woobiquity

cvii. Of bad hair days that never end

Okay, one last picture from Zurich. This one's a little grainy because they don't allow flash in the Kunsthaus. According to my mental notes (can't seem to corroborate this on Google) this early-1900s sculpture is 'Venus' by Carl Burkhardt.

It brings a whole new meaning to the term 'helmet hair', doesn't it? You'd be propping your head up too...

cvi. Zurich through the looking glass

Just back from a weekend break in Zurich and let me tell you: if you are one of the people who still thinks Switzerland is dull, you have obviously never been to Schiffbau, Zurich's new post-industrial cultural centre.

As factory conversions go, this one challenges Tate Modern for architectural wow-factor. Go check out the cavernous bar where you can rest your beer glass on white-light shadowboxes lined with antique surgeons' tools or vintage doll babies. Wander into a large room at the end of the complex and you're liable to find (or we did anyway) scores of young artists frantically scribbling on upturned tables.

Through another door, Moods proves that jazz clubs don't have to be crusty to be cool.

And La Salle shows that dining in a glass box can be one of the best restaurant experiences in Europe (food divine; service perfection). A massive Venetian chandelier cuts through the simplicity of the architecture, while through the glass ceiling silhouettes canoodle in a bar two floors up, framed within a long rectangle of red-then-purple glass.

The successful use of so much glass got me thinking. Zurich, while conventionally thought of as a transparent city (and therefore rather boring) in reality has an endless ability to surprise with what's on the other side.

When I lived in Zurich in the very late 90s, the orthodox Jewish family who lived on the ground-floor house opposite lived their whole lives in front of a sliding glass door visible from our kitchen. Mainly I saw a lot of tea drank sullenly in bathrobes, but on special days some of the mysteries of a traditional, big-family Passover or Hannukah unfolded while I chopped onions or loaded the dishwasher.

In another part of town a couple of 20-something guys lived in a storefront space, with corner windows that gave the passer-by full view of TV watching, internet browsing, sleeping, dinner parties. I thought of writing their story. Then Big Brother launched, and I knew I'd missed the moment.

And while it's not quite as exciting as honest-to-God voyeurism, window shopping in Zurich is one of the most rewarding ways for a weekender to pass the time (not least because come 4pm on a Saturday most of the shops lock their doors for the rest of the weekend).

Take this view into a wonderfully cluttered antiques shop on a cobbled pedestrian street on the left bank of the River Limmat for example.

Similarly, Zurich itself remains a window onto the world as it was 20 or more years ago, with a (to any child of the 70s) heart-warming devotion to municipal orange and a collective blind eye to the cigarette industry, whose ads still adorn billboards on ivy-colored walls the city over. On transport, there's not a whiff of the trigger-happy paranoia true of most cities in the era of terror.

It's like you're seeing everything through the rippled glass of not-quite-antique windows.

cv. Of dramatic weather patterns

Hurricane Wilma it ain't, but isn't it eye-catching. Cloud reflections on an office building on the Euston Road, London, two days ago.