the eternal search for bed

Yesterday marks the beginning of the third week of my disease. It could be diptheria, but that's just a guess. For fun. Perhaps I haven't told you of my crippling illness. That would be because I've been too sick. Call it a Catch-22.

Yesterday also marks the day Jennifer went back to the United States. We parted in Venice.

My symptoms (from the disease, not Jenn's departure), basically boil down to some sort of horrible lesions who've made their home on the back of my throat. This makes swallowing more painful than perhaps I realized swallowing could be.

I've sought the advice of something like four doctors, three pharmacists, two dentists, and a partridge in a pear tree. None charged me anything, each prescribed me something different (though the pills are always cheap) and each took a different take on the matter. Some didn't think it was serious at all and laughed with their colleagues over some matters in their own language, another warned me that a blow to the stomach might cause serious liver failure. One said no more juice, another said no cold drinks at all, and they almost all suggested I gargle.

So, I gargle daily and take rather strong pain pills to cope, but my condition has not much improved. I've all but lost my appetite since I don't want to force anything past the Gateway of Agony. Also, as the day wears on, possibly partially as a side effect from the pain pills, I get some serious fatigue and pretty much need to take a nap.

But I was gonna be just fine without Jenn, I told myself, and stumbled over the Grand Canal, found the train station and took a train to Zurich. The train ride was impossibly pretty, like Austria. Why... it was almost like a dream....

The conductor woke me, in Zurich. As I left the train, I saw a man wearing a fabric chicken on his head. This should have been my first clue, the initial warning, but I looked at him, shrugged and said to myself - strange places, strange behaivors.

As I walked through darkening Zurich, eyes peeled for a hostel yet drooping with fatigue, I began to sense something was peculiar. The streets were packed, not with cars but with people, people in silly get-ups, jester hats and mad hatter apparel and painted faces and with flags from just about any old random place in Europe, even Romania. Then I saw the screens, in every establishment ffrom travel agencies to apothecaries, all showing the same green image, and understood.

Football. In fact, the EuroCup. This is a big deal for them. Switzerland is hosting it this zear. Tonight's game? Here in Zurich. Every hotel in the city booked full.

I hurry back to the train station, the sun long set, find a train headed to another town, just a couple of hours away, relatively cheap, I hop aboard just as it begins to move. I find Basel in my guidebook and am shocked to learn it's a pretty big city, a population of almost 200,000. I know from experience that free camping becomes nigh on impossible in cities bigger thann 75,000 or so.

I awake again, now in Basel. To my horror, the same phenomenon of bright costumes wafts through the train station. Posted on a wall: Tthe following night's match is to be in Basel. Surely every hotel in town was booked full. There are no ôther depatures tonight. Terrific.

Tired, sick, and coughing up deep brown phlegm (another delightful symptom), I wander the streets. I can't even find a place that's open, much less offering rooms. It's well past midnight now.

I arrive at the YMCA hostel and knock half-heartedly on the door. The door says they close at 11, but shockingly, it opens anyways. The man who has answered does not work there. He explains the employees are all asleep. But then he lets me in and suggests I go sleep down in the TV room.

A woman and another fellow are watching a movie in which a woman gives a noisy, painful birth, shouting in German. It makes introductions even more awkward as I try to explain that I've been advised to sleep on one of these couches.

Well, my time is running out, so I'll cut this short. First day without Jenn, I slept on a couch in the basement of a YMCA in a Swiss border town. So yeah, I'm doing just fine. In the morning, I confessed to reception and offered to pay them. He seemed to try and guess the price of sleeping on a couch and suggested - 10 francs? (that's like 6 bucks). That sounds fine.

I might see Jan tonight. I also might come home soon if my health continues to refuse to improve.

Ciao