A little story about Giger...

Back in 2005, my wife and I packed up our very young kids to do a guided tour of Europe. As we were getting ready to head into France from Switzerland, our tour guide stopped us in Gruyeres. At the stop we were to have "a lunch" and tour the Castle. We were also told by this young Dutch tour guide that there was a very "insane" man who ran a "very crazy" bar near St. Germaine covered with bones and skeletons and dead stuff. Even though I had been an Alien fan since 1978, and had Giger's paintings throughout our house, the location just did not click in my jet-lagged, tired, run crazy by the 8 and 10 year old kids, mind.

Not until we got to the "bar": a wonderful, Giger bar filled with seats of bone, biomechanical art and sculpture everywhere. Then ... we knew.

Exiting the bar, to our surprise, we ran into a wizened, white haired figure dressed in all black right there in the street. Could it be him?

It was my hero, in all his splendor. I made lame attempts to speak to him in german, but we ended up having a very nice conversation in English. A very nice man by all accounts. We unfortunately did not have time to view the museum, but to spend time with him more than made up for that.

When we got back to the bus, I informed our tour guide that perhaps he may need to study up on one "H.R. Giger" a little more in detail ;) ...