Snow by the centimeter

Flakes as big as dinner plates.
Eat your fill,
And hope some's left for breakfast.

 Branch, icy veins, and

Teach what we already know:

Coldest of silence.

 

[ The Dude abides. ]

Night hunt: swan song

Like the great Julian Hussein Assange, I too have an indominable thirst for truth, no matter how ugly. And so it was that one night not too long ago that myself and my associate Sevan embarked once again on a mission. A mission to expose once and for all the after-hours habits of the bird-formerly-known-as-Swan. The brave can read on.

It began much like any other mission. The swan is an elusive beast, known to outwit even the most skilled tracker.

We followed the trail over many miles, passing untold numbers of festive impressionist light sculptures.

And took in the local fauna. 

It wasn't long before we came upon our first prize. But as every schoolgirl worth her salt knows, you can never feed just one swan. 

Before we knew it the rest of the squadron had assembled...

... and we set about bending them to our will. 

 Turns out swans (and ducks alike) are ape for candy corn. What's that, our corn subsidies are wasted on high fructose candies? Tell that to the wildlife. [ Note also the German tourist mocking the ugly swan in the background. ]

Hardly the brightest. All the better for a devastatingly efficient winged army. Bow down as the spirit moves you.

Basel-isk

Let's hear it for Basel, everyone. Any city that allows parties in soon-to-be-destroyed warehouses is tops in my book. 

 

 [ Steampunk'd ]

[ Old city gate ]

[ City hall ]

[ All along the old city gate ]

On notice

 

[ Halfway up Le Salève -- note that you can STILL see the Jet d'Eau ]

It hit me today that every single one of my goals, the things I'm excited to begin and experience, they're all related in some way to my career (murky and shrouded in mystery as it remains) or school. That and the carpal tunnel WebMD tells me I'm developing have convinced me it's time to draw up some plans.

Scanning all horizons for adventure.

The secret lives of the Helvetic wildlife

After many a sleepless night and painstaking research, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the feeding habits of the enigmatic Swiss water swan:

[ Guest commentary by Sevan ]

Not so dapper now, are we?

Hard to tell in this picture but these sheep have cattails -- look like fat German Shepherds from far away.

And all this is fitting

 [ Lucerne ]

I visited Lucerne about a month ago and still this sculpture haunts me: one of those works that seems to have had to be made, to the point that the event it commemorates (the massacre of Swiss guards during the French Revolution) likewise seems necessary. Mark Twain described the statue in A Tramp Abroad :

"The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions of them. But they are libels upon him, every one of them. There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting. 

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff--for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. How head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion--and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is."

And now, completely unrelated and lightyears less depressing: deer (turn the volume way up and listen to the joke in the first ten seconds). Also note my cunning focus on the single deer to produce the desired shock when I pan out to a whole field's full (close enough to touch, not that I did--no lyme disease this winter, thanks).

To complete the non sequiturs - 

Suddenly it hits me: "I love you" and "I miss you" [prayers to the same God].
That somewhere between 6,000 miles and inches away from my fingertips
There's a home that will keep [all of] us,
The people I want to save.
I intend to keep you.
Go see, of course,
But find your way back.

[The cliche is no less true.]

City planning

Three distinct, fantastic cities in such a short window -- still sorting them out. Be it river, lake or sea I can't imagine living anyplace without water nearby. Give me a bench and trees and a hill to watch it all from, to take in the ebbs and pulses.

 [ Lyon ]

 

 [ Amsterdam ]

 [ Prague ]

Nobody's got the keys to the elephant factory inside us. -- Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Things we found

Such a commotion and din.

 

Best study break in recent history.  

   

Once the kids stopped hogging the thing.

Chalk another up to the Swiss: excellent playgrounds.

Go see

 

Be the bold ones, we're told--

Be the first leaves to turn in autumn

And then again the first to shake off snow. 

Live with full eyes and fuller stomachs,

Never quenched but never pining.

Drive as long as there are things to be seen

And you've the eyes to see them.

Go see.

