Maple juice

After a couple of weeks in Jena I noticed that my skin was getting really dry. It's not really that it's so very cold or dry here, maybe it's just the shock of not being in very moist Victoria, where moss grows on cars in the winter. I also notice that the buildings here are heated a bit more than I'm used to - I have yet to turn on the heaters in either my office or my room, as the warm hallways seem to provide enough heat.

In any case I decided that I should pick up some cream for my dry skin. I don't really have brand preferences, I was just looking for something fairly cheap. I went to the store, and saw this:
(I actually nabbed this picture from the Garnier website, as my attempted photos were coming out worse than usual.) If you look at the label you'll see why I chose it, and no, it's not because of the amusingly awkward English titles (Body Naturals bodyrepair) followed by strictly German labelling. It's because of the maple leaf, surrounded by the words "mit kanadischem Ahornsaft", which I knew translated literally to "with Canadian maple juice". I figured that this meant maple syrup, though when I looked it up, my dictionary gave Ahornsirop for maple syrup, rather than Ahornsaft. But on the Garnier site it actually says Ahornsirop in the text.

Now having lived my whole life in Canada, I've eaten a goodly share of maple syrup, and I've visited a sugar shack or cabane à sucre on occasion, and this is really the first that I've heard about the benefits of putting maple syrup on one's skin. Or even micro-maple syrup (you might be able to read Mikro-Ahornsaft on the label, just above the maple leaf), whatever the hell that means. But the cream is marketed toward people with severely dry skin during the dry winter months, and I think with the red and white packaging, maple leaf, and maple syrup, they're trying to get across the idea that this is some sort of natural beauty secret from the wilds of Canada. (Incidentally, this product is not sold by Garnier in Canada or the United States, but it is in France, where this liquid is described as maple sap - la sève d'érable - but not micro-maple sap.)

I can't make too much fun I guess, since I fell for it...