Kid's Skiing Near Geneva

Piou-piou, we look up to you

We took the girls to Valorcine over the holidays, a little resort some friends of ours recommended, 15km north of Chamonix and only 2km from the border with Vallais.  Neither of us had ever really considered skiing before we moved to Switzerland. For myself that's largely because I actually can't physically ski.
We've tried a few lessons last year, so we decided to go for a week  We enrolled them in a week long ski course with a giant yellow bird called Piou-piou, because hey, when you think of animals that might be good at teaching people to ski, you think of birds! Piou-piou is actually the mascot for the Ecole du Ski Francais' courses for kids aged 3 and older.
At the end of the week both girls received a little badge for completing the course. Though the big one clearly deserved it more than her little sister as she completed every minute of the course, whilst altitude sickness (literally: on Christmas eve) and bad weather, combined to make the little one less enamoured of skiing, and in the end she only completed about half the course. I think she was the smallest one on the course, perhaps if the weather was better she would have been ok, but I suspect now we'll have a tough time getting her back on skis.
It occurred to me that the Ecole du Ski Francais might be to skiing what the British Council, or Bell is to English. But then a friend tells me kids the eldest will start skiing with school in a couple of years and be taught by the Ecole Suisse de Ski, which, you'd think might be better (just cos it's Swiss), but according to the World Cup Standings, this isn't so. Anyway, the irony is that from Geneva they have to go to France to ski, as it's closer.

French Lessons

We started going to French lessons provided free by the canton, because our eldest daughter goes to a local primary school.  I can't work out whether the idea of the free French lessons is benign, a gentle encouragement to learn the language so we can support our daughter in her school work, or aimed more at encouraging our cultural assimilation. The class is a ragtag of immigrants to Switzerland, a mixture of people from all over, but mainly, oddly, from Bolivia or Korea.  There are a few folk from the Middle East and one or two Europeans. None of us are very good at the language, we all try hard one way or another.

Healthcare in Geneva

I thought I should fire this thing back up, as the summer distractions are now well and truly gone. So this post is about doctors, in Geneva, and the one I'm seeing at the moment who is making me laugh. Way back in August I crashed off my bike, high siding and landing on my hand. At the time I decided it was only a flesh wound, so carried on with slight soreness that seemed to be getting better, that was until I was doing pull-ups in the gym (will cover in another post), and made me and the two guys I was working with almost throw up as my wrist made a huge cracking sound.  The sort of sound that tells you, really, you should go see a doctor. So I did.

Cycling in Geneva

I cycle pretty much every day in the city, and have been doing so since March.  I've seen a few things, learnt a lot, so this post introduces cycling in Geneva and talks about what Geneva is like for cyclists, why it is easy and a few of the hazards. I have other alien experiences not related in this post, so will maybe come back to them later. Enjoy the read...


Getting Around Geneva by Bike
Geneva is an easy cycling city, it naturally has some good things going for it, wide roads, a small geographic area and a reasonably large cycling population.  These things give the rider a sporting chance by making them highly visible on the roads and ensuring a decent number of car, truck and bus drivers know to look out for them. Cyclists in Geneva are favoured by the city's efforts to make their journeys safe and simpler.

Where to cycle in Geneva
Where to cycle in Geneva is quite a simple question, mostly the answer is near the edge, between the yellow broken lines and the kerb. On most roads cyclists are separated by yellow broken lines from cars and bikes and pretty often from buses and trams as well.  On bigger roads further out of town extra wide, beautifully tarmacked, pavements where pedestrians and cyclists are separated and you can really fly along these. Occasionally in the centre of the city cyclists have  a piece of pavement dedicated to them, often these are not as nicely maintained as those out of town, and as a purist this doesn't appeal to me.  A cyclist needs to stay alert on these stretches for people crossing the cycle-path, delivery vans pulling up onto it, and people who straying into it without paying attention.

