BRIGHTY.CH

I know: still a whole month to go until the real celebration gets started.

But it is actually time to start writing your cards, you know.

I received my first one this morning, from my friends at the Union Bank of Switzerland:

Cute, isn’t it?

I was rummaging through a box of old things this week and came up with a couple of items I’m sure my kids will die laughing about: my yearbooks from the fifties featuring a couple of great pics of yours truely:

Moi in 1952

The same in 1954

And the amazing thing is: by the time the nineties arrived, I hadn’t changed a bit:

Oh, the ’90’s!

I guess: once a hunk, always a hunk, eh?

Oh, and you can grab your own over at YearbookYourself…

Makes sense!

Priceless!

There are many reasons why we spend literally AGES planning our holidays.

They have to be absolutely perfect, of course, which, when traveling with two adolescent daughters whose wishes are diametrically opposed to ours, is a feat in itself.

We make use of the obvious web sites: TripAdvisor, HolidayCheck.de (very important to get the opinions of both the Brits – “The bar was fantastic, but the bloody Germans couldn’t stop getting up at 06:00 every morning to nab the sun beds” – and the Germans – “The pool was fantastic, apart from the very loud and drunken Brits“).

And then, you discover other tools…

Take this place: the charming little Hotel Alicja in Lodz, Poland.

European standards in a friendly athmosphere, they state. And their website is teaming with pictures which will ultimately make you totally forget about St Barth’s.

Tempting, I hear you say..

The Zürich Wine Exposition, Expovina, is a pretty awesome idea. Really!

12 steamboats, docked side-by-side, serving as a temporary home to nearly 120 wine merchants. A place to lazily stroll around on a Saturday evening, tasting delicate nectars to your heart’s content..

And all that for the modest sum of CHF 20.00! Awesome I tell you!

So awesome, in fact, that most of the town’s teenagers rapidly cottoned on to the awesomity of the happening and decided to grace it with their thirsty presence. You have to hand it to them, though: they are pretty conscientious when it comes to persevering through a seemingly hopeless task; I’m sure most of them managed to visit at least every booth twice!

Which is vastly more than we succeeded in doing: after having managed to get onto one of those damn boats, frayed a passage through a mass of jovial visitors, discovered a couple of free square inches which had temporarily been abandoned by someone else’s elbow, and set claim to our own moment of rapture, we diligently experienced a virtual Vuelta (not bad, but nothing to write home about) before sampling a few drops from “down-under” (Oz or South Africa? To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure anymore..).

And then it was rapidly time to call it a night.

I’m sure the place really IS awesome. At around 14:30. On a Thursday afternoon. Which is precisely when most people wish to relax after a grueling week on the grindstone.

To be absolutely honest: there weren’t only teenagers present. Quite a few adults had made it as well, probably ex-teenagers wanting to reminisce their youthful days on those steamboats, judging from the fact that this was the 55th venue….