WE HAD TO GO to a conference in Austria, or Switzerland? Some place with mountains in the heart of Europe, where people go skiing, with Alpine villages. We flew Swedbank Airlines, which became the new national carrier after the latest venture to create an Estonian airline went bankrupt and belly up. It had the symbol of Swedbank painted on the fuselage and all elements of its interior were true to Swedbank’s branding. We had a layover in Zurich, I think. That’s where things started to go awry.
For one, my eldest daughter got lost, and when I found her, she was eating pizza with some family friends at a local ski chalet. By the time we got back to the airport, my family was standing at the gate and they were calling our names. There was also a conference at this airport, which made it particularly overcrowded. The attendees were packed into an open air theatre, where the seats were constructed of servers. Someone told me that all of the data in Europe was being filtered through this one data center. From there, one could watch the planes approach and depart through the valley. It was snowing a lot too. It looked dangerous.
At last the sky cleared, and we boarded our plane to our final destination, arriving without incident. The hotel room was clean, in fact there was no furniture in it except for a bed. A familiar cat was in the room. With orange and white spots. She ran to the window and leaped up onto the window sill, and a gray cat came to the other side of the window and they began to communicate in their Austrian cat language. My wife also went to the window and leaned over, and that’s when desire overcame me and you know what happened next. “I hate you,” she kept saying. “You could never satisfy me. You’re not a real man.” But her words fell on deaf ears. The next destination was the big bed, the only furniture there. After she got to the bed, she shut up. The cats were still at the window and those wet snowflakes kept fluttering down.
north! 