THRILLER: The Galilee Plot: (International Biological Terror, The Mossad, and... A Self-contended Couple) Read Online Free PDF

restlessness of people who go away on expensive holidays, and
pensioners whose pensions, in thrifty hands, enable them to wander the world
far and wide and experience all its wonders, before the fleshly eyes that are
always yearning and never satisfied are closed, the questing heart is stilled,
and the tongue and the palate are no longer serviceable for experiencing,
seeing, expounding, hearing, probing and tasting, however much is possible.
    We tried out quite a few
specifically non-exotic restaurants, including large self-service
establishments.
    On the Bahnhoff Strasse,
the central thoroughfare of Zurich, stand three gigantic department stores,
each comprising grocery shops on the lower ground floor, on the level above it
sales of household and kitchen supplies, in all their varieties and
eccentricities; on the upper floor – clothing, and on the roof – a huge
self-service restaurant. “Manor” for the paupers, “Co-op” for the petty bourgeois,
“Jelmoli” for the snobs. And finally, “Migros”, a popular establishment
combining Italian speakers, Italian style, Italian food and Italian prices.
    It is only right to stress
the high standard of the emphatically Swiss and well maintained toilets operating
in each of the above-mentioned establishments, located, for public convenience,
on the upper floor, and constituting a part of the restaurant. Sometimes, those
requiring toilets come up without needing anything else, not even a glass of
water, and this in all weathers, and they praise the consummate, socio-humane
concept. As a whole, at regular times, regular people arrive at regular places.
Once it happened that my wife needed to do some repairs to her clothing, on a
cold and wet day, but had no means of doing this. Naturally, all the regular
visitors to the café-restaurant were witnesses to her futile attempts to
do what she wanted to do but was incapable of doing. And then, a middle-aged
woman rose from her regular seat, approached us and proffered a pair of folding
scissors, which as it turned out, she always carried around with her in her
handbag specifically for cases such as these, and the business was settled in
the most heart-warming way.
    It was not by mere
coincidence that Peter Kropotkin, the eminent anarchist, gained the initial
impression that “people are good” by their very nature and tend to help one
another – in Switzerland certainly, it is down to the behaviour of the Swiss.
 

Chapter Six
     
     
     
    According to a principle,
which we adhere to, we don’t watch television and we don’t even have a set at
home. In our hotel room, the TV is tempting, with all its dumb innocence and
unhypocritical humility. And it turns out that every year programmes about
sport are aired, and those who understand sport or enjoy watching it need have
no fear of being bored. I never liked sport of any kind; the principles behind
it and the objectives mean nothing to me. But here I was in for a surprise. My
wife proved to be an avid fan of sports programmes, identifying with the
competitors, and sometimes breaking into spontaneous applause in front of the
screen. She claimed that by observing the facial expression of each competitor,
and in particular his level of determination, she could predict who was going
to win the contest and indeed, it was just as she said. I commented that if it
were possible to bet on these contests in the same way as on horse races, we
could recoup the full cost of our holiday.
    In high school I was
renowned for my avoidance of physical education classes, to the point where the
tolerant and genial P.E. teacher was driven to distraction, threatening to ruin
my “average” by marking me down in his subject. His wrath, utterly at odds with
his pleasant personality and mild manner, blazed so fiercely that he took the
trouble to invent a new rating, hitherto unknown in any school in Bulgaria, or
elsewhere. My mark in the subject of physical education was a big round “0”