from Geneva, Switzerland: going home

There was a time, decades ago, when Swissair was my favorite Europe-bound airline (!) and Geneva was, therefore, a typical connecting city for me.

The remarkable thing about this is that I never much cared for Geneva as a place to visit. It’s a personal reaction, I admit. It seemed (and still seems now) a place of high etiquette and propriety. Everything is expensive and older women look very well kempt. Perhaps I sensed that I didn’t exactly blend well here.

For complicated work reasons, Geneva was a good stopping point now on my way back to Madison. I came early, took care of my assignments quickly and found myself with a long afternoon where I could call the shots and do as I pleased. I chose to walk.

For hours and hours, up through the old town and along the lake, I walked. A few photos, to show that I am happy to give Geneva another chance, even as I still feel that its warmth is more weather related than because it is inherently a welcoming place. Here’s evidence of its charm though. Because Geneva, on an early spring day can appear charming:










hot chocolate, naturally







drawing lessons














I ask the desk clerk for food recommendations and I am given a name of a place that is minutes from the train station, with a cuisine that aims to please: Swiss fondue and Chinese dishes as an extra bonus. No, that wont do.

At a beautiful old bookstore I ask for something on Geneva’s food scene. I am told that there is one great book on the new bistros here except the gentleman over in the corner is reading the last copy.

The gentleman over in the corner is willing to part with it but I ask if he could, instead, simply recommend a nice place to eat. Seafood, he tells me. I should try the Café Central for its fresh seafood.

I am in one of the few land-locked countries in Europe and so I hesitate. If at least Switzerland aligned itself with the European Union, so that Scottish salmon and Greenland pink shrimp were all really Union food… But no. Switzerland is in its own neutral world and so I say no to the seafood place and ask for another choice.

Brasserie Lipp. Go eat there – the food is quite good. Fresh and honest. (Alright, the honest is my addition.)

Now that’s just plain funny. Brasserie Lipp is a favorite for any number of Parisians and visitors to Paris. It is an institution there and I have never gone to it because Paris has enough other choices, so that I have not felt the need to seek out this solid, old world brasserie, with very traditional cuisine.

But here, in Geneva, I have no other ideas and so I do go there and I happily acquiesce to Greenland shrimp (because I actually think little pink shrimp make a lovely appetizer), but then go with the Swiss beef and the ever magnificent Swiss scalloped potatoes and Swiss wine and all in all, I am prepared to be satisfied.

Except that a gentleman at the table next to mine is an older Frenchman who travels to Geneva occasionally and eats at the Brasserie when he is here and he rolls his eyes at this Swiss rendition of the venerable old place, so that even here, I am told not to be completely won over.

It’s not nearly as good as the French version, he tells me. And, it is expensive for what it is.

Is it? I am here so briefly that I have not bothered to study conversion rates and so I have no idea what any of the prices around me stand for. I assume everything is expensive because it is Geneva after all, but the Brasserie Lipp in Paris is your middle of the road place so why should it be different here?

Why indeed. Ah well, you can’t go wrong with Greenland pink shrimp and Swiss beef. And really, there is not a restaurant in the world that cannot be criticized, just like there is no city in the world that hasn’t its failings. It’s all in the mindset. I am prepared this time around to find Geneva an acceptable stopping point and the Brasserie Lipp to be a fine old dining establishment and so it shall be thus.











I return late to my room, the one where someone has smoked and smoked all its living days, the one right next to the train station, so that I should not even bother to look out the window because the view cannot be anything at all. The one I will happily leave tomorrow to return back home.

Let’s hope for a good croissant in the morning. The Swiss bake ever so well. And who can beat an airport that is a six minute train ride from city center. There, you see? It’s all in the mindset.

Now let me drift back in my thoughts to the fresh, gusty mountain air, and to the view out my window this morning. Now that was something else…


Cervinia morning: view from the Hotel Hermitage

from Cervinia, Italy, one last time

In the morning, the sun is brilliant. The rich blue color of the sky alone is a thrill. Sure, I am biased, but the Italian Alps in my mind are the place to go to if you need a hit of sunlight. I know, it’s not rational on my part. The snow does not fall from blue skies, but when I am here, the sun never fails to make an appearance. It’s one of those charmed places for me. (I don’t really believe in charmed places, but if I keep up the pretence, maybe it will continue never to disappoint me.)

