Wednesday July 28
I thought of making a trip to Zurich today but I just didn’t feel like it. I’ll be in Zurich Friday after my last game since I fly back Saturday morning. But I don’t know how late my game will go Friday and I fly out at 10:30 AM Saturday, so I don’t know how long I’ll have to look around. It was also a consideration that due to the long trip I wouldn’t have much time. If I take the 6:31 AM train I still wouldn’t arrive until after 8 AM. Then I remembered that the train from Zurich to Biel was at 22 min. after the hour from my first day’s trip. This means that I would have to catch the 11:22 AM train to get back in time for the round and the 12:22 PM train would make me late. From my experience thus far, that’s not a lot of time since I’m not moving real fast right now. I’ll think about it some more and maybe go tomorrow. One plus side of taking it easy was that I could go to the bank and cash a traveler’s check. I always seem to be too busy sightseeing during the morning and the banks are closed by the time my game gets done. I’ve been getting cash out of the ATM, but it always worries me after that ticket machine ate my card.
Since I was up early, I took some sunrise pictures of Biel and then walked around some more. I stopped by the playing hall to check my pairing (I was paired against a much higher rated opponent but he did not have an IM title like the last guy) and then went back to my room to look the guy up in the database. Studying for your opponent? What a novel concept! It didn’t do me any good as I lost to even back my score at 50%. Maybe this Indians analogy isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
