Out After Dark...Redux!

redux: adjective
1. brought back
2. revived

Last week's post needs to be brought back and revived. Someone was missing from the party...

In last week's post I shared our close encounters 'Out After Dark' with a snake, a hedgehog, and a demon-eyed dog.

Then this week this hanger-on showed up on the light post outside our building! Welcome to the party, Spidey!
 

Don't the markings on the underside of the body look like a face?

With the flash reflecting off the bushes.

From the 'front' side.

He/she is well fed. I wish we had an object of comparison in the picture, but it is a little bigger than a quarter (including its hairy legs and fat body). Big enough that Maureen gives it a WIDE berth when going past the light post.

Today's poem is Spidey's perspective on being included in this redux blog post. Read at your own risk:

Sheesh,
there they are again.
Those two-eyed
two-legged
noisy
nosy 
GIANTS
tromping around my web
like they live here!

Excuse me,
you don't see me going into 
THEIR homes...
OK, so you see me 
once I get inside,
but that's another story.

Back to the problem
at hand...
and I have NO hands!
These GIANTS and
their black rectangles
flash me with a
bright light and it
disrupts my dinnertime 
and life.

I know, 
if I move real fast 
like this...

"EEEEEK!"

Works every time. Hee - hee...

©2019, Bridget Magee. All Rights Reserved.

Out After Dark

When we lived in Arizona we had many run-ins with snakes - mostly in the daylight.

One of the many I saw on my trail runs.

When we moved here to Switzerland I thought we left the risk of running into a snake behind - day or night.

I was wrong.

This past week Joe and Smidgey encountered this fella right outside our apartment building while out for Smidgey's pre-bedtime walk.

Snake photos by Joe.

Out for an evening stroll...uh, I mean slither.

We've tried to identify him (or her) but to no avail. There are snakes native to Switzerland, including two that are venomous, but none look like this critter. Perhaps a pet who escaped? We're not sure. It was gone by morning.

Another evening last week, while walking Smidgey once again, we encountered a very different critter:

A hedgehog! See his cute face?

Smidgey wanted to be "friends" with this prickle ball.

Hedgehogs do not seem to be the 'brightest bulbs' so to speak. This fella let Maureen get right up next to it so we could take these pictures. Credit where credit is due: photos courtesy of Maureen.

And then there is this critter seen in the night:

Spookiest of all!

they slither
they prickle
they scare us with their eyes

after dark
WATCH OUT
they might give you a surprise!

©2019, Bridget Magee. All Rights Reserved.

Chocoholics or Just Lucky?

In my opinion, we are very lucky to live in the land of chocolate abundance. And even luckier that we get to take advantage of this sweet Swiss cultural phenomenon of visiting chocolate factories periodically.

(We don't have a problem, really. 😋)

Recently we visited our fifth chocolate factory, and I can honestly say, eating Swiss chocolate and seeing how it is made never gets old. Each visit gets me more in touch with my sweet side. (And a little nuttier each time.)

Jazz hands!

(For the record, there is an adorable picture of Maureen in her own chocolate costumed glory, but she forbade me to include it. Maybe you can coerce her yourself...)

This time we went to the Frey chocolate factory in Buchs, about an hour by train/bus from our house. One of the specialties of this chocolate factory is their line of Easter chocolates.

Somebunny looks shocked!

The thing that set this chocolate factory apart from some of the other ones we've visited was the "Virtual Tour Guides".

We wore headsets and scanned a QR code at various screens throughout the factory. You set the language at the onset so you could understand your "guide". It was a nice way to self pace your way through the chocolate making journey of this particular brand.

The tour culminates in a tasting room, where you can sample as many Frey Chocolates as you want. Let's just say Joe got his money's worth.

Complete with a chocolate fountain.

All around it was another good day to live in the land of chocolate. I even wore my "tasty" shirt for our tour.

Me and my bunny buddy.

And we ended up with a few bars to bring to the US for gifts - this is one of the most affordable factories and Swiss chocolates yet!

A tasty collection.

When you come to visit us here in Switzerland, we'll take you on your own chocolate journey - pick your factory. You can even borrow my shirt. :)

Today's poem is actually a throwback to one I wrote last year. Sometimes I get it poetically right the first time - why mess with what still rings true?

In Switzerland,
chocolate is brown gold.
Putting it in our faces,
never gets old.
©2018, Bridget Magee. All Rights Reserved.

Feast or Famine

Depends on the month.

Late summer is traditionally the time when people take time off of work to go on holiday. It's easy if you work for a big company or a school which either have people still running the business or is closed for summer.

But what if you run a small local restaurant?

In Switzerland, you just close up your restaurant and go on holiday. We found this out when we tried to go to the little burrito joint in Zurich.

And then a week later, walking by the burger joint by our house.

Translation: Summer holiday from 28.7.2019 until and with 18.8.2019 our company remains closed.

Could you imagine closing your business for several weeks? And then still being in business?

Well, actually restaurants being able to stay in business is a bit of a problem here in Switzerland. In recent years more pubs and restaurants have closed than ever before.

Part of the blame is the strong franc, but closing your business for weeks at a time to go on holiday probably doesn't help either.

Today's poem is about that feeling of wanting to eat out, but finding the proprietor of the restaurant has the exact same idea!

holiday from cooking
for the cook
not the customer

©2019, Bridget Magee. All Rights Reserved.

Good News Alert! I am proud to announce that a few of my haiku 

have been chosen to be published in the print journal, 

seashores - an international journal to share the spirit of haiku. Woot!

Sails Hoisted for Tolerance

Art reflects society - what's good about it, what's bad about it, and even what we hope for!

