July 15, 2006
Ah, Geneva will forever hold a place in my heart. No, not for the breathtaking beauty of the second largest lake in Europe, one corner of which the city is centered around. Not for the quiet and quaint cobblestoned streets of old town with its pale grey stone buildings, unique stores, surprisingly plentiful trees, and precious little cafés. Not for the parks, though they are numerous and filled with lingering vacationers and locals alike relaxing in the cool tranquility created by azure blue water and sunny skies. Not for what this city – home to the United Nations and more than 200 world organizations headquartered up and down the Avenue de Pais - has contributed to the world’s search for peace and harmony amongst nations and man, nor for its contribution to religion throughout the world, and particularly some of our puritanical roots . Certainly all these qualities make the city a lovely and interesting place to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon. But it secured a place in my heart when I spotted the familiar maroon can in the hand of a Japanese tourist standing in the shade on the path that runs along the lake. Could it be? Is it really? No, it’s not possible. Yes, those are white letters. Yes! Sure Enough! It is!! D-r- P-e-p-p-e-r! They have Dr. Peppers here! Glory halleluiah be to God in heaven above. I all but ran into the first grocery store I saw. There they were, in the refrigerated section no less, eight whole rows of Dr. Peppers! I love Geneva!
Dr. Pepper wasn’t my only satiated America craving this trip. When I arrived around 9pm last night on the train from Milan, the first priority was finding internet to check on my couches for next week. A quick check for Boingo hot spots on the train told me that the Geneva McDonalds all had internet connections. Hmmm, McDonalds…. I get a McDonald’s craving about twice a year – and one was hitting now, hard. How guilty I felt. I arrive in Geneva and where is the first place I go? Not the lake, nor the old town, nor the United Nations, I head straight for the McDonald’s, one block from the train station. I paid $10 for that Bic Mac meal but damn was it good. How much more American can you get than sitting with your laptop and rolling backpack eating McDonald’s fresh off the train in one of Europe’s great cities. My son is going to give me grief for this one, I know!
I called my hosts to tell them I had arrived. (I didn’t tell them I was calling from McDonalds.) They gave me directions to take a train near where they were having dinner and told me they would meet me at the station. After a bit of backtracking I found the train and headed for what looked like an empty car at the back. As I sat down, I heard the unmistakable sound of sobbing from the section of seats behind where I was. There was a girl talking on the phone and crying. She was clearly American and was telling her friend that she was stuck in Switzerland. She had fallen asleep on the train and someone had lifted her money belt from her backpack with all her money and her passport. She was supposed to meet friends in Paris for the next three days before catching her flight home. Now she would be stuck in Switzerland and it was unlikely she would even catch her flight. I know it is rude to eavesdrop, but every mother instinct in me was crying out to do something for her. I heard her say goodbye and close the phone, still sobbing quietly to herself. The mother instincts won. I leaned around the seat, apologized for eavesdropping, and asked if she’d like to talk. She nodded her little face up and down, tears rolling down her cheeks even faster. I asked if she’d like a hug. She nodded emphatically. I wrapped my arms around her and she cried into my shoulder for several minutes. As I held her in my arms, I felt not only her suffering in this moment but the suffering of many lost moments – my own moments when I travel and feel lost and want only to go home, and those of my girls when they felt lost and alone, Erika in her teenage years, and April in the transitional days from childhood to adolescence, when I had whipped away their tears all those years ago. I cried a silent tear for all the moments we women suffer as little lost girls inside. When she had cried all she needed to for that moment I sat back and let her dry her tears and we just talked for awhile. She had received other tragic news that day in an email and now had the whole problem with the passport. I consoled her as best I could. We ended up talking about the World Cup and her eyes brightened as she told me how she and her friends had watched it from Circo Massimo surrounded by half a million celebrating Italians. My stop came too soon. I gave her my card and wished her luck. If you read this, Elizabeth, I am still thinking of you and wishing you a safe journey home.
