Chez Raoul

 

We visited our friend Raoul in Geneva this weekend. The little black pug who was our neighbor in Seattle, was kind enough to share his parents Donna and John--or as I like to call them, Johnna and Don, with us. I don't know why, but this slips out all the time, and apparently my affliction is not unique as many of their friends make the same mistake. Of course, I also have a tendency to call my nephew, Erik and my friend Erik, Derek.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, the two look nothing alike; but drawing on something I learned in my neurophysiology class at Mount Holyoke, I am pretty sure that their names are stored very close to each other in my brain.

 

 

Or,perhaps this is the beginning of the end... Oh well, if it is at least I'm in Paris.

But back to Geneva.

As most people know, Switzerland, our neighbor to the southeast, has a history of political neutrality. Interestingly though there are more guns there,  per capita than in the U.S., or at least I think there are.  Anyway when one is in Geneva and makes their way to the lake, s/he can not help but notice quite possibly the tallest fountain of water...ever...in the entire world!

In my opinion, it is remarkable only for its size. It is not but a single, giant plume of water rocketing upwards of 150 feet. It is not at all aesthetically pleasing nor does it produce a feeling of peacefulness as many water sculptures do.  The only thing I wondered other than why is this thing here, was: is the water pressure  great enough to lift a man into the the air, were he to (somehow) sit on top of it.  Kris says yes, definitely.

Alas, I am easily distracted and after contemplating my man in the air query, I sought an answer to the first question (why is it here?). Of course I immediately developed a theory about the fountain and that involved the phallus. Here goes: Since there is no war in Geneva and since men are encouraged to sit down to pee anytime before 10:30 PM and REQUIRED to do so after 10:30, this is a city where men rarely get to use their guns or hold their you-know-whats. Thus, the fountain is a giant phallic expression of "Genevan" masculinity or emasculation, take your pick.

We arrived in Geneva around noon on Friday. We had to go through customs, which for us only meant that we had to show the customs officer our passports--he didn't even look at my residence permit--the one that I had been told I needed to have before I could leave the country.  Our line was completely stalled while the one next to us was moving quickly along.  When we shod the guy our ID, I saw that they had pulled someone out of line and put him in a small room; he had brown skin and looked pretty angry. "I would be, too" I thought.  I guess it shows my own political bent, but I wasn't surprised that the guy had brown skin and just assumed he had been a target of some sort of racial profiling.  Of course, I could be wrong.

So, there was Donna, in her black velvet jacket and lovely chartreuse scarf.  I expected her to be holding Raoul's leash, instead, she was carrying a grocery sack full of limes, a half dozen eggs ($3.00 worth!) and some freshly ground coffee. Apparently, the only dark, oily (American tasting, french roast type) coffee they have been able to find in Geneva (and Paris) is in a store nearly an hour out of town. Donna takes the train out to buy the whole beans and then takes small portions of them to the grocery store where she grinds them.  Kris is not crazy about the coffee here either, he says it is too "french".  I don't know about that; I just add cream and sugar and I am happy.  Of course he also says that he has decided that if you put enough cream and sugar in anything, it will taste like cookies. I have a similar theory about french butter--it makes everything taste better.

In fact, in consideration of the two theories, I was thinking about making chocolate chip cookies with french butter, oh yeah.  I found some Hershey's chocolate chips at the Grande Epicerie of the Bon Marche the other day; they were in the "German foods" aisle; there is no American foods aisle, just ones for Asia (including India), Mexico, Italy, Germany and Great Britain.  Rather than admit that the French think America has nothing to offer on terms of culinary accomplishments, I decided that Hershey must have been German.  Anyway, the good news is, I found the chips and didn't have to take a train an hour out of town, just the metro to Sevres Babylon; the bad news is they cost 5.5 euros! yikes, I decided I would wait until Kris had a real craving, until then, he could content himself with plenty of cream and sugar in his cuppa joe.

