A new road to explore in 2010 - Hermance, Canton Geneva

The snow capped mountains around Geneva seem so foreign to me at the moment. I do not usually blog about personal stuff but today I feel I need to say something about coming back to Geneva after a period abroad.

I am back in the City of Calvin after traveling near the Equator, the world’s umbilical line. The tropics. The Caribbean. The Pacific. I am back after flirting with the snow capped Andean glaciers, smelling fresh flowers and savoring fruits whose names I can’t remember. A sensory overload.

It is nice to be back in this orderly town where things work as they are meant to and where silence seems to be the norm. Many people say Geneva is rigid, not fun, and not a good place to be in winter. Well, this winter I hope to discover a different Geneva.

2010 will be the year when I will discover new corners of this City and the Canton. Just as I did during the recent holidays, only in a country worlds away from Switzerland.

Let’s discover Geneva together in 2010 and please share with GenevaLunch your findings.

¡Feliz Año! Bonne Année.

Thanks GL Editor: Madame Ellen Wallace for such a fancy title for my blog!

I am indeed new to Geneva. Or at least as “new” as I can be at two years and six months of having arrived at Cointrin Airport from JFK carrying three oversized suitcases, a roll-up mattress, a jet-lagged 8-year-old girl, and a 2.5 feet tall Sheppard-Hound dog who stood scared in her grander-than-life cage. -How is that for an introduction?-.

My "new" hometown

Tricky thing is, until recently, I kept a certain distance from “some of Geneva”. Freelancing when I wanted to (and I did not want to most of the time), and only taking on projects I cared about (and I did not care about that many either).

And so one day I realized I had started to discover things about Geneva that I should have found out a long time ago. Yes indeed a sad turn of events. Please, do not mistake me for someone who has “refused” to “integrate” -as my French teacher would say. Not at all.

An expat, who veni, vidi, vici Geneva for six months -before leaving again- said to me: “you’re a Genevan vet”. She did not mean vet as in animal doctor. She meant vet as in veteran. Moi, a veteran? In a revolving-door culture of expats in Geneva, a veteran could be anyone who stays more than one year. So… I might be after all a -reluctant- vet.

I guess I am discovering Geneva, sort of: backwards. I admit it is a rather peculiar way to discover Geneva. What I have found out is that I learn something new about my new home everyday. Mostly, through other expats, immigrants and the few Swiss I have met along the way.

Thus, this blog is a public exploration of Geneva done with “a little help from my friends.”