Morzine grows quiet on a Saturday morning. Overnight it emptied out. School kids from Paris are back in Paris. British families have done their week. They're at the airport now. Madame here, at Le Samoyede, told me that next week they expect only one French booking. The rest will be foreigners. Her country men and women tend to stick to set holidays. They like traveling in their granted vacances windows. And for them, the winter vacances window has just closed.
By chance, I overlapped with them and for me too, this is a day of departure. Breakfast is shrinking as we speak!
I have enough time for a walk and I try a new set of blocks, which, unfortunately puts me right by a store type I love in this country: it's a mix of newspapers, cards, books and small toys. You would have to be pretty stubborn in your preferences not to find ten or twenty great things to take back home to your grandkids. That, and a few cards to put in my stack of greeting cards that are so very useful to have around.
It's sunny, but still cold. I think some chilly winds blew in something resembling Arctic air overnight. I pull up my zipper, and then pull it down again. In an hour and a half, I'll be in Geneva. It's going to get up to 50F (10C) in Geneva today. (This optimism leaves me once I am actually in Geneva. That lake! Such cold breezes blow across it!)
Well, goodbye Morzine. You've been great for taking me out of all the tense times of the pandemic. (I am sorry you're plunking me back down into a world of war!)
The drive seems long. Many curves and inclines. And then there's traffic in the city. Wait, I need to refresh my attitude toward this city that I cannot seem to learn to love. Hey, must be tough to be Swiss, surrounded on all sides (but for a tiny linking strip and half a lake) by France.
My history with Geneva is so complicated. I've come through more than a dozen times and rarely stayed more than a night or two at most. Why linger... If you ever look up the "ten best things to do in Geneva" you'll find that number one on everyone's list is to go look at Geneva's iconic fountain in the lake. I mean, it's pretty, but it's one stream of water. A lot of it, but still -- water.
The second thing that stands out here is the flower clock.
Check.
And chocolates. Geneva is known for good chocolates. (So are a number of other places, but still. Switzerland = good chocolate.)
And there's the old town. I'm staying, as always, close to the old town. This time I have a lovely room at Hotel de la Cigogne.
But here's the thing: the city is so expensive that I cannot get myself to spend the money on anything but the most basic available. No view. Looks out at a courtyard. But, it is a very nice room. With very crisp linens. Another Swiss classic.
I did this with the thought that I might be stuck here for a week if my Covid test comes back positive. The shower in the bathroom is so nice that I can see myself standing in its warm stream for maybe two or three hours each day if I run out of things to do in the room itself.
It's past noon now. I leave my bags and head out.
(The Swiss flag is like the Savoie flag, only the Swill white cross is a tiny bit smaller.)
I walk, not so much to sight see (I've seen the sights! See above...) but to go to the pharmacy that does Covid tests for weary travelers. And it was the best test I have ever had (and I've had a lot!). He did it exactly right, following the nasal canal. And thankfully I am negative. I've been self testing in Morzine every couple of days so you could say I wasn't surprised, but in fact, I was surprised. And a bit relieved too. I had totally entered the stream of life in Morzine. 100%. I did not hold back. I used my good mask constantly when faced with tricky crowds, but I did not stay away from crowded situations.
After the test, I plunged into my Geneva agenda. The thing is, I need to keep busy here, or else I succumb to the city's stiffness and gloom. (Sorry, I keep seeing it that way.)
As I walked, I thought how I should have a real soft spot toward Geneva: this is where the United Nations began, and my father was very much involved in those early formative years of that organization. Had the UN stayed in Geneva instead of moving to New York, I may have lived for several years as a child in this city. I wondered if Geneva is better to live in than to visit. Yet, as I once explained to a friend from Switzerland back when I was much younger -- I can't imagine living in a country that had an even worse record of acquiescing to the rights of women than Poland did and that's saying a lot (women couldn't vote in Switzerland until 1971, and in some cantons' local elections, that date is much later).