Still, my goal is to ski over to Switzerland today and I am told that this morning, Switzerland is closed.

How can a country be closed? It is what happens when the winds continue to speed across the mountaintops in some kind of a race that only nature can understand.

[One of the reasons to ski in Cervinia is that you can make your way to the top of the mountain range and ski down into Swiss Zermatt. Not that Zermatt deserves a day of your time – being far more crowded than Cervinia ever could be, but it’s a fun thing to do and the trails there are different – through woods and past huts with steaming hot chocolate inside. Swiss chocolate. Exactly.]

So, it's closed. Never mind Switzerland then. Tomorrow I have to travel back via Geneva (work reasons). That’s plenty Swiss, if in a French sort of way. Today, my heart stays in Italy.

But fate has a different agenda for me.

Signora, they have opened Switzerland. The desk clerk says this tentatively. And by now, I'm reluctant as well. My memories of Zermatt are less sumptuous. The trail over the mountain summit is rarely without weather issues. Skiing the top of a range is a windy experience even in calm days. Today, the winds are down to only 60 kilometers an hour. They may grow worse and I will have to ski back, no matter what the weather (there is no road connection between Cervinia and Zermatt).

Still, a hot chocolate in the woods…

I’m off. One gondola, then another, then a third and I am on the top.

It’s freaky windy up here! Do people get blown away ever? And the sun, what’s happening to it? Clouds, just as I approach the Swiss side. Figures.

Okay, I can’t dally. A photo of the Italian side,



…a photo of the Swiss side,



…a tightening of the scarf around my face, a tightening of everyone’s scarves…



…and I am off.

Every exposed part of my face is suffering. The wind is blowing pellets of ice straight at me. My face tells me that one layer of cream was not enough. I am getting wind burn and ice burn. The only thing missing is a sunburn.

I navigate the trail slowly. I don’t want to make a mistake. I don’t want to wait with a broken limb for the rescue team. I will die a slow death waiting for the Swiss ski patrol to bundle me up in a blanket and scoot me over to some clinic or other. No thanks.

At my elbow, the Matterhorn peak stands tall, sharp. You wimp, it seems to say. Famous climbers have climbed my steep sides and you groan at ice pellets.



I am close to the first base (one third down!). I am thinking wow, not even a fall! I am so on top of this. In good form! I have been whipped and buffeted and I am still in one piece.

In this very moment of self-congratulatory reflection, I am suddenly hit hard, right in the rib cage. An out of control skier flies right into me. I stagger, topple, can’t get up. He slides down further, but seems unhurt. I am dazed. A woman skis over and tries to figure out if I am alright. I try to figure this out as well. I ache, I throb, but I can move. The skiing maniac comes over for a minute but he appears to know no language that I am familiar with. And so he skis away.

The woman asks if I want the ski patrol. No, no! I do not want to be carted away on one of those sleds they use for people who have bones crushed in two and three pieces. I can move, I am whole.

Yes, I can move, but it is a slow move. My trip down to Zermatt is painful. My ribs ache. My energy is zapped.

The Matterhorn hides behind a cloud and refuses to show its peak. Okay, I like you just fine, Matterhorn on the Swiss side, but please, show me something of the good in this run because right now I just wish I were in Italy.

I pass the restaurant in the woods where I was to have my hot chocolate. Forget it. I don’t want your chocolate, I want to finish this run down so that I can take the lifts up to the summit again where I can face Cervinia.

Alright, I am being unfair. I am in Switzerland now. A nice Swiss skier showed concern and helped me to my feet. Switzerland. My children’s pediatrician comes from Switzerland.

I slow down and take out my camera. I have crossed one mountain range and the world has changed. I may as well take note of it.


Swiss place of rest and refreshment



Swiss men, waiting for refreshment



other Swiss men, feeling refreshed


Just before entering Zermatt, I give in to the unbelievably strong urge to sit down and massage my ribs. I take off my skis and find a table at a restaurant just by the trail. Spinach soup. Okay and hot chocolate. I’ll have a mug. Swiss hot chocolate.

