Chillin Out in Switzerland During Europe’s Record Freeze

Last night as I walked down a boulevard in Geneva, a young man passing by nodded his head and wished me a « bon froid » instead of good evening. Can a « good cold » exist ?

frozen lake front (lake Geneva 02.10.2012)

ready for a swim ??

We are having a record breaking cold spell in Europe. Parts of the Danube, Europe’s busiest waterway flowing through ten countries, closed due to ice blockages. Canals across Holland froze turning the entire city of Amsterdam into an open air skating ring. Strong winds whip across Switzerland, reminding me of back home in the Windy City and open plains of the Midwest. Once a tough kid, I turned into a big sissy. I love winter, but hate cold. Even though I am part Norwegian, I lack the fortitude of my Viking cousins living up by the North Pole.

In Switzerland, a northeast wind, called the Bise, blows shutters off houses and branches from trees. Everyone knows I love to exaggerate, but no kidding, docks on Lake Geneva look like chiseled ice sculptures, cars turned to blocks of ice and steel train tracks froze halting traffic.

car or ice sculpture ?

The cold even penetrates the walls of our concrete home and I am literally chilled to the bone. My lips turn blue, my fingertips grow white and my feet never thaw.

Snow and ice, crunch and crackle, underfoot, as I trudge to school reflecting on childhood when snow drifted as high as window ledges. As it nips my face and stings my eyes, I lean into wind. I feel rugged like Grandpa Mac who cleared a path through five-foot high snow banks to light a the fire in the pot belly stove of the one room school house where my grandma first taught.

The howling wind rattles the window frames of my school room under the tiled, mansard rooftop in the attic of the one hundred year old international school, where I teach without heat. Each room has a space heater, but if we plug in more than one appliance at a time, the lights go out and computers shut down. My colleagues and I toss coins to see who’s turn it is to freeze. On my Ice Day, I wear a hand-knit Norwegian sweater, three sweatshirts,long underwear, wool mittens and a scarf.

Brrrh. I don’t want to leave my house ; I don’t even want to leave the bed. Like the ground hog who sees his shadow in stark sunlight in a cobalt sky, I long to retreat to my burrow under a down comforter and hibernate for another six weeks.

My joints ache ; my fingers and toes go numb. I think I am suffering. Me, with a layers of clothes, heated lodgings and a hot meal every night. I wonder about the unemployed, poverty stricken street people without a roof over head or food to eat. How do they survive the night? Many don’t. Already over 600 people have died in Europe from the extreme weather.

I stop grumbling about winter and feel grateful. I am gifted. I have a home.

more winter pictures of Lake Geneva, Switzerland: http://gallery.me.com/geraldlechault#100343&bgcolor=black&view=grid

Cross-Country Skiing in Switzerland Precarious for a Flatlander from the Snow Belt

If you grow up in Switzerland, skiing is a birthright. Like riding a bike, no one forgets how to do it. Forget the thrill of school closing for inclement weather. Here we have the ultimate snow day! We even bus kindergarteners up in the mountains for skiing during regular school days and better yet have a ski week vacation in February.

cross-country skiing in the mountains

No one here can believe I don’t ski even though I grew up in the Snow Belt.

Maybe if I learned to ski when I was a child, I wouldn’t be so afraid. Where I grew up in the flatlands of Illinois, only the wealthy could afford to fly halfway across the continent to the nearest mountain.

Besides, no American coach in his or her right mind, would ever condone skiing for a star hoopster. A teammate and I broke training one season and attempted to ski on a golf course on campus where the highest elevation was a two-foot bunny hill on the back nine. Heck, I still fell down.

I am not afraid of heights, but I am downright speed phobic. Anytime the velocity picks up, I envision my previous accidents, flying over my bicycle handlebars on a hill in Germany or careening out the window of an air born car off an autoroute in France.

I still might enjoy skiing if my back never cracked, my knees could bend or I had a solid base to stand on. Just try balancing on a two inch by 6 foot slabs with bad feet. With my high arches and ankle pronation, I might remain upright if I skied barefoot and hung on by my claw toes. Strong thigh muscles, able to hold the squat position also help, but I lost those when I quit doing defensive slides back in the seventies.

Ah the great irony of life! In youth, when I was nowhere near a mountain, my greatest dream was to alpine ski; now in middle age I live at the foot of the Alps yet break out in hives just looking at the slopes. However to appease Le Frenchman, an avid skier extraordinaire, I don my skis once a winter. But in the mountains, cross-country skiing is a misnomer. It should be called up and down skiing and the only thing worse than sailing 25 miles an hour on sticks, is flailing at top speed downward on a curve!

