One Day in Zurich: The Trip of Rookie Mistakes

Today we’re talking about our one and only visit to Zurich Switzerland, way back in 2008 - long before we started our travel business. We'll discuss the mistakes we made, and what we learned as a result - much of which informed how we now advise our clients who travel on our Little Roads Europe itineraries. 

Among other things, you’ll hear about…:

- The Swiss dessert that looks like Klingon Gagh
- How I ended up with bloody feet wrapped in rags
- The importance of knowing the difference between a sex club and a sex shop 

Want to know more about us and our travel services? Find us at: 

www.LittleRoadsEurope.com

www.facebook.com/LittleRoadsEurope

We craft small-town driving itineraries for travelers to Italy, Ireland and Scotland.

And our "alter-egos" as musicians:

www.OrsiniVirtuosi.it

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Little Roads Unfiltered Italy and Beyond.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Today we're talking about our one and only visit to Zurich, Switzerland. Among other things, you'll hear about the Swiss dessert that looks like Klingon Gok. How I ended up with bloody feet wrapped in rags, and the importance of knowing the difference between a sex club and a sex shop.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

We are recording as always while sitting on our terrace of our little home in Italy, so you can get a sense of the sounds of our town. Church bells, you might hear some cats talking or ringing their bells. You'll hear scooters, definitely, other traffic, maybe people talking next door, and whatever else happens.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Today we'll be talking about what we learned from our first trip to Zurich and all the mistakes we made while doing it, Witcher Legion. In today's chat here on Little Roads Unfiltered, Italy and beyond.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

For those of you who don't know us, we are uh professional musicians and also travel writers and consultants. Uh we've been living here in Italy and working here for uh over six years now. Uh, if you want to learn more about us and our lives, you can find us on our website, LittleRoadsEurope.com, uh, on our socials, and here on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

And we hope you like the music which we uh arranged and recorded ourselves. That one was Puccini's Oh mio babino caro, the famous Aria, and of course it was in a swing jazz style. So we hope you like it. So let's get talking about Zurich and all the mistakes we made there.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Yeah, you were saying this could be sort of subtitled the trip of rookie mistakes.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Yeah, 100%, because this trip happened way back in 2008 when we were first beginning our travels. We didn't have our travel business yet. We were just kind of many years from that, yeah. Yeah, we were yeah, so we had been to Europe like four or five times before uh that. We'd always been traveling though to small town Italy or Germany, and then we were flying into Zurich uh because we were actually going to take an overnight train from Zurich to Florence. And we thought, well, let's fly into Zurich early in the morning and spend the whole day just walking around Zurich.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

And explore this very famous town, uh uh uh European capital and all that.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

And uh but it's good to know that it's good to remember when you're listening to this podcast that this day of mistakes happened in 2008 before uh smartphones, or certainly before we had smartphones.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

And before we got smart about that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

We were using a paper map, and uh so we couldn't look anything up on a smartphone. You just had to kind of figure it out, ask questions or not get it. And um you couldn't use that that resource wasn't there for you.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

And also since we were the traveling that we did do up to that point was uh almost exclusively to small towns, and so we were used to uh small town uh distances for walking and also small town prices uh compared with 100% so whatever big city.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

So the rookie mistake number one that we made was I bought a brand new pair of shoes to wear for a trip and then didn't wear them until I went on the trip. And that was dumb as hell because we had also arranged to fly, we used to do this all the time, is we would fly into uh an American city because we were flying from Nashville, there were no direct international flights. So we would fly from Nashville to somewhere else, and we would take the earliest flight of the day, and then we would have like a nine or ten hour layover in that airport, and we would leave the airport and go do something else. So in this case, we flew from Nashville at chicken thirty in the morning to Philadelphia where my parents are, with the idea that we would go have a nice lunch somewhere downtown of Philadelphia and walk around, have some coffee and just some good catching up time before we had to return to the airport.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

