Spielplatz 95

While we were out of town, our friend discovered a wonderful little playground near the Limmat River.  Before we left on vacation, my friend Susannah clued me into a wonderful map, published by the city, charting and describing all 192 playgrounds in downtown Zürich. (I ended up ordering two: one to use, and one to take home and frame. As far as souvenirs go, I think it exemplifies our stay here perfectly.) Susannah's started working her way through that list with her kids, and they discovered the wonderful Spielplatz 95 while we were gone.

We'd made plans to hang out with them today, but I had toughest time getting the kids out of the house.  Dennis is still home, sick, and I think Joey might be joining him. My two-year-old was crotchety all mornin, but simply refused to sleep.  We made the best of a bad situation and I pulled some premade bread dough out of the refrigerator, another find by Susannah, and the kids spent some time making more of the little bread-dough animals they'd so enjoyed putting together at the community center.

Embarrassed to admit it, but I helped Joey with his animals.

Ten points (and my gratitude) to anyone who can figure 

out what they are supposed to be.

I thought maybe, once he was full of bread, Joey would drift off for a nap, but it wasn't to be.  And I hated to keep our friends waiting any longer (and I was eager to give Dennis a quiet house, so that he, at least, could sleep), so I took a deep breath and packed up the kids.

It might have been a mistake.  Joey refused to sit in his stroller, but whenever I let him free, he'd puckishly run in the opposite direction.  After missing two buses, I got tough and tried to force him in.  He's awfully good at escaping his five-point harness, and fought back with all he had.

At about this time, a roly-poly Babushka walked by and noticed my troubles.  How could she not?  She leaned over Joey and started clucking at him, alternately trying to make him laugh with funny faces and scolding him for his naughtiness.  Everything she said was in Schweitzerdeutsch, so I only had the vaguest understanding of what she was trying to say to Joey, but I believe, by her pantomime, she was telling him he had to go to sleep right away or he would get horribly sick and would have to go to the doctor for a shot (here, she pantomimed an injection into his rump and punctuated it with a scary face). Joey wasn't impressed.  Freaked out, but not impressed. After about five minutes, the well-meaning lady finally realized it wasn't helping, although I sent her off with a grateful hug for her good intentions.

And, in the end, she actually did help.  When she left and Joey regained his composure, it was clear that he'd exhausted himself into good behavior. We finally made our way onto the bus.

After all of that, we actually visited two playgrounds, the community center near Susannah's house, which Ella desperately wanted to see, and then Spielplatz 95, which was definitely worth the bus ride.

The Spielplatz was all water toys for the kids to pump and divert and otherwise manipulate.  I think Ella summarized the magic of this playground quite nicely: "This is the sort of playground that makes kids feel very important.  They can imagine all kinds of things like, for example, that they're working really hard in a chocolate factory or or that they're trying to fill Clifford's water dish."

Yep, exactly the sort of thing grownups do.

Ella had to rock back and forth on a little teeter-
totter to fill up the buckets up there.  It took her
about ten minutes to fill the buckets: a lesson in
patience.

Unfortunately, the park is, at best, a half-hour from our house, so, sooner than I'd have liked, I had to wring out Joey's clothes and pack the kids up for the journey home.  But they'd gotten enough fresh air and sunshine that I felt I could rationalize another movie.  Ella had seen tantalizing ads for Raiponce all across France, and, at long last, she got to curl up and watch her beloved Rapunzel.