But the waitress bring the hot chocolate before the soup and it comes in the form of a little packet which I am to pour into the hot milk she places before me. I have seen these packets in the grocery aisles of the stores back home.

I forgive her. The soup is good and I needed to rest.




I am nearly in Zermatt. The snow is wet here and there are bare spots off the trail.




I don’t want to ski into the town center. Sure, there are good people here doing good things,


(in all honesty, I do not think they are Swiss)

...but I want to return south. I ski down toward the large, ever so technically proper gondola and head back up to the summit.

Finally, sore but standing, I face the Italian valley, with a smile.




It’s a long run down and my ribs still feel too big for my rib cage, but the sky is blue, the view is splendid, love is in the air and on the ground...



...and I know that toward the bottom, I can stretch out with the rest of ‘em, turn my face to the sun and exhale.

And at the end of the long afternoon, I'll reach for my just desserts,



... to be followed by a long, long spell at the sauna.

UPDATE: Check the comments for the latest on helmets and princes.

from Cervinia, Italy

I wake up at night and I spin, countless thoughts, tripping over each other. My crazy work schedule this semester, the bid for a new condo, I’ll be moving, everyone’s moving, I’m in Cervinia but the Law School is just emails away. I need to write more, I need to moonlight, I need to sleep.

I pull back the curtain and stare at the dark mountains, waiting for them to be light again.

And eventually, they oblige.



Oh-oh. Looks sort of partly cloudy up there. Sill, there are patches of blue...

I ask at the desk -- What time do the lifts open?
The lifts? They are all closed today.
What? I have crossed oceans and continents to be here! I want to ski. Why? Why is everything closed? A strike? (I’m in Italy after all)

It’s the wind. Very strong. 90 kilometers an hour. It’s not safe.
Wont they open just a wee little lift so that I can try my bright yellow rented skis maybe just once? I only have these two days to ski!

I get the Italian shrug.

I hover by the hotel desk and give my very best rendition of being very anxious.
Might conditions improve?

The shrug.

I consider my options. I have no options. I pace.

And, I am rewarded:
Signora, they are opening three lifts! The bottom half of the mountain, you can ski there. But it will be windy.


The understatement of the year. An hour later I exit the little gondola and I look ahead of me. Snow, clouds, drifting, blowing. A few hardy types assess the run down. I will follow them!


the bold


I can’t follow them. I have to find my skiing groove again. My groove is suffering from disuse. I hit an ice patch and I lose control. Down I go. Wrist hurts. I get up and continue.


blowing, drifting

I make it down once. Dizzy from the speed, the challenge. I get back on the gondola, more confident now. Wind? Pffft! What’s the big deal?




But at the end of the second run I am tired. I should have had the eggs and the oatmeal and the cakes and the cheeses for breakfast… I did not think I would be skiing. I did not think to store the nutrients.

I do one more run and then I stop. It is 12:30 and I am spent. I walk back to the hotel and make plans to sit in front of the fireplace for the rest of my life.

No, wait. Food first.

Cervinia isn’t a happenin’ town. There is no nightlife, no glamour. European royalty do not flock here. But Cervinia is Italian to the core and there is great food to be had up and down its one skinny street.

My lunch is richly nourishing. Reviving. Invigorating. Steaming hot.


hot and honest

I am satiated. I want to go back to the slopes. At the base, I see green lights flashing on several more open lifts. We are permitted almost to the top of the mountain! I ride the gondolas, finding a spot in cabins filled with jovial Italians. I have to ask this: how is it that an entire nation is so good at having fun?

The views mesmerize me. Moreover, I have found my groove, so that I can actually imitate a person who knows how to ski. I’m not on the top of the mountain, but I feel like I am.


nearing the summits


The run is long and I am tempted to call it a day, joining those who choose to enjoy other aspects of skiing here.


sun and laughter



...and a cigarette

But I go at it again. For the sheer torture. The challenge. The speed.

