danny, the champion of the world

Here’s something, as a friend of mine might say.

It’s about 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, and Max and I are on the back end of Mia’s school drop-off. This is a few weeks ago, mind you, but the routine is generally the same: I roust Mia out of bed and make breakfast for the two of them. I wrestle Max to the floor and put on his clothes, and I hector Mia into putting on hers. I badger them both into brushing their teeth, and then I finish the job for them myself. I harry them into their shoes, heckle them into their jackets, and hound them into the car, and we set out.

That’s a lot of wheedling, I know. And yes, I used thesaurus.com in writing that graf.

Then we get to school, park, and run to the mudroom, where Max and I stand by and listen to my watch tick as Mia slowly changes out of her jacket and into her “indoor” shoes. We walk Mia to her classroom and say hello to Mrs. Hamilton, and then I persuade Max to leave behind the Matchbox cars in Mia’s class and join me on a stroll past the fish tank and through the old nunnery to the front of the school.

It’s a slow stroll. Slower than the shoe-changing. Max likes the fish tank a lot.

Finally, we’re back outside, on our way to the car. This is a long set-up, I know, but there’s a reason for it. Here we are, it’s been about an hour and a half of me barking orders and pleading and occasionally using a voice that, I’ll concede, can come off a bit churlish, but now the pressure’s off, Mia’s in class, and the only thing left to do is to kill a little time and have some fun. My voice, in other words, is no longer sharp, and my mood is no longer edgy. I’m, you know, relaxed.

So when Max declares a race to the car and breaks into his awkward, straight-armed gallop of a run – ba-bum, ba-bum, go his footsteps, just like a heartbeat – I play along, slouching like Groucho and affecting a phony run just fast enough to stay close behind him.

“I’m gonna beat you, Max!” I tease, breathing down his neck. “I’m gonna beat you to the car! You’d better run, Max! Better run fast, because I’m gonna beat you!”

To which Max responds, in a panicked shriek that belies just how much he loves this, “No, Daddy! Don’t beat me! Don’t beat me Daddy!”…

…just as a group of four moms passes us coming the other way.

So, um, that’s kind of awkward.

Okay, so Fasnacht is almost over, and after two parades and a whole lot of shredded paper, I’ve learned a little more about it. Such as:

I. Fasnacht has a special purpose. I’d assumed as much, but I couldn’t have told you what that reason was before the past few days. Now, after a little more research and a hot tip from Mathias, I know that Fasnacht is a pagan tradition designed to scare off the bitter winter – think of it as a kind of Swiss Groundhog’s Day, only more proactive. That, then, explains the all the costumes, though I’m not sure why the iconic Fasnacht clown would frighten anyone, much less the great and powerful Mr. Snow Miser.

Vikings, on the other hand, are very scary, and an entire brass band of Vikings, such as the one that performed, loud and drunk, on the risers at the Metalli mall Thursday morning, were positively fearsome (especially the 300-pound tuba player in the horned helmet). So were the pirates, and the witches, and the trolls, and the other pirates, and the tigers, and the communist aliens, or alien communists, or whatever the green men in the Soviet costumes were supposed to be. The drunken ski team was not very scary (the drum major’s fu manchu notwithstanding), nor was the momma chicken with all the little baby eggs following her down the street, tossing feathers on parade-goers.

The band of smelly hippies was terrifying.

All of these, mind you, were the band members, the people walking in time and playing an assortment of mediocre pop hits from the ‘70s and ‘80s (“We Built This City,” “You’re the Best Around,” “Danger Zone”). The crowds of people watching, both at the Metalli and along the parade routes, were even more impressively, if less uniformly, decked out. There were more witches and more trolls, and there were giant, puffy clowns and Oompa Loompas and blue-haired cigarette girls, and virtually nobody tried to get away with a lame cop-out like “oh, I’m just a dude with a bobbly valentine headband and no other costume to speak of.”

As for us, Mia was Cinderella on Thursday, then shifted gears to Fairy Princess for Saturday’s parade. Sarah was a pirate, complete with a headband and a mask and a scary hook fashioned from tin foil. And Max was Clifford the small red dog on Thursday, then donned a princess dress for Saturday’s festivities.

(Got a problem with that, Tim Hardaway?)

II. Fasnacht works. How else to explain the 60-degree weather on Greasy Thursday, the first day of Fasnacht? True, it was back down to the low 30s today, but clearly, winter is on the run. Not that that’s all that impressive, given what a pussycat of a winter we’ve had so far, but still. Score one for paganism.

