Goats Etc

I had such a goat-packed weekend. Which is something that I don't think I've ever had the chance to say before.

On Saturday night Reto and I went to see Circus Monti. I haven't seens a circus since I was a wee young thing, but happily this one was really quite adult-friendly, and featured no clowns whatsoever, no audience participation, almost no kiddies in the audience and no putting of heads into the mouths of lions. Instead there were performing goats (kind of poorly performing in some instances, which really added to their charm rather than detracting from it), lots of juggling and leaping and falling over, all those circusy things that you would expect like tightropes and trapezes and good looking, well-muscled young men, and all those circusy things that apparently people here would expect but that came as a bit of a surprise to me, like crepes (apparently crepes are to Switzy circuses what fairy floss is to Australian circuses. Although they also had fairy floss for sale as well. We ate a crepe though. Not lemon and sugar, sadly, but banana and chocolate, which was kind of horrible). Anyway, the circus was full of high points (I think I liked the tiny woman who juggled the enormous ceramic pot plant pot thing, and the table (not at the same time) on her feet the most) and had one small but influential low point - the seats were really uncomfortable. So much so that I could hardly move by the time it was over and have been in absolute agony ever since, including all of yesterday, when ...

Reto and I went on an excursion to Engelberg with his parents. We had planned to go somewhere else, but the weather was deemed inclement, so we went to Engelberg instead, where it was all blue (sky) and green (grass) and white (glaciers. Or maybe just snow, I don't know) and lovely. We walked around and gawked at the scenery and the many thousands of parapenters, and I became progressively more and more crippled as the pain from my back spread down my leg and up my neck and basically everywhere. It was really a lovely day for it, though.

The goaty highlight of that day was this weird sort of small and temporary saleyard that was set up in a parking lot that we passed by on our way to Engelberg. A bunch of people had brough along a bunch of goats and sheep and tethered them to some fences, and then assorted passers by (like us) turned up and gawked a bit and considered buying a sheep/goat. Presumably some people went there deliberately with the intention of actually purchasing some livestock, but we only stopped there because we were passing by and it looked wacky. And so sadly we didn't buy anything (where does one keep a sheep or goat when one lives in a one room flat on the 8th floor?) but I did pat some baby goats and a few adorable little puppies, and I successfully managed not to get bitten by anything.

A successful day all round. If you don't count the cripple thing.