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zurich’s half-awake rhythm: drizzle, beats, and questionable food choices

@Topiclo Admin3/21/2026blog

the train rattled on, clattering through a blur of alpine peaks and suburban sprawl until i slipped into zurich by mistake. or maybe on purpose. hard to tell when you’re a touring session drummer dragging a drum case onto busses all morning. i checked and it’s a solid 11.5° here right now, which is just cold enough to make the condensation on my beer can feel like a dare. humidity’s clinging to the air like a relative who won’t stop talking about their divorce. pressure’s low, clouds are high, and the street performers near bürkliplatz park look like they’re auditioning for a rainy-day rom-com.



i’m not sure if the landlady’s cat saw me or if it was just the way the light hit the cobblestones. either way, its tail flicked at the door and vanished into the fog. neighbors? well, if you get bored, they’re all closer than you think-Zug’s ten minutes away, Westhessen’s two, and somewhere between a Starbucks and a flea market is a secret izakaya where the beard guy behind the counter knows my oldest joke by name. they told me last night that something brews down by the oldZumtobel brewery, and that’s why my teleprompter keeps misfiring mid-set. turns out it’s not the equipment; it’s the predictable acoustics of that godforsaken hall.



i borrowed a ukulele from a guy in a waistcoat three blocks down and traded him a half-eaten chocolate bar for a ‘lifetime supply’ of misheard lyrics. turns out ‘freibier’ isn’t a genre of jazz. the locals are just rude about capitalization. sipping bitterhop from a mug labeled ‘for poetic traumas’ beside the limmat river, i overheard that something haunted the Old Town Hall. pack of stray cats roaming the wine cellars, hissing at tourists who said ‘oooh, gothic vibes,’ as if they didn’t crawl into my socks last week.



early fell for a scam at the 7-eleven on bahnhof. woman handed me a pamphlet titled ‘zurich’s 12 Best-Kept Secrets’ and winked. turned out it was just their Saturday crossword contest. drank six cough drops off the rack after that, wondering if coughing was the same as laughing. woke up in a park surrounded by strangers arguing about whether the ‘zeitgeist’ was Bavarian or Siberian. someone tossed me a bratwurst. it was lukewarm and decisive.



there’s a maple tree by the opera house with a swing that creaks like the plot of a bad telenovela. tried sitting there. someone ate all the guitar cases. turned into a sax. tried again. the streets hum with the ghost of ABBA covers thinly veiled as polka bands. 20% chance of rain the next hour, according to the weather app, and 80% chance of regret after the 2 a.m. döner kebab. walking past the altweger pub, heard that something’d happened to the concrete bridge at Sachertormaus-cracked open like a WiFi signal from 2003. didn’t see any WiFi, but the streetlights looked like they were stuttering.



photos? tried snapping the oldtown hall’s gargoyles mid-blowjob, but they’re terrible subjects. kept zooming in until the gargoyles became cats. tried again. forgot to save the file. ended up with a blurry photo of my shoe, and a houndstooth-patterned bag left unattended near the st. peter’s bridge. the bag had a single loose candle; frothed someone’s headrest. what kind of symbolism is that? i miss pressed documents and beanbag chairs. miss them more than I miss vintage clothes, which is saying something.



used the post bus to wander toward the belvoir tower. the old digs had a sign that said ‘historie beckoneth’ and oozed fish smells. saw a guy feeding pigeons breadsticks while wearing socks with sandals embroidered in the aragonese tongue. took a photo. someone yelled ‘terence!’ down the cobbled alley. I’m not a history nerd, but I’m afraid it was the hotel from ‘the americans.’ if there’s another layer to this, I want it in 4K.



the black lotus park has a playground with swings shaped like broken metronomes. perfect metaphor. bought a coffee at coffee break-owner named her espresso ‘the divorce papers’ because the city was moving too fast. tried haggling at the flea market. ended up buying a tote bag from a woman who kept quantum physics jokes in her apron pocket. one read, ‘if the neutrino were a stripper, what would she wear?’ still not sure, but the receipt glowed like a neon sign from 1987.



gonna try the seunigende chappel next. heard it’s got secret tunnels, but they’re probably just for tourists who want to say ‘I watched the closing credits.’ if I find a mural of grandma’s last cringey dance move on the side of a u-bahn, I’ll pretend its authentic. nearby, a mural called ‘the mirror of förtschried’ made me vomit in the alley. not sure if that’s a joke or a review.



oh, and the bakery on Pilgergasse? ‘neighbors told me something’s wrong here,’ they said. smells like regret and pretentiousness, maybe. ordered an Albanian pancake made of regret and served it sideways. neighbors nodded in approval while a street cat licked the table like there wasn’t a pandemic.



final stop: k swiss credit union. sign creaked under its own weight, creaking like it remembered how to scream. ordered a melange. if this were a movie title, it’d be ‘Hot Swissmess: The Sourest Film of 2024.’ someone’s teaching a class on ‘avant-garde staplers’ at the east station. I’m gonna sign up, hold up a votive, and pretend I know what kinetic sculpting is. the tram back smells like old photocopies and a vague promise of spring.



oh, and the map shows… wait, what’s wrong with that map? it highlighted the wrong lake village. but here’s zurich anyway:

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chaos in balance, I suppose.

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About the author: Topiclo Admin

Writing code, prose, and occasionally poetry.

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