Brilliant ad campaign

By the Swiss milk producers, as seen on a Geneva billboard:

Crow pose


Eagle pose



And, of course, headstand.

Using my handy Google (French to English) Translate This Page tool, I am able to provide you with the rationale behind this ad campaign:

Once more, untiring Lovely is the high-speed motorboat. Like many women currently, it discovers the benefits of yoga.
Lovely is addressed particularly to the women who, with the return of age, are more prone to the osteoporosis than the men.

Yoga and milk: many common points
At first sight, nothing seems to bring them closer communiun, and yet, yoga and milk present certain common points:

	Both are daily sources of wellbeing and pleasure.
	Both slacken. Milk because it contains tryptophan, an amino acid which is transformed into serotonin, our “hormone of happiness”.
	Both strengthen our framework. Milk thanks to its calcium and yoga by the fact that it uses the bones, but without exaggeration. The muscular tension, the pressure and the tensions exerted carefully on the bones and the muscles at the time of the exercises of yoga have a stabilizing effect on the osseous structure. Scientific studies show that the practice of yoga increases the osseous density clearly. Thus 3 portions day labourers of milk and dairy products all the more reinforce the bones if they are associated the practice of yoga.

All the good things go by three
To meet our daily needs for calcium all in there fascinating pleasure, it is enough for us to consume 3 portions of milk and dairy products. This is why the new rule is stated as follows: 1 milk glass, 1 yoghourt and a piece of cheese each day… and three meetings of yoga per week.

What the above fails to mention is that the cheese is indeed delicious, but hardly low fat. (Not that I'd want it to be--low-fat cheese is pretty much a travesty if you ask me.) And you really have to search for skim or low-fat milk, or low-fat yogurt. And then of course there's fondue and raclette...yum. So if I'm looking a little pudgy when I return to Illinois--on Friday!!--you'll know why. But I have been doing yoga three times a week, in part because it slackens me.

Blackbird

It is one of those truisms you hear so often that you begin to dismiss it as meaningless: that living or traveling abroad can make you understand things in a different way.

I've been thinking about this lately. Our apartment has a balcony that looks out on a small yard with several trees. There are lots of birds that we just don't see or hear in the Midwest: magpies, giant pigeons, and blackbirds. I often work at the kitchen table with the door to the balcony open, with birdsong (as well as traffic noise and children playing) as background music. For a long time, Tony and I were puzzled by the fact that we would often hear the birds singing long after the sun went down. Don't Swiss birds (with the exception of owls) sleep at night?

And then we finally understood the lyrics to the Beatles song:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night.
Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

Oh. So blackbirds really do sing in the dead of night. I guess it's just because they were only waiting for this moment to arise.

The organ grinder of Geneva

I love this guy and his cats (there's one, sleeping on a tray to the side, that's a little harder to see.) He works the streets in downtown Geneva nearly every weekend. He was kind enough to stop for me so that I could take this little video.

Note the cats' complete nonchalance, as well as the many people who hurried by without even a second glance. Not all of them, but a lot. And those white, skinny faceless mannekins in the window display in the background.

I should see if he speaks English. I bet he has some interesting stories to tell!

Easter in Geneva

It wouldn't be Easter without an Easter egg hunt, at least not in this family. I loved coloring the eggs with the kids and hiding them--outside, when the weather cooperated, but often enough inside as well.

At some point I came up with the idea of hiding a "special" plastic egg with each kid's name on it. I made up clues ahead of time that would help the kids find their special egg--usually riddles or bad jokes. When they showed me their egg, they got extra candy. It got to be a lot of work to come up with different clues--and corresponding hiding places--every year! It was fun, though.

This year I cheated. Coloring your own eggs doesn't seem to be done in Geneva--I didn't see the ubiquitous Paas kits I used to buy in the U.S. But there were a lot of beautiful pre-colored eggs. And I didn't make up clues this year, either, although there was a "special" egg for Eli. (It turned out to be a hollow chocolate egg with a little plastic model car inside.)

Tony, Eli and I had a lovely time taking turns hiding and hunting for Easter eggs in one of my favorite parks in Geneva, Parc Eaux Vives. A lot of other people were enjoying Easter in the park, too:Tony and Eli read while I wandered around taking pictures:
It was a lovely day. The only thing that would have made it better would have been to have had my two other Easter egg hunters here.