2013-01-06 47 8

Location

A brookside near Ehrendingen.

Participants

Plans

Catch train from Zurich to Oberglatt leaving 3.07pm, continue to Niederweningen to arrive at 3.50. This should allow for arrival only slightly after hashtime.

Expedition

It is tradition on January 6^th to eat a cake composed of spheroid and visually identical segments, equal in number to the size of the family. Baked into one of the segments is a figurine depicting a king. The family member in whose segment the king is found is declared king for a day in compensation for possibly losing one of their teeth. But since the Swiss aren't particularly fond of single-leader systems, this usually leads to a revolution and the subsequent constitution of an anarchic community.

Calamus didn't have a cake, but a lot of work. But constantly being imprisoned with a myriad of the almost latest books, whose parchment felt more alive than Calamus did, didn't qualify as healthy, so when the daily coordinates almost fell within the cantonal borders and not too far from a train station, he gladly accepted this inviation to get some fresh air inside his head.

Niederweningen, despite lying at the far end of the canton, still had a direct train from Zurich. But it was Sunday, so the connection wasn't very frequent and Calamus had to change in Oberglatt, a stop he used to stock up on chocolate.

When the train approached Niederweningen, Calamus was confused to see two stations on the train display: Niederweningen-Village and, a little further, Niederweningen full stop. A quick glance on the GPS, which unfortunately didn't show train stations, revealed that the train was approaching the hashpoint pretty fast, so Calamus decided to give it a shot and leave the train at the first station.

It still took him some time to leave the village, which turned out quite a bit bigger than expected. When he passed the church, an elderly man emerged and, apparently going for the same direction, approached Calamus. After asking where he was going and offering his help to the stranger, as was custom in some regions of the canton, the man started on how great it was to live in Niederweningen. His attempts to hide his German accent were good enough to prove he had lived here for some time. After presenting a detailed catalogue of his descendants, he made some suggestions which trails were the nicest and recommended a trip to Baden, to which Calamus truthfully responded that he'd already been there.

"You zee", he continued, "ze trel you ah valking on is a historic vun." Now Calamus was no expert in road building, but the gravel path below him didn't look a day older than renaissance. "Oh really? Just how old is it?" "Vell, at least multiple zentjureez!", the man exclaimed exstatically, obviously having his own definition of the term "historic". After the man had left at a fork, not without giving the best regards to Calamus's extended family, Calamus hurried on to make up for the lost time.

The hashpoint was right past the Argovian border next to a brook, very close (but not close enough) to a bridge. Getting to it only required a negligible amount of climbing.

On his way back, Calamus took another path to see whether it had been the right decision to leave the train where he had instead of waiting for the terminal station. It had been, and Calamus had just made a pointless detour.