Some local knowledge is useful
Though Geneva is no Copenhagen, where an estimated half of all journeys are made by bike, cycling is a popular means of getting around the city, because the weather is good, the distances are short and the roads are fairly safe, at least in summer.  The city is a fairly easy place to cycle and if you are new to the city, heading out on roads you don't know isn't really that worrying, because you're not likely to find yourself on a packed intersection with a half a dozen exits - because there aren't any. However, that isn't to suggest you can be complacent - despite the cycle friendly infrastructure, which includes cyclist specific traffic lights that give them a head-start on the rest of the traffic. In my own experience the biggest danger to cyclists in Geneva are the trams.

Falling off the bike
Since I was about 9 I've only done this three times, and twice of those were here in Geneva, both times because my front wheel got caught in the tram tracks. The first time was on a dry day, I was going like the clappers and I miss judged getting over the tram tracks, because I wasn't used to them being there.  Personally I'd never cycled in a city with tram tracks and so had little idea how to negotiate them.  At high speed I managed to plant the front tyre in the track, came flying off, wrecking my jeans and putting a nice hole in my knee.  About six weeks later on a wet day my tyre lost grip when it crossed a tram track and I went tumbling to the floor. This time I happened to have over trousers on and wasn't going so fast, so I slid, rather than bounced, but the result was undignified and painful.  Since these two experiments in self-destruction I've been both more careful, and more sensible about how I cross tram-tracks. I know make sure my tyres cross the track at a greater angle and I also make sure I cross tracks at low speeds, to minimise the disaster if I do come off my bike. These things help, but don't remove all the danger of trams.

The junction looked clear!
The other major danger trams pose is the confusion they contribute to priorities at traffic lights. Trams have their own lights and their own priority at junctions where they interact with other traffic, knowing what these lights mean can be useful to a cyclist following the tramlines. But if you aren't following the tramlines, and you arrive at a junction which appears to be empty, be careful because it might be that the traffic has stopped to allow a bus or a tram to breeze quickly through.  I'm glad I've never been surprised by a tram, not even slightly, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I have heard stories about people being taken out by a tram, and that I imagine to be a very unpleasant experience, if you ever remember it. It is the only thing about cycling in the city which might be alien to many cyclists new to the city, but a little common sense and caution means it really should be nothing to worry about. This does depend somewhat on the level of peer pressure you come under to ignore your own common sense, but more of that in another post...

Breakfast with the Swiss Ambassador to the UN

I had breakfast with the Swiss Ambassador to the UN, Dante Martinelli, on Friday. Mr Martinelli was talking about Switzerland's role as a host of the UN. The picture he painted made it clear just what hosting the UN means to the Swiss economy. The organisation works as a magnet for all kinds of UN agencies, international organisations, NGOs and ultimately commercial companies. Core to the UN in Geneva are, apparently, organisations such as WHO and UNAIDS.

Learning French in Geneva

I've been here a year and my ability to speak French has only recently begun to move forwards. I have had hardly any lessons in the language in my life.  Like many Anglophone I gave up learning French when I was only 13. My class had two teachers, one who was utterly useless and the other who assumed the other was doing her job and so credited the class with more understanding than I had, I was completely lost and lost interest. However, I studied German all through school and at university, so when we arrived in Geneva my I thought somehow my experience of learning a foreign language would help me to pick up French.

My new Swiss Driving Licence

We are arriving at the end of our first year in Switzerland, which meant today we had a choice of either handing in our UK driving licences in exchange for a Swiss one or paying a fine and having to take a driving test. The driving licence was one of those small things we needed to get round to, but some how never had. It is the standard way of an expat. I laugh at myself because before I moved to Switzerland I knew plenty of expats in the UK who had to panic when the grace period on their driving licences came to an end.

