The difficulty of learning how to deal with long summers

It's been 29 degrees today! And I have found myself tweeting about the weather far too often lately. I should really stop, because no one else gives a shit. I know myself how annoying it can be when people in other parts of the world brag about their warm weather and beautiful, blue skies. I should really try to avoid doing the same thing myself.
I am also concerned about the cause of this new found obsession; does it mean that I am getting old? Or am I just being Swedish in a foreign country? I hope it is the latter. Although I cannot help thinking about my grandfather and his obsessive need to watch the weather forecast on TV at every given occasion, in spite of the fact that he would most likely spend the best part of the day in a dark room, developing photos. Somehow, he just really needed to always know what the weather would be like the next day. I don't know if he was always like this, but I suspect that this need developed some time after retirement. And I am still far away from that stage.

I suppose the most likely reason for my current weather obsession is the other one, the one about being a Swede... I confess that the fact that I have moved to a place with a better climate than Sweden makes me feel not only relieved and thankful, but also a bit superior to those that are left back home. I know that it's not thanks to me that the sun is shining and the flowers are blossoming, but I still can't help feeling a bit pleased about being better off.
I suppose that a whole life time of facing the ridiculously short life span that the Swedish summers have does something to you. I still can't look at all the green treas around me without also feeling a vague fear of them turning yellow soon. Because that's what I'm used to. I'm used to being thankful for every summer's day that is being given to me. And suddenly finding myself in a situation where you don't have to suck the marrow out of each summer's day, because there will be enough of them anyway, is something I'm not quite used to yet. I still have to learn how to stay inside when it's 28 degrees outside and not feel guilty about it. And I have to learn to not shout out that the sun is shining every time it appears in the sky...

The joy of getting drunk for free

This past week I went to two popular events in and around Geneva: "Nuit des Bains" and "Caves ouverts". These are essentially just two varieties of the same event, where one takes place in the area around Rue des Bains in Geneva and the other one is spread out in the Genevois countryside. Sure, they have their differences, for instance, the former claims to be a night of art gallery openings (where the "night" lasts for three hours and stretches from 18h00 to 21h00) whereas the latter is marketed as a wine tasting festival. The truth is though, that most people don't really know this. What they know, and what they care about, is that they are going to a place where there is free wine and a good chance of running into someone you know. The majority of the people who go around the galleries at nuit des Bains couldn't care less about the art. I know, because I tried to look at some of it last Thursday but failed because of the groups of mingling wine drinkers that blocked the pictures on the walls. I also had great difficulties even entering some of the galleries, since the crowds around the wine and snacks table were clogging up the entrance. I'm generally pro free wine, but since I'm not drinking at the moment I noticed the down side of this generosity more clearly than I have done before, when I have been one of them. If you're not one of the freeloaders yourself, the crowds tend to grow more annoying and the whole experience becomes rather disturbing and muddled by the lack of space and possibility to focus on the art.

It may seem pointless and even stupid to go to a wine tasting festival if you don't drink wine, I am aware of this. But it's also kind of a nice and festive event, and if you can't drink, you can always eat. And indeed I managed to get myself some free dinner, which made it all worthwhile. The wine drinkers did seem to enjoy it vastly though; the sun was shining on this what seemed to be the first summer's day of the year, and the wine was flowing. But much in the same way that the visitors at Nuit des Bains don't have any persistent memories of the artworks, none of the wine drinkers at Caves ouverts that I talked to seemed to have any idea of what they had been drinking... Apart from the ones that actually bought some bottles of course - they had the labels to go by.

It's strange how the joy of getting drunk for free can make you so much more tolerant towards crowded places than if you're sober; I remember last year's Caves ouverts as a joyful and relaxed day and wasn't really bothered by the crowds in front of the bars and the waiting. I suppose being sober turns you into a more bitter and intolerant person.

Bread-heaven

Damn, if there is a bread heaven on earth, it must be at café Wolfisberg in Carouge! I went there briefly today, and bought some bread on the way out, since I'd bought bread from there once before and have fond memories of consuming it on the balcony with a bottle of rosé. Ok, perhaps not a bottle of rosé, let's say a glass... Anyway, my memory served me right. I bought the same bread as the time before - a small baguette shaped loaf which was stuffed with apricots and pistachio nuts. I just had some and, oh my god, this bread is to die for! I was a bit annoyed by how expensive all their bread is, but I understand why, because this isn't just normal bread I'm talking about; no, this is bred blessed by the gods! I'll quite happily pay a few francs extra for bread that tastes this good. I could easily eat the whole loaf myself (I bought a small one, unfortunately a bit too small) but because of the estimated high calorie content I choose to save some for my husband. Also, when I eat something that tastes really nice, I like to share my experience with someone. And I can't help hoping that he will go crazy for this lovely bread as well and insist on going back to buy some more....

