Today was nice.

I treated myself to another lie in – only getting up until I felt fully rested. The sun was shining today and therefore I was in a rush to get out and enjoy the rays. I decided that I was going to go back to the food hall very close to the flat.

It’s another place around here that I have developed a fondness for even though I don’t live here. I love food and I love looking at food prettily and quaintly packaged and artisan. I find it charming and it fills me with warmth and a certain kind of happiness. I wondered about for a bit, feeding my eyes, and then gave into my hunger and craving for coffee and bought myself an espresso and a nussstangen (like a nut based sausage roll). I sat for about 30 minutes munching away at the pastry and sipping away at my coffee. It was incredibly relaxing to have no particular place to go, nothing to do and just watch people pass by. Quite frankly it was heavenly. It is one of my favourite things to do when I’m on leave an away from home, just escape from everything, just slow down to a stop and just BE.

I left, eventually, perhaps a little reluctantly, and took a long walk around the neighbourhood and then on a whim, took a tram into the centre of town. There was nothing I particularly wanted to see, I just wanted to be outside in the glorious sunshine and walk. And that I did. I walked and walked. I was little annoyed with myself because in the rush to get out into the sunshine, I forgot my watch and could not indulge in gleefully counting my steps and the distance I walked. However just because it was not recorded, does not mean it did not happen! I spent a bit of time sitting an watching the river Limmat flow by, which was extremely soothing. I took a few pictures here and there but most of them have ended up on a virtual digital cutting room floor!

As I walked back to the flat, the weather starting changing to more of what I had expected at the beginning of my walk. It got very windy and the clouds started to gather in a most unfriendly manner. All I could think of was buying another pastry (I had a Berliner in mind), making myself a cup of tea and settling back down with my latest Harry Potter book (The Prisoner of Azkaban). However when I returned to the food hall, there were no Berliners left but I did manage to buy a little a bread roll the Coop. When I got back into the flat I ate it with jam and a pot of Lady Grey tea, very nice.

I did not quite make it to reading a book, I was so tired from my afternoon walk that I fell asleep on the sofa. When woke up, I made a vegetarian ‘shepherd’s pie’ for our dinner. Mashed sweet potato topping with Beyond Meat fried with onions, garlic, sage, rosemary and some Maggi cubes. Really it was a ‘leftovers pie’ and I just used up the ingredients that were in the fridge and cupboards. Although I just made the whole thing up as I went along, the final result was very tasty. I didn’t really notice that I was not eating meat, the texture felt close enough. We have used this at home in the past but not something we have recently experimented with. I wonder if it something I can explore when I get back home more for variety I guess, I don’t really have a problem with eating meat but I am open to reviewing what I am eating and why.

My little break is almost over! Friday is my last day in Switzerland. I am a little concerned about whether storm Eunice is going to mess that all up. I have already had a message from the airline company telling me I need to look out for more emails with updates in the flight status. There is not much I can do about this. If it’s not safe to fly, it is not safe to fly. However, I would like to get back to my life in the UK! I am back at work on Monday, as much as I complain about it, and as much as I have really loved this break, I still have to do my job and I still have responsibilities that I need to honour. Gotta live in the real world!

I will say that these past 48 hours have done me the world of good. I feel a little bit more like the person, that I know myself to be. As ever, I still need to work out how, to at least try and keep hold of some of the internal peace I have re-gained. Or maybe I need to accept that work, will always be stressful, things will sometimes upset me and I have to find other activities and people that bring me joy to negate some of the negative things that work brings to my life. I do not have control on how situations pan out and how people act but I do have control over how I react, how I present myself and the decisions that I make. So I should take ownership of that. Haha, I’m pretty sure that this was the resolution I made at the end of 2019 for 2020. And we see how that turned out… But, but I have learnt lessons about myself and now I really do need to out the good things into practice. Yes, I do.

Well, sleep beckons…

 Guäts Nachtli