Okay the day started out fine with a simple average of 20kmph but it quickly turned for the worse when I had gotten lost somewhere north of Zürich. I thought that I should, after traveling for 6 hours and covering a circle with a diameter of 20 km, I should find a major road that was more direct then the route that I had originally planned. It was surprising to find that no one from this region has ever heard of Zürich or Frauenfeld even though they grew up in the area. I have always admired the Swiss for their precision and their intellect but for their attitude to strangers I never understood them. I went off on my own to find Zürich.
After grumbling for about an hour or so I found myself face to face with a kind old gentleman who was biking through the area (he didn’t know where Zürich was either, but that was for a different reason). He told me that he remembered the Chernobyl accident because he had a child during the spring of 1986 and had to ride 23 km into town to decontaminate the mother’s milk. He continued to tell me that his son had died 2 years ago of a rare type of cancer. At this point he stopped and I shared a moment of comfortable silence with him and his son. My eyes watered.
From this point on I felt like that there is so much that I don’t know about the global scale of disasters like the reactor 4 and the small heroes of the world who stay silently in the shadows.
I finished the day absolutely exhausted and needed some well earned rest. Emmanuelle had found a camping spot outside of Frauenfeld which suited me well as I was too tired to do anything else.
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