The hills are alive with the sound of cow bells

You know you are in Switzerland when you hear cowbells during your morning jog! Just like I did this morning. I didn't see the actual cows since there were too many treas in the way, so I wasn't quite sure that what I heard was actually really cow bells and not just part of the music in my ipod (I have a very obscure mix of music in my ipod, and always set it to 'shuffle' when I go running, so cow bells could possibly be part of one of the songs). It really was cow bells. I don't know what function the bells would have in this day and age; I mean, I assume that the cows are enclosed in a rather limited space. None the less, it was a nice sound to hear when you are jogging on a beautiful little forest path far away from noisy traffic. So I turned off my ipod for a while and just enjoyed the sound of the bells, trying to picture them walking there on the other side of the treas, probably followed by a milk maid with braided hair and apron. I enjoyed that moment. It made me feel like I was really in the countryside, not just a few hundred meters away from the nearest road. Then a fly flew straight into my mouth and the moment was gone. It actually didn't just fly into my mouth, it went straight down my throat before I had time to react. So, in other words, I swallowed a fly this morning. A small one, but still. This is what you get for jogging in the forest with your mouth open.

Montreux and Yvoire - two overrated tourist destinations

I've done a fair bit of sight seeing this past week, thanks to the fact that my mother has been here to visit. We've eaten crepes in the old town, visited the cathedral, gone to parc des Bastions on the 1st of May, been to look at the bunnies and the wild boars in the little animal park in Jonction, plus two longer excursions, one to Montreux and the other one a boat trip to Yvoire.
I suppose Montreux and Yvoire are two places you ought to go visit if you live in Geneva. I've heard a lot of good things about both of them, although I have been warned that Yvoire can be a bit on the touristy side. Well, that is the least one can say!

We went there on a beautiful, sunny day, and had a nice 1,5h boat ride there. Once we got there we saw little else to do but to follow the stream of tourists, because they all went in the same direction. This is because there was only one direction in which to go. In other words, Yvoire proved to be a lot smaller than I'd thought. It didn't take us long to have gone through the whole little medieval village, and since there seemed to be little else to do than to eat there, we scanned the menus of all the restaurants we passed. Yvoire probably has more restaurants than inhabitants, so it wasn't hard to find a place to eat. The only problem was that they all seemed to serve exactly the same thing, with a few exceptions. This same thing was of course "filé de perche" from lake Geneva. Most restaurants had different variations of this popular but to me completely pointless dish. What they all have in common is that they consist of breaded little fish bits, fried in a lot of butter and served with chips. And that's it. Sometimes you get tartar sauce with it, sometimes just lemon and sometimes some other sauce. But usually it's just the fried fish and the chips. I do not understand why people pay to eat this, and why it is so popular around Lake Geneva!

We managed to find a restaurant which served not only filé de perche but also some kind of bouillabaise, and had a lovely (although overpriced like all the restaurants in Yvoire) three course lunch on a sunny terrace, overlooking the lake. When the lunch approached its end and we realised that there was actually 1h and 45 min left until our planned departure, we started to panic. Because we had already gone through every street of this medieval open air museum at least two or three times, and apart from restaurant menus, there is little else to look at or do there. To our relief we discovered that there was actually another departure one hour earlier than the one we'd planned to take, so when dessert was finished and the bill paid we went straight to the boat in order to spend the rest of our late afternoon in Geneva. I'm glad we went to Yvoire, because I've been wanting to go there for quite some time since I keep hearing how pretty it is etc. Now I know that I have no reason to return to this medieval theme park of a village. I would rather go to a real town which is not designed to steal money from tourists. There is not much to see in Yvoire which can not fit on a postcard.



Montreux also left me slightly disappointed. It did rain when we got there, which of course has something to do with it, and we arrived just after all the restaurants had stopped serving lunch, so we had to have some rather disappointing crepes in a café. But the town itself was smaller than I'd thought, and not as pretty as I'd expected either. To our great content, the sun came out just when we'd finished our lunch, and we decided to walk along the waterfront to the castle of Chillon, which we'd planned to visit. This walk was amazingly beautiful, and was worth the whole effort of going there.
The path was lined with different kinds of flowers, from poppies to rhododendron, as well as a variety of more or less exotic treas. And seeing the mountains on the other side of the water at the same time was just breathtaking. The castle of Chillon itself turned out to be a bit too big and a bit too empty to be fully enjoyable. I generally like castles and had wanted to go there for a while, so again, I'm glad we went. But they could have made the visit a bit more interesting by adding some more authentic furniture etc.
Now that I've been to Montreux I see little reason to go back. Next on my list of places to visit is Gruyere. I have been wanting to go there since before I moved to Geneva, so I certainly hope it won't disappoint me!