And uh almost invariably when we did that Philadelphia stop, which we did a number of times, uh we would pick up a uh uh cheesesteak or the pork sandwich from Tony Luke's.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Oh, we would almost get a listen, you know, I the even the the the TSA guys were always jealous because we would be going through with a cheesesteak or one of those broccoli rob pork steaks. Or one of each Tony.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Yeah, to eat on the plane.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

To eat on the plane, and then the people around us on the plane, I don't know if we were their favorite people.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Well it's honestly no worse than the actual food they're serving on the plane, though, I don't think so. But the but the we got a lot of respect from the security guys as we went through.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

At any rate, that's what we did that day. But I was probably hoofing around in those new shoes of mine that I thought were gonna be great for like, I don't know, an hour until I had bloody blisters everywhere. And I remember like blood soaking into canvas, and I was like, this is dumb as hell. This is bad.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

That was that was an unfortunate choice.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

And so I was hobbled before we even got on the plane. And um, but we didn't want to take the time in Philadelphia to look for a pair of shoes. That was kind of rookie mistake 1.5, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

So yeah, we we we got on the you hobbled onto the plane with your bloody stumps and the cheese. And my bloody stain.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

And my bloody stumps, you know. And then we got to Zurich and we were there in the morning, so we were gonna spend all day in Zurich because the f the uh train, overnight train, left at like 10 p.m. I think.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Something quite late, yeah. So we had tons of time to play with.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

The the second rookie mistake. Now I'm arriving with uh bloody stump feet, so that was bad. Then the second rookie mistake was we did not sleep on the plane. And we know better uh now that you have to just do absolutely everything you need to do to sleep on that flight. But at that time we were enticed by the cookies, the movies, playing games, chit-chatting, and just being generally excited about the trip. So we probably slept 45 minutes in total combined.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah, uh now we always uh do and we advise our our travelers coming from the United States when they're flying over to Europe to do whatever it takes to get as much sleep as possible on that plane. So you wake up in the morning while you're landing and you're as refreshed as possible, having gotten as much sleep as possible.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Several laps in the airport, um, or wherever, out of the airport, anywhere, but just a couple of miles of walking combined with one or two martonies really sets you up great to sleep on the plane. You don't care anymore. But you just have to understand that like the free movies and all that it's not for you, just don't worry about it. Because you're you'll end up trading the first one to four days of your trip you paid so much for for like three weeks.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Getting used to the time change, yeah and all that. Yeah, it's definitely not worth it. At this time, uh nearly twenty years ago now. This was we hadn't uh perfected those those techniques in traveling.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

So Yeah. So then the third rookie mistake we made was we didn't really do any research at all for Zurich. We did the research for the Italian part of our trip.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

It was really an it was really an Italy trip. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

But just with this one, but with Zurich, we thought we can just wing it, you know, it's like twelve hours or something, we'll just wing it. And that is something I would never do now. And uh, you know, a lot of our clients will say, Well, I don't want every minute planned. And I hear that. I also don't want every minute planned. But if I would go back and do it again, the way I would organize it is I would know more about the city, I would know about the pricing, I would know a couple of cafes to go to that looked nice that were like well regarded or at least interesting.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Or offering something specific that is particular to that area.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

I would know a couple of little things like artist shops and bookshops. I would know some hidden, quote unquote hidden sites that are like smaller sites, little quirky museums or interesting churches that aren't uh as well known.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Yeah, everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

I would know some viewpoints for good places uh to like take in a nice view of the lake or whatever you were looking at. And I would know some kind of quirky history facts and things that would definitely keep you entertained for twelve hours. And then if you found other things while you're there, you can throw it all away. Who cares?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Yeah, and we it wouldn't take very many of those things to make a perfectly good uh d you know, eight to twelve hours uh in in a place like Zurich. Uh it would only take uh a few of those things that you mentioned to to fill that out nicely.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

