9. Driving, Parking, Garages: From Geneva to Zurich 9/5/22

Happy Labor Day!

After breakfast at Christie’s, we left Geneva and headed to Zurich where we need to return our car (we’ll walk and use public transit and taxis here in Zurich for the next two days) and from where we will leave for SFO. Fortunately, the bellman at the Tiffany Hotel in Geneva offered to get our car!!! Which saved us the nasty task of having to navigate getting the car out of the tight space and out of the very very narrow garage lanes. As we were leaving town, we got word that Emma suddenly developed the same stomach issue that Finn had, but she persevered and flew back to London. By the time they all landed and as Hem dashed to a client meeting he had developed the same stomach flu; as he was about to call his client to cancel the meeting, he got a message that the client had to cancel because he tested positive for Covid. It’s a crazy world. I believe everyone is OK by now.

Then we were off… it was a late start, so we opted for the motorway rather than the smaller roads as we had over the previous drives last week. And even with that decision, it was a beautiful drive just didn’t get us into the thick of all the little villages along the way. But we decided to stop briefly in Fribourg for a snack. Fribourg is home to a major university and has a large medieval center. We parked in a public garage underneath the city and walked around for a while… and had some pizza because all restaurants were already closed since it was past the traditional lunch hours. We realized we had better get back on the road (after having some great gelato!) so that we’d get to Zurich before dark; there had also been a lot of construction on the road, and it looked like we’d suffer some more delays on the remainder of the drive (which we did).

We walked back to the garage and stopped at the pay station. Mike inserted the ticket and then his credit card and then we waited.. and waited.. and waited. We tried to stop the transaction, but nothing happened. We didn’t get the credit card back and we didn’t get the exit ticket. We then noticed that there was a handwritten note taped to the machine well above where you insert your ticket and off to the right side—that we think pretty much said that the machine was not taking credit cards— good information, seen too late. So we pressed the “call” button and a recording came on in German… we began to talk to the robot… and finally a human got onto the call, but didn’t speak much English. Eventually he understood and said, “I come now.” So, we waited again, and waited and waited. Then we pushed the call button again, and once more spoke to the robot and the same guy got on the call again; he hadn’t left yet. We stressed that we needed to get to Zurich and he repeated “I come now”.. About 10 minutes later (which seemed like 10 hours) he arrived and opened up the machine and after some monkeying around with parts, the credit card was retrieved… but we didn’t get an exit pass. He said something and we figured out we needed to get into the car and head to the exit and deal with the exit card once we were at the exit.

We took the elevator down two levels (the garage went down 6 levels) and easily found our car (unlike when we were in Malta), and headed to the exit. There we waited a few minutes with our lights blinking to alert other exit-ers that we’d be sitting there. The guy appeared and opened the exit arm… and off we went. Never paid for the parking!! And now Mike’s credit card is all curved.

We then drove straight to the Helmhaus Hotel… a small 24-room place about a block from the river and very centrally located. It’s sweet and convenient. By now it was after 8 pm, and we still had the car; and we wanted to go somewhere for dinner. We figured that if we returned the car before dinner, we’d never have dinner and we were really hungry. We actually had a reservation at 8:15. We called to push it to 9:00 (which was the last possible time to arrive at Widder Garden). So we decided to keep the car overnight and return it in the morning. But we needed to find a place to park the car overnight. The hotel explained where the nearest public garage (our favorite place) was, and we drove there – It’s a pretty huge underground garage so we’re hopeful that we will find the garage again… and that we will find the car… and that the payment situation will be a little smoother than today.

Then we headed uphill and then downhill and across the river to Widder Garden which turned out to be a really delightful outdoor restaurant… steak tartar… gazpacho… grilled salmon sitting on risotto.. And some alcoholic drinks. All good ways to end a somewhat stressful day.

Tomorrow we will stroll Zurich.

And now we wait to hear about this special master.. what a sham. And what a delay this will be. Seems like this delay and likely other delays will make this whole thing go on and on and ultimately #45 could just slide by again. So unfair. I hope DOJ appeals and wins… Must say watching all of this from afar is pretty strange. Somewhat akin to watching the Democratic Convention in 1996 from Machu Pichu in Peru.

All the best.. We head home on Thursday.

Fern