Rob and I got on bikes, road down to the city center (almost unbearably hot), and parked ourselves along a grassy area near the river where the Zurichers congregate on pretty days to swim in the river, lay out in the sun, drink extremely overpriced drinks, and listen to horrible techno music. The 5 or so hours we spent sitting there, people watching, and occasionally getting in the river, were some of the most relaxing of the trip. The water was much cleaner than I had previously understood it to be, not too cold, and full of Swiss people.
Later, Rob's friend M came by, and later his friends A and N. Against my better judgment, M, A and N convinced me to walk a good while upstream to one of the bridges over the river, jump off that bridge into the river, and then swim/float downstream. I knew that I was not that strong of a swimmer, but after this experience I'm not even sure if I count as a swimmer at all. The water felt great, the sky looked nice, the people I was with were very nice, but I was using all my energy and focus to furiously paddle the water enough to keep my head from sinking (I never learned to float). By the time I flopped onto the pier at the end of this track, I was out of breath, and glad to be alive, while the others seemed hardly affected.
Soon thereafter, the sky got cloudy and the wind started to blow. We all knew this was trouble, and packed up our stuff, but not before the lightening started, and the wind began blowing leaves off the trees into our faces. Rob, M and I walked our bikes to a middle eastern restaurant, and soon after we began to eat, we experienced a rainstorm unlike almost any I have ever seen, on par with the storms in LA in 2005. The rain stopped, we finished eating, we took the tram back to Rob's place and went out again for a few more hours in town, which was probably not wise for me as we had a hike up a mountain planned for the next day, and I had already proven myself entirely out of shape.
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