Wherein DF dis/confirms some earlier observations about Svizzera

OK, broad readership, you heard it here first: DF was wrong. About one thing. Remember how I said earlier that there is a puzzling dearth of bums in Zuerich? Well, it turns out that there are not no homelesses here, though there are some. Today, DF witnessed a frail old couple, shabbily but not poorly dressed (if you follow me), hobble up to a dumpster near Bahnhof Enge, open it, and root around for cans or god knows what. It not only proved wrong my earlier observation about homelessness in Zuerich (which was affected by an unPopperian black-swan type error anyhow), but may have been one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen.

But DF's surprise at the non-checking of railpasses here continues. I've yet to see a single person checking any tickets, and I'm on trams a lot. Today, I was almost happy to see a cop get on a tram, assuming he was there to check our tix (mine was totally legit, natch). But then the cop just sat in a seat and started texting someone. I wanted to be all like, "Hey, guy, stop sending txts to your BFFs and do your damn job!" But that might not have been a great idea.

I used to have a theory that while Chicago was on average much colder than DC, my subjective experience of DC was much much colder because I prepared for the cold more thoroughly when living in Chicago, so I actually felt much colder when I was in DC (i.e., I'd go out in DC without proper gear b/c it didn't seem that bad, and then freeze my ass off, while I'd bundle up for fifteen minutes minimum in Chicago because I knew that if I didn't, I might die).

I mention all this because once again, it is hot in der Stadt. Someone looking at the average temps in Zuerich might say that it's not that hot compared to the US, but here's the difference: in the US, places are wired for A/C or located to catch cool ocean breezes. In Zuerich, the buildings, houses, and trams are almost uniformly un-air-conditioned, so that you're some kind of hot all the time. This ranges from "sitting in the office and kind of sticking grossly to the seat" to "walking up the hill back to ETH and pouring lakes of sweat." Don't get me wrong, DF loves the Zuerich, and it's only a low-level annoyance, but lord if it doesn't make me pine for the good old US and its environmentally unfriendly A/C addiction.

Did you know?

--The reason Swiss email and web addresses end in ".ch" is that the traditional Latin name for Switzerland is "Confederatio Helvetica," or "CH".

--Swiss-German people often greet each other by saying "Hoi." It's a weird sound for German-speakers to make. DF is beginning to be able to sense how Swiss-German sounds different from standard German, though this is really only an elemental aural instinct and not something I could explain.

Zuerich daze

Many have asked what DF is doing in Switzerland. The current prevailing most popular misconception is that I’m on vacation. This is false, as you’d already have guessed because it is a misconception. I could describe in some detail what it is I’m doing here, but that would be kind of boring, so I’ll just say instead that I’m working as a visiting scholar at the ETH (Swiss Federal Technical Institute) in Zuerich for a few weeks this summer. This entails giving a paper presentation, attending some seminars, and generally hanging out with the interesting and very generous folks in the IP subset of the political science department of ETH. But rather than merely describe, let me narrate a recent day I spent here in order to illustrate by example:

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

DF arises around 7am (Ztown time, finally free of jetlag) and wanders down to the breakfast room at the Villa Hatt. I am, as usual, the only person in the breakfast room, which is great because it allows me to snag the best seat in the house: the one closest to the enormous plate glass window affording sweeping views of the city below and the Zuerichsee beyond. I have taken numerous pixes of the views from the Hatt decks, but none of them really do this view justice. I will simply have to ocularly devour it on a repeated basis to make sure it sticks in my memory.

There is a pretty standard Eurohotel breakfast that consists of juice, cereal, cheese, deli meats, bread, and yogurt, and the Hatt’s falls into that category formally, but is echelons superior in terms of quality. The very nice older lady who seems like the manager of the place is Frau Erika, and it’s a close call whether her German or my English is worse. If I feel particularly alert on a given morning, I’ll make the effort to use my broken German when chatting with her, though this really only requires saying “Guten Morgen” upon seeing her, and “Ja, super!” upon being asked for the seventeenth time whether the breakfast is good (and since it never varies, it’s a bit more absurd to continually ask me if everything is good, though I suppose I appreciate Frau E’s effort and her general commitment to excellence, though it at times borders on fussiness, which may just be a Swiss thing).