Afterwards, I can hardly walk. Thank you, hotel of mine, for having a sauna. Few have ever enjoyed a dry hot room as much as I did this late afternoon.

from Cervinia, Italy

Looking back:

I am nineteen and I have moved to the States. I am an au pair, a “mother’s helper.” I tend to a rich person’s child’s needs. In my spare time, I finish college.

Back in Poland, just before my move to the States, my friends and I develop a passion for skiing. That is, skiing in the Polish style, circa 1970: you go find a room in a farmhouse somewhere in the Polish mountains and each morning, you go out and put on your leather lace-up shoes (quaint, isn’t it…) and your carefully waxed boards. You take tiny side-steps all the way up a hill (30 minutes maybe) and then you ski down (1 minute, if you are a speed demon; we were all speed demons). And then you do it all over again.

So it is no surprise that, when I start earning au pair money in the States, I immediately think of upping my skiing experience. I purchase a subscription to Ski magazine (look at all this equipment! Choices, people here have so many choices!) and I acquire skis and real boots that snap instead of lace and I look around for an interesting place to ski.

I do not remember how I found Cervinia in Italy, but I did. At the age of 19, I take my first solo vacation, away from the little girl I am minding, away from the fascinating but so very strange liberal arts college I am attending (very American, but so un-Polish). To Italy, I go to the Italian mountains and feel that I have made it in life (I measured success differently then).

And in the morning, I look out from my bed & breakfast window onto a mountain that stands at the border of Italy and Switzerland: the Matterhorn, from the less familiar Italian angle. I stare at it for a goodly amount of minutes. I am an impressionable young thing and that mountain represents everything that is right and beautiful in my life.

In the afternoon, I ski, really ski! With lifts and my fancy skis with cute little roosters painted on the tips.

Ahhhh…..


I return to the Matterhorn again, a year later (I’m twenty now!), this time from the Swiss side. I am with a group of American college students and I want not to be a part of that particular group because, frankly, they seemed so…foreign.

Transitional years. I do not know where I will live, I do not know where I fit.

And when I graduate from college in February and say good bye to au pairing for good, I rent a room in the Italian Alps and take out my skis one more time, just me, alone, zipping down to the village, then riding the gondola up again.


That was then. This winter, I am invited to join a small group who want to do some sailing off the coast of Florida. And I think – do I really want to be on a boat, with choppy waters around me, or do I want to head back to the mountains? I haven’t skied the Alps since those college years when earnings went in one pocket and out the other (in some ways I have not changed). I need a week-end off, if only to interrupt the mad pace of this semester. Airfares are cheap, the snow is melting, melting, but still there.

I’m on my way.



One bus, two flights, one more bus, a train and a taxi ride later, it is almost dusk. I open the door to my hotel balcony and I look up at Mount Cervino, the Italian side of the Matterhorn. Where 35 years ago I woke up each morning to its splendid sun-drenched face and thought, well now, this is one pretty view and isn’t life promising?





In the early evening I walk down to the village and have my sensual moment with food, first in the cheese and salami store...




bursting with ripeness

...then in a pastry shop. Tomorrow I'll be on the slopes. Today, there's nothing left to do but eat.


easy choice for me



not for him...


...and you know what gets to me everytime I go out to dinner in these regions? The cheeses. I cannot say no to them, even if the portions here are meant for athletes and not for people who had spent the day sitting in various mechanical moving devices. Oh, but these are the things I love to complain about.



This, and the the presence of a large scale in the bathroom of my hotel room. The nerve.

would you fly for hours, take long bus and train rides, give up a night of sleep to spend the better part of two days being cold on a mountaintop?

I would.

I am off this afternoon. Where? Check in tomorrow. They promised WiFi.

Hint: the wintry meteorological conditions notwithstanding, I plan to eat very well.

Meltdown

Look at him. Tucked into an alleyway. Forgotten. Melt away, disappear. This week, we’re into daylight savings time, no time nor space for you anymore.



You don’t want to get to that place in life where you are melting away with a bunch of carrots stuck in your face, or worse.

