Holy Cow, Burgers! And the Oddity of the Swiss-French Dialect

Awesome Burgers; good linguists!

The old quatre-vingt vs. huitant debate caught me out in the Holy Cow burger bar yesterday.  The place is completely and udderly brilliant, its yummy burgers are done up with imaginative and various toppings, service is speedy and its outside tables on the Rue de Carouge in Plainpalais are always packed at lunch.

I chose the Elvis Blue Cheese burger yesterday. At CHF13.90 perhaps it sounds a little dear, especially if you go for a meal option and spend closer to CHF20, but then they are super quality burgers and it is fair to say you don't actually need fries if you aren't looking for a blow-out meal. Compared to Ronald and his golden arches, which are said to be the most expensive in the world here in Switzerland, it is a no-brainer. Holy Cow every time, I highly recommend a trip there.

Geneva Motor Show with a Four Year-old

The last time I went to one of these it was in Birmingham and I met Richard Noble discussing his up coming ThrustSSC project. Shows how long ago that was! Last year I missed it for two reasons; because I didn't really know it was on, and I had just started a new job, so didn't think I could take time off in my first week. This year I was advised not to go on the weekend, and so we went on Friday afternoon. It was busy, but I can easily imagine, this weekend, the last, will be much, much busier.

I asked the big one on Tuesday if she fancied going. I just wanted to test the water. It was boiling! On Wednesday and Thursday the first question up was "are we seeing the cars today?" by Friday it was clear that were I to renege, there would be tears and tantrums. I just didn't want to get there and hear 20 minutes later, "I'm bored, can we go home?" As entrance is only CHF16, it would have been no hardship, it was more to do with the palaver of getting to Palexpo on two buses, just to turn round that bothered me most. As it happened the first sign of dissent didn't show until nearly an hour in, and was quickly bought off with a snack and a drink. In the end we got through two hours of car watching. I was amazed!

The show is divided in to two tiers, the mass manufacturers, Ford, Toyota, Renault all have swathes of cars on thei stands that you can climb in, check out and compare. My four year-old thoroughly enjoyed sitting behind the wheel and shouting at me, "look Daddy, I'm driving!" On these stands, behind a cordon, is also a swanky GT or a competition car just to remind us Nigels that the cars we drive on the road have some pedigree. BMW, Audi and Mercedes all have stands like this, even Porsche has a single Cayene you can climb in. But Porsche is mainly in the other tier, with Lamborghini, Bentley, Pagani and the like. These all have red rope syndrome, low barriers keep you off their stands and more than an arm's length from the cars. You're welcome to pass the red rope if you are a serious potential buyer, but otherwise, just look thank you!

Just looking was enough for us. To the big one the Pagani was just like the Cat in the Hat's car, she hasn't learnt the word outrageous yet, but she gets the concept! We must have spent 10 minutes staring at the Lamborghinis going round and round on their stands. We looked at the Bentley Continental GT and discussed anther we should get one for Mummy. At AC we wondered where the the girls would sit if we bought one for Daddy. We climbed in and out of a dozen cars and pointed at several more that looked like my father's Ford Special, essentially they had to have no roof and be painted in British racing green. At the Mercedes stand we discussed the workings of the internal combustion engine on display, more on how that works with a four year-old another time and place perhaps.

Incredibly we did two hours on the floor, then went to find something to eat. She had a sandwich, I has the classic saucise veau avec frites. Sat at the dirty wooden benches, with serious and semi-serious petrol heads all around us, I was reminded of random BRDC meetings at Silverstone I used to go to when I was a kid, all fried food and everything except the drivers had a slightly amateurish feel. Sat in the sunshine, not necessarily true to the Silverstone experience, enjoying a sausage and a beer, enjoying a cha with my four year-old, I was delighted at what excellent entertainment the Motor Show actually provides to a child. I'd highly recommend it to kill an hour or so, but maybe skip the weekend.

 iPad update
This one is going out on the iPad. This is the third time of writing because seemingly you can't save work on Blogger if you are accessing it on iPad. Hmm, bit of an oversight?

DIY in Geneva

Someone'll see it!

This is the advertising Migros bought on a billboard outside our apartment. It has been vexing me for the past few days, because I have been trying to work out why it is here.  I'm struggling to  understand why the media buyer at Migros thought this would be a good place for this particular ad for their DIY store.
Every building on our street is an apartment block, with no garden anywhere, and off the top of my head the nearest house with garden is three roads over from the ad.

Deja Vu: Undiplomatic Community

Once again we find people with CD plates don't really care about other people - it makes you wonder how they are able to do their job, or perhaps why they even bothered to apply for it in the first place.  Our undiplomatic community raised its head again. Bizarrely the person leaning on their horn this time was the replacement for the woman who leant on the horn last time, same country, same apartment. Perhaps that's how you bagsy a parking space in their home country.

I noticed in my last post on this subject that I suggested the rule of law had managed with some competency for the last 500 years, and I marvel at my credulity to believe that the law actually did anything in this town. Whilst it may have been competent for much of the last 500 years, in the past year, it hasn't been that great. Since my last post on this subject I've witnessed three of my friends get mugged and the cops declare they didn't care; my neighbours flat get broken into and the police refuse to send someone out; and a police force decide to work to rule. That could be a whole other post.

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...

Learning French Nursery Rhymes

The girls have been teaching us French nursery rhymes over the past couple of weeks. Both of them go to a public  crèche just across the road from us, regulated by the Bureau d'information petite enfance or BIPE. This means they are the only English speaking kids in the place, and so they are learning French like crazy! About ten or twelve days  ago the two of them came home signing about trois petits chats and a chapeau d'paille. A repetitive, but nonetheless brilliant song that took us a few days to figure out was indeed about three little cats.  For the life of us we couldn't work out what shepherd's pie had to do with the song. But I've been reliably informed it's a straw hat!  Now, brilliantly and thanks to my girls, I know the words for hat and straw, thus we've been learning French from nursery rhymes along with the girls.

It did help that we found a useful source in the scouting movement who, always prepared provide a catalogue of nursery rhymes in French!

Because both the girls know the songs so well, but they are in different classes, I like to imagine the chaos of the assemblies, where the kids are all gathered together to learn the songs. Rows of small children sat down on the carpet in the crèche avidly listening to someone with a guitar teach them these songs.  I reckon there are probably a few tears and squabbles as best buds elbow each other in the face whilst trying to get the actions right. Though from what I've seen most of the actions are involve vaguely waving your hands in the air whilst muttering a line of the song. The thought of the vague confusion of thirty small children and their abstract curiosity as they wonder what's going on, makes me smile.

When we'd got a bit of a handle on all the little cats the big one broke out into a rendition of Si tu aimes le soleil, which goes to the tune of "If you're happy and you know it" and involves the waking up of autumn, so we've learnt how to say if and wake up, which, incidentally is a word I've been struggling with for ages. For instance when you get to nursery and the nurses ask comment va tu? to either of the girls, usually the answer has something to do with how well they've slept, but I always have to say elle dormait jusqua Sept heure et demi instead of elle reveillait a sept heure et demi. Who knows what the difference really is, but it's nice now to be able to say she woke up, instead of she slept until.  It's like I said recently, if you want to learn French, then mix your source and get out there and just use it.

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.