NB: The Villa is an ETH-affiliated residence, and this led me to believe that I’d be in the company of other visiting folks, likely scientists or whoever likely studies here. But in my time here, I’ve seen exactly one set of guests other than DF. This was a loud family so conspicuously and uninterestingly American that I played up my German around Frau Erika to conceal our common heritage (which I did only to make sure I didn’t have to get into a pedestrian conversazione with them).

Anyway: I eat the typically excellent fruehstuck, clean up and head out of the Villa and down the street toward school. DF gets to the ETH via a route that is almost ridiculously picturesque: there is a downward-curving residential road that leads past the equivalent of Swiss yuppie mansions (which are conspicuously not McMansions), and then right along Freudenbergstrasse, which runs along a park that affords famous views of the sun setting over Zuerich and is thus highly populated by view-peepers in the evenings, although it’s equally gorgeous in the AM.

This takes me to the Seilbahn (funicular railcar, I think) at Rigiberg, which is the center of this very posh neighborhood (there is a fancy restaurant and theater nearby—I perused the restaurant’s menu just to get a sense of the prices and was unsurprised to see entrees on the order of $50-60 USD). The funicular slides downhill past a mix of castle-like residences where rich Credit Suisse and UBS bankers must certainly live, as well as some mid-level apartment complexes, and deposits DF at Rigiplatz far below, where there is a newsagents and a Migros (the slightly lower-end of the two Swiss supermarket chains, the other being Coop). From there it’s a quick transfer to the 9 or 10 tram, and I’m at ETH in minutes.



There’s a seminar on today, the second day of a three-day onslaught of empirical legal studies led by three professors from the University of Illinois-Champaign. If you’re one of the broad readership who also does law stuff, you know what this is about. About ten or so years ago, people who write about law got wise to the fact that they’d been basing centuries of cases and legislation on ill-founded empirical assertions about the world. ELS seeks to give some kind of statistically measurable basis to the factual assertions underlying law. DF has had no background in formal stats, and the morning is both fascinating and mind-bending. By the noon break, I feel like my brain is as full as the exploding-gut guy in Monty Python.

Blessedly, and (again) insanely generously, ETH treats us all to lunch. The seminar participants are a broad cross-section of folks who are either grad students (from ETH, the Max-Planck Institute in Munich, or Oxford) or assistant/associate lawprofs (me, a couple guys from LSE and Oxford). Lunch is at the restaurant at the top of ETH, and the conversation reminds DF why it is awesome to be an academic. Topics range from whether couples should have to get a license to have babies, to whether there should be competence standards for voting, to why terrorists aren’t better at terrorizing. It’s enormously fun. The only down part is that DF has lost faith in the ETH elevators after they got stuck very briefly the first day he was here (getting stuck in an elevator being just about DF’s ultimate psych-out fear).

Anyway: the afternoon consists of discussing several papers that use empirical legal methods, and they are alternately very interesting and insanely hard to parse. It’s like being asked to read a great novel in a foreign language you don’t know that well. One of the papers illustrates the continuing incidence of assimilation bias, which means that we are more likely to be skeptical of the validity of studies that render conclusions with which we disagree, and are more likely to attribute the results of such studies to the researchers’ bias (than to the fact that we can be wrong about the world, because, really, who likes to acknowledge that sobering and unsettling fact?).

Afternoon session ends, and there is a couple-hour break, which DF uses to head over to the English-language bookstore he’s been scoping for some time. It’s open this time (ha!), and an hour of fun perusing follows. I finally select a book called “The Slap,” which is billed by reviewers as an Australian version of The Corrections (and so far that seems about right, though nothing’s quite as good as The Corrections, so this may merely reflect the fact that Oz is not as good as the USA). Then back to ETH to meet folks and wander over to dinner.



