Day 16 - Swiss Hospitality

It was pouring that morning, so was glad not to be on the bike. On the recommendation of my Airbnb host, I had churro for breakfast with some coffee, was quite good and filled me up for quite a while. I still had an hour or two to spare in downtown, so walked in the rain for a while and paid Eur 6 (hmm, should it not be free...?) to enter the cathedral for 15 minutes.

I got to the airport by a quick train ride and checked in for my Swiss flight to Vienna via Zurich. There was a cool milk-glass floor, where you could see people queuing for a fast-food restaurant.

Glass floor of the airport

The flight to Zurich was uneventful, except for the 90-minute delay we've had, but all flights out of Zurich were delayed, too, so did not need to worry.

I boarded the Vienna-bound flight with only one passenger behind me, we ended up sitting in one of the front rows. He turned out to be rather drunk, a Viennese guy living in Switzerland? Sweden? Bangkok? He was pushing stories without end and offered me some sort of a mint from a round metal box. It turned out to be spit tobacco - I almost threw up after taking it in my mouth. As he was blaring his stories, a woman sitting in an aisle seat one row ahead of us turned around and she struck up a conversation with us. Well, as faith would have it, she was the second Hungarian I'd met on this trip and she was a quite well-known person, Emese Hunyadi, a speed skater with multiple Winter Olympics medals and even a world record. It was a very funny flight, us three talking loudly, disturbing the serious businessmen and -women sitting around us - but then who cares.

Emese Hunyadi

We landed with an hour delay - and I was quite happy to see my two bags on the baggage belt. I was back, safe and sound, with the images of mountains, monkeys, dromedars, sand dunes, kaftas, medinas and amazingly wonderful roads swirling in my head, in Vienna.