How A Gorgeous Girl In Switzerland Turned Me Into Prince Charming
By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Nightlife Blogger
A press packet was waiting for me at the Bern hotel and attached to it was the card of a Tourism Bern representative. The card had a picture of the person and once again, it was a very attractive girl.
This is unbelievable, I thought! During my week-plus press trip to Switzerland, there was babe after babe from the local tourism boards serving as tour guides. If the point of the trip was to show PubClub.com that the country has as many beautiful women as it does fine watches, then it succeed in spectacular fashion.
I was not due to meet this latest could-be fashion model for another hour, so I did a quick walk around the town (it’s pretty small), though I was too excited thinking about the ravishing beauty that would soon be in my company to notice much of anything. I returned to the lobby a few minutes early and the hotel clerk said he thought that the short, somewhat elderly lady in the corner was there to meet me.
“No, that can’t be,” I said, pulling out the business card with the attractive girl’s picture. “I’m supposed to be meeting a beautiful blonde…”
I was interrupted by the little older lady (about 4-feet-nothing, mid-50s and carrying a pointing stick) who announced that it would be she – and not the lovely Swiss Miss on the card – that would be showing me the city.
The disappointment in my face must have been quite obvious because the hotel clerk gave me a little “I don’t know” shrug as we exited.
Now let it be stated, I was very grateful to be on this trip and especially thankful to Tourism Switzerland for arranging personal guided tours to its wonderful destinations. It sure makes it easier to write about a place when someone who knows the area can point out things and talk about the culture and history of a place.
It’s just that this little ol’ lady apparently failed to notice the cocktail glass on my card and the fact that she was taking around PubClub.com, not BoringUselessHistoricalFactsOfBern.com. She pointed out where churches stood back in the 13th century, talked a lot about children and spent a good 15 minutes describing every aspect of a fountain that featured a statue of an adolescent male. “Look at the little boy,” she kept saying. “Look at the little boy!”
We walked over a tall bridge and when she told me the river is so clean you can actually swim in it, I was tempted to jump over the side and personally see if it were true (I was later assured by others it is, by the way). The Bern Lady, as I began to call her (to myself) was less of a tour guide than a schoolmaster who reminded me of Ms. Smith, my fifth-grade teacher. Ms. Smith would throw erasers at us when we were not paying attention. Which, in the case of Ms. Smith’s class, was frequent.
The Bern Lady did not have erasers so she used her stick to tap objects to keep me in line and my mind from wandering. She even made climbing to the top of the Clock Tower, which provided me with a commanding view over the city, an agonizing experience. She explained in painful detail exactly how the clock worked and then began to quiz me on what she had said, throwing in a few whacks on its mechanisms for effect.
This went on and on and on, my only saving grace being that she pointed to a building we passed and said “that’s where the other person is taking you to dinner tonite.” Another person!? You mean someone else was taking me to dinner!? By this time, I had forgotten all about the girl on the business card. I didn’t care if the entire Swiss National Hockey Team showed up, at least I would be rid of The Bern Lady.
As the appointed time approached and we waited for my dinner companion beneath the Clock Tower, The Bern Lady confessed she had not met her replacement. I did learn it was a girl, someone relatively new to Bern Tourism.
Suddenly – and right on time, of course, for this is Switzerland and everything happens right on time – she appeared in the distance. To say this girl was a looker would not be doing her the least bit of justice. Tall and thin with shoulder-length blonde hair and wearing a stylish button-down coat, she looked as if she had just stepped off a fashion runway. My eyes became wider than than a Saas-Fee ski run. I began to hear violins playing.
Once in of me, she stuck out her hand and introduced herself as Flurina.
Flurina, what interesting names the Swiss have, I thought to myself.
Well, actually what I was really thinking was let’s get out of here, have a couple of drinks, engage in some idle chit-chat and then start making plans for her to come back to California with me.
“Well,” I heard a familiar voice say, “I guess you’re in good hands now.” It was The Bern Lady; in less than 30 seconds I had forgotten all about her!
But I did thank her for her services, then put out my arm to Flurina and together we walked to the restaurant.
She had chosen a beautiful place for dinner. It was elegant, quiet and softly lit. I chose the most secluded table I could find and spent the time trying to comprehend my sudden change of fortunes. A mere hour earlier I was seriously considering leaping headfirst off a bridge and now I was in a romantic restaurant with a young and sophisticated goddess, her hair shining and eyes sparkling with each flicker of the candle’s flame.
Actually, I could be slightly overstating Flurina’s true attractiveness. The dramatic night-and-day contrast between her and The Bern Lady was so dramatic that were I to have encountered Flurina in, say, a bar, I may have merely considered her attractive rather than so magnificently breathtaking.
I’m not sure what we talked about and I was so mesmerized that I did not get any photos of her, but I wanted it to last as long as humanly possible. I did ask her to join me as I set out to explore the bars but Flurina sidestepped this by saying she was going to visit someone in another town that night (darn lucky dude, I thought, though it could also have been a friend or family member).
So I set about the town alone, initially walking around in kind of a post-Flurina daze. And, in a bit of irony, a place The Bern Lady pointed out called Lorenzini turned out to be one of the city’s best hang-out bars.
Flurina turned out to be another Swiss babe in a trip that was full of Swiss babes. Except, of course, for one.
Related links:
• Bern Visitor’s Guide
• Bern’s Bars & Nightlife
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