ETH and the University of Zurich (the former is more of a technical school, the latter, more humanities oriented) are located on a hill above the main part of the city. I think this hill is called Zurichberg (Zuerich Mtn., obv.) and it’s there that DF is staying in the Rigiblick area. By virtue of being high up, one has to walk down steep sloping hills whenever one wants to go into the town. This is often picturesque, as there are stone stepways cut into the side of the decline to make walking down easier (though going up can be kind of a bitch, especially when it’s hot as it has been for some days now). These declines are sort of a challenge for DF’s poor reconstructed tibia, and of late aforementioned tibia has been aching a bit from all the hill climbing (though descending is, for whatever reason, less pleasant). There’s an old-fashioned funicular railcar that goes from the Uni area to the flats of the main city, but it’s under construction at the momentito.

Anyway, DF joins with some ETH colleagues and treks downward to meet the other seminar attendees and sem leaders, and we walk en masse to a restaurant uncreatively named Neumarkt (uncreative because it’s in an area just this side of the Limmat that is itself called “Neumarkt”). The food is really really good, which is one of the upsides of being in a city this expensive—you pay for what you get, but you get what you pay for. DF continues to make concerted efforts to opt for vegetarian fare when possible, opting for cold cucumber soup and pike from the Zurichsee (all tasty, though the latter gets demerits for having bones). The convo was again fun enough that I found myself thinking at the time about how fun it was. Topics included ELS, DF @ Chicago, and how to measure the effect of laws redefining animals as companions rather than chattels. Yeah, this is the kind of stuff I like to talk about, and no I am not going to apologize for it.

Dinner breaks up late, late enough that the Spain Portugal game is almost over, and it’s a good thing, too, because (DF realizes when he pops into a Neumarkt kneipe) Spain is on their way to a 1-0 win (and later reports indicate that the win was totally deserved), which is kind of a bummer but good in the sense that I didn’t have to sit through the whole thing and watch Portugal slowly and inexorably lose.

We hike back uphill, and DF stops by his visitor’s office at ETH to get his back and then make the trek back to Rigiblick. It’s the morning in reverse, obv: tram #9, funicularity to the top of the hill, walk along the ridge of Freudenbergstr with the lights of the city and the flat black Zurichsee in the distance, and then a quick dogleg to the left and I’m at the Hatt.

On this night, DF arrives at the Villa Hatt very late, close to midnight, and has to navigate the enormous rod-iron gate and creaky staircase very carefully. But once back, sleep blessedly happens in an instant, given the length (and exhausting heat) of the day, and tomorrow it’s up early for more Zurich and scholarship blah-blah, and I’m looking forward to it already.

Image 1: Exterior reflecting pool outside UniZuerich by night.

Image 2: Exterior of ETH and its distinctive dome.

Image 3: Interior hallway at ETH.

We are having a yodel-party now

Often, it's said that cultural stereotypes are harmful and unilluminating. And so I did not come to Switzerland expecting the natives to break into Alpine-style yodeling, well, ever. And yet as I sit here in my ETH office, I cannot ignore that someone on the square outside appears to have brought an accordion (or something) and is yodeling his ass off. It's a reality/stereotype convergence, whether meaningful or not. Oh, and church bells are also ringing, which is dissonant but has grown to the point where I'm pretty much surprised for there not to be bells ringing.

Unrelated, although perhaps related to the idea of cultural stereotypes, I have been on the local public transport (mostly trams) countless times in my days here and have yet to be checked even once for having a valid ticket. This is surprising because the entire system relies on voluntary compliance, so you'd think there would have to be at least some checking-up to make sure we're all not free-riding (and, just to be clear, I'm not--I've validated my ticket every damn day so far, though it's beginning to seem unnecessary). Could this mean that the Swiss are so rule-followy that the local police need not check up on them? I haven't enough data to know (said the guy who's spent the last two days at a mind-bending stats seminar).

