The Detour That Took Jason to Zurich

I was standing at reception in a corporate headquarters outside Zurich, holding a coffee I had not asked for, watching men in suits start their working day. My mind was still in the car. Ten minutes earlier I had been a passenger in a stranger's car, and now I was being introduced to the company he ran the technology for. The change of scene was disorienting. The story I had just heard was worse.

5:55 in the morning

It had begun badly and early. A cold January morning, and I was awake at an hour that a night owl has no business seeing. I locked my room, checked my watch — 5:55, right on time — and my phone rang. Jason, as I will call him, was already outside.

Since I started travelling around Europe, carpooling has become my preferred way of covering a few hours of distance. In India, a few hours barely moves you; here, the same time can put you in another country. You meet people, you save time against the bus, and you pay less than the train.

That morning I needed to reach Zurich, and the only ride I had found on Mitfahr was his. He had driven to my address to collect me, which was generous, and within ten minutes we were on the motorway.

Merci vielmal

We began with the small questions strangers ask each other, then drifted into the differences between German and Swiss-German, into higher education, history and life in general. Swiss-German carries a great deal of French, which makes it slippery if you already know Hochdeutsch. Only in Switzerland will you hear merci vielmal, French and German welded together to mean thank you very much. German itself shifts from region to region, so the same object can have three names depending on where you are standing.

We traded confusions for a while, then German and Swiss history, and somehow arrived at work, careers and whether people are happy in them.

At which point he mentioned, almost in passing, that he had once been a journalist.

The licence, and the year that followed

I asked the obvious questions, and the rest of the drive belonged to him.

He had started out as a journalist, which meant travelling to remote places and driving long distances. Then, one uneventful night, he broke the speed limit on a German motorway. His licence was suspended — six to twelve months, I am not certain which. There was no public transport to the area where he worked. With no way to get there, he stayed at home.

Why not find another route, I asked. Why not take a flat near the office for a while? He had tried. Nothing worked, and in the end he sat at home, frustrated and defeated.

His father owned a civil engineering business and needed help with the computer hardware. You are doing nothing anyway, his father said. Jason pointed out that he could switch a computer on and little else. It made no difference; his father enrolled him in the relevant courses.

He went reluctantly, then began to take an interest. The subject opened a door he had not known was there. He worked at the lessons, experimented at home, and started helping in his father's business.

One day, while he was setting up computers in the office, a client of his father's watched him from a distance and asked whether he might look at a machine that was giving trouble. Jason fixed it. The client was impressed, and told other people.

Requests followed. The business grew, partly because of him. He discovered that he was good at this, and that he liked it. After a couple of years he moved to another company.

Head of IT

That computer illiterate person, he said, was me twenty years ago.

I had been staring at him for most of the story. Then we turned into the car park and he said, welcome to headquarters — I am the head of the IT department here. We were at his office, and neither of us had the change for the ride, so he suggested we go up and ask someone.

So I stood at reception, surrounded by people arriving for work, replaying the whole thing. Everyone wants to do work they love. Very few people get there by accident, and fewer still admit that the accident was the making of them.

Travellers' Tales

This post belongs to Travellers' Tales, a series inviting readers to share the experiences that changed something for them. If travel has made a difference in your life, or left you with a story you cannot stop telling, write to me at admin@europediaries.net and tell it.