Oups !!!

Luckily on groomed trails in the mountains, they strategically prop bright red, two-inch thick, gym mats against trees at the bottom of curving slopes.

Hey, I learned to drive in Illinois, I am no dummy. As soon as I see the red warning sign in the distance, I stop, remove skis and proceed with caution. Then I put away my gear for another year.

World’s Oldest, Greatest Vice – Chewing Gum Good for You

As soon as I got my first tooth, I fell in love with gum. At my grandparents’ summer camp, I begged the boys « Got any gum? » Then I swallowed it as fast as I could chew it until my parents forbid campers from giving me another stick.

If gum chewing contests existed, I would win. In grade school, learning to blow bubbles with a pink wad of Bazooka rated right up there with sinking my first jump shot. As a teen, chewing gum in class on the sly, made me feel rebellious. Before college basketball games, I chewed bubble gum to psyche up before battle. After the French teacher caught me chewing gum in the language lab, when I supposed to be busy rolling my r’s, I learned to hate to parler francais.

Remember good ol’ Bazooka Joe, who became one of the most famous 20th century advertizing characters for Bazooka gum marketed just after WWII in red, white, blue symbolized USA and patriotism

But the joke was on me – I wound up living in French speaking countries. When l first moved to Europe, gum chewing was a dead give away to one’s nationality, a trademark of being American like the stereotypical baseball cap and tennis shoes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZXRaVBf0pY

But, Le Frenchman I fell in love with considered it a disgusting habit, so I used to smuggle gum in my luggage on transatlantic flights. Now I purchase packets of my vice across the border in France, where surprisingly more gum is consumed than anywhere else in the world besides the U.S.A.

In June 1944, U.S. troops first brought chewing gum to France along with freedom. However, French chewing gum wasn’t launched until 1952 when former GI, Courtland Parfet, introduced the chlorophyll green mint stick, called Hollywood Chewing Gum.

Now much to parents’, teachers’ and Le Frenchman’s chagrin, it turns out that gum was good for us along.

Recent US studies (where else in the world would analyze statistics about gum’s virtues) show that students who chewed a piece before exams increased the blood flow to the brain helping with memorization.

Chewing also calmly helps relieve stress and control appetite by reducing hunger.

The xylitol in gum helps stop the progression of cavities and inhibits the growth of bacteria.

Finally something taboo that is actually good for you. However, Le Frenchman under ze roof still finds my gum chewing revolting, so like the little kid at camp, I sneak gum into the house. The illicit activity only makes it more enticing.

How to Beat the January Blues

Down & out? Feeling tired & fat? Frumpy & dumpy? What is it about January? When the snow piles up, the temperature plunges and the sun goes into hibernation, the mood starts to plummet.

The holiday hype has died down, Bowl games are over, the Packers stunk up the play offs, we ate one too many cookies or tipped back one too many hot toddies and now it is back to reality with nothing to look forward to.

Above the clouds in the Alps

To brighten my spirits in the spring, all I need to do is fling open windows to feel inspired by the Swiss Alps and French Jura, but in winter those same mountain tops lock in fine particles and pollutants in a fog so thick I can’t see my hand if front of my face. The locals recommend heading to the peaks to beat the blues…rise above the smog where the air is clean and clear, but not everybody lives near a mountain, nor has agility to ski or the money to afford the sport.

Check out my inexpensive quick pick-me-ups to brighten your bleak winter days especially if you live Up North on an empty pocketbook with a bad case of lumbago!

1. Read a good book.

2. Watch an old sit-com, back in the day when the special effects were so poor, the lines had to be great

3. Surprise a friend you haven’t talked to for years with a phone call

4. Write an old fashioned letter, you know, by hand with pen and paper.

5. Take a bubble bath by candle light

6. Listen to smooth jazz

7. Teach a child to do something new and watch their eyes light up

8. Lie on a yoga mat with your legs at a right angle against the wall and arms reaching overhead, then breath deeply in a full body stretch

9. Open a good bottle of wine and savor one glass

10. Turn off the computer, TV, iPhone, iPod, iPad. Stop text messaging, facebooking, linking –in, emailing and Tweeting on line and connect in person (ie. hug someone you love, speak face to face!)

How do you kick back the January blues ?

