A Well Kept Man

So my cousin Joel just spent the last several days with us and as a result accumulated a few mementos from Switzerland.  As he is traveling without a lot of spare room in his backpack, he opted to mail his new two liter beer stein back to the U.S. along with a jacket that has now been replaced by a much cooler Swiss version.  One might guess this story will be mostly about the trials of attempting to communicate this to the Swiss Post Office, but one would be wrong (now that I am more comfortable speaking French, communicating the intent wasn't the problem).  One might also imagine humorous circumstances such as parking outside the Post Office in a 30 minute zone, and taking more like 45 minutes to complete our task causing my car to be towed, ticketed, or otherwise detained as a result of Swiss Parking Cop aggressiveness, but one would again be wrong.  (Although to be honest we did take 45 minutes to do something that should have taken 5-10, and I was illegally parked for 20 minutes or so which could have made a better story).  

One could even imagine the cost of shipping the box to the States costing well more than either of us had on our person and the clerk not accepting credit cards, forcing us to abandon the package in a frantic search for an ATM, getting money, and still not having enough to pay the bill as one of us managed to misunderstand the amount...but one would be wrong yet again (but only because I remembered I had a spare twenty in my pocket).

Instead, I will regale you with a tale about the most minor aspect of this story, which is now a funny story (at least for the three of us who know it so far).  As Joel and I were communicating to the Postal worker the need to ship a delicate, glass beer stein to the U.S., we realized we would need some sort of cushioning inside the box to prevent the glass from breaking.  Unfortunately we didn't not cover packing materials in French class, so I tried to get creative.  I asked for papier (paper), cacahuète du boîte (box peanuts, aka packing peanuts)...as you could see I may have been causing more problems than I was solving.  At this point, Joel decided to try the universal expression for bubble wrap by saying "Pop, Pop, Pop" while making a motion that he was popping the little bubbles on the bubble wrap.  I am pretty sure she thought we were a few corners short of a square...but all of the sudden she said "Voila!" and ran over to a shelf were she produced bubble wrap and said "Oui! Pop, Pop, Pop!"

Problem solved, and bubble wrap will forever remind me of the Swiss Post Office with my cousin Joel, whom has since entered into the 23rd annual International Charades & Signs Contest which will be held in Geneva next August.