LGG and I went off into the hot and humid weather by bus, and unfortunately, LGG lost her favorite pair of "cool cat Hawaiian" sunglasses - she was in tears and it took some time to calm her down.
After that crisis, I bought the last Weber grill they had, and as it was the floor model, I bargained the guy down a bit. It's easier than you think to do that in German: "Wie viel kostet?
Next stop: man-capris. Officially, these are called "3/4 hose", but they're capris, and they are very common on men here, so "man-capris" or "man-pris". LGG helped me pick a pair and as you can see in the picture below, I look somewhat silly in them (please note that I am also wearing the Swiss-standard ankle socks with my sandals - except they're not black). But they're much cooler than pants and dressier than shorts, so we'll see how they go.
We also got LGG a new pair of sunglasses - 30 CHF! (Note to self: lose sunglasses in the US.) She was thrilled to find a pair that look like cows:
She tells us they are "moo-ilific"...
We went back to get the grill, bussed home, went to the store for grilling supplies (real charcoal, not briquettes, and firestarter chunks, not lighter fluid) and food, and went home to cool off with lots of bubble water. Crisis: it's 20 minutes until the stores close and we have no beer! Crisis averted after a quick trip to get a nice Alpenzeller.
We inaugurated the grill on Saturday evening with bratwurst and schnecke (curly, skinny sausages whose name means snail), but realized in the process that our roof terrace is too dang hot for the summer, so we ate inside. Note to self: get an umbrella.
We wrapped up our hot, sticky Saturday with a semi-spontaneous trip down to the Euro 2008 Fan Zone in central Zürich. We stopped off for coffee and ice cream, and a chat with the friendly woman at the shop who hails from Washington, DC, and then watched the first half of the Netherlands-Russia match on the big lakeside screen, along with 500 of our closest friends. It turns out that having a 5-year-old along exempts one from security pat-downs - or at least I didn't get one on the way into the Fan Zone.
Finally, we waded back through the sea of fans - and Zürich youth, who seem to love spending weekend nights hanging around the downtown train stations, smoking, drinking beers, and flirting ostentatiously - and rode on home in time to watch the rest of the match.
2 comments:
I always use the briquettes because I find that the "real" charcoal falls through the grate of the Weber.
I figure by the time we figure out how much "real" charcoal we need to cook anything we'll have finished the bag since so much of it will have fallen through the grate and then we can look for the briquettes...
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