We've been had!

I know in this previous post I said I wasn't going to detail individual experiences Lou and Leona had on their day trips around Switzerland, but when I read the following journal entry I couldn't let it go unreported.  I guess every country has its own version of exaggerated marketing!

 

 photo from flickr

12 February 1990 - [Today] we went on an excursion with about 17 other temple missionaries.  We were supposed to go see a Stainless Steel factory and have a demonstration and a sales pitch in Strasbourg, France.  But - we had our dinner someplace in Switzerland, and they talked to us for a few minutes about the value of stainless steel cookware and then the man in charge started demonstrating and showing some blankets and pillows that looked like some kind of sheepskin, and it went on forever.  Then we had lunch and found out that our "free" dinner which came with our 17.50 franc fare for the trip consisted of some pasta with a few little pieces of pork in it; we had to pay 3.5 francs for our salad and 2.60 francs for a glass of apple juice!  I ordered a dessert, but I was full by the time it came time for dessert and I felt I had been "had" enough so I didn't take a dessert!

photo from flickr

Then he started in on selling some kind of liniment for rheumatism and then some garlic pills and another something for the arteries and called it snake oil, so we were sure we had been to an old fashioned medicine show - without the show!  However, the young salesman did put on quite a show of salesmanship.  I finally got disgusted, so I got up and walked out in the hall and on outside for a breath of fresh air - to top it off we were sitting with some Schweiss couple and the guy was smoking a big black cigar.  I just stayed out in the hall waiting for the "show" to finish!