So Slim and I went
paragliding in Interlaken
today (photos to be posted in a week or so). As the van takes a group of five customers up to the top of the hill, the leader explains that we'll each get to pick our tandem pilot.
I consulted my
inner economist. "I want the one with the gray hair," I said.
The pilot, Robi, gave me a form. "Regulations. Just like any air flight, we need to have the name and destination recorded. The liability is just like Continental Airlines," handing me a ticket to sign. I read the back, expressly disclaiming that Air Transport laws applied, and stating maximum liability would be 72,500 francs. And since it's Switzerland, the law of contract is probably respected, so that's a real waiver. Fair enough--if I do not fly, so much as plummet, my ability to recover in civil court is perhaps the last thing on my mind. My pilot has plenty of economic incentive to land safely such that civil liability does not add much at the margin. And Coase teaches us that the limited liability permits the price to be as low as it is. I accept the benefit of the bargain, and assume good faith that the professional paraglider is just unfamiliar with the nature of the forms rather than trying to snow me.
The fact that I'm posting suggested that I survived. But I'm pretty confident that one is not supposed to bounce on the side of the hill during takeoff. (Slim, whose launch was after mine, reports that one of the other pilots crossed himself at the time.) And, hey, fun.
Switzerland as a whole has been, if not quite disappointing, not quite wondrous, however. Nothing really wowing in the museums, and I'm not the Hodler fan Slim is, so my patience with Swiss artists is usually exhausted a couple of rooms into an art museum. (Did see a
nice Lichtenstein in Zurich.)
Everyone talked up the food, which, other than some remarkable hot cocoa in a hotel in Zermatt (which, in any event, was from a mix--I bought a kilogram's worth), has been mediocre. "Rosti" appears to be German (French?) for "fifteen-dollar hash browns." Fondue is fun, but only for about a third of a meal, and wasn't notably superior to my American experience nineteen or so years ago, and I can quite likely go another nineteen years without having fondue again. Everything is bland, including the sausages.
Even in Zurich, when we asked ourselves what Tyler Cowen would do, Slim and I went off the beaten track to a little-traversed, and probably sketchy, ethnic neighborhood, where we stopped at the eighth doner kabob shop we saw, and had a mediocre doner kabob. So much for competition. And something in my genes makes me anxious when I'm on a train with a bunch of German-speaking people; I keep waiting for the shouts of "Achtung! Juden!" Zermatt had beautiful scenery, and I broke my personal land-height record at the top of the Klein Matterhorn. And I did enjoy the parasailing. But nothing here is going to make me want to come back, the way I felt about London or even Paris.
