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.

Birthday Parties in Geneva

Visit lulaloo.ch for great invites

There's a song on kids TV that my daughters like to sing and dance to. Just before they do the birthday cards for the day they play a song and video, the words go something like "Birthday party, everybody's here; Birthday party, fun for everyone!"  The girls like to dance around shouting this at every opportunity. But since the big one's birthday party last weekend, we have heard rather less of it. This might be because we are mid-birthday season with the little one's coming up next week and the impetus for the song's performance has been lost.

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...

Weather in Geneva

I feel like something needs to be said about this. For the last week or two the weather in the city has been quite frankly amazing, the sun has shone and regularly the temperature has been up around 12C.  I am completely unable to fathom what has happened to the winter.  If I had any interest in snow I would probably be worried, but what I've heard and seen, adrenalin junkies who know a thing or two about risking their necks are turning to other means.

It certainly makes getting out the house a lot more pleasant.

Seeing the real Switz - Chateau D'Oex Balloon Festival

We went to Chateau D'Oex on Saturday to see the balloon festival. A two hour drive along the lake and up into the mountains. I would hesitate to say that the balloons were worth it, as we managed to missed one mass ascent just as we arrived and we missed a second about half an hour after we left. We did get to see some leaving the ground and we saw plenty in the sky.  The big one thought it was fabulous, whilst I'd have loved her to see the mass ascent, unfortunately there are competing needs of a children that sadly meant we need to leave - the trip home, unlike the trip over, was two hours of peace accompanied by gentle snoring from them both.

Cold today

It was cold today, Sarah went to a training in Parc des Bastions at around 10am, and the girls and I followed her out a few minutes later in the pushchair. My life! What a shock it was to the big one when she realised would have to walk in the weather, instant application was made to get in the pushchair. When we got the Parc des Bastions it was really too cold to hang around outside so we found the nearest cafe and cowered from the cold. 

We try to get some fresh air in the girls everyday, which should mean they get a run around in the fresh air.  Unfortunately the little one was so put out by a horrid cold that we decided the rest of the day would be spent indoors. I'm glad to say that she is now back on form whilst Mummy sings her "There was an Old Lady..." The afternoon was spent playing with the Brio train set and making cookies, a lot of fun in our little flat. Though I was left wondering at one point what was there in Geneva that we could have done on a cold Saturday afternoon in the middle of winter. Perhaps we haven't looked hard enough to find these things out.

Snowed in

Anyone with a three year old will tell you that it is particularly difficult to get through a day if they don't have some fresh air. Over the past few days that has been a difficult thing to achieve. Lots of snow in the city meant getting about was hard work, but even before that getting out of the house was a task itself. Putting small children into big coats, whilst they are inside is not popular, they get hot and very bothered. Then the little one has to be put into a sleeping bag type arrangement in the pushchair, which keeps her even more warm when outside, but which obviously is not very welcome in the beginning. Then I have to get dressed for the outside, hat, coat, scarf, gloves, all these have to be discovered in their hiding places, boots and socks too. By now I just have a couple of once adorable little girls yelling themselves pink.
Once outside the footpaths are narrow, somewhere between one and three snow shovel's wide, depending on the density of the traffic. But none of the paths are wide enough to comfortably accommodate a large buggy as well as all the hurrying pedestrians. Where the paths aren't cleared it feels quite treacherous, slippery under foot, so that when the big one chose to walk, she slipped a couple of times, a damp and bruised bottom was about the most that came of it, and I think the excitement of the snow more than made up for the discomfort.

Dropping leaves on top of snowfall

Out the back of our flat block is a decent area with a slide, and a nice willow tree, which is currently shedding it's leaves on to the snow. Here we went to build a snow man, though as the snow was powdery he didn't really get beyond a snow mound. We tromped around, making great holes in the snow, leaving foot prints everywhere, until I twisted my knee swinging the big one out of snow. The rest of the day was spent inside as I was afraid to go out and risk my knee on the ice. Happily, the next day the city authorities seemed to catch up with the weather and had begun to arrange for foot paths to be properly cleared.

Snow

Lots and lots of snow today, it began this morning and has not stopped, building up quite a layer of the white stuff. Some one recently told me this city is useless at dealing with snow, a very reassuring thing to hear when you live at the top of a hill! The story goes that a couple of years ago the council didn't salt the roads enough  and when the streets turned to ice the authorities decided it was too dangerous for them to go out and help people, nice!
Unlike the UK the snow is actually falling and settling during the day. By comparison, if snow is to last in the UK it has to fall during the night, and then in the morning everyone wakes up to a beautiful white scene, and children shouting "Mum, Dad it's snowed, it's snowed!"
We walked into town this morning and the big one was so excited by the snow she couldn't move five metres at a time without bending down to scoop up a handful and then slipping over. So I got very cold fingers from continually brushing the snow from her trousers in an attempt to keep her dry and warm.
We were aiming to go to something called Trees and Lights, sadly it appears as though the snow put this off, or perhaps it just doesn't work in day light. The gumpf advertising the event really ought to point that out. Whilst lights during the day maybe a bit tricky, it's fair to say that Geneva hasn't really done broad daylight in a couple of weeks now.  I'm not expecting to see the sun over the city for a while.
Sticking to our plan we continued to cross the river, with the snow scooping and the headlong sliding from the big one this took a good 10 minutes, although it was lots of fun. Our hope was to find a Christmas market, we knew should be there. Sadly, it was the smallest, most pitiful excuse for a Christmas market I've ever seen. Cologne has nothing to fear, but then neither does Gawcott. Oh well, it was a bit of a failure, so we got back on the bus, with half of Geneva, and headed for Manor to have lunch, where we found the other half of the city, hiding, sensibly, from the falling snow.