The Neutral Zone

Zürich, Switzerland - We've spent much of the fall hiking and taking in the colorful foliage. For some of these trips we've ventured out on our own - just Hannah and me - while on others, good friends joined us.   Lech Lech is among the more posh ski towns in the alps. Wikipedia describes Lech this way: "Catering to wealthier clientele, particularly to the international jet set and foreign royalty, the municipality is an internationally known winter sports resort on the mountain range Arlberg. The Dutch royal family and Russian oligarchs regularly ski there." We visited in the fall shoulder season between the peak summer and winter periods. Many of the restaurants and hotels were closed ahead of the winter rush. When you're plebs like us, this is how you afford and gain admittance to such an exclusive place. Needless to say, we did not rub shoulders with royals or oligarchs. We visited Lech with our good friends Ben and Laura where we celebrated their recent enga...

Zurich, Switzerland - The title of this blog is both literal and figurative. The pandemic has been on a bit of a tear here in Europe. It seems many European countries, Switzerland included, got a little lax over the summer thinking the pandemic was behind them. The Swiss reopened bars, nightclubs , and even some large-scale events . The results were predictably not good, with cases spiking rather drastically in October and November. Tragically and also hilariously, a Swiss yodeling competition that attracted ~600 people was one of several superspreader events this fall. While case counts have settled down a bit recently, they are still about four times higher than they were at their previous peak in March. Indeed, the Swiss seem rather more cavalier with coronavirus than what I understand is happening in the US. Restaurants are routinely packed with customers. People wear masks indoors to shop and on mass transit, but rarely outside, even if city streets are crowded.  All th...