I think it was stuff like this, like with this um experience with uh this like screw up that led us in a couple years later to actually form our business.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

To start to start to develop the ideas about the the itinerary building, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yeah, because a lot of people were asking us for help and we realized like this isn't as obvious as it seems. You do kind of learn as you go.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

So after we arrived, um we were pretty desperate for coffee.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

And we noticed that uh everything was really expensive, especially one of the first uh sort of stretches of street that we walked was that whatever the high street is called there, the big shopping strip.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah, and it was like every store was what uh I think it's uh what what a lot of people like, which are high-end shops, and it's just that we don't we don't care about that.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Anybody that's seen us uh in person or in photos knows that we're not fashionistas, and so these are not important things to us. So that wasn't really doing well.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Our colleagues back in the orchestra we worked in used to refer to our clothing as either bed-to-day wear or ashtray chic. So you know, Prada is like a useless waste on me.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

All I think about ishtray chic was pretty generous too. I guess.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah, I just I see like fancy clothes like that. All I do is imagine how many mustard stains I'm gonna get on it.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

So we did we did manage to find a uh I guess it was sort of a grocery store and sort of all-purpose general store because we were looking, among other things, for a pair of flip-flops or other shoes as well.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Yeah, because I was completely hobbled. I didn't even have band-aids because I didn't travel with band-aids at that time. Anyway, I needed like full-on gauze at this point.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

And we were, again, discovering everything was just so expensive. So so a a three-pack of band-aids would have cost about twenty bucks or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

So I bought a pair of flip-flops that was like the lowest quality flip-flop, but they were very expensive, but very cheap.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

But seemed like a great idea. But all that really did was make a new set of blisters in in places on your feet that hadn't already been built.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Well, the the flip-flops were so cheap, they had like no support, and uh they weren't meant for that. They were meant for like walking in and out of a shower, you know, not walking eight miles on cobblestones.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

I mean it was and we did walk, I we I bet we did walk eight miles that day or more actually. Um so so we decided we'd hit a very wounding on all those feet. Yeah. Yeah, so so your blisters had blisters. And uh so we walked over to the uh instead of this high-end shopping thing, which is obviously not for us, uh notwithstanding your really nice flip-flops that really weren't. Um we we decided, well, we should go to the historic district because that's where we'll see the the old architecture and and maybe some churches or other points of interest. And uh and so we did wander over there and we did see some of that kind of thing. But what we were really uh struck by more was we kept seeing these giant posters. Uh you you you remember these uh oh yeah, these posters that we saw that were advertising various uh uh sex shows or exhibitions or sex shops, or just straight up genitals. Yeah, well, they were pictures of uh fully nude people and or just the just the actual genitals.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

I remember like in particular one that just I was that shocked me. Female and male was just a close-up, like six foot tall, so like two meter tall, just male genitalia. And I was like, well, that is visually descriptive.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

So so uh and and and again, then we did see the some of the the shops, the storefronts, and I guess theater fronts where where these things would be taking place. We walked by a lot.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

But I mean it was all over. It wasn't like a poster. Yeah, it was like street after street over.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

And it wasn't just one block either.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

It was no, I mean it was just like all over. It was just bonkers, and we were thinking I mean I'm not approved, but I was just like it I I was surprised.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah, yeah. We were we were both pretty surprised at that. So uh we we were we were so tired and we couldn't really find any coffee or uh at least we didn't think that we could stand to spend what it might have been.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

And this was kind of, I would say, I don't know if I would put it under rookie mistake, but I would just put it under mistake, which is if things are not going the way that you want, don't stick to your original plan. Like be ready to change your idea because we pivot, yeah. Yeah, we weren't ready to pivot, that's a good word, and we weren't ready to to think about making any difference, and instead we were just kind of uh unhappy.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

And one of the things I think we would have done is just accept the fact that we're gonna spend a lot more on this day than we initially might have.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, and so we were just wandering around and then getting more and more aggravated and despondent of the stuff. Plus we were sinking. Plus we were tired as hell still. Definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

So I one of us had the idea to find a little a green space, a park, a bench, or something to lay down in and just kind of doze off for a few minutes, kind of leaning against each other is what we imagined.

