Tuesday, April 24, 2007

24 April 2007

It’s 2007, and Zurich has finally decided to cave in and open up a shopping mall. This is a country where, until a few years ago, it was illegal to have discounts or sales outside of certain government-regulated time periods, for fear of having unfair price competition, and where it is still illegal to have stores open on Sundays (except for in airports and train stations, or except for three specified Sundays each year, for those stores not located in a train station or airport). And now there’s a mall. Swiss style. Apparently, it was so mind-boggling that when it first opened a month ago, it was impossible to actually shop at the mall, because it was so crowded with people who went just to stand and stare.

The stores in the new mall close at 8 p.m. (most stores close even earlier), and are closed on Sundays. And as is practically required in every gathering of stores here, there is a large branch of one of the two major grocery stores. There is also a church, because we all know that that’s why people go to the mall – to pray for good deals and short lines. There’s a library for those who don’t want to buy anything, and a hotel for people who want to live at the mall. There’s a movie theatre with nine screens (which is quite large, considering that the main downtown theatre has four screens). For those patrons who feel that 8 p.m. is just too early to call it a night at the mall, there’s a nightclub.

Summer time is concert time in Switzerland. Although it’s a country of only six-odd million people, Switzerland has numerous music festivals in the summer, attracting all kinds of musicians of varying levels of international fame. I’ve seen Sigur Ros, Jose Gonzalez, Death Cab for Cutie, Royksopp, and Metric here, and I’ll probably see Bjork, Damien Rice, David Gray, Arcade Fire, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah this summer. Not bad.

What puzzles me about the summer music festivals is their nomenclature. For instance, the most famous summer festival is the Montreux Jazz Festival, which is where I saw Sigur Ros last year, where the Chemical Brothers, the Beastie Boys, the B-52’s, and the Pet Shop Boys are playing this year. My knowledge of jazz is pretty basic, mostly covering Monk, Ella, Billie, Louis, and Duke, but I’m pretty sure that “Sabotage” and “Time Warp” don’t get played regularly in jazz clubs. Maybe it should be called the Montreux Not-Necessarily-Jazz Festival?

Another big music festival is held in Lucerne. Van Morrison played there a couple years ago. David Gray will be there this year. It’s a well-known venue for established artists. And it’s called the Blue Balls Festival. Seriously.

Anyways, speaking of summer plans, a friend and I will be taking a trip to Helsinki and St. Petersburg soon. We found out that in order to get Russian visas, we have to give the government our flight and hotel information, our hotel needs to invite us to come to Russia as tourists, and then we can get our visas, after we’ve already booked our tickets and paid for our hotel. Sounds a bit suspect to me, especially since it involves lots of websites that end in “.ru,” which in any other context would make me think I was being scammed. I emailed a few hotels (in English, since my Russian is non-existent) to try to get a reservation. One hotel emailed me back in Russian. I translated their response online, and it’s clear that they understood my English inquiry, since they responded appropriately, so I’m just wondering why they responded in Russian. Or maybe they’re using online translations, as well, and we’ll show up and find out that we’ve ordered two ducks and an armchair, instead of three nights in a hotel room. Wish us luck.

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