The uniforms were almost ludicrous,
so ill-fitting and casual.
So I shouldered my own pack and set off, through the bridge over the
Rhine, and up the hill opposite.
There is something very dead about this country. I remember I picked
apples from the grass by the roadside, and some were very sweet. But for
the rest, there was mile after mile of dead, uninspired
country--uninspired, so neutral and ordinary that it was almost
destructive.
One gets this feeling always in Switzerland, except high up: this
feeling of average, of utter soulless ordinariness, something
intolerable. Mile after mile, to Zurich, it was just the same. It was
just the same in the tram-car going into Zurich; it was just the same in
the town, in the shops, in the restaurant. All was the utmost level of
ordinariness and well-being, but so ordinary that it was like a blight.
All the picturesqueness of the town is nothing, it is like a most
ordinary, average, usual person in an old costume. The place was
soul-killing.
So after two hours' rest, eating in a restaurant, wandering by the quay
and through the market, and sitting on a seat by the lake, I found a
steamer that would take me away.
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