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Zurich’s Shining Surface and the Brighter World Below

No city is just one thing

Ryan Frawley
Globetrotters

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Zurich Old Town. Photo by author.

“Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face.”
— C.G. Jung

Every city is really two cities

At least.

The above, and the below. Cities reflect the people who make them, and in time, the people who make them come to reflect the city. But as visitors, our heads immersed in the buzzing cloud of our own reality, we rarely see past the shiny surface.

Zürich was never the plan.

Not that we had anything against the place, either. It was just the closest major city, and therefore airport, to where we had to drop off our rented camper van.

It’d been a long journey through Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, and Slovenia. A one-way relocation that offered almost free use of the vehicle, as long as we got it where it needed to be.

We did. And then we took the train to Zürich, staying a night in a cheap hotel…

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