III. Fasnacht is funded entirely by an all-powerful cabal of Swiss dentists. Think I’m crazy? Look at the facts. The only people that weren’t throwing confetti at us were throwing candy at us, most of it hard candy of the sort that I always seem to pop into my mouth, then get sick of after about 15 or 20 minutes, then bite on, leaving a sticky pebble of sugar lodged alongside one of my many fillings. I hate that stuff, but Mia doesn’t, and she was in heaven, filling her puppy-dog purse with it, along with all the chocolates and brownies and cookies and oranges and gum she could get her hands on. For some reason we can’t quite fathom, some of the floats were also tossing out travel Kleenex and Pampers-brand hand soap for kids, but nobody – not one of the hundreds of people that passed us and handed out free stuff – was giving out floss.

Seriously. Who benefits? Follow the money, people. Follow the money.

IV. You cannot just brush confetti away like dandruff. Especially when you’re a professional, adultish woman and you make a habit of engaging 13-year-old Swiss girls in confetti fights all afternoon. That’s right, my wife, she of the fancy job and the smooth, even temperament, spent Saturday afternoon out by the hockey stadium chucking fistfuls of yellow and red and purple detritus at gangs of high school kids as they passed on parade floats.

She learned this behavior from her daughter – her four-year-old daughter, mind you – who overcame her early timidity and began heaving confetti at band members near the end of Thursday’s parade. Then she started throwing it at the non-playing mascots that trailed the bands, and then at other parade-goers, and finally point-blank at an infant in a stroller – that’s when I stepped in.

Nothing I could do to halt Sarah’s confettish, though, nor did I want to stop it – the look of glee on her face was just too hilarious. To their credit, her victims responded in kind, pelting Sarah about the face and neck and shoulders with their own supply of paper, leaving her with confetti in her hair, down her back, in her pockets. They weren’t laughing either, not like Sarah. They, one suspects, had spent the entire parade being confetti’d, and they weren’t about to take any more of it, especially from some no-account auslander.

And it didn’t end there. There was a pirate ship float shooting cannons full of confetti into the crowd. There was a medieval castle blasting the stuff from some kind of machine gun mounted in a turret. There was an “Ice Age” float (yes, “Ice Age” again – who knew that movie had such a huge Swiss following?) with squirrels showering us from the top of an iceberg, and there were toothless hags dancing along the street tossing it at us, and there were men on a flat-bed truck shoveling it – literally, shoveling it – out of a giant trough and onto our heads.

It was, as Mia so lyrically termed it, a “confetti-quake.” And for what it’s worth, it’s a pain in the neck to get out of the carpet.

V. No, I’m serious about the confetti. I’ve vacuumed four times, and the cleaning ladies were here Friday. I’m still finding the stuff all over the house.

I’m not complaining. I’m just saying.

VI. Fasnacht is rad. I love this holiday. We need to take it for America. I mean really, it’s 20 degrees in Chicago. Are you telling me that a holiday centered around drinking, fried food, and candy – one that, oh yeah, gets rid of the harsh winter as a bonus – you’re saying that wouldn’t go over big?

Let’s steal it. Let’s make it our own. Come on, who’s in?

So Fasnacht kicks off on Thursday morning, and while I know you’re probably pretty up on all the Swiss costume festivals, there may be one or two readers who aren’t. So, um, I’m going to talk to those people now, alright? Good. Here goes:

What’s Fasnacht?
That’s a good question. Tough one to start with, but good one.

Thanks. And the answer?
Well, um, I’m not totally sure, to be honest. I mean, I’ve never seen it in person or anything. But I did do some research.

I started the research after the banners went up. That was probably a month ago. They went up over Zugerstrasse, the main street running through Baar. (Curiously, once you get to Zug, the street name changes to Baarerstrasse.) They had clowns and coats of arms and radishes on them, and they came accompanied by all kinds of other posters announcing parties and the like. That’s when I figured something interesting was afoot.

So…
So Fasnacht. Well, it’s basically Carnaval, done up Swiss style. It’s very Catholic – people put on costumes, generally clown suits, I think, or jester suits, with crazy, scary masks, and who knows what else. They throw confetti, and they get drunk for four days, starting this Thursday – “Greasy Thursday,” they call it. And the whole thing culminates next Tuesday – Fat Tuesday.