That’s thought number one. Thought number two? No time nor space for that. This afternoon I bid on an empty shell of a box (my pursuit of the condo) and I worked. Endlessly. So that tomorrow I can take off late at night and get to the spot where I took my first solo foreign vacation. I’m sure it’s changed, but still, I want to be there and remember what it was like when I did not even know which country would be my promised land.

negotiations

About the condo...

Naïve me. I think: if I let the builder/seller know how much I want that particular condo, he will sell it to me at a price I can afford. Why wouldn’t he? I want to buy it, he wants to sell it – the marketplace will push this into my lap, right?

Instead, it is, I think, like this: seller knows how much I want the condo. I have admitted that there is no other unit in all of Madison, nay, Dane County, that comes even close to the price, size, quality of this particular place. Rather than feeling honored and puffed up by my words of great praise, I am thinking that he used the information against me when the counter offer came in ----- at a sum greater than the original asking price!

Now, some would be discouraged by this. Not me! I see this as an opportunity to educate the builder/seller in the true worth of reaching out to people like me. I want to teach him how to make things happen out there, so that all are satisfied. I owe him that much.

In the meantime, I am condo-negotiating left and right, working endlessly at all hours of the night and feeling that one more day of this pace will permanently crack me, scar me, undo me in some profound way.

Or not. Hearty Polish peasant stock here. I give thanks to my roots.

words

Someone asks you – you want a coffee?

Could this be offensive? Maybe.

I enter Starbucks this morning (still in D. C.). Large order: three drinks and two (so-called) bakery items. I wait.

Behind me, a woman (maybe a decade or so younger than me – good looking, cheerful) waits her turn. Behind her a homeless guy engages her in a conversation. There are maybe four homeless guys hanging around this Starbucks.

Hold on. Let me be clear: I do not know that they are homeless. That word has not been articulated before me. They just appear to me to be homeless.

The guy asks the woman – are you buying a coffee? She says, tentatively, yes… He asks: can I buy it for you? She answers (thinking, I am sure, as I did, that he is homeless) – I am buying an expensive one today: Venti latte with vanilla and cream... (she looks too skinny for that to be her morning drink but oh well, I want to believe her).

Then, her to him: do you want a coffee? He protests, no no, let me buy you yours. After a back and forth, with no immediate resolution (she is saying no no, he is saying yes yes), he hands over crumpled bills to the barista. A twenty and some ones. Over her head. Over my head for that matter. The barista reacts perfectly, I think. Leadership in the making. He takes one dollar out of the bunch, hands him back the bills, pours him the coffee and the matter is over and done with.

She, the customer, got pulled into this. She felt badly. She wanted to buy a coffee for the homeless guy. His pride would not permit it. All three players, the homeless man, the woman in line, the barista – all acted with honor and heart. They stayed within their roles, but they came out okay.

Nice story, isn’t it?

from D.C.

The town of controversy. Even though right now my hometown is embroiled in controversy (look to other blogs for that one: Ocean has become so sweetly benign, concerned more with distant places and current eating trends (yawn!) than with the truly more serious issues of life, death and free speech), D.C. is the place where I imagine everyone to be either an elephant or a donkey. At least in the clothes they wear and the words they utter. It is simpler that way, even though this type of division substantially ignores real people with credible ideas.

To me, the visitor, Washington is a place of urban balance. It feels like a city and, to an extent, it looks like a sizable city…

…So that this morning, I am sitting by the floor-to-ceiling windows of this warehouse-like interior, reading my law text and I see myself reflected in the vase on the coffee table. A cityscape.




Outside, the wind is unpleasantly strong. And cold. We give up on a hike down to Georgetown or the Mall. We pace the neighborhood and watch robins shiver.




Tomorrow, I return home. For an insane amount of work. But next week-end, I am taking a solo break from it all, returning to a place first visited when I was so very very young. It helps me to return. A look back is comforting.

from D.C.

Boxes, deliveries, furniture assembly. Trips to the hardware store, the drugstore, the grocery store and, unfortunately, yet again, to Bed Bath & Beyond. Nothing is as tiresome on a bright and sunny Saturday as standing in line in the basement of BB&B with a cartload of lamps, pillows, towels, knives and who knows what else. Oh, unless it is riding the subway with four sacks of the above, plus a full length mirror, precariously tucked under a sore arm.