My hosts, Maya and Iddo, met me at the station and took me to their friend’s house where they were having a barbeque. There was one other couple, a single guy, and an overgrown Golden Retriever puppy named Ben. (Oh how I miss Buffy sometimes.) All five of them are from Israel and their mother tongue was Hebrew (though four of the five spoke perfect English). Sometimes I feel like such a stupid American. Am I the only one who thought Hebrew, like Latin, was a dead language used now only for religious purposes? They told me it was a dead language but had essentially been reborn and was now spoken by over six million people. Why don’t I ever know these things? I felt like such an idiot. I wasn’t about to admit I just ate McDonalds off the train, so when Maya told me, quite mother-like, I was eating dinner even though I said no thanks, I obediently complied – and happily so for it was quite good. The single guy and I quickly entered a parry and thrust verbal war – one of my favorite interactive games from back in my bartending days. Garrick and I could get so verbally abusive with witty cut downs people actually thought we didn’t like each other. No one understood it is sheer fun. This guy (I don’t remember his damn name) said he was afraid he would injure my American ‘sensitivities’. I responded, doesn’t he know Americans are insensitive and to fire away (ha ha).
I love these unexpected moments in traveling when suddenly you find yourself sitting around a candlelit picnic table outside on a summer evening talking with people you’ve never met who have had lives you can’t even imagine. The conversation moved easily enough until I asked if they would give an ignorant-American their view of what is going on in their side of the world and why. I know so little about Israel and the Middle East and all that is happening there. Despite occasional efforts to take in some understanding, it all just goes over my head. That’s what I get for being taught history was about memorizing dates as opposed to understanding the human psyche and the struggle for power and prominence. For someone supposedly so smart, I am awfully stupid about a lot of things. I was politely told that this was a conversation they didn’t engage in for there were different views around the table. Little did I know that as I was prodding for a kindergartener understanding of the conflict, at a time when emotions were particularly raw as Israel and Lebanon had essentially entered into war again. I hadn’t seen a television or newspaper in six weeks and knew nothing about the bombing that was happening. The easiness of conversation never returned. I felt like a cartoon character who unknowingly said something incredibly insensitive and stupid and in the last frame of the cartoon track when everyone has stopped talking and is standing around stiffly asks in an innocent voice: “What? Was it something I said?” Now I know it was late and they were tired and one of the girls didn’t feel well and that I am always oversensitive, but I was disappointed that I couldn’t take advantage of such a rare opportunity to converse with people who know personally the experience that we can only read about in newspapers – a source I don’t consider very accurate.
We said our goodbyes and dropped the other couple off at home. When it was just Maya and Iddo, I asked if I had done or said something wrong. They assured me not then explained to me what was going on at that moment in the world. My ignorance is in a way a double-edged coin – it is in part thanks to my naiveté that I can look at the world through rose-colored glasses and see such beauty. I believe we need people who see the world and the people in it as lovely and beautiful and good. Yet because I insist on maintaining my naiveté there is also a depth of understanding about what is not so lovely and good about the world that I will always gloss over. If you dive deep you can’t see the sun at the same time. Sometimes I wish I understood man’s dark side at a deeper level, but I’d hate to give up the light I see cast around everyone to do it. I guess that is what they mean by the saying Ignorance is Bliss, but the knowledge that you are ignorant steals a bit of the bliss.
We changed the subject and chatted about other things as Iddo pulled the car into the garage. Actually it wasn’t their car. Switzerland is piloting a new concept in auto-sharing. In many European cities it is not cost effective to have a car, yet there are times where it is more convenient to have one. For a small annual membership fee, they can join this program that allows them to select the type of car they want and the amount of time, and pick it up at a central garage location – a van if you are moving, a sports car for a Sunday afternoon drive, a sedan when you have company in town for the evening, or anything else you might need. They pay 3 dollars so per hour plus 50cents per kilometer, but do not have to pay for gas. Everything is automated. There are no check-in counters. They have a garage access card and they enter their account information in a computer system in the car when they pick up and drop off the car. It is a really great concept.
