| By Lisa Miller Rut Ro. To truly
appreciate the events of January 2, 2005, you'll need a little
history of the events leading up to this quite eventful day.
On New Year's Eve, Mark and I went out for a stroll and looking
for a nice restaurant to celebrate the coming New Year. As
one would expect, all the restaurants were packed. We did find a
nice looking restaurant. Food was on display; some nice
looking tapas. We made our selections, went back to our room and
ate dinner. The next day, January 1, I awoke, a little
queasy, but no problems yet. We went to Lucerne, walked
around the city, took a six hour boat trip. As the day
wore on, my stomach became more queasy, trips to the water
closet more frequent. On January 2, the adventure
truly begins. Early January 2, let's say around 0200
hours, I was not well. Around 0900 hours, Mark was
insisting on a trip to the infirmary. Mark made arrangements for
a taxi to take us to the infirmary, only to learn that the taxi
driver did not speak English. Being the super guy Mark is, he
drug the taxi driver back into the hotel, had the receptionist
explain our dilemma. The taxi driver drove us to the
infirmary and walked us to the emergency clinic. The taxi
driver received quite a big tip. Upon entering, Mark had
to locate someone that spoke English. The lady was very
nice and made arrangements for me to see Dr. Peter. Dr.
Peter was very nice. However, when someone would walk in
the room, he would stop in mid sentence, break into German, and
begin speaking to the visitor. This would usually happen
about the time Mark and I were interested in learning my fate.
If Dr. Peter the room and then reentered, he would begin
speaking to us in German, sounding very serious, and then all of
a sudden switch to English. During our conversation with
Dr. Peter, he asked me what I thought about President Bush. I
must say that when you're laying there on a gurney, and you've
got a doctor speaking German to you, you're going to take the
easy way out. My response was "whatever you'd like to
think." He laughed and we knew all would be ok. To make
this long story short, Dr. Peter diagnosed, as the Swiss say, a
"food allergy." In the United States, we call it "food
poisoning." He gave me some pills to calm my stomach, told
me I could drink tea and eat bread and potatoes. For the
remainder of the day, I rested in the hotel. Mark and I
altered our plans to stay and extra day in Lucerne. This
is a good place to say thank goodness we purchased travel
insurance. Mark was quite the hero of the day. He
stayed by my side all day with only the Cartoon channel and CNN
to watch. Guess which one he picked? I'll give you a
hint: ask him any question about Scooby Doo; I bet he can
answer it for you. The moral of the story is that you can
travel anywhere in the world, including Switzerland and get food
poisoning. Mark and I have not allowed this bump in the
road to spoil our trip, we've continued on and are now laughing
about the little mishap. |