Comptoir Suisse

If you walk up the hill about a kilometer (.6 miles, Randy) you’ll find the convention center which is the site of the Comptoir Suisse (the Swiss Fair). It lasts for 10 days and makes parking really difficult.

It used to be that the Comptoir was the Swiss answer to the USA shopping mall. Most shops were mom and pops and every object had its own shop. But at the fair, EVERYTHING was together. You could check out a sewing machine, buy a coat, spy out the whirlpool baths, see the latest in electronics and fill your wine cellar ALL IN THE SAME PLACE.

Now, we do have malls, so everyday is the fair. Yippee. They’re not COSTCO, which is about as close to the Swiss Fair as you can get (yes, you can buy Polish sausages at the Swiss Fair), but you can buy milk and a micro-wave in the same place now.

There is something magical about the Fair. Nowhere else do those slicer-dicers look so good as the fair. The knives are sharper, the food processors more powerful, the coffee-machines more expressoed, the magic cards more slight-of-hand, the vacuums more full of suck… And the folks who demonstrate the machines are never more persuasive than during Fair week. Just tell one of them “you want to think about it…”

But I’m always ready for it to be over so I can get my parking space back.