Sport

As I'm sure I've mentioned, even though I DON'T LIKE SPORT AT ALL, I am sort of a fan of large-scale sporting events, in the manner of the Olympics and this soccer thing that's just finished. I like how people hang around and there is free outdoor entertainment and public transport is more friendly than it normally is (although you're annoyed that there are no spare seats, you enjoy seeing all the enormous dutch men in fluorescent orange wigs struggling with their banners and wondering if this is the stop to get off at).

In this spirit, I was always determined that I would make some sort of an effort to at least go to some of the cities where the games were being held and see what the vibe was like while the soccer was on. Being more of a slacker than a doer, though, the closest I got was R and I going to Berne a few days ago and having dinner in some restaurant that was just next to a fanzone*. There wasn't any soccer on that night, so instead of sporty entertainment there was some woman on stage who is apparently quite famous in Switzo (well, Reto had heard of her, and he is pretty oblivious to everything), singing the kind of music that Reto's mother would like (ie. atrocious folksy sort of stuff with no redeeming features whatsoever). So that wasn't endearing at all. Later we walked past another fanzone in Berne and this one was heaps wackier, but there was still a bit more yodelling going on than I would have liked. Admittedly this was sort of rock yodelling, and the singer seemed to be wearing some sort of heavily spangled outfit that doesn't go with yodelling (and therefore I suspect the yodelling might have been ironic or something), but it was still somehow ... not great.

Ever since I saw Ms Mac's picture of the ginormous soccer player statue in the train station in Zurich, I had also been meaning to go there and have a bit of a squiz. Apathy won for a long time, though, and so the first time I was actually in Zurich with the opportunity to look at them (ie. while they were there) was on Monday, ie. the day after the soccer finished. Switzerland being as it is and all, there was none of this "leaving the christmas tree up until it dies and you're left with squillions of old crunchy pine needles tromped into the carpet" type attitude (not least because this is the land of no carpet), so in spite of the fact that I was there at the crack of dawn (10am or so, after helping Reto lug his vaaaast quantites of army crap onto the train), the soccer giants were already in a state of semi-dismantledness. All their arms were gone. I saw a pile of giganto hands with their pink little (enormous) fingernails sticking out of some giant-hand-mincing machine (or possibly just a normal rubbish skip). One of the armless soccer chappies had been pulled down and was lying in a rather ungainly fashion on the ground, face down, with his shorts missing and a man standing in the area where Soccer Giant's bum should have been had he apparently not been in the throes of being dismantled bum-first.

I had intended to take my camera with me that day so that I could take a photo of Reto in all his army finery, all laden down with his idiotically heavy gun and his bayonet and his cammo helmet and his bags and bags of army junk, but a photo of these partially deconstructed soccer chappies would have been far better. But I forgot the camera, and so now I have neither photo. I suppose that's what I get for saying "I'd like a phone with no features at all, please" when I went to buy my mobile. At least it can send and receive SMSes, which is a distinct step up from my previous phone. Which, by the way, wasn't so old as to predate SMSes, it was just sort of broken.

Just picture them armless, pantsless, and lying face down with normal-sized humans coming out of their bottoms. It's a bit like an Almodovar film, isn't it? Thanks to Ms Mac for the photo, too.

* a fanzone being a fenced off area where everything you could possibly imagine is banned. Like weaponry and pets and glass bottles and anything you might be able to throw (I think that was actually specified on the signage. What can't you throw?? Things that are so sticky that they don't let go of your hand when you try to pelt them? Post-it notes?)