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Um so we looked at our map. We had a paper map of the city because we didn't have the smartphones yet. And um uh and we found a we found a little park uh with a few benches and we got there. Uh it was a little bit of a trudge up a little hill, but it we we managed. And um there were none of the benches were available, so we just literally plopped down on the grass and uh propped our heads up with our little sort of knapsack that we were carrying.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

You know, even though that is almost 20 years ago, I still remember that moment because I was just so grateful to sit down and put my bloody feet on grass and just just to rest for a minute because I was just at this point totally overwhelmed, pretty stressed, and we only had like 8.5 hours to go until the train.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

We weren't really concerned with things like, for instance, how many dogs had visited that batch of grass in the last uh since the last rain or whatever. Um, or people for that matter. Uh who knows? Um we kind of we kind of got as comfortable as one can in that circumstance. And we started kind of dozing off a little bit, I think. And then we were awakened by a uh huge motor sound because it was right about then, five or ten minutes later only.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

The uh the sort of city groundskeeping crew showed up with mowers and weed whackers and stuff. Yeah. Leaf blowers, maybe they were doing at that point too.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

It felt like chainsaws, but okay. I mean, maybe it was just leaf blowing.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

It was really loud and and uh uh utterly impossible to um breaking what was otherwise a nice sort of peaceful uh break in our in our yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

So we had to we had to skidaddle because it was time to go and we said we're back into genital poster land, and then we said, well, all right, well let's look for like a place that we can eat dinner at.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

And yeah, we started looking around at various restaurants, and again, everything was so expensive. Overpriced compared to what we were expecting to find.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Because we were still thinking, oh, it's going to be like it was when you know, six months ago when we were in small town Germany or small town Italy. And I mean, obviously not. Switzerland is a whole different country. And just I want to just go off for a second here and just say that I love Switzerland. It's it's so incredibly beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

But you do have to keep in mind that the prices there are eye-watering, like in general. And uh I mean this was 2008, we've been back several times since then, but it's definitely worth looking into a little bit because it's almost certainly going to be more expensive than uh where you're coming from, with few exceptions in the world. Yeah, so it's it's just something to be prepared for so that you can make the, you know, not make this mistake of getting annoyed walking all over town and not waste your time just griping for nothing.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

So we found a little place, like on a small little street. It looked cute, we liked the menu. It was still super expensive, but we're like, I I think it wasn't as bad.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

It was manageable, I think, because it was in a sort of out of the way.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

And we thought, okay, this is good, let's come back here for dinner. And um and then we decided, you know, we had several hours to spend and we just didn't feel like going shopping or whatever else. Didn't know the sites because we hadn't researched.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

One of the things that we did know was that uh Zurich is is on a lake, like Zurich. And uh we also knew that there was there were boats that could kind of cruise around parts of the lake that you could hop on, and the larger ones have uh little cafes on board. So we did exactly that. We got on uh we got on this boat, bought our ticket for uh like a a two-hour circle around the lake. So we could see, and this was this was actually that was really nice. It turned out to be a good idea. I was particularly happy. Again, it got you off your feet.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I didn't have to walk anywhere for a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

We got to see we got to see a lot of stuff from the from the boat, so that was nice. And uh we were able to get a couple of beers that were uh, you know, again, a lot more expensive than we would have expected to pay elsewhere. But it was beer at least, so that really did take the edge off a lot. Yeah, definitely. And we didn't have to drive anywhere, obviously, so that was not a problem.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

And then I remember looking at their cafe menu on that boat and being like, Oh my god, I cannot pay thirty-eight dollars for a hot dog. I can't do it.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Right, right. But reversal.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

