Zurich Airport

· mumblings ·

We flew to Brazil via Zurich airport, and I was amazed by the place. It's like stepping into a clean and shiny future, where people speak with gentle, calm voices, and everybody can afford Rolex watches and Mont Blanc pens. Even the smoking rooms looked stylish (from the outside). Most airports seem to have a variety of cafés and shops, ranging from the downmarket to the upmarket, but everything at Zurich seems to be at the very upper end of the scale. There are champagne and caviar bars, endless shops selling designer goods, and glossy black temples stocking ruinously expensive Mont Blanc pens and accessories. Plush sports cars and motorbikes casually litter the concourse. The architecture is sleek and modernist, and even the lighting manages to convey luxury. If you can imagine someone translating a black MacBook into a building, that's Zurich airport.

Given that none of us had any money to speak of, it was just as well that we didn't have any time to shop. We just wandered scruffily through, goggling at everything like a bunch of yokels, drooling slightly as we went.