Traffic Jams and Tattoos with Dirndls: Impressions from Zurich

The age of the automobil as an individual means of transportation is over. Says cultural theorist Paul Virilio. Because of the oil price, global warming, etc. Some cities, Zurich among them, were already trying to banish cars from their downtown areas, step by step, by taking away lanes and parking spaces.

If only that concept worked! The first impression we got when we entered Zurich by car was: chaos, total traffic jam, aggressive speeding whenever a short piece of free lane opened, desperate fights for every free parking lot.

It took us more than half an hour to go the few hundred yards from the main train station to our hotel late on a Saturday night. Erratic traffic lights, pedestrians crossing streets in hordes without even watching out for cars, drivers almost knocking them over after they hadn’t succeeded to conquer the crossing at the fourth time the light turned green…

Didn’t seem like people were much impressed by the efforts of the city council – if the extremely short phases of green and long phases of red at the crossings were part of the plan to frustrate drivers out of town. And, no, this was not just the clueless tourists’ fault.

Most cars that were hopelessly stuck and dragged along in the metal avalanche had Zurich license plates. Streetcars were half empty. And later, from my hotel window (when our car was sitting in a public garage for $61 a night), I saw cars circling around the block forever to take a chance at the maybe five legal parking spaces within that particular square mile.

So the traffic policy didn’t provide us with a working example of Swiss efficiency. Social rituals in a beer garden did, though. In that self-service beer garden right on the bank of the Limmat where it meets the Zurich lake, people didn’t order one beer, and than maybe another one later. They went for the crates instead.

Many younger people – some of them in flip-flops and very old, cut-off jeans, some in suits and ties – met in large groups, then sent one or two for the drinks. They came back with at least two crates of beer, putting them down right next to their clique’s table and propping their feet up on them in a proprietary gesture. Then passing around and downing one bottle after the other. In an astonishing speed. Very efficient. And very impressive even for a German from Cologne. Where they say it is the waiters’ pride to always serve you a new glass of beer even before you finished the old one.

Apart from that, Zurich is the only city I can think of where it was next to impossible to find an open café on a late Sunday morning. (Maybe people were still exhausted from the beer and the traffic on Saturday night.) It is also the only city where I ever saw a young woman wearing a dirndl and braids with army boots, and huge tattoos covering both upper arms. Looking absolutely, stunningly beautiful. Because of her outfit, or in spite of it – I have no idea.