The Luddite Gives In....and other springtime tales

So, I have spent the majority of my life eschewing most modern technology. I really love to live a simple life, connected to the natural world, and using mostly my own power and ingenuity to get what I need. Some exceptions have been, my adoption of a laptop and cell phone during my Montessori training in Minnesota, and my acceptance of Facebook and Skype when I moved here to Switzerland. Most recently, of course, the creation of this blog.

Well, I took one further step into the realm of new communication technology. I have a "smart phone." Initially I thought that this would be a colossal waste for me. I am really not interested in telling everyone online where I am at all times, I do not want to sit at the lake on a beautiful sunny day and look only at the screen on my phone (as I see so many people do), and I am no longer on Facebook, so uploading photos and such is not a real draw for me. I came around when I realized that I could (as I did yesterday) sit in a tram on my way home and receive a Skype call from my mom. I could sit and chat with her just as if she was in the same city as me.

What an awesome benefit and comfort for someone so far from home and loved ones :)

Here are a few photos taken over the last few days with my new phone:



This last week, the city started to warm up, literally and figuratively. It is a funny thing to notice. The people who live in Zurich are pretty comparable to any "big city" types. They go through the day stressed, heads down, pushing through crowds and not having much consideration or sympathy for the people around them.

After having lived here for almost 3 years I can understand why people here are like this to a certain extent. It is like any other animal in a hostile environment, they have developed acute defense mechanisms to adapt to their environment. Well, that all changes on the first sunny warm days in the spring. It is so funny to watch. They lift their faces up from the cold grey cobblestones and find those first rays of light shining down, then they look around and smile. They laugh with friends in the street, they talk to strangers, they lie on the grass at the lake, they play music in the parks, and they fall in love again. The transformation is so remarkable that the city is truly unrecognizable from itself just 4 weeks earlier.

I was sitting at the lake this week with a friend who shares my occasional disdain for the city life here in Zurich. A month ago we were grumbling about life here, how unfriendly the people are, how awful the weather is, and how generally bleak and hopeless life is in this place. Last week we sat there on the grass by the lake, drinking a glass of wine, watching the swans curl their necks in their courtship rituals, squinting into the dazzling diamonds reflected from the surface of the water where the sailboats were tied up, bobbing like excited children waiting to be let out to play on this beautiful day. Both of us sighed and said just how much we love living here.

Then laughed hilariously at ourselves.