But back to Geneva, Donna and Kris and I ate lunch at a little french bistro called Cafe Negociant.  Unbeknownst to us, the name was a reference to the wine cave in the basement.  If you wanted to order a bottle of wine (which we did) you needed to go downstairs and choose one for yourself.  So we did.  the only thing was, it was all very overwhelming and we had not point of reference.  Many of the wines were Swiss (we hadn't known until that day that that Switzerland produced wine), but we Didn't want to chose a Swiss wine as Donna said she didn't like them.  Other wines were over 100 Swiss francs($80).

So we settled for a bottle of Bordeaux for 50 francs.

We didn't know what to do next "Do we take it upstairs? Or do we tell the waiter the name of the wine?"  I decided to take it upstairs and play dumb.  On our way up, we ran into the sommalier, who was horrified to learn that we had been left downstairs by ourselves, with no assistance. In the end, our wine was good. Kris enjoyed his duck leg and salad. Donna was not wild about her salad because it was cold. The waiter had come to her when we downstairs to tell her he had only enough duck legs for one person (she and Kris had ordered the same entree).

Simple, enough, right?

Well, Donna doesn't speak french. No problem, the waiter switched to English. "Would you like something hot or cold?", he asked her.

"Hot", she replied.

The waiter pointed to another "duck" option; she chose it. But in  the end, it was cold duck salad with shaved foie gras.  The waiter had made the same mistake in English that English speakers make in french: it is easy to get hot and cold mixed up as the word for hot is "chaud", unfortunately, the word (obviously) starts with a "c" and rhymes with "cold". On the other hand, the word for cold is "froid", which rhymes with "hot".  Thus, our poor brains have trouble processing it all. Hot/cold, chaud/froid, in the end, the foie gras was good, but when one wants something warm, something cold doesn't really hit the spot. 

My entree was essentially what I had expected.  A lamb hamburger. The only weird thing was that is was two patties and was wearing the worlds smallest  sesame bun. It was rather "mignon" as we say in France.  I offered some to Donna, as it was warm and there was plenty of it.  But she doesn't like lamb; Raoul on the other hand, loves it.

When John got home from his day at the WHO, we had a lovely dinner at Cafe Jules Verne.  As the resident french expert,I attempted to translate the menu.  The first entree, of which we were all very scared, seemed to have something to do with the back of a wolf and his skin! When the waitress arrived, I asked her to confirm my translation of this curious french delicacy, (or perhaps I should say, curiously french delicacy) which, as it turned out, was wolf fish served skin-side up.

John (who doesn't eat red meat, chicken or pork) ordered it.

That night we had cocktails in a little back room of a funky neighborhood bar.  We could barley breathe for all the smoke that a nearby table of chain smoking young women were producing.  in an effort to get some fresh air Donna, opened the only window in the room.  Apparently, this made the young women too cold. One of them (an American) got up, marched over to the window, closed it, locked it, and then pointedly turned towards Donna and with a truly American passive-aggressive gesture asked: "Est-ce que ca vous derange" she then repeated herself in English "will it bother you if I close the window", of course she expected Donna to play along and defer; instead, she replied "Um, yes. Could we keep it open just a bit so we can breathe?"

Score: 1 for the 30-somethings, 0 for the 20 year-old human chimneys.

It is still incredible to me, their audacity and the nonsense of it all.  These women would rather get cancer and give it to those around them than be COLD. Bizarre.

Anyway, on a different note, I LOVED my drink.  It was like a mojito but with lime instead of mint.  Donna, if you are reading this--what was it called?  I love lime and I am fond of sugar and this cocktail had both in spades, along with rum and a slight hint of coconut.

The next day we took the train out Nyon, a quaint little town about 15 minutes from Geneva that kinda reminded me of Seattle/Puget Sound. We walked around, had lunch and then contemplated dinner.  That night we extended the table and filled it with all the makings for fresh Vietnamese spring rolls.

We left on Sunday morning, the Watson-Weagels ( I know I have spelled that wrong) accompanied us to the train station, where I almost got away with Raoul. 

All in all, Geneva is rather a pale comparison to Paris, but the company there would be difficult to beat as pugs don't come any cuter than Raoul, nor friends any nicer than Johnna and Don.