Off to Switzerland
25 April 2006
Nikov is threatening to take me on a sports date. I mean he waved two tickets at me with great zeal the other day. Arghhh!
I think I will have a bout of SAD, a sudden relapse of Seasonal Affective Disorder, such that I will have to take to my bed the night of the game. Whatever game it is. I mean what do they play this time of year? Huh?
I do know that the World Cup will be played in Germany this summer. I read that somewhere.
Neighboring, neat and tidy and economically civilized Switzerland is attempting to cater to the soccer widows by running tourism ads showing hunky, bare-chested, male-model farm boys tossing hay and milking cows.
The accompanying caption reads: “Ladies, why don’t you spend this summer in Switzerland, where men focus less on football and more on you?”
I think the Swiss tourism board is onto something.
If you’ve ever been to Switzerland you know that they have the happiest, most content cows in the world, which means the half-naked farm boys must be doing something right!
Nikov’s family lives in Switzerland. They fled there during the war in the Balkans. I’ve hinted to Nikov, since seeing the ad the Swiss tourism board is running, that we go visit his family this summer. He can go to Germany and see the soccer with his father and brothers, and I can stay with his mum and sisters-in-law and … eat chocolate!
Switzerland has the best milk chocolate in the world because they have the happiest cows.
What does Hershey’s chocolate say about American cows? Actually I don’t think real cows are involved in the production of Hersheys, are they?
You know, there’s even a Swiss national rescue budget for cows that lose their footing while grazing on those craggy mountaintops.
Given the value of one cow, Swiss farmers don’t go out and just shoot their livestock if it suffers a broken leg after a fall. They call in a rescue copter and airlift the cow to safety where its leg can be set by one of those half-naked farm boys. And then once it’s loved back into a state of health, the cow is put back out to pasture so it can continue producing milk and thus yummy chocolate.
When you eat Swiss chocolate can’t you just taste the love and care that has gone into creating it? If you hadn’t noticed, you’ll notice now, won’t you?
And if you abandon your fella to the telly and the soccer this summer and go in search of a bare-chested, Swiss farm boy, for goodness sake leave the Hershey’s Kisses at home.
