My plans changed. These things happen, the way they always do: quickly, without much ceremony.
My plans changed. These things happen, the way they always do: quickly, without much ceremony, and usually for reasons that are clearer in hindsight than in the moment.
I am still in Zürich. I will be here until around the middle of September.
August here surprises people who have not spent it properly. The city does not empty. It fills. There is the lake, which becomes the centre of everything. There are people on the water in the morning, and people along the shore in the evening, and the light at Seefeld at that particular hour before it goes golden is something I find difficult to leave behind.
"You can be five minutes from the city and feel genuinely far from it."
There is a walk I come back to whenever I have more time than usual: through the forest near the Botanic Garden in Seefeld. The trees there are old in a way that is calming rather than dramatic. You can be five minutes from the city and feel genuinely far from it. It is one of those places that reminds you there is no particular urgency to anything.
There are markets and activities and a kind of unhurried energy that belongs specifically to August. People who have decided that the best thing to do with a summer weekend is be entirely present in it.
When a trip falls away and you find yourself with weeks that were supposed to be somewhere else, the first feeling is almost always resistance. And then, quite quickly, something settles. An unplanned stay has a different texture than a planned one. You are not fitting anything in. You are just there.
After this, Scotland. I have been looking forward to that for longer than I admitted to myself.