We slept on the side of a mountain, so of course we drank and played the Stick Game. It’s a little hard to explain, but the basic idea is that you drink, carve up some sticks, and throw them into the ground. Sometimes you also throw them at other people’s sticks.I got 2 points. “No need to bring any special clothing or a tent,” the amiable Swiss friend-of-a-friend said. “The mountain is high but it will be warm and probably won’t rain. We can sleep under the stars.”As I lay under the picnic table at sometime around 3am, convinced I was going to die of exposure as the rain dripped down from the slats above, it occurred to me that I’ve never seen a Swiss man who wasn’t already dressed in what I’d consider ‘special clothing.’ On close inspection, even the average guy on the street’s practical shirt and plain jumper usually turn out to be the kind of gear Mountain Rescue teams wear: certified to -400 degrees Celcius and/or 50 fathoms below sea-level, impermeable to dragon fire, and made of some lightweight nano-material. “Special clothing”, to the Swiss, would need to be truly spectacular to prove more useful, warm or practical than what they normally wear - a space suit, perhaps, or the inside of a tauntaun. Lying there under the picnic table, the only thing I could think of that a Swiss person on the side of a mountain would be able to wear that would actually prove more warm and practical than their usual clothing might, in fact, be another Swiss person.I gave up trying to sleep at around 4am and stumbled out from under my sodden picnic cave to pee. I weaved my way out by their tents (“no need to bring a tent” meaning “bring a space-age tent that apparently folds out from something the size of a vitamin tablet just in case” in Swiss, apparently) and wandered out to stand and piss in the rain. I actually felt a little better, standing alone in the dark out there, junk in hand. Pissing out in an open space, a black forest on one side and a steep drop on the other, you can’t help but get a deep sense of how ridiculous and vulnerable your place in the universe is. For a guy, I think that it has at least something to do with being very conscious of the fact you’re holding your dick while you stare out into a big, unforgiving world.I stood there for a while longer in the rain and looked at the forest and the towns below. I crawled back under my picnic table, then, and slept.

We slept on the side of a mountain, so of course we drank and played the Stick Game. It’s a little hard to explain, but the basic idea is that you drink, carve up some sticks, and throw them into the ground. Sometimes you also throw them at other people’s sticks.
I got 2 points. 
“No need to bring any special clothing or a tent,” the amiable Swiss friend-of-a-friend said. “The mountain is high but it will be warm and probably won’t rain. We can sleep under the stars.”
As I lay under the picnic table at sometime around 3am, convinced I was going to die of exposure as the rain dripped down from the slats above, it occurred to me that I’ve never seen a Swiss man who wasn’t already dressed in what I’d consider ‘special clothing.’ On close inspection, even the average guy on the street’s practical shirt and plain jumper usually turn out to be the kind of gear Mountain Rescue teams wear: certified to -400 degrees Celcius and/or 50 fathoms below sea-level, impermeable to dragon fire, and made of some lightweight nano-material. “Special clothing”, to the Swiss, would need to be truly spectacular to prove more useful, warm or practical than what they normally wear - a space suit, perhaps, or the inside of a tauntaun. Lying there under the picnic table, the only thing I could think of that a Swiss person on the side of a mountain would be able to wear that would actually prove more warm and practical than their usual clothing might, in fact, be another Swiss person.
I gave up trying to sleep at around 4am and stumbled out from under my sodden picnic cave to pee. I weaved my way out by their tents (“no need to bring a tent” meaning “bring a space-age tent that apparently folds out from something the size of a vitamin tablet just in case” in Swiss, apparently) and wandered out to stand and piss in the rain. I actually felt a little better, standing alone in the dark out there, junk in hand. Pissing out in an open space, a black forest on one side and a steep drop on the other, you can’t help but get a deep sense of how ridiculous and vulnerable your place in the universe is. For a guy, I think that it has at least something to do with being very conscious of the fact you’re holding your dick while you stare out into a big, unforgiving world.
I stood there for a while longer in the rain and looked at the forest and the towns below.
I crawled back under my picnic table, then, and slept.

Notes

  1. yellowhammer-blurb said: I think I know who’s going shopping for some nano-tech zero kelvin clothes :-)
  2. everythinginthesky posted this