Get out and play

Welcome back to another episode of A'lil Hoohaa's monthly photo blog challenge. This month, PJ, our host, picked "Get out and play" for us to interpret.

So in June... it was either miserably cold and raining or incredibly hot and humid. Both not ideal conditions to get out and play. At least not for this fair weather blogger!

Browsing through my picture gallery it looks as though I might just come up with a handful of appropriate photos.

Let's start with the surprising way the Zurich Lake Basin neighbourhood decked its streets for the 25 years' anniversary of the Zurich Pride Parade. Street signs, lamp posts, pedestrian crossings; they all got a rainbow touch. And the most delightful part of it? It was a legal activity! The city council voted 92 : 17 in favor of this supportive statement. Way to go, otherwise conservative Switzerland!

Speaking of Switzerland. Our garage door broke down, and my car was locked in for a few days. It was a bit of a challenge to get places, but I managed. On one particular day I took the train to Bern, our capital city to visit the bears and the sights. This is the Aare river. The water has this particularly crisp color because it carries quite some snowmelt coming from the Alps.

My blog turned seven years old. and instead of participating in the women's strike march on June 14, I worked and took my son to hockey practice. I did, however, treat myself to a cheese / avocado burger and some bubbly while he was training.

Do women go on strike days where you're at? This was the second time this happened in Switzerland after 1991, and even though some progress was made in the years since, we're far from equality. As I said earlier in this post: we're still pretty conservative around here.

As I'm typing this, I'm on my way back from the annual U.S. Car Meeting in Sulgen, a tiny village in Eastern Switzerland. Classic (and modern) car drivers from Switzerland, Germany and Austria come here to spend a day of watching beautiful cars, listening to road trip music (as I like to call this genre), meeting likeminded people and pretending we're somewhere in the United States. ;-)

Fun fact: upon entering the premises, they give you a customized stack of leaflets: invitations to other car meetings, business cards of dealerships, and the like, plus, depending on your make and model a nomination to compete within your category: best 50s, 60s or 70s car, best muscle car, best truck etc.

They recently must have introduced categories that have nothing to do with your car but with you as a driver: did you arrive from the longest distance, are you possibly the youngest (or the most senior) driver)? So guess what, the guy asks me "Welcome, is this your car and how old are you?"

At that point I didn't know about the competition and I grinned "I'm 18". He goes "Excellent, you take this note to the information booth, show them your driver's license and good luck!"

Consider this your bonus picture.

I crossed my fingers and said "thanks for thinking of me. Actually, I might be more like 19."

Here's a particularly fabulous Studebaker Golden Hawk. I may have been slobbering a little bit! (More gorgeous car pictures on my Instagram page)

As I was saying we're currently experiencing a heat wave (can you believe there's a Wikipedia post about June 2019?) pretty much all over Europe. We're talking 37°C (=99°F today), add the humidity, and it feels like 102 and more. Not my type of climate, especially since most of the Swiss residential and even office buildings don't have A/C. I know, hard to imagine. Even though we ventilate our rooms in the mornings when it's still cool-ish, keep our blinds and windows closed for the rest of the day, I find it hard to sleep at night. Let's not forget the mosquito visits. Uggghs. Bring on September already!

Time for a yummy Strawberry Lime frozen Iced Tea!