Blonde and Brunette arrived at Malpensa airport in Milan after the usual enjoyable air travel experience of unidentifiable food, screeching babies, germ and fart infested cabin air, and seats created by a dollhouse dominatrix furniture designer. Never all that bright in our own time zones, it isn’t entirely a stretch to assume that we should be forbidden from getting off a long flight and into a rental car in a country of attack-drivers. However, that’s precisely what we routinely do and did that day.
Blonde, who owns a 7-year-old car that just hit 14,000 miles, is somehow always the designated arrival driver. This may be due to her proclivity for rude, speedy, gesture-laden driving which is an excellent way to announce our arrival to our lucky host country.
In our envy-inducing 1 cylinder Fiat we roared/lurched off to our destination- Lake Como. It’s “only” about an hour’s drive in the company of an assortment of anger-management class drop-outs driving Maseratis and Ferraris. What would Jesus do? Oh sorry, wrong question. What would a driver with Mario Andretti’s speed and Bruce Jenner’s brain do? Answer: something smarter than what Blonde did.
As we approached the exit to Lake Como we saw a very long line of traffic which we were not interested in joining. So Blonde, never having been anywhere near Lake Como before or even knowing if there was a second exit to the lake, made the judgement call that we would bypass this congested exit and take the “next one”.
Within seconds we blew past the traffic but, to the annoyance of Blonde, had to drive past a ticket office into a parking lot. Why did these idiot Italians have a parking lot in the midst of a highway? In the best Italian Google can approximate this situation gave Blonde an “ass screpolata”. (Hint: Chapstick was needed.)
A parking lot attendant approached our car and Blonde angrily waved him off saying “We don’t even want to park here”!
Brunette, famously more observant than Blonde, raised the interesting question of “Why would a parking lot attendant be carrying a gun”?
The answer is: the “parking lot attendant” is a Swiss border crossing guard and Blonde had blown past the border without pausing. You often hear about the excellent senses of humor the Swiss possess. No wait, they have precise watches but they aren’t major jokesters and are very humorless about people ignoring their borders. Whatever happened to the famed Swiss neutrality? Couldn’t they have at least have been indifferent to this minor error?
The guard took only the briefest look at Blonde and Brunette and immediately decided that the best course of action was to get B&B out of Switzerland ASAP (American Sorry Ass Propulsion). Cars waiting to cross the border (via the series of parking lot “offices”) were backed up and B&B were back in Italy faster than you can say “Va te faire foutre, trouduc”, if you can even say it. (And if Google even translated it right.)
Be forewarned: the Swiss have the pissiest meter maids anywhere.
Moral of the story: Take your own gun.