Hair of the Dog, Pt. 1

Big news in Zürich city this August on multiple fronts! First our little neighborhood Hungarian specialty foods store started selling freshly baked bread, a remarkable event indeed well worth the newspaper coverage received. Quite a shrewd move, since we (and I can only imagine other locals) didn't frequent the store very often. After all, once fully stocked with an industrial-sized tube of authentic paprika paste and bottle of Unicum bitter herbal liquor (Hungary's answer to Jägermeister, which actually didn't need to be answered) we're set for several years of goulash dinner parties.

But a tiny new bakery is entirely a different matter. We stopped during Saturday morning's walk with Hobbes and tested the new wares, the family sharing a single Nussschnecke. Yes, that's spelled correctly with three consecutive s's, literally it means "nut snail" or what we'd call a cinnamon roll (that's Zimtschnecke) except not so sweet, with nuts instead of cinnamon sugar. The tasting panel decided it wasn't half bad with one judge in particular voting an emphatic four paws up for this latest neighborhood expansion project. It's now completely unnecessary to walk four minutes downhill to the existing local bakery; it sits on a different Platz after all, practically an altogether different neighborhood!

But our major life change in Zürich this summer appeared as another local business transformed itself. We're incalculably lucky that a Tiersbedarfladen (animal care store) opened up the street (about as far away as the Hungarian bakery) soon after we moved into the neighborhood. Neither groomers nor pet stores are plentiful in Zürich, so lacking a car means a cross-city tram ride trying to rein in Mr. Golden Personality for a grooming, or a return trip from the city's only mall lugging 33 lbs of dog food on one's shoulder. Lamentably our local shop's full potential never quite materialized, instead providing a frustratingly perfect display of typical Zürich customer service: although we tried to buy the exact same specialty dog food every month (and the owner recognized me as a montly customer), she never stocked it but instead asked me to special-order it every time with the lead time varying inexplicably from 3 days to 3 weeks (except when they forgot completely), and at 100 CHF per bag I didn't feel like stocking up. Invariably I'd buy a sometimes similar but usually different food every month, wreaking havoc on poor Hobbes's stomach. So I recently resorted again to the cross-city mall trek, viewing the haul home as good backpacking training.

Apparently that particular service model earned scant repeat business, because the store changed motif significantly a few weeks back. New signage and rearranged decor features the storefront prominently now as a Hundecoiffeur, the dog barber! Details forthcoming!