We walked the few blocks to their apartment in the center of Geneva. They are in the process of moving and Maya began frantically trying to neaten things. I tried to assure her not to worry, that I didn’t mind the disarray in the least, but to no avail. I had to giggle to myself because I am exactly the same way. They were both obviously tired but took the time nevertheless to sit and chat awhile longer before going to bed. Iddo coordinates an MBA program for the university and Maya works for the airline industry. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting them, though our time to talk was short. If I were married and settled, they are the kind of couple I’d love to have in a circle of friends. As it is I am a single vagabond, I know not when or if our paths will cross again, though I hope they do.
I slept soundly on my little “f&f” on the floor and awoke early to write awhile before heading out into the streets Geneva. Maya had left early for a business trip but Iddo gave me the scoop on Geneva highlights for the day. As I was zipping up my backpack, he brought me a bag with two bananas and two nectarines and insisted I take them with me, knowing how difficult it is to eat properly on the road. These little acts of kindness and hospitality never cease to amaze me. Sitting on my bag at the train station, eating my banana, I smiled with the thought of the genuine kindness with which it was given and with which they shared with me their time and home.
This too is a city I would like to return to, and not just for the Dr. Peppers. The diversity is striking – with people from many walks of life scattered throughout the streets. There were people still garbed in their traditional clothing from the Middle East, India, Asia, and Africa. The lake creates a common bond, a centrifugal force as people gather to admire the shooting wall of water near the harbor, or to swim in the many swimming holes, to picnic with friends or family, or just to stroll slowly along the water’s edge. Pots with blooming flowers are everywhere, suspended from lampposts or placed upon rails, and otherwise scattered here and there. The water is interrupted by the occasional white swan and the green grass of the parkways by an occasional statue – many of them lovely female nudes. There is a certain energy to lake cities – I felt it in Boston and in Vancouver and feel it here as well. A certain tranquility that rather than breeding stillness, breeds a peaceful yet vibrant activeness.
I finally heeded the call of hunger and stopped at a little crepe stand. I know, I know, I’m in Switzerland – I should eat some chocolate or cheese or something. But with French all around me I just had to have a crepe instead. Even at the little stand on the shores of Lake Geneva, my mushroom/cheese crepe was made with the flair and precision of a French chef. The man spread the batter just so, turning it with deft precision and purposefulness, before sprinkling exactly the right amount of cheese in perfect proportion, no wait a little more here, a little more there, then stepping back to eye it and make sure it was evenly distributed before doing the same with the mushrooms. He dropped the last mushroom with a flourish of the hand more reminiscent of a chef extraordinaire at a five star restaurant topping off his masterpiece with a sprig of perfectly placed parsley than a guy in a paper apron standing in the sweltering heat of a cardboard crepe stand on the side of a lake. He then folded one end then the other, carefully creasing each before creating a perfectly folded rectangle, flipping his creation on to a paper plate, and handing it to me. It was truly an art form. I ended up chatting, as I ate with a lady named Rose from San Francisco. She works in outsourcing and, with a daughter now 20, took up a position that lets her do a fair amount of traveling. She was eager to learn about couchsurfing. I have a feeling it will prove a wonderful resource for her as she travels. I guess I’m turning into a couchsurfing ambassador of sorts. Maybe I should get a job with them!! I have actually volunteered to help for two days at the collective they planned as it just so happened to be at the same time I planned to be in Austria. It will be nice to give a little something back to this project that is giving so much to me.
Having refueled, I made the long walk to the United Nations building, just to say I have stood there. The flags out front were impressive but the gates were closed and I could see little else. With the heat of the day becoming unbearable, I decided it was time to make my way to the train station and to my next stop – Montreaux…
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