We ended up getting a salad and for like eighteen bucks or something, and that was also dumb because the salad wasn't like a big This wasn't a cob salad with with hard-boiled eggs and slices of chicken and bacon on it and stuff like that. It was like a few pieces of iceberg lettuce and a couple of wedges of very sad tomatoes.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Nealy tomatoes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

And I and that is a good kind of point also because sometimes if you're in that type of situation, it's better to just spend uh a little bit more money and get something that you might actually like rather than get what whatever the cheapest thing is that you don't like. So that was I I learned that little nutty.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

So that was that was uh wholly inadequate lunch, uh, except for the beer. Um but at least it only cost eighteen bucks.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah. So um so we got off the boat, but that was a really nice boat, right? Yeah, it was it was and we got off the boat and uh did a little bit more walking around. Well, that's true, but I had rested them for like two hours, so I was ready to do, you know, open up some more blisters for a little while. And we um we ended up saying, let's go, let's go have dinner. We're starving. Um at that point in the day the restaurant would be open.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

We still had at least a few hours before the train, so uh we had plenty of time to do that and then walk back to the train station.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yep. And we were thinking, you know, let's just go get let's go take our time at dinner. And so we start looking for this restaurant, can't find it.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

We couldn't we couldn't find it anywhere, we couldn't figure out which street it was on.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Hadn't marked down the street name, so that was smart, or the restaurant name.

unknown 20:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

And of course you couldn't pin it. Yeah, you couldn't pin it on your phone because that didn't work. You know, and we very smartly didn't even pencil it in on the map.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Right, right. That would have been a good idea. That would have been a good idea. Another another of the things that we've learned over the years.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Yeah. So didn't do any of that. So we're then we're wandering around, and I was starting to get pretty uh like sad at this point because I think despondent is the word I did not know it how much further I could actually go. It was so painful, it was so gross, and I knew I was like destroying my feet for the rest of this trip. We had a lot of walking planned, and so I was pretty stressed about that. And then um we couldn't I remember you you kinda sort of slumped against the wall.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

You were so depressed and and uh you're just giving up and you started crying a little bit, I think. And I and I tried to I tried to uh sort of calm you down or make you feel a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Yeah, so he leans over to me and he says, Now listen, honey, let's let's try to focus and calm down. Let's focus. Was the restaurant that you want near a sex shop or a sex club? I still laugh when I think about it.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

That did uh pull you out of it. I I am fairly certain I did not tell you to calm down. But I'm sure I didn't say that. I wouldn't I wouldn't say that I wouldn't make that kind of rookie mistake. But uh but yeah, I did say I did say this thing, and although that wasn't the the clue that that led us to the place, um that did give us a little uh emotional second wind. And then and then we did find it a couple of blocks away uh from where we had uh slumped over there in near defeat.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Uh so and and in the end we had a really nice dinner.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

And actually I thought one of the nicest things about it was the dessert, which now it's funny I said that because I didn't actually like the dessert, but I did learn something and it's very memorable. And it's a very traditional type of Swiss dessert which is called vermicelle, which is like a French way of saying vermicelli. And it's this particular Swiss dessert which looks well, it's chestnut flour mixed with sugar and uh something else that makes it soft, and then they run it through a pasta maker so it looks like noodles, but the color is brown, so it's like a brown pile of noodles. Like twisty, soft ones too, sort of. Yeah, but they're they're really, really quite sweet. And so I don't love the dessert. It's definitely a dessert, yeah. But I do like finding new things, and especially when they're memorable. After like almost 20 years, I still remember that because it was just so interesting. And it was a thing that we had seen in windows, shop windows, all during the day when we were hobbling by. So when I saw it on the menu, I was like, well, let's get it.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

They were selling it at bakeries, and I guess you could get a not not you wouldn't get a cone of it, I guess, like an ice cream. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