They do have good cheese product thought! Down to the red fruit glazed cheesecake!
I had decided to use this half day to shop for the kids. Clothes. By now I sort of know what they all like and there are shops that could do well by them. So I walk for miles, going to one, not finding the next, finally doing most of my purchases in Petit Bateau which no longer operates out of the US, but still feels to me like the best simple kids clothes store on the planet.
(One of those street selfies...)
And I pop into Zara, because the prices there are way low (-ish, because this is Switzerland and nothing in this country is way low without the ish).
And this is when I see the cops block of a stream of traffic and I hear it: the march. Thousands of people, feeling the pain that I feel, that I know you feel, marching for the people of the Ukraine.
I'm with them. Of course I am. If you were here, you'd join too. How can you not.
(I see this sign and I kick my self for allowing old stereotypes to fester within me! SO easy to misjudge people you don't really know...)
(Oh, and how can you not love a people who plant crocus bulbs in their grass strips!)
Evening: a negroni in the lovely hotel lobby now that I know I dont have Covid...
Dinner: well, I thought about this for a good bit before I even left home. Eating in Geneva has always felt depressing to me. I will happily eat alone at any restaurant in most any country. But in Switzerland I feel like somehow everyone's speaking a different language (even though in Geneva they speak French) and no meal is worth that feeling of distance between yourself and your surroundings. And have I ever mentioned the fact that people here seem like they are way stodgier than even me, and I'm 68, so pretty stodgy, just by virtue of age. (These are my feelings which probably have more to do with me than with Genevens.) So I pick a Nordic place, where a woman is a chef and she is quite renowned and by the way, despite the food's reputation, they don't use table cloths. So not stodgy.
It's called Fiskbar and it's less than ten minutes from my hotel. Across the bridge.
The short distance is important -- I'm not a little tired. (An admission: I loved my hotel in Morzine, but the internet speed was ... slow. I stayed up til at least midnight every day trying to get the photos to load. 25 pics each day -- that's many hours of patient waiting until I could get them onto the blog. So I will be making up for lost sleep once I get back home.)
I dont have to praise the food at Fiskbar. It goes without saying that it is excellent. It's the first time I will have eaten in a Michelin rosette place since I took my kids to one back in Paris before most of the grandkids were even born. For all I know, it may be the last rosette place I go to! It's a rare night that I decide it's worth the drain on my retirement savings.
But tonight, it is in fact worth the drain. It's been a harrowing two years and we have no idea what the next ones will bring. So, I eat well tonight.
Though it's never just about the food. To have a good meal, you have to know a little of what's behind it. And you have to like what you learn. This evening, for example, Fiskbar's chef, Francesca Fucci Priscilla came out to chat with me. I suppose one gets curious about the solo ancient woman diner who speaks French, but looks like she's from elsewhere. (Perhaps less stodgy. I tried!) In any case, we talked. I of course praised her brilliant imagination (because this is what stood out for me -- not only the preparation, but the creativity, behind everything. ) We talked, too, a little about Covid. I said -- well, at least that's passing for now. And she said -- yes, but now there's a war!
So then instead of talking about the fantastic way she prepared a clementine within a meringue in olive oil (she may cook Nordic, and speak French, but she's Italian! From Puglia!)...
... we talk about the war.
Francesca is both brilliant and a very decent human being.
And after, I walk back to the hotel and I think -- I was young, and so often I felt lost in this city. I'm older and I no longer feel lost. People are people. When you see them marching in earnest, draped in blue and yellow flags, when you meet them in their own anxious moment after a meal, you remember: Geneva isn't really that much different from any other city. It's just more expensive and maybe a little stiff. Until you see and meet the people who actually live here and it turns out they're not stiff at all.
A pinch in the arm moment: good people are there. All wanting the same peace, the same good life for themselves, for their kids.
All under one moon.
with love...