It's August We're Closed

It is August no more, so we are no longer closed. Obviously as we were closed over August I couldn't actually say that, in August. But at least now you'll know for next time. The truth is that like many, many Genevoise my family and I took a couple of weeks holiday in August, whilst out the country I can hardly write about it.
Clearly August is the month to shut up shop and head off for the hols. In late July I left my office to get a nice sandwich from a place I know near me, it looks like a pretty normal store.  During the day it looks like a typical store, open door, shelves with products them, a counter and some tables where customers can sit.  So I reckoned it would be easy to get a tasty sandwich from them. However, when I got to the store the shutters were down, and a note attached to the shutters told any passer-by that the store was closed for two weeks whilst they went on summer holiday.  I was a little surprised the proprietor couldn't find a manager to cover two weeks, surely I thought he would have an assistant, of whose competence he was sufficiently confident that he could leave them to run the store for him for a short while. However, over the next couple of weeks I came to realise that he wasn't being odd, there were dozens of other small stores just like him, with notices on them saying we are closed for the summer, or running summer hours.
It's common knowledge in the UK that if you own a small business, whether you serve the public or other business, you don't get a holiday. But here, in Geneva, seemingly you do. What the benefit is I'm not sure and sadly I don't think I'm going to find out soon. If I rock up at the door to your sandwich shop, expecting to get my lunch, and you've whimsically decided you are closed, I think it will take a couple of months for me to feel like I'll come back to you.

Swiss National Day 1st August

Happy Birthday!!

The Swiss nation celebrates its birthday tomorrow.  The date, 1st August refers to an agreement called the Federal Charter, between the three cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden (now split into Nid- and Obwaldens) in 1291. The Switzerland of today however dates from the formation of the Swiss Federation in 1848 (a busy year!). Prior to this year, which marks the founding of the modern state, the cantons' sovereignty was recognised in the Treaty of Westphalia, which sounds important and if you had to pick a year out the air, you'd probably guess was signed in 1648, and you'd be right!

What's on in Nyon - shops open on a Sunday revelation

The weather on Sunday was a complete disaster! The day was a wash out, in the morning, just to get out the house I wrapped the big one and the little one up in as many layers of water proofing I could find and dragged them out the house to the boulangerie. The rain was heaving it down, bouncing off the floor, coming in sideways, and the big one just carried on telling me a story about bears chasing crocodiles. In pouring rain we wondered what we could do that would make it easy to escape the rain and entertain ourselves. Answer came there, acquarium!  A brilliant idea we thought, let's find one.

View from Saleve

View of Geneva from the Saleve

We took the telepherique up Le Saleve on Monday, a steep ride up the face of "Geneva's mountain" in a cable car followed by a pleasant stroll in the sunshine to find the summit of Mont Blanc hiding behind cloud. Its the second time I've been to the top of Le Saleve once before we took the girls up in the cable car, but yesterday it was just Grandad and I who went up. On the first occasion we hardly got further than that telepherique station, such is the way with the legs of little ones. This time around we were able to discover much more of the beauty to be seen on and from the top of the mountain.

Dinner at La Broche - bad food, good company

On Tuesday evening we went to La Broche on Rue Stand with a group of my colleagues, 10 of us in all. As the venue was chosen by my Genevoise colleagues I was excited by my expectation of finding a hit. Unfortunately, at the moment Rue Stand is full of road works, so finding it is not strictly easy and when you've done that finding the entrance behind the holes and the fences is tricky too. Nonetheless, when we got to the terrace, we were sat outside a very pretty stone building, called the Arquebuse (though not a gun in sight). The terrace was just the right place to be on a warm July evening.

Last day of school

Marching band, just what an 8 year-old loves

The small one and I tried to go the Parc des Bastions on Wednesday, and were confronted by marching bands followed by troops of school children variously dressed up as treasure chests and pilots. Inside the park had been transformed into an 8 year-old's wildest dream. At the end of the year Geneva puts on a big party for all the children in its primary schools as they move up a year - it's like the school trip to the zoo, or the theme park, but instead of each school organising their own trip, the city does it for everyone. Like the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games each school had a child marching at the front of it carrying a sign with the schools name on it.

Geneva welcomes you! Does it?

On Friday I took part in a debate asking does Geneva do enough for anglophone expats in the city. I was part of the panel at the 5th birthday of an online directory for English speakers in Geneva: Angloinfo. The debate was based on an article that appeared in the Economist in March, about an investment banker who had to move his business back to London because his employees weren't happy and basically couldn't find entertainment in the city. I was defending the motion that Geneva does not do enough, which in the end, in front of an audience of expats of many years standing,  who were proof for the arguments against the motion, we lost emphatically. The debate however, was good fun.