Oh, and here are some interesting pixes.



Above: this is the headquarters of the local sports organization, Grasshopper-Club Zuerich. They're one of the top teams in the Swiss first division (honestly not a terribly distinguished accomplishment), and have easily the most bizarre name I've ever heard of for a sports team.



Above: this is an amusing copyright-related item. In 2009, a US court found that Swedish author Frederik Colting's book, "Sixty Years Later: Coming Through the Rye," a sequel to J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye," violated Salinger's copyright. The court enjoined its publication within the US, so you won't find any copies. Outside the US, though, the injunction had no effect, so you will find copies of the book, and these copies proudly tout the US injunction in an attempt to pimp it.

Even more random Z-town related thoughts

I had a plan, readers, I really did. It was very civilized and even kind of Euro in its conception: this Sunday, I was going to get up, have breakfast at the Villa H., stop by ETH to do some work, and then head to the English-language bookstore on Bahnhofstrasse to get some reading material, and then grab a caffeinated beverage and enjoy aforementioned literature, perhaps in a café or on a Limmat-side bench. Classy, right?

So it all went according to plan, and I hiked down Muehlestrasse across the river to Uraniastrasse in what continues to be breathtakingly good weather. As I approached Bhfstr, it became increasingly clear to me that something was slightly amiss. Yesterday, these areas were all abuzz with people—Zuerchers were cramped into every outdoor seat that a café could fit onto their patios. But today, there was conspicuously less action going on. Hm. So I hung a left on Bahnhofstrasse and found myself at the ELB, tried the door, and … locked!

Then it dawned on me: there’s nothing going on in this town because everything is closed on Sunday here. Restaurants, bookstores, all other stores—pretty much anything commercial is shuttered. But I guess this makes sense, right? I mean, who would want to go shopping or out to eat on a Sunday? Jeez. I wonder if it has something to do with the religiosity of Zuerich. But it really cramped my style, especially since I won’t have a free moment for the next three days to go back to the damn bookstore.

Anyway, as I sat on a bench and stared at the bookstore, trying to will its doors to open (NB: fail), something occurred to me (which is really quite a rare and remarkable event). I have not seen a homeless person in the entire time I’ve been here. Nor have I even seen anyone who could arguably be homeless. Admittedly, I’ve spent the majority of my time in some pretty fancy areas, but I’ve been all over the city center, and not a bum in sight. Plus, even in LA you’ll often find homeless people in relatively fancified areas (Sta Monica, and I was once accosted by a guy asking for change as I sat at the corner of Rodeo Drive and Wilshire—I suspect he picked the spot to maximize the sense of guilt he’d inflict on people there).

So while there may—must—be homeless people in the city, the fact that I haven’t seen them strongly suggests that there are far fewer of them in Zuerich than LA (hardly a surprise). Conjectures: smaller wealth disparities, and (related) more effective social safety net. It does make sitting outside nicer, though, not having to worry that some poor soul is going to come up and do god knows what. Social welfare programs are always derided in the US as a distribution from the haves to the have-nots with no compensation, but you do get something for it—safer, more peaceful public spaces (not to mention that whole “helping the less fortunate” thing that’s apparently so unfashionable in the US).

Lowest lows: US 1:2 Ghana

Same opponent. Same result. Same scoreline. Same outcome: bounced from the World Cup by Ghana, 2-1.

If you want to know what DF’s experience of watching the Ghana game was like, it’s pretty simple—just read the post about the Algeria game and reverse absolutely everything in it. I wasn’t even going to write about last night’s game—didn’t know if I could—but there may be some catharsis in doing this, so what the hell, here goes:

I knew something wasn’t right all day yesterday. The game was going down at 8.30pm, but there was lots to do beforehand, yet somehow I wasn’t able to focus on it thanks to a vague, uneasy sense of pre-game jitters. This is ridiculous, of course—the presence of a soccer game in ten hours shouldn’t prevent me from having a productive day, but somehow it did. And this wasn’t excited anticipation, either—it was something like foreboding. This could all be 20/20 hindsight BS, but I don’t think it is.

