The girl with one shoe

One thing that is very noticeable in France is that you cannot walk around in Flip Flops (unless you’re at the beach) in any season, without every Tom, Dick and Harry dropping their lower jaw in aw, disgust, or perhaps bafflement. This is a strange thing for me; Flip Flops are my favoured footwear unless there is 7cm of snow on the ground. I remember wandering through the streets of Calais with my then bearded friend Stevie in his sandals, me in my flip flops (even with lovely painted toe-nails), and we elicited quite a lot of jaw drop (even though Calais is a seaside town).

Switzerland, it seems, has similar issues with feet.

I injured my right foot at work on Tuesday (Switzerland is not as safe as it pretends to be; the wall fell onto it) and had to go and get it x-rayed. It was raining heavily, thunder rumbling the skies, and Zurich was under a giant puddle. I had worn ballet pumps to work, and because of the swelling and the cut on my foot, I could not wear the right shoe after the incident in the office, so I took it off. I hobbled with one shoe to the tram stop; the doctor’s had no more crutches and all the pharmacies were closed for the night.

It is astonishing first of all that no-one helps you onto and off trams when you are clearly struggling, and wearing only one shoe, (the old trams here have huge steps to get into them), and secondly that people look at you like you are absolutely bloody bonkers, and wearing only one shoe, even when they can see your foot is swollen to the size of an elephant turd, and you are clearly in quite considerable pain (or heavily constipated; it’s the same face).

I feel like my journey home with one shoe on made me see Zurich from a very different light. Or perhaps it just saw me in a different light. Either way, if you intend to rob a bank, I recommend you wear shoes, otherwise you’ll stick out like a sore thumb and will instantly spotted.