KSB präsentiert Ihnen jeden Mittwoch einen Gastbeitrag von Milton Milaras. In Ausgabe Nummer vier von «From Joburg to Bern» erzählt unser Autor von seinem Ausflug nach Zürich. Dabei entdeckt er Gemeinsamkeiten mit seiner Heimatstadt Johannesburg und kommt am Ende gerne nach Bern zurück.
Wir wagen den Versuch und drucken Milaras’ Beiträge nur auf Englisch.
Pic taken by M. Milaras on a walk through Lorraine-Quartier. «Apochalüpt» is written on it. KSB reported.
This weekend I visited Zürich. That Swiss metropolis. That bastion of banking, bustle and business. People trot intently pell-mell from one terribly important appointment to the next. Heaps of boutiques, nestled between multi-national corporations, present covetous trinkets in over-engineered window displays at awe-inspiring prices. Not to mention that for an extra franc, a large tea comprises a single additional finger’s width of hot water in the same glass as a small tea.
The pace of Zürich bites at your heels while it eats you from the inside: a blind headlong rush into economic and social survival. Time is as thin as high mountain air, never quite enough to not be gulping greedily for more, blood pumping all the while. I recognise this easily, as Johannesburg is very similar; cut from the same cloth so to speak. Another London, Sydney, Athens, New York. The self-important successes of capitalism.
Each respectively with its own ‘slow-witted’ village-cousin: Cape Town, Manchester, Melbourne, Thessaloniki, Portland, Bern. And despite the metropolis’ superiority and condescension for this very fact, these slow cities openly share their simple secret with those who come to live there: you do not die if you slow down, meander a bit, let plans fall by the wayside and delight in the unexpected.
Milton Milaras ist vor ein paar Monaten in Bern gestrandet und kennt die Hauptstadt mittlerweile fast so gut wie seine Heimat Johannesburg. Er is Autor, Geograph und Tänzer und unterrichtet immer mittwochs (also heute) ab 17.30 Uhr «Creative Writing» an der autonomen Schule Denk:Mal in der Lorraine.
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