I’m sorry. Greasy Thursday?
Yeah, that’s what they call it. Greasy Thursday. Now you Swiss you were here, don’t you?

So this Fasnacht, it’s basically Mardi Gras then?
Basically, yeah. But I never heard about Fasnacht before this year. (Had you?) It’s northern Swiss and southern German, and as I mentioned, it starts on Thursday morning. Like, early. Apparently, at 5 a.m., “The Frischi Father,” whoever that is, appears in the window of the town hall in Luzern, and then there are a couple cannon shots, and boom – the city goes nuts. From then until next Wednesday (Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent), Luzerners are permitted – nay, expected – to be drunk.

You said what time?
Yeah, I know. Five in the morning. Whose dumb idea was that?

And that’s it? They drink?
Well, no, that’s not all. They have parades, and they play music, and they wear masks and costumes, and they eat fatty, fried foods to help fortify them for the rest of the winter. So, like, they eat sausages, and onion quiches, and Fasnachtschüechli, and donuts. Stuff like that.

Fasnachtsch…?
Fasnachtschüechli.

Fasnachtschü…?
Whatever. It’s not important how you say it. What’s important is that it’s really good. It’s basically a flaky, flat, fried wafer, covered in powdered sugar. It’s great.

So you’ve had one of these Fasn… these flaky wafers?
Oh yeah. They’ve been on the shelves at the Migros for about a month now, ever since the banners went up over Baar. That’s how I figured out that something unusual was coming down the pike – I’d seen the banners, and then the packaging for the Fasnachtschüechli has all kinds of confetti and masks and stuff on it, so I made the connection there.

Boy, nothing gets by you, huh Dan?
You got that right.

So wait. It’s a costume holiday, and it occurs in February or March, and people eat tasty pastries, and people get really drunk. It’s basically Purim, isn’t it?
Yeah, I said the same thing. They even sell noisemakers in the stores that are basically groggers. Sarah pointed out that both holidays probably come from pagan traditions, just like all the other holidays. She’s probably right about that.

So will you be getting drunk?
Probably not, unless Max challenges me, and then maybe. But no, I think we’ll probably just dress up and go to a couple of the parades.

Dress up as what?
Well, Mia’s a princess, obviously. She’s got a crown and some costume jewelry, and she’s got a gold mask. She’s way excited. And Max has bunny ears, though they don’t really stay on, so we’ll have to see. I also bought a fake mustache that I’d like him to wear, but so far he’s been resistant. That’s the Dutch in him.

And what about you guys?
Sarah’s got a blue wig and a black mask. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s weird. You don’t recognize her when she’s wearing it. She looks great. And then I have this little headband thing with bobbly valentine thingies on it. It looks sort of like this:

Wow, you really go all out, don’t you?
Um, yeah. I’m not a real dresser-upper.

By the way, Mia did all the pictures for this one again, didn’t she?
Yeah, I really like her photos. She’s pretty good, isn’t she?

Better than you. And she’s what, four?
Yeah. Um, thanks.

Anyone out there want to explain what’s going on with this billboard? Any of you German speakers? Mathias?

It’s a serious question. 24 letters? In a row? I mean, I understand that it takes a lot of material to make a space bar, and maybe after the war it was just too expensive, so you had to economize or something. But it’s 2007. People are driving past this thing at 50 kilometers per hour. (Maybe 55, but never more than that, I swear.) Would it kill you people to break this into, like, three or four smaller, more easily digestible words?

Also: Unabhängigkeitserklärung? That’s just made up, right?

Right?

Max and I watched two swans tango today. We were out at the shore, having just come from a lazy train-station snack, and the rain was pocking the still water as though each drop was a tiny pebble. Next to us was a class of kindergartners, with their reflective orange vests, heaving fistfuls of breadcrumbs at the gulls and ducks and pigeons. The bounty was causing a bit of a melee – an actual feeding frenzy, right next to the docks – and in the middle of it all, completely oblivious, were the two swans floating bill-to-bill, gently swaying their heads back and forth, dancing. They placed their cheeks together, then switched sides, then switched again.

It looked, strangely, like an extended air-kiss, two beautiful birds just loving one another, and it was mesmerizing.

And then the water changed, as the rain-gravel peppered the water’s surface and the ducks scattered, and the swans split apart and began to plunge their heads under the surface in search of food. I picked up Max and made a quick retreat to the car, snacking on my son’s neck and stomach as he giggled and shouted “No don’t gobble me!”

