Euro 2008 may be over, but true fans never abandon their team. (Note the symbolically (prophetically?) deflated football.)
People usually have something to say when they hear that we live in Lugano – often, "Oh, that great jazz festival" or "Wasn't there some sort of peace treaty signed there?" or "[sigh] That place is paradise, I tell you, paradise." (Sorry Franklin College, no one seems to know that you exist.)
Close behind these topics in the Lugano stream of consciousness is the Olympics. People have mentioned it so many times that it started to sound really probable to me. I began jumping into these conversations enthusiastically – "oh yes, I've heard this! I think there must have been some events here one year!"
But today my desire for certainty overcame the hypnotic power of hearsay and I looked it up. World Olympics Lugano: 28,400 results. World Olympics Salt Lake City: 2,320,000. I find nothing that mentions events in or around Lugano. But based on the list of previous events, I have some theories about why we all think this:
1. Turin 2006. Torino is not so far away, really. Zoom out a world map a couple of times and they're practically on top of each other.
2. Lillehammer 2004. Another cute little European town that seems really familiar for no real reason.
3. Nagano 1998. Nagano. Lugano. Nagano. Lugano.
4. St. Moritz 1928 & 1948. How did this tiny Swiss town (just a four hour bus ride from Lugano) get the honor twice? They stole hosting rights the second time from Sapporo, Japan. That place doesn't even know how to make beer, the Swiss pointed out, how can it host the Olympics? Let's bring them here for our tasty Feldschlössen. (Germany had offered up Garmisch-Partenkirchen once again, but let's just say their beer wasn't very popular at this time in history either.) (Full story here.)
Thanks to all who guessed and/or tried to get the answer out of me on the phone this weekend. The actual retail price of these four eggs was 3.40 CHF.
Julie-uli-uli, you win! Congratulations, you are truly ready for expatriate living (and/or an appearance on a morning game show). Let me know when you have a new address and we can arrange a covert meeting to exchange information. Alex also deserves an honorable mention for his guess, which was so close I had to use Excel to figure out who won.
So, for your reference, this is more than $10 per dozen.
We ate these little investments this weekend and – no surprise here – they looked, tasted, and felt delicious. This probably won't keep me from buying the much less vigorous but still not exactly cheap "Budget" eggs in the future, but it might make me slightly more resentful.
As an old coworker used to say when addressing a group, generally after a long unrequested lecture about some obscure employment regulation "The Feds" were going to start busting us on: "Have good weeks!"
