It was about 7am when I managed to leave my bed - for me a hard task to tear up with it that early without outer pressure. But, 10 degrees, that's promising.
I prepared myself something what is proposed to be a French breakfast (I need to get into their way of thinking):
An egg with mayonnaise, café au lait, orange juice, roasted bread. Solid energy for a morning walk.
Invigorated by this I used the pleasantness of civilisation to get to the boarders of the city. It definitely takes strength to ride the tram in full outdoor armament (hiking clothes, huge backpack, boots, compass around the neck) but not leaving it at the main station to take the train to the mountain side - latest at this point, all the people have been sure that I'm crazy.
I left the bus at this family garden with the size of a Texas ranch.
Already after a couple meters I found this nice breaking point, a bench and fresh water. Following my rule from the last year, that I have to drink on every spot with potable water I had here already my first drink. To contour myself from Mr. James Bond: Beside of spirits I do understand with 'drink' also pure water. On the left there is this very interesting street sign - finally with a delay with more as 50 years somebody came to the insight, that this one might have a bad aftertaste http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tsgAIU4r2M - it will be replaced soon in the whole country.
The target of today's walk, Fällanden: I will carefully surround it.
A guinea pig race ground?
Vigilante in nice uniform.
Ok, this is, how they define the meaning of village today: on the left this was maybe once a traditional farmers house, on the right, something that pretends to be a state of the art mid level citizens housing in country style. And beside of the design of the solid parts: mind the offcut greens. But all in all it's a good reason to focus on the background, the Alps looking nice today.
Hey, I think, that's art - must be art.
In that case, that's art too.
There have been people, who designed a settlement. From practical reasons they thought, it might be good to have some office space close to the street. But on the other hand they have been deeply afraid of the street, from reasons we will never know. If it would be noise, they could buy well protected windows, maybe it was the traffic light that scarred them, or maybe that a truck is crushing into the house, so they could build a wall, nicely close to the street, and between that and the house would be plenty of place to build something nice. Let's say a table to play ping-pong, or a bicycle port, or a nice pergola to enjoy lunch brakes in the summer or even everything together. But because something I can't imagine, they builded something between a barrow and a war trench.
From the other side of the street a waft of smell from cemetery blew in my nose. It was a tree nursery, interesting, that the flavour of young plants reminds me to the death. Guess, it's like toilet spray: after a certain time of use in that environment also this perfume reminds just to farts.
Just after I took the well-calculated risk to go through this valley, jump over the ditch to follow the village boarders exactly and to safe some hundreds of meters of walk.
I have to admit, it was not a big bravery, it's a peaceful small brook, the valley is not to narrow, so I saw chance of about 1:1000 to get wet.
On the other hand, there have been engineers who built a nuclear power farm on the shore of the Pacific, and they thought "Well, there is a chance of about 1:10'000 that a earthquake of level 8 could cause a worst case scenario. If we have a earthquake with level 8.9 and an additional tsunami, the chance is pretty exactly 1:1 (6 of 6 reactors are broken) that we get something even beyond. I would say, that's worth to try".
As you see, I'm a sissy...
As I climbed up on the other side I saw this settlement. It is even marked on the website of the community of Fällanden as one of the four sights of interest in town - because they mark the sign of C, O and S on the ground. I wonder, if they write something with sense. let's say "sock" would it be a sight of national interest?
Beside of this, there is not much more to tell.
Quality control - yes, I'm still on the boarder.
On the other hand, because the forced me, I could tell more: Probably the designer of the settlement told the contractors, that the design is attached to traditional village design in this area. And beside of this, it has the practical shape of a laager, it's easy to defend against foreigners - especially English speaking ones.
Especially in under defined sites people have the need to express their rootedness to nature or to the cultural environment.
As I told above: it's quite far away from the national boarder. Almost every detail is whispering: you are in Switzerland. But the owner of this carport had the need, to set an exclamation mark on it.
Example of this whispering.
Somebody lost a drinking bottle in the forest. Somebody else found it. But instead to be lucky with it, he/she puts it on an upraised, well visible point, that the unlucky loser has a good chance to find it again.
Just that I'm not only spreading bad mood: I like that house.
Look here! How they built settlements in the traditional way and compare it with the C, O, S above.
Three lines, the roof ridge is following the flank of the hill and everything with almost not touching the compound, it is like the fields are going until the walls of the houses. It's really that simple - I really can't see, why there are so many classes for architects, if only a small percentage can do better as this.
How nice the world could be.
A shiny happy tree with beard
I'm the wrong one to get educated by a guy whose name is Roli Ranger.
Hot travel hint for everybody who likes to make holydays on the shore of the Greifensee (lake):
This youth hostel was built in 1939 according the planing by Emil Roth: http://www.youthhostel.ch/en/hostels/fallanden as a sightseeing attraction is mentioned, that there is a triangular gothic church in the town Greifensee, the only one in whole Europe. For all that people, who that fact is not enough reason to reflect about for the duration of the holidays, there is a close by bus stop, a direct connection to Zurich.
The community of Fällanden proudly presents: two generations of construction zone fences.
I'm not sure what's the message of this sign, but I did understand that the guy who made it, was deeply falling in love with soil patterns.
Where the lake becomes a river.
The river Glatt is doomed do be boring. Its whole valley is boring.
On the other hand it is homeland of big mussels, looks like a crow or somebody learned to open them. If they are tasty, somebody should start a business with it (Glatttal-Oysters. AOC, individually opened by special trained birds from an altitude of 10 meters, freshly delivered from the nearby international airport to any ridiculous rich people in the world).
Another completely unknown touristic hotspot of the village.
Hot bridge design.
Unintended sculpture park
There was a time, when people had more humour as people from today.
The heraldic description of the flag is following:
"Ein in Gold steigender roter Löwe, geschwänzt mit einem grünem Pfauenstoss." To bring the full power of this sentence literally into English, I think it makes sense to translate it with a programme: "A rising red lion in gold, skipped with a peacock green kick."
A monument valley.
It is not without any irony that exactly here the batteries of the camera refused to work further.
Anything what happen later on this day is only visible on twitter.
I walked up the forest, fell down a ditch, where I found something like wilderness. I saw two different kind of deer: a bigger brown one and a smaller dark brown one.
At the end, the walk was a little bit to short, I didn't feel exhausted - so I decided to walk a little bit further back into Zurich. But, this was even the reason, why I decided to take this walk as the first: it looked very easy on the map, first I had to check if I can at least walk that.
Lessons I learned:
- Some hours later I had a tiny pain in the legs: I could practice more
- I need to carry more batteries with me
- 10 degrees Celsius and no winds is the optimal walking condition, just wearing a long sleeve shirt and long trousers, first it was cold, but after some hundred meters I felt perfect.
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