Where’s Your Lulu’s?

Seems like the last thing for me to sell is my annual membership at the local fitness club and it will be one of the first things I find in California. Nothing beats putting the kids in a (fun) daycare for a few hours while Mommy pumps some iron and then relaxes in the Cafe with a post-workout latte.

Exercising in a European gym has definitely had it’s interesting moments.  Although my bicep curls and squat thrusts are the same no matter what part of the world I’m in, pretty much every other aspect of the gym has produced it’s own type of culture shock.

Gym Speak	Canada		Switzerland
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Cost	$50/month is pretty average. If you included the $6/hour it cost having my kids in the daycare, my membership soared to over $100 per month. Not cool.		No monthly payment plan here! In Switzerland, they expect you to have your financial crap together so you pay for the year up front. CHF 70/month includes a better quality facility AND unlimited daycare access.
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Attire	Pretty much a guarantee that when you walk into a west-coast Canadian gym, you’ll find 8 out of 10 women wearing Lulu Lemon (much to the delight of the male gym-goers).		Do you know what it feels like to be the only woman in the entire building (heck, this entire city!) wearing the coveted Lulu magic?! If you’ve never seen your rear in a pair of Lulu’s, you have no idea what I’m talking about. And that’s what’s so glorious about it.
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Amenities	For my aforementioned $100, I got a crappy little daycare where the chick talked on her cell phone the entire time she was with my kids (darn you stupid contract!) and some decent equipment around 5-10 years old.		Let’s do it up Swiss-style. Gleaming hardwood floors, a plethora of shiny new equipment and weights, a pool and a ton of other amenities that I haven’t even bothered to use. Like, the co-ed sauna. Sorry, the mandatory nude co-ed sauna. (Because honestly, bathing suits are such a hassle). And plus, this photo on the gym’s homepage really brings out the dudes.
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Members	Women Only gyms are easy to find in NA. Perhaps impossible here. My last gym had a ladies’ floor so you could do those bent-over rows without worrying about some juice monkey checking out your Lulu-Hotness (although, they were distracted by the other 20 Lulu-clad women in the place, anyway).		Other than the über-hairy Eastern Europeans that keep me from ever stepping foot into the whirlpool, it’s mainly old people working out when I do. Well, them and the Spandex Guy. Every day. Same spandex.
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Oy!	In my experience, the most shocking thing you’ll find in a Canadian gym is a woman exercising sans t-shirt and just a sports bra. That amount of skin attracts a lot of stares and most self-respecting women just don’t want to be bothered, no matter how rockin’ their six-pack is.		It’s been five months and I think I’m finally desensitized to the most shocking part of working out here. The pool is in the basement level and the change rooms are on the main floor above it. The stairs and (glass) elevator wind their way up through the middle of the main entrance and weight machine areas. If I had a nickel for every hairy, old guy I’ve witnessed walk up in nothing but a towel casually wrapped around their waist, I’d be building my own gym. Focusing on the last set of killer tricep extensions is hard enough without some old guys’ butt crack getting in the way.

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