There’s a little cafe on Werdstrasse cutely called “Bubbles” that serves brunch and what they call “English breakfast.” It’s not far from my studio and reminds me of my favorite corner cafe in Chicago, “Uncommon Ground,” that also serves marvelous brunch. I would be hard pressed to call the brunch at Bubbles equally marvelous, just oddly European, but it’s a great place to have extremely dense French toast “mit Zimt” (with cinnamon) but no syrup. I’m not even sure they know what you’re talking about when you say “syrup” here, but their response to “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” is “Of course,” so I’m good with that.
I’ve never been much of a tea snob, more of a connoisseur (which perhaps is really a French version of a snob), as I do use tea bags and have even been known to microwave my hot water — tea blasphemy! I did notice, however, that they are very fond of Lipton here in Zurich, which I think is by far the grossest tea I have ever had the displeasure of sipping. Maybe I’m just spoiled from Portland, where everyone understands tea, and it always comes loose leaf and in hundreds of fantastical combinations, harvested from wild orchards and meadows, and served in your own little personal-sized BeeHouse teapot with an earthenware mug, but really, with all these great European teas around, why pray tell, Lipton? I might even be able to pass on the earthenware mug if I could have something other than the worst tea in the universe for brunch.
I still liked the place. It’s weird, warm, full of smoke, bad art, and cool lighting. There’s a candelabra whose wax hasn’t been cleaned up in the last fifty years, smack in the center of the room, oozing white all over the wall and into miniature, snowy Alps on the countertop. The cafe is also full of bizarre artwork adorning the walls and eccentric modern lighting that the Swiss seem to love so much. Uncommon Ground in Chicago also has such artwork, which is usually for sale, and usually hit or miss in terms of being something that you’d actually consider purchasing. I wasn’t sure if the art in Bubbles was for sale, but in light of the outlandish style of these paintings it’s quite possible they shipped the latest pieces straight from Chicago after they couldn’t sell them there.
I spent a good amount of time seated at a table, sipping bad green tea and pretending I knew how to read tabloids in German. I actually was surprised at the amount of words I already understood after taking zero lessons and being here two weeks. Still, I couldn’t read the articles to save my life but I examined the photos in great detail, most of which were about gorgeous people and their beautiful lives. There’s a lot of beauty overall here in Zurich, and I’m not just referring to the architecture.
This week, Sprinkles was in town on business and we rode some trams, ate at some restaurants, and otherwise observed Zurich. Creative people who care about things other than the gossip and drama of their own lives often see so much more of a city than the people who think that the table on the car in the S-bahn is for playing cards while an entire Swiss landscape passes them by. I’m still learning how to see such things, but I’m getting better. There’s beauty in minutia, in random people, in graffiti, and in the leaves crushed into tram tracks. Late Thursday night a beautiful girl with long, wavy brown hair that curled at the tips, got onto the number 13 tram, sat down two rows behind me, and pressed her nose into yellow roses with red fringed petals. The roses were wild with no wrapping around them and thorns still poking out nastily from their long stems. Yet she gripped them in the center tightly, sampled their perfume periodically, and sometimes looked straight ahead with a copacetically pleasant expression. I kept looking at her out of the corner of my eye as my coworkers babbled on in drunken chattiness.
Friday night I randomly mentioned to Sprinkles the beautiful girl I saw on the tram. “I saw her too!” he said before I could even finish my description. I was actually surprised that anyone else had noticed her since it was late, we had all had too much liquor, and she had gotten on and sat down behind us. “Do you think Zurich hires beautiful people to walk around the city with flowers?” I asked Sprinkles. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen that; it’s like everywhere I go there are gorgeous people walking around for no apparent reason, with roses or tulips, and you can’t not look at them.” Sprinkles snickered at this, in that wrinkled eye way that belied his amusement, but made no comment.
Even my walk to the cafe today, despite the cold, the dirt, the spray paint, and the loud traffic, was beautiful. The way in which lovers fall for each other with all their imperfections is the same way you can “see” beauty in anything. In fact, it was a friend I met in graduate school who taught me to find beauty everywhere, even in a gritty city like Pittsburgh. After he moved to New York it became harder for me to do it alone, but the knowledge and desire have stayed with me ever since, which is why I eventually started dabbling in photography and learning how to draw all over again with charcoal (although it will be a while before I’m not too embarrassed to r
eproduce my neophyte attempts at drawing on this blog). There are lyrics to a song I always remember, that go, “Life is grand, love is real, and beauty is everywhere.” More notable than this chorus, however, is the title that condenses every weathered, smiling, rough-edged person and place I have ever known: “Better Beautiful Than Perfect.”