But I did, I did gobble him. I figured I had to, if only to reestablish my dominance after being badgered into stopping at the lake in the first place. We had been on our way home for lunch and a nap when Max shouted at me from the back seat. “No go home!” he ordered. “I want go see seagulls!”

It’s become something of a habit lately as he experiments with boundaries and all that. He’s been more insistent lately, and at times it’s pretty overbearing. Like today, after the lake, when Max tried to order me downstairs to find his puppy dog.

“Go get it!” he shouted, pointing downstairs and putting on the sternest face he knows.

I scoffed at him, naturally. “Why are you telling me to go get it?” I asked, then reminded him, “You don’t tell me what to do, I tell you. I’m the boss, applesauce.”

To which he scrunched up his brow solemnly and declared, “No! I’m not applesauce, and you’re not the boss.” Then he poked his chubby little finger into my chest and began to climb on me as I collapsed on the floor, laughing.

(Oh yes he is applesauce.)

(Today’s photos provided by Mia Grace.)

It’s been a slow month for us, and with no major travel on the calendar, it figures to stay that way. That’s by design, of course – after trips to Rome, Jungfrau, Barcelona, London, Los Angeles, and Amsterdam in a matter of about eight weeks, we were ready to just cool our heels for a while, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Or at least, that’s one way of putting it. You could also say that we’re in a bit of a doldrums. Not that we’re depressed, just a little stagnant. Mia goes to school, Max and I buy bread or go for a drive or get soft pretzels and watch the trains come and go, and then we go home for Max’s nap. Then we pick up Mia and the kids play and eat pretzels while Jean-Yves and I have coffee from the aggressively named Snack Attack. And then we come home, make dinner, ignore the whining, run the bath, read the stories, ignore the whining, tuck the kids in, kiss them, read, rinse, repeat.

It is not the stuff of travel diaries. Not typically, anyway.

It’s also not entirely like that. For one thing, let’s face it, it’s only been two weeks since the Susan Christopherson Traveling Roadshow went back home. (Confidential aside to Jacob in Chicago: Hope you recover quickly from the dread kissing disease!) But there are days – and today was one of them – when it just seems like I’m living in the background art in a Simpsons episode. The same three people keep passing by, but they’re so crudely drawn you just don’t notice.

The funny thing is that today really wasn’t very routine at all. It was quite unusual, actually. In the morning, after dropping Mia, Max and I drove over to Zugerland, the big supermarket/mall in Steinhausen. We meant to go play in the Kinderparadies, but it doesn’t open until the afternoon, so instead we rode the coin-op carousel and the coin-op tractor, and Max and I had our portrait taken. Oh, and we bought bread.

Then, during Max’s nap, a couple air raid sirens went off. They lasted about a minute apiece, and came about ten minutes apart, and they wailed at us – loudly – from every direction. I reacted the way any rational father would react during alonetime – er, naptime: I shut the balcony door fast and tight so that the noise wouldn’t wake the boy, and then I watched through the glass to make sure no one went screaming out into the rain-dampened streets. Nobody did, so neither did I, but if you happen to know of any major air raids (or minor ones, for that matter) perpetrated on north-central Switzerland today, let me know – I’d love details.

And the rest of the day…well, okay, the rest of the day actually was pretty routine. Mia came out of school reporting ear pain, so we did book an audience with the pediatrician for 5:15, and then we had to kill time until then. But we killed time the way we always kill time – Snack Attack, playground, coffee, chatting, and then more bread. For the record, Mia has a minor ear infection, nothing to be excited about, and certainly nothing like getting the kissing disease, like Jacob from Chicago has. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

The days won’t always be like this, I know. For one thing, when we get back to Los Angeles, they’ll go back pretty quickly to being a dawn-to-dusk horse race, and I can’t say I wouldn’t take this over that, because I would. And anyway, life will change even sooner than that – much sooner. Like, Fasnacht is right around the corner, and I don’t have to tell you what that means (but I will). And next week is ski week, and Mia’s home from school along with every other kid in Europe. No doubt we’ll find our way to one of the local resorts for a little sledding (or sledging, as they call it here), which ought to be an absolute riot.

In the meantime, the coin-op tractor was pretty good. We may just do that again tomorrow.

