Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's I miss back home! I also missed my normal Mother's Day of lunching and shopping with my Mom and sisters, and secretly was happy that they weren't able to do it this year. I'm telling myself it's because they couldn't bear to go on with our tradition without me and would have spent the day sobbing through the mall reminiscing about all the wonderful shopping memories I'd given them over the years. But in reality it had nothing to do with me and 2 of the 3 of them were out of town.
We celebrated an unusual Mother's day today here in Switzerland. It was nothing short of a dream come true for me. Prepare yourself to be filled with envy. I spent my Mother's Day with my husband and 3 kids at (drum roll please........) the circus! Now I know some of you are remembering your day of pedicures and swedish massages and thinking "Damn her! She has all the luck!" and of course, I can't blame you. But Bryan has always known how to treat a woman and today was no exception.
All joking aside, it was a pretty fun day. We met a great family who just moved here from L.A. and mom Crystal also married a "smooth operator" who decided the circus was a wonderful token of appreciation for the mother of his children. We're a couple of lucky ladies. Unfortunately they weren't appreciative of our mothering skills enough to book us the good seats and we spent a good deal of the show looking at elephant butts, horse butts, and trapeze artists butts. But it was entertaining none-the-less!
The circus was called "Circus Knie" and it is the main circus of Switzerland. It has been around since 1803 and definately has a different feel than Circus's in the States. The only other circus I have been to lately was the Ringling Bros circus at the Allstate Arena. At that circus, I think we spent about a $100 on overpriced glow sticks and flashlights that act as mini strobe lights. The kids were more into the cotton candy and popcorn than the circus because we were so far up we could hardly see the yippy dogs jumping through hoops.
This circus was an old fashioned circus in a big circus tent set up in the middle of the city. (The same spot as the burning of frosty) There was one small circus ring where the performance took place and even with bad seats we were only about 20 feet from the action. At one point the other mom, Crystal, leaned over and said, "This seems like the kind of circus where something tragic might happen and we'll all be scarred for life!" Visions of out of control elephants trampling the crowd, or tightrope walkers plummeting to their deaths quickly crossed my mind. Fortunately, there was no Mother's Day tragedy, other than the fact that we were at a circus on Mother's Day.
There were 5 elephants that were crammed into the ring doing their typical circus tricks and lots of beautiful horses that ran around the ring. There was only one clown and he wasn't all that funny, but there were 3 guys dressed in sailor costumes and the boys found their schtick pretty amusing. The trapeze artists were pretty amazing and performed without nets, but the tight rope walkers? No so much. They didn't use nets either, but were only about 8 feet off the ground. I quickly realized there was a reason for this because both tightrope walkers fell off numerous times. It may have just been an off day for them, but it reminded me of watching my 4 year old on the balance beam.
The only disturbing part of the circus was when they brought out audience members to try and reenact some of the stunts performed by the professionals. They put them in waist harnesses with a rope attached that was on a pulley from the top of the tent. The audience members were to run up to a horse and try to leap on it with the help of someone from the circus pulling the rope to help lift them off the ground. Their next trick was to try to stand up on the horse as it galloped around the ring. The first 3 audience members were entertaining and as they fell from the horse while trying to stand they would swing from the rope and then a circus performer would help them down. Then, the 4th audience member came out. She was a pleasantly plump woman who made the unfortunate decision to wear a skirt to the circus. She ran up to the horse and pretty much ran face first into the side of it. They had some trouble pulling her off the ground to get her on the horse and this is when she flipped upside down exposing her from the waist down. Thank God for nylons. When they finally got her on the horse, she looked terrified as it ran around the ring and needless to say, she never stood up. When she fell and started swinging by the rope around the ring, they made a big production of it and she slammed into the circus worker, landing on top of him. Public humiliation has no place in a circus. Unless of course you're getting paid for it.
The thing I found most refreshing about the circus was the lack of concessions. At the intermission, everyone went outside and there was a small stand to buy popcorn, ice cream and a few other snacks. There were no obnoxious novelty toys or cotton candy the size of your head. It was all about enjoying the circus and my kids didn't miss all the rest of the garbage at all. For 2 1/2 hours the kids were glued to the circus acts and it seemed like good wholesome fun. When asked afterwords what they liked best about the circus, Z said "Everything!", C said "The funny guys in the sailor costumes!" and E excitedly yelled, "The Penguins!!!!". Apparently the rest of us missed the penguin portion of the show.
So all in all, a pretty great Mother's Day with the kids. Days like this remind me why I love being a mom to my 3 little goofballs, and I wouldn't want to be experiencing Switzerland any other way than with the 3 of them and my sweet, if not suave, husband. Happy Mother's Day!