A local art installation, Ship of Tolerance, depicts what the world needs most: tolerance. The idea for this art had a global reach, but the local purpose was for it to be a symbol of openness and acceptance for the refugees living here in Zug. Even though this work of art was completed in 2016, it is just as relevant today in the world as a whole, if not MORE!

The Ship of Tolerance is the brain child of Ilya and Emila Kabakov of New York by way of the former Soviet Union. The artist couple, in collaboration with Kunsthaus Zug (the local art museum), came up with the idea to create a participation art piece that allowed children the chance to experience tolerance and respect as they created this amazing symbol of tolerance. The 120 sail panels were painted by school children throughout Kanton Zug and are mounted on the 11 meter high mast.

As you can see the sails look bright, fresh and colorful today. They swap out the sails regularly when they get weather beaten and tattered, which can happen quite easily on a lake shore in Switzerland.

A super cool aspect of the ship is that it glows at night.

It is a real wooden ship that is about 18 meters long, but it has never sailed on its own. Actually, back in 2016, when it was completed, it had to be "sailed" around Lake Zug on a raft. Now it lives in a lakeside beach park not far from our home where kids can climb, play, and tolerate each other.

On the platform there is this sign:

Translation: Enter at your own risk.

A tolerant view of personal safety and personal responsibility, if you ask me.

Today's poem is an acrostic that is my hope for a more tolerant world.

Together we embrace
Others.
Love
Everyone
Regardless of differences.
Acceptance
Now
Can save the
Earth. 

©2019, Bridget Magee. All Rights Reserved.

Wrestle-Mania!

First of all, hello again from Switzerland! We are alive and well, but incredibly busy as of late, hence my blog post lag. Things should be settling out going forward and I plan to resume my regular blogging, with a surprise feature coming this fall. Stay tuned. 😀

Today's post about an epic 3-day event that happened here a few weekends ago.  Zug was lucky enough to host Switzerland's largest sporting event: Eidgenössische Schwing- and Älplerfest.

Basically, Eidgenössische Schwing it is the Olympics of Swiss Wrestling.  Every three years a village hosts the event and the people come in droves. Zug hasn't hosted since 1961, so having it this year was a BIG deal.

The location of the festivities was near where we lived in the corporate apartment. I ran through these fields last year:

Cornfield picture taken Summer 2018.

This year, for this event, the fields were transformed to look like this:

That's not corn growing out of the ground...

...that's a stadium!

Another  former cornfield.

Temporary buildings abound.

They actually built the world's largest temporary stadium (no joke) for this 3-day event. It held 56,500 lucky ticket-holding fans. We weren't among them. We actually watched on a Jumbo-tron in another temporary stadium set up outside the hockey arena (a kilometer or so away) of the local hockey team that I've mentioned on my blog before.

I'll explain the wrestling pants in a moment...

Thousands of people gathered to watch live-ish.

We even got to see some yodeling action.

Yodel-le-he-who!

Listen closely, you can almost hear them.

So what, you might be asking, is Swiss wrestling? Well, it all starts with the pants.

Photo courtesy of  ESAF Zug from this website.

The wrestlers, men only, wear trousers with these shorts (diapers?)  made of jute worn over them. The objective is to lift your opponent off his feet and pin him on his back on the ground, all the while keeping a firm grip on his shorts. The winner is chosen by a three-person jury.

Grab, lift, and throw.

They even put the shorts on the directional signs!

The winner gets the title of Schwingerkönig (Wrestling King), leaf wreath "crown", and a bull. Yep, the animal.

This year's competition was an upset. The local favorite, 22-year-old Joel Wicki was beat in 40 seconds by a 34-year-old wrestler from Bern, Christian Stucki. At 34, Stucki is the oldest winner in history.

Photo courtesy of SwissInfo.ch

Maybe Wicki had too much pressure on him?

Here his likeness is being used to peddle shirts at a local grocery store.

Incidentally, these shirts are Edelweiss shirts worn by the competitors and 80% of the Swiss population that weekend. At 80 CHF  a pop, that's a lot of national pride.

But, wrestling is not the only event that took place during that weekend. We also attended a Boulder Throwing competition. We watched guys throw 40kg boulders from a stand.

Here's the winner. He threw his boulder 4 meters 72cm from a standstill!

And there was plenty of food and drink and people watching to keep you entertained as well.

Not a fan of Swiss food personally.

Surreal to see so many people in our old stomping grounds.

Yesterday, a few weeks after the event, this is what the stadium looks like now:

Halfway disassembled.

Again, we feel very fortunate to live here and get to participate in these amazing cultural experiences.

Today's poem is a tribute to "King" Stucki:
pull
      push
             lift
sawdust drift

flip
     grip
          drop
'king' on top 

©2019, Bridget Magee. All Rights Reserved.

Everything Is ok.-

Bags are ok.-.  Umbrellas are ok.-.

Many thanks to the ok.- models Maureen and Elisabeth.

Ice tea.is ok.-

But energy drinks are the most ok.-

Photo courtesy of ok.- website

Also from website.

A lot of things are ok.- because ok.- is a brand made by the Swiss company Valora and sold exclusively in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Luxembourg. They started out with energy drinks...lots of energy drinks. Then they branched out with water, cookies, chocolate, tea, sunglasses, umbrellas, bags, and more! The best part is the prices for this brand are really ok.- And in Switzerland that's saying a lot!

One more feature that makes this brand stand out is its cheeky style. From its url name: www.okpunktstrich.ch which translates to "ok dot dash" (which is exactly how you spell it) to its advertisements, ok.- is more than OK with us.

And Luke is der Bruder?

Today's teeny tiny poem shows this brand's style:

outspOKen