Sometimes things just click...

This afternoon I was wanting a nap so bad, I was really hurting. I was trying to figure out a day trip for tomorrow, but I could barely keep my eyes open. I had a couple of hours before CF left work. I needed to get back outside but I really couldn't think of any particular reason. I decided to head out without my purse but with the big camera... I keep stashing it away in the bottom of my bag, this way there was no hiding it, so I would have no excuse not to use it. I just went out and wandered, and just when I was getting bored and considered heading back to the hotel (which still would have resulted in a nap), the light was suddenly perfect and all the floodlights were coming on and lighting up the city's spires and towers. It was beautiful. I walked back to places I've already been 3 or 4 (or more) times just to see if I could get a better shot. All my photos have been turning out so gray and dreary. Well tonight everything clicked and I got some fantastic shots. And I love the trams zipping through a bunch of them with a great motion blur. I had two funny encounters while I was "in the zone." Up at Saint Peter's a man started speaking German to me. I am a horrible person for what I said, in my defense I was caught off guard... all I got out was, "Uhhhhh, English?" Terrible. But he said to me, "I think you need a--" and then he made a tripod shaped motion with his hands. I showed him how my camera was actually doing pretty well in the dark. Then he noticed that I was shooting this clock tower with the tower of Fraumünster in the empty space right next to it, "Oh! Very nice!" Just then the bells of both towers started ringing in the 7pm hour. "Oh, thank you! Thank you!" My fellow photographer joked to the tower for my benefit. And for the next couple minutes we both took some shots while the bells rang loud and long. It was awesome. I looked down one narrow street and saw him shoot up into some rafters. Quite the kindred spirit I had finally encountered! I wonder if he went back to his home or hotel and uploaded his photos right away, too. Yeah, right!

I finally had to scurry back to the hotel because, well, when you gotta go, you gotta go! But it wasn't too long before I expected CF to be back and I spent some time looking through the photos I had just taken. I finally heard him coming up the stairs just when my eyes were about to give up on me pretending to be awake and roll back in my head. We walked over to the bratwurst stand we've been wanting to hit ever since we found out about it the night we got here. They basically hand you your sausage wrapped in wax paper and a napkin, you grab a little cup of mustard if you want it, and guess what, you grab another one of those crusty, chewy rolls. Apparently the way to eat this is double-fisting style, roll in one hand, meat in the other. But considering how freezing it is we hustled our loot back to our hotel room. And just as we arrived at the front door, a few rain drops began to fall. So glad we came back! We munch on our meal, and then broke out the luxemburgerli cookies I bought earlier. "Those are fantastic!" CF told me. "I know!!!" Who did he think he had to convince?

It's almost 10pm now, CF went to sleep right after finishing his last cookie. He had claimed earlier that we should stay up till 11 so we would sleep through the night. But as he dozed off he mumbled that if he's going to wake up at 4 or 5am, he should go to sleep earlier so he'll get a full night's worth of sleep. Whatever. I'm about to join him. But I'd better not be woken up by iPod drumming or under-bedsheet toe tapping again!

Tomorrow I might pull off a day-trip to Lucerne. I am rather unprepared as things stand right now, but I think it'll mostly be a matter of getting a train ticket and getting on the train. So hopefully tomorrow I'll be out for more of the day, I'm ready for an adventure... well, after a good night of sleep anyway.