Cars for Comrades

Everyone is turning green. Not gangrenous green but environmentally green. I have friends in the UK who have ploughed up their back garden to grown turnips and others who steadfastly refuses to use air travel to go anywhere. They are restricted to a 100 mile radius around their homes. A self-imposed travel ban.

I would quite gladly go green if it were not for one weakness: I am obsessed by cars. Since being a child I have had a passion for all things automotive. Thus living in a city where I can’t justify owning a car at all is very hard for me. Public transport is so superior in everyway, its even air conditioned for gods sake, that my lizard brain lust for convertible, turbo-charged gas-guzzling jalopy barely gets a look in.

You see, I am acutely aware of my energy consumption: first we must factor out my jet-setting tendancies (I don’t fly much but the amount I fly consumes energy equivalent to that needed to light a shopping centre for a year). Then we come close to what Swiss researchers are touting as the ideal energy consumption: 2,000 watts. 2,000 watts per person per day. At the moment, the Swiss consume close to 6,000 and the Americans 12,000. Here, without air conditioning, without the need for a car I can get close to the magic 2,000 and feel terribly smug about myself.

Only, there are times when a car is required: times when I really need to sling stuff in the back and take it to the tip. For those times, fortunately I have Mobility to fall back. Now, mobility car sharing is a wonderful thing. Close to our home there are six, maybe seven of these bright red cars, painted in sympathy for the socialist cause I suspect and just waiting to be used. Except if it is a Saturday and then they are already in use. All the time. Sometimes, they are in use from two in the morning until four in the morning as well. I don’t know what mobility users are doing at those times: sleeping in them? Anyway, with so many cars close by I never have a problem getting hold of one, waiving my plastic card at the dongle on the windscreen and driving off to fulfil my errands (and of course feeling smug about the sustainability of my transport habits in the process).

I get five metres down the road and have to stop. The car was clearly previously driven by someone measuring about 1 metre 20 tall. The seat is touching the windscreen. I have to stick my head out of the windows to use the rear view mirror. Everything needs adjusting. Which brings me to the point: mobility drivers can’t drive. We can’t drive. We never drive. The only time we drive is when we really have to drive. Its not our car. So we don’t care that we never shift out of second. We fill the car invariably with junk that we are taking to the recycling hof: Full to the bri, so ze cqnt see out of the windows. We drive our kids around in the mobility cars. Forgetting that we are driving and playing cards with the children, only to realise that all that honking is because the lights went green while you were shuffling the deck. I know this because to my horror I have become a Mobility Driver. Tootling along the other day, I noticed that other drivers gesticulating madly at me. Tooting their horns. Waving. Pointing. What inconsiderate people I thought. Don’t they know that my driving habits are offsetting their air conditioners? How ungrateful. Just because my car is red and I am a mobility user does not give them the right to abuse me on the roads. Only later, when a gust of wind caught me in the back of the neck, did I realise what all the fuss was about. I was driving along the dual carriageway with the car boot open. Oblivious to the effect that my car-sharing antics were having on the rest of the world.

What’s red and green and weaves all over? A Mobility user.

Mirror, Mirror

I just spent a pleasant and relaxing weekend in a farmhouse in the French countryside, surrounded by the fruits of one woman’s quest for shabby chic furnishings. The owner of this chateau had combed and scoured “brocante” shops for the things that lend a certain style to the inside of the home. The results were quite admirable and quite successful too. A packing case as a table. A day bed as a sofa. Sunhats for dresser decoration. Faded prints for lining the stairway walls.

Sometimes its hard to find the right piece of furniture. You can search and find nothing that really fits. In Zurich, the furniture on sale tends to be either beautiful, modern, Italian and expensive, or ugly, modern, Italian and, er, expensive. Leaving those of us on a limited budget with only one real option: taking a soul destroying trip to the Swedish furniture emporium to select some randomly named bookcases only to get way-laid by the Swedish Shop and coming home with an armful of cod-roe paste and a jar of Senapsil.

There is, however, another option as the landlady of my French chateau would testify to: the Brockenmarkt. The Brockenmarkt is a store where buyers can pick up anything ranging from thickly daubed, brown oil paintings of the nativity to old 1,000-piece Jigsaw puzzles with 134 pieces missing (usually the corners or the sky). There are several in Zurich. Some better than others when it comes to finding things that would serve a purpose.

I admit that initially I was averse to the idea of buying furniture that possibly someone had died in but having seen the inside of several people’s homes, each of them lovingly furnished from other people’s cast offs secured at the Brockenmarkt, I have rather changed my mind. There are good, solid bits of furniture to be had there at reasonable prices, if only I could carry them home.

Traditionally the Brockenmarkt has catered to the poor: buyers whose options are limited and for whom the Brockenhaus is really the only option. But a Swiss friend pointed out to me the other day that in central Zurich at least, the target market of some Brockenhauser was changing subtly, reflecting the growing trend for fashion conscious Zueriwesters and Kreis Druu fashionistas to go in search of those cool, design classics of the 50s and 60s.

As my friend said, the Brockenhaus is really just a reflection of society, both in terms of what gets thrown away and what gets snapped up by those who are keen to avoid the Swedish emporium. Once a place for cheap things, the brocki is becoming a choice location for those looking for a dash of country style.