Nothing is as uplifting as having passersby offer help as I walk the five blocks from the metro to the apartment, determined to make it without losing my grip.

At the corner, a man is selling flowers.




There are many, many same sex couples in this neighborhood and I smile at seeing one carrying flowers with his right hand while clinging to the arm of his partner with the other. Sadly, public expressions of connection and caring are rare in this country, except among those with public permission to physically reach for another (a child, a young lover). Arms entwined, hands held across all ages and genders – I associate this with Europe, not here.

Friendly. This set of blocks has people who are more curious, more chatty than anywhere I’ve seen in an urban setting. Even Madison seems aloof by comparison. It could be the weather. It makes you stop and take notice. How about that! Sunshine! And BTW, that’s an awfully spiffy looking camera. I remember going to buy a camera several years back…

Friendliness, curiosity – these are good things. Sunshine, flowers, scenes of caring. Springtime.

from D.C.

I am told the snow is falling horizontally back in Madison. That the winds are causing significant drifts. People are urged to stay off the roads.

I hear this, but I cannot fully appreciate it. I am immersed in the first days of a Washington spring.

True, I am not here to play. A daughter is starting a job and helping her move here is the reason for this brief hike out east.

South east. If ever I needed a reminder that D.C. is part of the south, the weather this week-end does that for me, emphatically.

Lunch outdoors? Sure. Outside my daughter’s apartment building, the tables at the neighborhood eateries are crowded. (Sorry, Madisonians, for you, this scene may well be months away.)



A young man sits in front of a Starbucks, with a Whole Foods bag (Be Free, it reads) at his side – a new American urban vignette. It could be any city. No, wait, any city in the south.



I take the metro back to the airport to pick up a rental for the day. Washington is the only city in this entire nation that always jarringly reminds me of the wars fought, the sacrifices made. The memorials, sure, I see it in the memorials, and on the ride to the airport, in the rows of white stones at Arlington Cemetery. And further, as we pick up passengers at the Pentagon, in the faces of people, young men, young women, who think of this current war in such different ways than you or I.




An unreal city, with real people who work hard, long hours, others who look hard for work. People with families. Sons eatig lunch with parents at outdoor cafés, daughters leaning on mothers' shoulders on the metro.

from D.C.

Such a hard week. No matter. Need to look forward. Need to board a plane and wake up and think: wow! I am elsewhere. And it is a nice, warm (ish) elsewhere.


Photos and text in the days ahead? You would think so.
Be as patient with me as I am with the Internet providers. We have our weak moments. All of us.

UPDATE:

The night rolls in, the air is balmy, wet. Rain comes in spurts. The head spins from the rapid pace of the week. I sit down (collapse?) in a warm place where the martinis are funky and the food is good...



...and then I retire. No, no functional Internet, but the bed is great, the surroundings are bold, colorful and in the morning, the shower is strong and a leopard bathrobe is hanging, waiting for me.

you put your left foot out, you put your left foot in…

If you only have five minutes to make decisions with lasting impact, you use the five minutes and move on.

That about summarizes my day.

My work continues to flood my waking hours. But in between, I have the time (measured in minutes if not seconds) to quickly, oh so quickly, create a future.

Working under pressure… I’m used to it. Manipulating time – a skill that has served me well. I think. Making changes, shifting perspectives – all doable.

Okay. Enough of this kind of writing. Tomorrow I get down to basics. I’m flying out east, snow and sleet permitting. Lots of travel ahead. Bear with me. It’ll be a month of movement in all ways.

forward!

And now comes the movement, the sprint. I’m up for it, the move, the leap, I’m ready. Polish peasant stock. Mobile, adaptable. Taking on the Badger motto: forward!



The snow is wet but firm. So is my resolve. White box, I’m going to go for it. Out of your rectangle, I will create a space that will be home. After a trip across the ocean, I’ll return to you. Here’s my address, my permanent address…

Whoa! I haven’t an accepted offer yet! One step at a time.

so what do you think?

This is it. The white box. Should I buy it? Say yes.