Even the scheduling didn’t really work well. I spent some time at the office (so much empirical work to read—but all incredibly interesting stuff), and then decided for a bunch of reasons to haul my ass all the way back up to Rigiblick to do some writing and watch the Uruguay/SoKo game. Game ended, and I remained edgy. Showered, hopped on the funicular, transferred to the nine, discovered that it stops right outside Paddy’s, and guess what—I’m fully two hours early for the game.

So then DF wanders Zuerich for a while, but in a blindly time-killing way, not in a “let’s explore the city and see the sights” kind of way. I ended up getting a snack in an organic grocery store and the sandwich is secretly loaded with sauce. Gross. I kill sometime playing poker on my BB and then it’s finally time to get over to the pub. But that’ll be good, right? Positive memories of the Alg game?

Hardly. The moment I got there, everything felt wrong. I first sat at a table near some other US fans, but they were so obnoxious (in a jock-y kind of way) that I had to move. The next spot was the same one I’d occupied for the Alg game: same room, same table, same chair, same drink, same everything that was associated with the LD goal. Yeah, I’m that superstitious.

But it still didn’t feel right. The room was hot and humid (Europe is simply not a well air-conditioned continent). The crowd was not really that into the game; it seemed like a group of US expats who were using the WC as an excuse to hang out. There were a few moms who spent the entire first half talking about strollers and preschools. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it doesn’t exactly make for good atmosphere. Worst, a couple guys brought vuvuzelas and blew them loudly throughout the half. If you think a vuvuzela is irritating when you hear it on TV, wait til you have a couple of them honking about three feet from your eardrums. I wanted to shove the horns down the guys’ throats.

Oh, and also the US sucked. Gave up the traditional early goal—thanks a lot, Rico Clark (not that Howard did much to save it). And generally looked overwhelmed by the moment and clearly inferior to Ghana. It was up to DF to change matters.

So I moved to the main room of the pub, where I was set upon by two Irish guys who had all manner of questions. They were all right, actually—much more interesting and into soccer than the Americans—and it was fine talking to them throughout halftime, but the problem was that they wanted to talk about all manner of things even after play started for the second half. Even worse, some German guys wanted to talk to me about unrelated things as well. I was like, “Stop talking to me, people, or at least talk about the game, which is happening right goddamned now!!!”

When LD scored the penalty part-way through the half, it was great but didn’t have nearly the momentousness it should have, because for everyone else there, it was a mildly interesting moment of sporting entertainment, while for DF it was a life-and-death, razors-edge experience of salvation. And being the conspicuously most excited person in the room kinda takes some of the fun out of it, and even makes you feel kinda foolish (perhaps justifiably so).

That said, I was in good spirits when the game went to extra time, since we looked better than Ghana at that point and were the odds-on fave to win. And then, of course, of course, we again surrender an early goal (though this was a really good one), and that ended up being it. One of the Irish guys thought it would be hilarious to take the piss re the second Ghana goal, but I wasn’t really that amused, and he ended up apologizing, which was somehow even more irritating.

And then the US lost. No one really cared that much, or at least no one cared as much as I did, which was obvious, and this made the whole thing all the more irritating and disappointing. So I paid my tab and hustled out onto Talstrasse, where the 9 spirited a very, very dejected DF into the Zuerich night. And just to cap things, when I got to Rigiplatz, I learned to my massive exasperation that the funicular railway was closed (or broken, or something), and the swearing that ensued must have seemed scary indeed because it caused a girl to stop babbling into her cellphone in French and vamoose.

