A few friends from work and I went swimming in Lake Geneva after work last week. Placing our wallets, watches, and other belongings in a backpack, threw a towel over them, and prayed to the patron saint of beat-downs to give us strength if we found someone rummaging through our stuff.As we ventured into the water, we were surrounded by a fleet of homemade boats flying flags protesting the international trade meetings that were going on a few hundred meters behind us at the World Trade Organization (OTC en Francais).
Once we navigated our way through the Korean fisherman naval blockade, we made for the open water and swam uncontested in the crystal-clear water. We made our way down to the Perle du Lac and turned around, making the complete excursion from entry to exit about two hours in total. As we neared the shore, a refreshing light rain started to come down. We emerged from the water to see a pack of Swiss hoods standing around our bikes and packs - they were identifiable by the coifs (cross between a semi-shaved head and a mohawk), shirtlessness, and smell of beer. Fear crawled up my spine. You can't exactly look tough emerging from the water wearing pink-lensed swim goggles and having your backup posse wearing speedos. We approached cautiously.
As we edged our way through the gaggle of teens, we noticed that our bags were untouched. I let out a sigh of relief as I opened my bag and saw my bank card staring back at me. What was even more surprising was that the gaggle of rough and pierced hoods struck up a conversation with us. "Where did all the protestors go?" "Are they partying with the guys in the WTO?" We joked, smiled, and exchanged witty one-liner jokes about the protestors with them. "What are you guys doing for dinner?" one of the Mad Maxx crowd asked. "Do you want to come to my house for spaghetti?"
At this point in time, several hundred neurons in the far reaches of Ben's medulla oblongata exploded. The fact that I had completely overestimated Geneva youth's willingness to engage in mischief made me want to find a small cave and pull the blanket over my head. We politely declined the offer of spaghetti and quickly dried off. The boys freaked me out by telling me ghost stories of "duck fleas" in Lake Geneva - more commonly known as swimmer's itch. I nervously laughed and feigned being unconcerned but went home and performed a Silkwood scrubdown.
1 comment:
Good call on the Silkwood technique as I doubt the euro Speedo would've protected you from the fleas not to mention bird flu.
Courtesy of www.aocd.org;
The major, although not the only, cause of swimmer's itch are trematode parasites of aquatic/migrating birds. The life cycles of these parasites involve snails as the first host and aquatic birds or some mammals as the final host.
When do we swim again? :-)
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