sure enough as the fuse that controlled the plug with the coffee machine went on, the power tripped again. After this the coffee machine was unplugged and all was well. There was a “little” appreciation of my ingenuity but not as much as I had hoped for. I thought “fuck em” I am only interested in Ursula so they can think what they like.
In the morning we decided to go off on a little tour of Europe. My mini was not suitable so we went in Ursula’s dad’s old Volvo estate which he had left to her.
Ursula had friends in Italy so that was our first direction. The next couple of months we drove several thousand kilometres doing Switzerland, Italy France and finally the length of Spain right through the middle staying at every Parador on the route. The car was gradually filled with wines and cheese and other regional produce that wouldn’t go off. The drive back to Switzerland was direct as we had decided to get stuck in to finding somewhere not connected to her mother or Brother. They had turned quite nasty and were threatening to cut Ursula out of her portion of her father’s estate. It got quite messy with Ursula eventually getting a copy of his will and realising that she had more power than her Mother and Brother were saying. There was the farm at Ehrendingen a few miles out of town which although was equally split between her and her brother, he had moved in and was not letting Ursula take any advantage of her rights to it. All this was because her mother and brother were unhappy about our relationship. We managed to rent an apartment in town but even that seemed to involve some sort of conditions vaguely connected to her family, it was all a little “mafia” like and I wanted no part of it. I enrolled on a full time German language course in Baden and Ursula got a job temping at Roche. For three months it was great, we connected with all her old friends and they were very happy Ursula was back to normal. As it was not possible for a Brit to just move to Switzerland and live without being “required” we sought some advice from the authorities. It was a definitive “No”; I had to leave as I had outstayed my legitimate duration. It wasn’t an easy time as Ursula had re-entered her life and had that “Swiss” mentality slowly starting to grow. It is all very, well, “Swiss”! Quite rigid and matter of fact. She was getting stronger and more focussed on career and I think I was starting to lose my appeal.
I returned to the UK quite deflated but determined to do whatever I could to keep the relationship going. Fortune smiled and I got a temp job at Hays Contract Personnel in the office, even though I had gone for a driving job! 6 weeks later I took over that branch as Hays said it was unprofitable and as part of a merger with Hays Accountancy it was on the chop list. Calibra Consultants Ltd was born and I had the means to make frequent trips to see Ursula. By the Way, it “wasn’t unprofitable” it was being run badly.Every 2 weeks I would take an empty Swissair turbo-prop to Zurich and Ursula would pick me up.
Before I left Switzerland I discovered that Porsche 911’s were cheap there and saw an opportunity to import old cars back to the UK. Ursula was keen and so we bought 2 and drove them back to the UK for me to sell whilst she returned to her job.
This back and forth worked for a while and although things were different I was accepting of it. Ursula was doing well and there seemed to be a gradual warming in her relationship with her family. I could smell the end of us every time I visited.
It ended when I discovered “Renato Rescaldini” was her new focus of attention and I was being put off coming over to visit. I didn’t really have any interest in Calibra Consultants and as it looked like the law was about to change affecting all Contract personnel businesses I decided to sell to the office manager. He was an un-discharged bankrupt when I took the business over but I had promised him 50% if he stayed and continued with the day to day running, he did, and when he was able I sold him my half and left. A fortuitous decision as it happens as a few months later the law did change and I believe the business failed, although his alcoholism might have played a part too.
For several months I was listless, I spent more time at the Hop Blossom than the landlord I even ran the place sometimes, but as I too have a difficult time moderating my alcohol intake it wouldn’t have been a good plan. I managed to get through my money and all seemed to have gone to hell again when the job in Vienna came up. Just what I needed, a complete break.
I woke up early and discovered the ceiling was still 6 inches lower than my head! My muscles ached and it was a cold gunmetal grey damp day. I had another shower to warm up and headed down to breakfast. I stuffed loads of carbohydrate down my throat, paid (it came to about £25.00 all in!) and went outside to mount the KTM. It was still there! I had harboured thoughts of it being stolen in the night so I could justifiably end this nonsense but it was still there.
