The morning was uneventful. I felt better. Banana for breakfast, worked for a bit. Then I was off to the Post to pay my rent, bought some eggs at Migros on the way, it was so beautiful and sunny I couldn’t believe it.
I quickly scarfed down some curry, then went to the HB. A beautiful train ride dropped me in the small town of Schinznach Bad, and an even more beautiful walk, along some river, took me to the namesake baths. I met Muriel in the lobby, and we proceeded to have one of the most wonderful experiences of my time here, something right out of the Swiss luxury scenes of a James Bond film.
First off, we got RFID wristbands that locked and unlocked the lockers. You held the wristband up to the locker, and it popped and unpopped the lock (in a beautifully designed visual way). We changed and hit the main baths, which were stunning. The water, backed by slate grey stone, looked placid and beautiful under the blue skies. We chatted and laughed happily under the bath-filling features that soaked our heads with hilarious quantities of water, up to the hot tub, and back into the main baths.
At my insistence that I actually did like swimming with families and little kids (Muriel thought it unhygienic) we went into the family section of the baths, where there was a great whirlpool section. We floated around a few times, talking about whether pawns became queens when they hit the end of the board, or whether, after a lifetime of aspiration, they were cruelly sacrificed to resurrect the existing queen. I cited the fact that multiple pawns could be queens to support the less cynical theory.
At these ridiculous, amazing baths there was also a waterslide, and we rode that a couple of times. Then we went down to the lowest level and into a basement room that looked like a little chapel; the wall looked for all the world like some old ruins. Have I mentioned the architecture of this place?! Every tile beautifully chosen, every room different. The wall separating the outdoor pool from the indoor staircase that leads gracefully into the water is alternately huge granite bricks and windows. The lighting everywhere was attended to with such care I could not believe it. The subtle lighting on the water when the sun had gone down; the lighting inside the igloo-shaped steam room that highlighted the steam in little cones against the velvet black of its walls; the picture window in the Finnish sauna; the atmospheric colored lighting in the Bio sauna… but wait, I’m getting there.
After we meditated in the basement room we walked to the hot-cold pool and chowed on some complimentary nuts and fruits (the whole thing may have cost 50 CHF, but even at that price, in Switzerland I didn’t expect free food!). Then we hit the different saunas. The Finnish sauna was cranked to a nearly unbearable 85 C. That measurement sounds off to me, only 15 degrees off from boiling water, but that’s what the sign claimed. By the way, this whole section was clothing-optional (?!). So we were walking around in just towels. What a crazy experience.
Anyway, we made it a few minutes in the Finnish sauna, then dunked ourselves with cold water by pulling a chain that inverted a huge metal pot over our heads. We hung out on the balcony outside looking out at the pool and the hills of the valley that nestled the place; then reclined ourselves on some elegantly designed chairs. The chairs were two interlocking pieces; a curved chaise back connected by a rotating pin to an arc of wood on the ground. By moving the connection point of the pin (somehow horizontally, and not along the arc), the default reclining angle (parallel to the arc) could be adjusted. And once seated, since all the weight passed through the pin, the connection point was nearly impossible to move and the angle did not slip.
We went back into the Finnish sauna and flipped a timer on the wall. We talked about exposing ourselves to extremes and made it nearly to the end, when Muriel with her higher surface-area to volume ratio couldn’t take it. I sweated out the remaining minute or so and then Gatoraded myself with the inverted pan. We switched to the Bio-sauna, which was kept at a more respectable 65 C. There were light jungle-y sounds playing, but they were not tacky. The room smelled of sweet herbs. We talked excitedly of the fact that I associate expensive not with quality as Swiss people somehow do, but with premium mediocre; about wild marketing strategies by the clothing brand Zara that fool certain Swiss people, and the emotions these strategies prey on.
We went out to the pool and snuggled cosily in the hot tub with some hypotheticals involving careers as film directors. It was lovely outside in the fading light. Muriel wanted to be home before it got too late. We went back in, checked our train connections, neatly solved some shenanigans involving a missing phone, and decided we had another half an hour for the pool. What a lovely half hour :) We sat, soaking in warm bubbling water, in a corner gracefully lit by the subtle lighting I mentioned previously.
At evening’s end, we hurried composedly out to catch our bus. Muriel remarked that it would have been a very lonely experience being in the bus surrounded by darkness… reminded me of that zombie bus in Transit, Call of Duty Zombies :P We got out at the Brugg HB and I got myself a Quollfrisch; we both forgot that Muriel hadn’t yet bought a ticket for the train, so I had to board it without her–a strange abrupt departure. (I have one foot on the platform / and one foot on the train / but I’m goin’ back to Zürich town / to face the quantum games).
On the way back, I wrote part of this log and realized surprisedly, that the only music I enjoyed listening to at the moment, holding on to freshly formed memories of this nature, was the 4 songs in my “World Peace” playlist. Every other song I tried was incongruent.
I climbed the hill to Culmann on a wave of happiness, chatted with Alexis and Giacomo and Daniel, challenged Alexis to foosball. I made myself some curry. The challenge mutated into Italy vs. Culmann Champs; i.e. Giacomo and Ricardo against me and Alexis. I ate the curry quickly, enjoying it immensely, then played several games of foosball. Alexis and I lost the first match, to our surprise–Ricardo was a ferocious attacker. But we switched positions and held on to the Culmann Champs title in a best-two-of-three. Then I played with Ricardo and beat Giacomo and Alexis twice. Giacomo said I should go up against Alexis solo and we played a tight game–I won by 3 or 4 but with some lucky shots. Then I beat Giacomo 10-1, which was really surprising, and all my success was surprising in light of there being no particular foosball skills I seemed to be particularly great at–I wasn’t the fastest shooter or the best passer. Giacomo pointed to my unpredictability and fencing-like reading of the field, which (geez #checkYourHumility) made a lot of sense in my new opportunist framework. We talked for a little while after that about random bits of American and Italian culture. Then I went up, skyped Grace for an hour :D I had a lot of stories–to be continued on Friday hopefully.
To close out the day I finished up the OpenAI app (finally! too many revisions), and wrote this here log. Cheerio readers! With this freshly bottled memory of sunshine, a toast, that you may enjoy good health and excitement in life.