I still don’t get out very often and I haven’t made any acquaintances worth mentioning, but there are a couple people of Zurich I am able to identify. You know. The kind of characters that when you live in a place for a while you just start to recognize and associate them with certain things?
For example, I can point out the creepy tram guy. He’s this older dude who just seems to ride the trams all day long for the fun of it and insists on always standing right in somebody’s personal space no matter how empty the tram is. Essentially, this guy loves to put his crotch as close to your face as possible. Very strange dude.
Another guy I can point out is Rollerboy. I have no idea what the locals really do call him, but I’m sure he has a moniker. This dude always wears the same outfit and shamelessly rollerblades along the most busy and popular streets of the city. He usually has some sort of paint on his body and face. He can often be found skating right next to or behind a tram. He skates during the rain, sun, and snow and he never seemed like a very friendly guy. I recently got confirmation of this during the weekend of the street parade. I saw him coming down the Bahnhofstrasse while I had my camera with me. I had a good laugh when I looked at the LCD screen and saw I had captured him in true form.
The joke is on me. That ‘TOT’ on the leg that is showing is German for ‘dead’ but I don’t know what his other leg says. I can imagine it might be the German word for ‘drop’.
