a short story

Yesterday after I sent off my crazy post, I took a shower, rushed around getting packed up, met Christopher at school and took him to his recorder lessons, hurried with him from there to church, spent three hours monitoring the crafts and play room during the Christmas charity toy exchange, hurried with Christopher from there to parcours class, went back to church to make sure everything was cleaned up, picked him up, and eventually made it home for ramen night, cold and dripping wet and with quite a grumpy child. When the kids were finally in bed and it was time to sit down again, I couldn't for the life of me remember what had been so important in the morning that I didn't get up to take a shower until 11:00. I'm not even willing to look right now.

And this morning at therapy I was trying to capture the feeling I've had lately of waking up every morning and thinking ok...what day is it, and who do I have to be today?? And how that's, like, the opposite of what I'm aiming for, which is just being one person all the time? And how this might have to do with...something like, a midlife crisis in which the private part of myself (which I've kept carefully sealed off, maybe because the social contract of my childhood was "you can be anything you want in private as long as you meet expectations in public"?) is finally getting fed up and demanding visibility and recognition? It's all very slippery.

Anyway perhaps enough of the deep thoughts. Here I am taking liberties with my free time again, when I really should be reading for class tonight (well...ahem...reading for class last week...). So onwards.

After therapy I had the feeling that I didn't want to do my normal processing-of-thoughts in the Migros restaurant with a decaf coffee, so I got on the tram going the other direction, and then I thought ooh, what I really want to do is have a hot chocolate at the national museum café, but it doesn't open until 10, if only there was an inside place I could hang out for 20 minutes, oh the train station has a waiting room I'll try that...

Boy did that pay off.

(1) In the Zurich main station waiting room there is a short story dispenser! Free! You press a button - English, French, or German - and there are some zzzt zzzt zzzt printing sounds, and then it spits out a little 2-inch long receipt, and when you pull on the receipt (and not before - this is such a brilliant touch!), the rest of the story spews out of the machine and you're suddenly holding this three-foot-long thermal print of a short story in your chosen language.

(2) And going to the waiting room reminded me that I've been meaning to visit the chapel at the station, which is conveniently right next door, because they have a nativity scene carved out of the ruins of Auschwitz. Which was worth seeing. I wasn't bold enough to take pictures with people there praying but there are two good ones here and you can download an information sheet (only in German, unfortunately) here.

(3) And then I did go to the Landesmuseum cafe and the hot chocolate (with accompanying short story) was delicious.

Recipe for a cool morning, step 1: locate train station waiting room.

Step 2: press to dispense story.

Step 3: Order hot chocolate and cheese quiche (Chäschüechli) and note that the cash register is also utterly baffled by Swiss German.

Step 4: enjoy the deliciousness (somehow only 10 Francs, which is super affordable for Zurich?)...

Step 5: ...and read your free story!

Step 6 (optional): Go back to press the button again (because you can) and notice that the photo booth company has branched out into fresh orange juice machines. Vending machine innovation FTW!