Flying Up Front

For the past thirty-some years, I dreamed of being bumped to first class and riding in the front of plane instead of squeezing into the sardine section of economy at the back.

Twenty-four hours before take off, when we logged on to Delta/KLM/Air France website for our seat assignments, we found out our return flight to Switzerland was overbooked. We were offered the “unique opportunity” to upgrade our tickets to for a relatively “small fee.”

We bit the bullet and bought it and let me tell you, nothing beats flying biz on long haul flight.

Once you wave the Business Elite ticket, airline personnel roll out the red carpet. Talk about celebrity status. I felt like Lady Gaga, Princess Kate and First Lady Obama all rolled in one. Check in is a breeze. First class never waits in line- first on the plane, first off, first served and no queue at the lavatory.

We received perks a ga ga from the get go, from the 20 extra pounds luggage allowance to complimentary toiletry bag filled with contraband toothpaste and lotion, to fluffy down pillows and comforters. For the first time ever, instead of pacing up and down the plane to keep my legs from going numb, I flew in comfort.

Pampered from the moment we were welcomed aboard; champagne flowed before the plane even began to taxi to the runway. Just after take off, the stewardesses whip through the aisles with tablecloths and dishes of warm almonds and cashews and cocktails.

No picnic fare in front of the plane: real cutlery, linens, glassware and our own individual salt and pepper shakers. Five-course first class cuisine is so fine it makes economy class fare look like dog food. No waiting until the end of the flight for your tray table to be finally cleared, as soon as one course is finished, plates are whisked away. Service rated right up there with a four star restaurant. No wonder, according to my Frenchman, four flight attendants served the 36 people in business class and that included half dozen kids, whose feet still didn’t touch floor, which seemed like a waste of precious space.

The best part of flying at the front of the plane was the legroom and the remote control recliner seat, plusher than my favorite chair back home. I kid you not; the seat had a dozen different buttons. The footrests raised, backrest reclined, lumbar roll relieved low back pressure and the headrest actually rests the head. After a glass of Mercurey, one of Burgundies best, and death by chocolate cheesecake, I was out for the count.

I can get into this fine art of flying at the front of the plane. For anyone with a bad back or past the half a century mark, elite class takes the pain out of a nine-hour ride. The only drawback, jet lag still hits the next day.

One and Only New Year’s Resolution

Get organized.

I made only one vow this New Year. That way I figure I would succeed. I started early before the holidays. But it is not going to be easy. My sister, Sue, was born with all the organizing genes in the family, so I got short changed in the tidy up department.

Never mind. I do try. Like the experts suggest, change doesn’t happen overnight. Start simple. Clean one drawer.

I start with the kitchen drawer. What really precipitated the resolution was my husband coming home from work yelling when he sets off the burglar alarm, « Where did you put the alarm deactivator. »

A decade ago, after being burglarized twice, we bought a sensorized sound system. We once had four alarm deactivator buttons the size of erasers ; we now have one. Every time the alarm goes off, DAILY, we conduct a « scream and search. »

My husband says he changed the battery months ago and swears he put it in the kitchen drawer. Thus my quest for self actualization through organization begins there. Most people store eating utensils in kitchen drawers. Not me. I find twenty pens, ten pencils, five highlighters, three board markers, two whistles and one sticky piece of bubble gum. See my priorities. In addition to writing tools, I discover pocket notebooks, Post-Its, a card from my daughter written in 1990, and a party list for my son’s fifth birthday. But that’s not all. I also uncover a Swiss army knife, a bottle opener, a pack of Kleenex, a glue stick, a scissors, a piece of chocolate, band-aides, pain killer, anti acids, matches, a mini flashlight, my cell phone, gym keys and cash in five different currencies.

No need for me to pack a safety kit to store in the car for inclement winter weather, I’ll just carry my kitchen drawer along every time I go out the door.

When my husband comes home from work, he doesn’t say, « Honey, I’m home how was your day ? »

No. When the siren starts screeching, It’s the usual, « Pot ! (Pat in French) WTF did you put the alarm? »

The trouble is that as all women know, one magic drawer exists in every household. Whatever you put in it, disappears. My new year’s resolution is doomed to fail. How can I get organized, whenever I am not looking, the drawer fairy strikes again. Somewhere in the house, my little leprechaun has a stash of treasures.

Yet get this, FYI, the Frenchman found the alarm in his camera bag where he left it after our last trip to the states, so much for tidy kitchen drawers and New Year’s Resolutions!