And um, but it was just funny because when I saw it for the very first time, I immediately thought it looked like gok.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Gok is the the worm uh food that not food for worms, food made of worms that uh uh for for trekes or trackers, depending on which generation you're talking about. Uh the Star Trek franchise, the Klingons would eat Gok.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Um that was the thing I I thought when I and so that which were which were usually live worms.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Um and so in fact uh Vermicelli is uh and and the French equivalent that the Swiss use the name for it is is uh means little worms. Ver vermin, like vermin, basically.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

Well, listen, uh I wanted to just say that nothing that we're saying is meant to in any way put Zurich down. Every issue that we had um was uh self-inflicting.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

100% our fault.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Um and I do have a punchline for all of this, uh, which I think you'll enjoy. But before I tell you that, let's take a minute to do our little segment, Ask Us Anything.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah, our listeners uh sometimes write in and well, ask us anything, and we try to address these things on these podcasts from time to time. And uh one that we had recently, um which isn't isn't relevant to this particular podcast, but it is on our minds a lot lately, is uh where are you guys gonna go next? What's gonna be your next trip uh outside of Italy?

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Yeah. Well, that is a great question, and that comes from New York 75 Whopper. So I love that handle. Anyway, that's a great question, and I would love to be able to tell you, but the answer is we have no idea because w as immigrants here, we are not allowed to leave this country until our formal paperwork is in place. And this happens, this is a normal process, but uh we happen to be in the interim period when our paperwork is literally in paper form. So it's kind of hard to explain, but you apply for uh your what they call a permesso di sugiorno.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

A permit to stay.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Yes, and uh while the permesso is in process, they give you a paper copy saying that you're legally here. Uh then after as they review your case, if they approve your case, they give you a little card, like looks like a credit card.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Or a driver's license or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Yeah, driver's license. So um we have now on October 31, we applied for the Carta di Soggiorno. Used to be called Carta di Soggiorno, keeps changing its name. And that's a long-term stay, and they take a longer time to evaluate that. So here we are in the middle of May, and they still haven't returned it. And in until whenever they return it, we can't leave Italy.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Our understanding is that this is not yet a uh an alarming amount of time to have to wait for this thing. Yeah. Uh, but nevertheless, we are a little bit on pins and needles waiting for that. Um, I probably check it twice a day. Just for the just for the security of it all, but also because as soon as we do get it in our hands, we'll be planning uh trips uh outside of Italy. Um in the meanwhile, it's no hardship to do a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

It is definitely not a hardship within Italy to be here. But when we do get it, the answer will be uh, I believe first Scotland and then shortly after Ireland, because we do uh need to get up there and do some more research trips for um research for us for our clients. Yeah. So that that's that. So fingers crossed for us that they're gonna turn that paperwork back pretty soon. Before the season's over. Yeah. Okay, so back to it. The punchline of this whole thing is just really kind of funny because we were a couple years after we took this trip in 2008, we were visiting a f cold old college friend of mine in Zurich, and we were telling her about this first trip to Zurich and And particularly about all the uh posters of genitalia and advertisements for sex shows and all the the clubs and the sex shops that were in full display. Isn't that unusual? I mean, what is the deal? What is the deal with that? And she was laughing and she said, you know what it was is she remembered that back in in that year there was a like a sex shop convention. So it that wasn't just the normal everyday decorations that they had, it was like a particular weekend or week or something when um they had like everybody in town for just for this.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

They went they went all out for it, uh, literally in some cases.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Oh no. Okay, well, I think that's a good place to wrap it up here. Uh, we hope you've enjoyed joining us for our chat about visiting Zurich.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

And if you enjoyed uh listening to us chat here, uh give us a like or a good rating on your favorite platform and tell your friends about us.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

And don't forget to send us any of your questions, ask us anything. You can send us anything and we'll answer it obviously within reason.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Uh we talk about a wide variety of uh topics on this podcast, from travel tips to slice of life stories uh like this one. And we post a new episode every Tuesday.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

So catch us next time. We'll see you down the little roads. Ciao.