Bern and Interlaken

 
One of my greatest aspirations is to never lose that awe, { that AHHHH }, that jaw drop in the face of beauty, giddiness at the simple existence of the spectacular. Interlaken is truly one of the most stunning places I've ever been.

{ This is Switzerland }

After spending the day in Interlaken a few of us went back to Bern for the night. At a cultural festival (Geneva would be shocked at the spectacle -- OUTDOOR noise, you say? And FREE? Preposterous!) on the city plaza we ran into a 59-year-old Peruvian man named César Miranda, and our night took a sharp turn. César spoke no English (French, German, Italian, Spanish, so I'll forgive him), so the next three hours were conducted exclusively in Spanish and muddled French. I feel incredibly guilty now for thinking César was trying to hustle us -- he just wanted to show us around one of the cities he calls his own. We talked about politics -- Swiss, international, American, pan-American -- haltingly, of course. I have no idea how he managed such patience at our understanding. 

Two Swiss-Germans came and sat at the table next to ours. Speaking no Spanish (and César no English), they and César began a battle for our ideologies. "We're the real Switzerland," both sides insisted. Above all César was proud of his multiple citizenships -- Swiss, Peruvian and Italian. The Germans plead with us not to allow this "migrant" to color our interpretation of their country: "He is not the real Switzerland. It's truly a beautiful country." In turn, César begged us to ignore them entirely: "But for the racism, Switzerland is a beautiful country." 

Switzerland, the boilerplate.

Silent duel

{ Dachshund crossing }

The bike was obviously abandoned--leaned against a bench on the waterfront, tires distended and warped from months in an attic or basement or locked outside an apartment building after all best intentions had drained away, handle wraps frayed not from frequent use but disrepair. An hour before I had noticed it on my way to the park, made a note to pass back the same way to make sure no one had rightly claimed it. I could see vast potential: ten speed, chain in decent shape, all indications to free trips around Geneva, across the border, around the lake. 

Out of the corner of my eye, a challenger. One bench over, eying me eying the bike. 

Five minutes on, it's clear our intents are at odds. Ten minutes, it's unmistakable. Fifteen, open war. His female companion (I'd hazard to guess wife, but would guess sister as a reserve) is impatient, I'm sure he'll be the first to cave. Twenty, thirty minutes. There are only so many empty gazes at the lake or into the distance at a fabricated acquaintance that surely isn't coming that we can manage. I flip through every file on my camera, he fiddles with keys. Wife/sister taps her foot.

Forty-five. I'm sketched out, I've lost. I stand up to leave. Barely had I crossed the street before the pair move bench and take the prize. Match.

Detente

That'll do, Jet. That'll do just fine.

Geneva's daylong nap

First overcast day so far--apparently fall is full of them here, so a taste of climes to come. The Jet d'Eau turns off, and if this city has any bustle to speak of it disappears entirely at the hint of rain. It's not a sullen or mopey feeling, just sleepy.

France for an hour

This morning the program paid for a boat from Geneva to Yvoire, France, about an hour and a half trip each way after a couple of stops along the Swiss side of the lake. The switch from one country to the next can be anticlimactic here--there was no customs agent or border station (which I realize can be difficult to construct in the middle of so large a pond as Lac Léman), and my passport remained in my bag, unstamped or examined. It's great: the most successful experiment in open borders that I know of, flawless except for the need to change currencies. Lose the franc, Switzerland, your exchange rate is killing all of us.

It begins

It's been three weeks since I've been in an English-majority country, and an odd silence has settled about my perception, to the point that I'm incredibly attuned to either English or Spanish or the five French phrases I've managed to get down so far. Our brains pick up the familiar. English is still spoken quite a bit here but a French immersion won't be difficult if I seek it out. It's serene--virtually all speech on the street fades into unintelligible background prattle and I speak so much less when in public than I do in native circumstances, just because I'm listening and deciphering that much more. Any communication is deliberate and self-conscious, language-as-tool rather than automatic.

With any luck, I'll pick up French quickly and be better able to move around the city without gestures or muffled Spanish (which works surprisingly well).