The primary focal point was Hesse's typewriter, sitting atop his writing desk, calm and still, as if meditating. On this very typewriter he wrote Magister Ludi, Narcissus and Goldmund and The Journey to the East. Standing in its presence, I felt like I was looking at the Bodhi Tree in India, where the Buddha achieved enlightenment.

At the table, I opt for pasta as the slim-suited waiter takes my order. Not because I want pasta. Not because it's the only item on the menu I can identify. But, rather, so I can claim that I ate Italian food in a French restaurant in a German train station in Switzerland.

Here in Geneva, everything started to click. I could almost imagine the opposite halves of myself beginning to alchemically fuse. The counterculture piece of myself no longer felt incongruous with the business traveler part of myself.