So I trudged up Rigiberg, got back to the room, and allowed myself to wallow in self-pity for a good long while. And while I tried to whip myself into shape this AM with the standard self-exhortations (it’s only a game, not that important in the grand scheme of things, hey at least you can walk, people out there are suffering far more than you over far more important things), the somewhat embarrassing truth is none of this really worked and I’ve been in a pretty intense post-loss funk all damn day.

“DF,” you may well be thinking, and very justifiably so, “this is ridiculous. Sports—even World Cup soccer—aren’t matters of life and death, and should not cause anyone, especially not a fully grown and no longer particularly young man to experience these kinds of highs and lows.” Well, yeah. I get that this was all kind of ridiculous, and it’s hard for me to explain why I keep following the USMNT with this kind of fervor, especially when there are other, more worthy things on which I could spend my time. I don’t really have an explanation, except to say that at times like these, I think back to times like Wednesday against Algeria, and it all seems worth it.

Tintinnabulation

There are a lot of churches in Zuerich. In fact, when I mapped out a plan of what to see in the city yesterday, all the travel guides listed three main churches (Fraumuenster, Grossmuenster, and St. Peter's) as the most salient things a tourist should take note of in this burg. And one could well divine this merely by scoping out the city--the Zuerichscape is most notable for the numerosity of its steeples.

This is all well and good, since I'm neither a big fan or a big foe of churches (are there big foes of churches? does anyone go around saying, "If there's one thing in life I loathe, it's a damned cathedral"? seems unlikely). But here's a notable and increasingly startling side effect: on weekend days, all of these churches, which have bells, ring those bells. Frequently. And kinda cacophonously, since there are often several churches going at it at the same time. And loudly. Really loudly. And for a loooooong time.

This everpresent bonging is something that I began to notice gradually over the course of this weekend. At first, it was kind of nice. Then, I thought, "wow, that's a lot of bell-ringing." And eventually, while it's atmospheric and probably religiously significant to at least some folks, it got to the point where it was kind of distracting and made me understand how the protag of Poe's "The Bells" really could go nutso thanks to excessive tintinnabulation.

For what it's worth, though, having just said this, the bells have quieted, and so I've regained my sanity. For now.

Image: view of Zurich from the Quaibruecke. On the left of the river, you can see the Frau- and Grossmuensters; on the right is St Peter's.

{NB: Seriously, the millisecond that I hit "publish post" they started ringing again. Aaaah! Bells!}

Highest highs: US 1:0 Algeria

It’s taken me a long time to get to this topic, broad readership, but that’s because I wanted to take the time and do it right. And now that I’ve got a momentito, relaxing in my Rigiviertel room high above Z-town, watching the Uruguay-SoKo achtenfinale and resting up for the fury that will undoubtedly characterize the Ghana game, I will tell the tale of how DF experienced the greatest goal in US Soccer history.

There are some days on which you look back and say, “that was a great day.” But this day was different insofar as immediately upon waking up, I sensed greatness. And why not? It was my first day in a new and awesome foreign city. The weather was great. And all the US had to do was beat Algeria to reach the knockout rounds of the World Cup.

Early signs were good: I managed to navigate my way from my hotel in the hills above Zuerich down to ETH without much trouble, though the walk was steep and gave my newly rebuilt tibia some challenges (not in a bad way at all—it was like having physical therapy all over again). I ate with some colleagues at the school cafeteria that overlooks all of Zuerich, and the city looked spectacular.

So three-thirty or so rolled around, and I dragooned a reluctant US expatriate and made for Paddy Reilly’s pub, which I’d scoped out long beforehand. The venue was, unsurprisingly, dominated by Brits watching their game against Slovenia. The US contingent was relegated to a small side room with a single TV. In attendance were DF and his compatriot, plus about ten other US supporters (and I could tell who was who when I walked in because Americans really do talk louder than other folks).

There were early technical jitters, as the pub crew didn’t seem able to make the US game appear on our TV, and I was briefly deeply concerned about having to find a backup venue. But it all worked out, and we were off. I won’t relate the game’s details, because you already know them and if you don’t you should. The first half was nervy. Hearts were in throats when Algeria hit the bar, and I was reminded of the endowment effect when Dempsey’s goal (later shown to be perfectly valid) was called back for offside.

