Wednesday, November 09, 2011

A Zurich belly dance lesson

My housemates’ sons give us Smart Boxes for Christmas. Depending on the type, they contain a series of things to do, see, stay or go to in Switzerland and the surrounding countries.

We’ve enjoyed nights in a castle and other fancy hotels.

This year on top of the hotel Smart Box we received a wellness (massages, etc.) and an adventure Smart Box.

On the adventure one we eliminated elastics that dropped us distances, anything with water where we might drown. Horses had some potential as did paintball, except between my cancer treatments and both our travels, expiration dates abounded.

Trying to decide what was left we spied a Belly Dancing lesson. Belly dancing is not new thanks to Arab friends, but a lesson? Sounded like fun.

The lesson was in Zurich. We debated staying with a friend’s, staying at a hotel but a crowded schedule and with two trips planned for Scotland and Germany in the next couple of weeks, the idea of sleeping at home was almost a luxury.

Bless the Swiss train system. We picked up the noonish train, had a wonderful lunch of Alpine macaroni and cheese in the dining car then had time to wander around Zurich for a couple of hours before locating the class.

The teacher was a smiley women of an indeterminate age dressed in aqua. Six other women and one man were suitably dressed. We were almost suitably dressed. The teacher provided us with bells on pretty cloth to tie around our waists. We jingled and jangled as we moved.

For 1.5 hours we shook things not often shaken, moved our arms in fluid motions and watched ourselves in the mirror with the growing realization belly dancing as a profession was a route that was closed to us.

The other dance students were impressed we’d come all the way from Geneva to the class. We were too.

Buying a pretzel was a necessity for the trip back.

Twelve hours after we left we were tucked in our respective beds, smiling at a day that we rated nine on a scale of 10.

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