Mile after mile of up and down (mostly up) went by and the scenery was just spectacular, it looked like it might have done hundreds of years ago. There was no urban sprawl, no real signs of modernity and despite the cold I was mostly enjoying the ride. Although I never got used to the wind. It seemed that when I went downhill, the wind was following making it treacherous and vital to keep on braking and when I was going uphill, it was against me. My knees were in agony and it was raining too. I wasn’t completely unprepared I had bought waterproofs, well, when I say proof’S I mean I had a jacket, I had omitted the trousers for what still remains an unsolved mystery. I stopped on more than one occasion in an area of incredible beauty and bawled myself stupid. Yes I was feeling incredibly sorry for myself. I couldn’t figure out why despite wanting to do the “right things” it never worked out. I seemed to have absolutely no staying power yet here I was committed to a difficult trial which required incredible staying power! It was actually quite liberating being so isolated and allowed me to have many a good cry, loud and uninhibited. Each time I finished a new energy came into me and a renewed vigour for the journey.
The “Radweg” was a mixed bag of isolated trail occasionally interspersed with main road. The trail may have been tough but the road! More than once did I nearly become the new radiator mascot on a truck; these bastards had no sympathy for the lone cyclist on a mission. I found the best tactic was to stop and dismount whenever I heard the rumble of juggernaut behind me; it was tedious but felt the safest option.
The particular route I had taken was the “Murradweg” which followed roughly the “Murra” a river in the lower Tyrol and would get me to a decent stop in Tamsweg.
I was constantly impressed with the friendliness of the Hosteliers and their helpful reminders that “this was NOT the time of year to be cycling this route! I had decided that KTM was an acronym for “Kill The Muscles, or Keep Taking Medicine” the first of which it did, and the second a very sensible piece of advice.
It was after Tamsweg that I realised I was now on the wrong route and heading more for Italy than Switzerland; a quick bus ride back on the new route would take me to a town called Mauternsdorf from where I could plan my next route. I decided to only use the bus to put me in the direction of Mauternsdorf and cycle to it; what I hadn’t realised was that it should have been spelt “Mountainsdorf”! As I started heading up this road I realised it was “Never” going to be anything but UP. And as I got further and further UP it got colder and whiter. Mauternsdorf is a bloody Ski resort and it was still being used! I went as far as practically possible before accepting my failure to negotiate cycling on hard snowy roads and finally managed to get a lift on a bus seemingly equipped for rescuing lunatics. There was loads of space for the bike. It didn’t dawn on me until getting to the town that it was actually designed for many skiers with skis.
I didn’t stop for long in Mauternsdorf, I realised that as it had been all uphill there was a good chance the next leg would be all “downhill” it was, but the mean spirited wind still blew against me and I actually had to “pedal” downhill on more than one occasion. The crying stopped because I was fed up picking solid drops of ice off my cheeks and whatever I initially felt when I left Vienna had turned to a grim determination and a sort of anger that I had forced myself to do this to myself. There were still many opportunities to just stop and gaze in awe at the surroundings and I did do just that. I loved the feeling of insignificance when looking at the majesty of the mountains. They didn’t have to speak; they silently informed me that they might kill me or caress me depending on my respect for them. “I respected them”!
Some days later, ( I had completely lost track of time) with a mixture of delirium and delight I was entering "Der Schweitz” I felt I had done enough and called Ursula. She was stunned but agreed to come and get me from wherever the hell I was.
I cut the narrative of the journey short here because there is only so much waxing lyrical about stunning scenery and abject despondency that I want to recall.
Ursula picked me up somewhere near Zurich and took me back to the apartment we once shared. It was warm, I was warm, the food she prepared was warm but the atmosphere and Ursula were as cold as the Murraweg River. She said I could stay the night but in the morning she would take me to Zurich airport and I must go home.
We talked quite a bit that evening but I still never quite got to understand what had gone wrong. It was easier to accept that she had just “woken up” from her previous nightmare and realised she was part of a culture that I would never be able to slot into. She had managed to overcome her anger at her family and I believe all was now well between them. She also had found a new job for a telecoms company and was active in her old sporting world, she loves to do triathlons.
She did keep in touch for a few years usually at Christmas and on my Birthday but then the communications stopped and she disappeared.
For my part, I returned to Farnham and the Hop Blossom with nothing but another experience under my belt. I was back in “reflective observer mode” back to no plans no aspirations no direction and no clue of what was to happen next.
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