Fete de la Musique

Sunday in Parc des Bastions we finally managed to find proof of the existence of Fete de la Musique, the weekend long festival that takes place across Geneva. The website for the Fete lists dozens of performers at dozens of venues, but the one near us, in Grottes, was not to be found when we went searching for the 2.30 performance on Sunday afternoon. We wasted a good 45 minutes in not finding the venue, the website directions were completely useless, and whilst we strolled through Grottes, with our ears pricked, we couldn't detect the slightest squeak of music.
We gave up on finding something to watch near to us, and with no idea what we might see we jumped on a bus to Parc des Bastions and spilled with the hundreds of other people into the park.

Parks in Geneva are a two faced thing. During the day they are chock full of children running and screaming, accompanied by careless parents assured that their children will be fine, beyond a scrapped knee or two. However, at night, as I found out in my first week in the city, they generally become home to drug takers, pushers and drunks.
Back towards the end of the first week of October, I was toddling home after more than a few beers with a friend of mine, when spying a park near to our house, I thought I'd take a quick look at it to see whether it was suitable for a three year-old. As a reconnaissance spouse, in a new city, these are important things you need to consider in your first week.  However, it turned out, that at night time the swings and slides do not remain the property of the under 4 foot tall.  A guy approached me, what did I want? he asked. In my usual defence I began to answer him in German, rather than give away the fact that I might be from off the continent (I have been accused of being American accented whilst over here!). He was offering me hard drugs, something I wouldn't have understood in French. Anyway, we continued to have a very garbled bi-lingual chat, until I nodded and wandered off, figuring my departure was probably for the best. Fortunately, when the sun rose, there were other parks around to take the girls too and we've never been back to this other one.
But it's not the only park like it, many is the park in Geneva that suffers from dealers staking claim to the patch whilst the swings are still and the sun is down. I was cycling into work the other day, when I heard sirens all over the place, a police van came past me, and I noticed that the park beside the road was taped off, with a couple of coppers hanging around looking like they didn't know what they were doing. In the Tribune de Geneve, the local paper, the next day was a headline about the bodies of two women found in the park, apparently they were known to the city's drug agency.
We'll stick to the parks during the day I guess.

Hair cut, hair cut!

What big ears you have!

I called the barber at around 11am on Saturday and booked an appointment for 1.30, a cultural adjustment that I reckon I will probably never get used to.  Whilst slouching around trading abuse about football teams and reading red tops might not be everyones' definition of customer service, it is distinctly something I miss about getting my hair cut in Geneva. It's the third time I've been to this chap in Geneva, only the second time I've booked an appointment to see him.

Cafe de Paris on Rue Mont Blanc

Last night we walked out the house leaving the nanny to put the kids to bed. Our conversion to Genevoisie is progressing well it seems. The sun was still out, it was warm and the whole experience felt really quite civilised. We had a movie to see at 8.15, which turned out to be one of those terrible "an idea I got reading A Brief History of Time" SciFi stories. Still it was entertaining enough, and we happened to pick the right restaurant to get a bite to eat from before hand.

Tour de Romandie in Geneva

The Tour de Romandie began on Tuesday with a 3.6km prologue in Martingy in Valais, which is about 90km due east of Geneva as the crow flies. Today the tour left Martingy to head north in to Vaud, through Montreaux up to Bulle near the southern end of Lac de la Gruyere and then south again, throug Chateau-d'Oex and Gstaad, over the top of Col du Pillon (a category 1 climb) to end in Leysin.
The tour continues until Sunday, when it arrives in Geneva at about 2.30pm after a 165km ride from Champagne on Lac de Neuchatel.  The riders will arrive in Geneva on the Lausanne road and rush round the end of the lake to sprint finish at the Quai Gustave Ador.

Health insurance - depends what your plan is

The bill from last weekends sirens and flashing lights came in on Friday. Just about all I can say is the excess for both of us for the year is now covered. We can get busy visiting doctors like a hypochondriac with webMD on twitter feed.