The atmo was tense in the way only a WC game can really produce, where every kick and miss and pass is fraught with extra tension. The tension in this case was, of course, ramped up because it wasn’t just a WC game but a crucial and decisive WC game. The second half grew even more fraught, as the lapse of time, all scoreless of course, gradually twisted the thumbscrews of anxiety. DF was, of course, cool as a cucumber throughout, head in hands, fingers in hair, head on table, swearing and yelling and generally freaking out.

And then it happened: just as the game was nearly lost (or, more accurately, tied 0-0, which would have felt like a loss, as Switzerland’s 0-0 draw did last night to my poor Schweitzer compatriots), a miracle happened. Donovan and Buddle and Dempsey broke down the right, and after Dempsey shot, and the Alg goalie—who had been great all day—gave up a rebound. The ball seemed to lie in the box for ages, all alone, surrounded by acres of space, until Donovan sliced into the scene and lasered it into the back of the Algerian goal.

Madness ensued, and I mean that pretty literally. Some good writers—Bill Buford (Among the Thugs), Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch)—have described the feeling of seeing your team score a crucial goal, and they both do a pretty good job. My take is that it’s a period of manic, joyful unselfconsciousness unlike anything else, one that makes us do and say things totally out of character because we’re incapable of expressing our joy in traditional, familiar ways. To wit: I hugged a burly US fan (a stranger) so hard that my poor sunglasses (which were hanging on my chest) got crushed; I shouted “Oh Jesus” repeatedly (which is uncharacteristic given my coolness towards organized religion); and I jumped on and climbed over about every piece of furniture in the tiny roomlet dedicated to US fans.

In that moment, Donovan had propelled us from a frustrating and gutting early WC exit to group C winners, ahead even of England. It was, easily, one of the most joyful sporting-related moments of my life (and I do not want to stop and consider whether it’s one of the best overall moments of my life, because of the very real risk that the answer may be yes).

More absurdist hijinks ensued: DF exited the bar and broke into various US songs and chants (entirely alone, and bedecked in a US soccer jersey, so that you’ve got the visuals down), and at one point even threw in a loud public performance of a Beastie Boys rap because it seemed distinctively American. I kept saying “This is the Mannschaft” and pointing at my jersey. I greeted several bald, large and threatening looking English fans, and they seemed amused by me much in the same way you might be amused by a younger sibling who finally beat you at something and was overly excited about it (which is not far off from what was happening, I guess).

I dropped into an imbiss and had a snack and beverage, where I ran into a couple I recognized from the pub (and the woman—admirably bedecked in jersey and US flag) remembered me as the guy who kept saying “Oh Jesus” when the US scored. Did the Zuerchers appreciate or hate DF for wandering through their streets early on a Wednesday night chanting “U S A”? Hard to say. Some were likely taken aback and/or annoyed, some were supportive (various passing cars shouted “Oo Ess Ah” at me), but I’d wager most were merely puzzled. The WC doesn’t seem to be much on the radar screen of the locals here, even with their own team well in the mix of it, so I suspect most of the locals just thought I was a crazy obnoxious American (i.e., they had it exactly right).

I went back to the office, and spent a couple hours posting incoherent things on soccer boards and watching goal replays. Eventually, I adjourned with new friends and new friends of friends to have a drink and watch the Germany game at the ETH student pub. I was able to cheer with real feeling when Germany won, as it had the salubrious effect of allowing us to avoid them in the next round (though the matchup v Ghana brings up sour memories of 2006).

And just about then I realized that I was really, really tired. It wasn’t jet-lag really, but just exhaustion brought on by emotion and hours of frenetic activity. And so I took leave of my Germanic amigos and was funiculared up into the Zurich night to sleep a well-earned and victorious sleep.