They’re teaching the kids about recycling in Mia’s class, which means that she now understands what things around the house can be – and ought to be – recycled. We’ve spent the week holding up packages from the market, with Mia searching for the arrows-in-a-circle recycle symbol and jumping up and down when she finds it.

The whole thing is really neat, though it should be noted that her concept of “recycled” is decidedly that of a four-year-old, which is to say that she doesn’t really understand the concept of turning a cardboard box into a ream of paper, or a beer bottle into a sofa. (They can do that, can’t they?) Basically, to Mia, if an object has the spinning arrows, it’s something you can turn into something else – specifically, something you can use in an art project. And usually, that art project is something meant to hold Mia’s princess accessories.

For example, here’s Mia assessing an empty egg carton: “You could paint that, and then you could put all your Princess necklaces and jewelry in there.”

And here she is looking at the Styrofoam packaging from Saturday’s burrito: “You could tape treasures onto it, and then you could paint it, and then you could put all your Princess necklaces and jewelry in there.”

Finally, here she is regarding a milk carton: “You could draw on it with markers, and maybe tape some string to it, so that you can hang it up on a hook. But first you have to drink all the milk, because otherwise that would get all your Princess necklaces and jewelry all messy. Right?”

Right. Needless to say, Mia’s spent a fair amount of time doing art projects over the last few days, which is fine, because it happens to still be cold as the other side of the sled, despite an ongoing shortage of snow. (Good thing we made the snowman when we had the chance!)

As an aside, careful readers will have noticed that I’ve returned to Buenos Burrito Take-Away, despite last week’s disappointing Pineapple Incident. I’m happy to report that the frijoles burrito contains only savory items, and is reasonably good – good enough, anyway, to justify the 30-kilometer drive. In other words, Burritos in Switzerland! Woo-hoo!

Woo-hoo for me, anyway. Perhaps not woo-hoo for Switzerland, which appears to be fighting off a fatness epidemic, and if they ever figure out burritos – really figure them out – well, that’s not going to help things one bit. Not that I’ve seen a single fat Swiss since we moved here – and I mean that, not one fat local of any age, period. But if the board of Gesundheidt’s newest ad campaign is any indication, oversized office chairs are a worry, and not for the office furniture industry. Says the ad copy, “Switzerland’s getting ever thicker.” (“And Leon’s getting laaaaarger!”)

Now, obviously this is a matter of great concern to the Swiss, who are reportedly considering a new law that would require kids to walk to school, rather than getting a ride. I don’t know how that law would work, but if it’s like all the other Swiss laws, it’ll work well, and it’ll probably involve concealed cameras. Still, I can’t help but privately root for Switzerland’s little problem to get even bigger, just as I cheered when I read that Australia is, statistically, the fattest nation on the planet, even fatter than the United States. (Don’t ask where I read that – it’s entirely possible that I just wrote it down, and then I read it. Still – statistics don’t lie!)

Anyway, my main reason for wanting to see the Swiss get bigger is pretty simple: I’m tired of America’s fat rap. It’s not that there’s no truth to it – we’re no Australia, but let’s face it, America could stand to lose a few. But America’s reputation is just too big for comfort.

Here’s a really good example. There’s a line of food in the supermarkets here that I like to call Brand America. It’s not a real brand – it’s just sort of a marketing tack used by the makers of microwave popcorn, peanut butter, sliced bread, muffins, brownies, ketchup, and hamburger buns – in other words, all those foods that are indelibly “American.” Basically, they just dip the packaging in red, white, and blue dye, and stick it on the shelf. That’s it. And apparently it works. Here, look.

First of all, don’t ask when sliced bread became such an American thing, or what historical analogy the Swiss use for really, really great things. I really don’t know the answer to that. (“Best thing since electric raclette grills”?) But if you look at this picture, you’ll notice that all the stuff the Swiss consider typically “American” is highly processed, high in fat, and high in carbs. You know, the kind of stuff that makes you need really wide office chairs.

But back to the issue at hand, which is recycling. (I know, I’ve gone off the trail a bit. Go back and re-read, I’ll wait.) Mia’s got one more week in the recycling module before they move on to something else, and we’re hoping that this is the week they teach the kids how to sort our trash. Basically, there are 26 different kinds of rubbish and recycling here, and so far we’ve only managed to identify two: the stuff we throw away, and the stuff we shove into the laundry room for the cleaning ladies to take away. Perhaps Mia can ferret out a few more.

If only to help her keep track of her Princess jewelry.