Category Archives: Festivals & Events

Wine O Clock

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Post by Lauren

Our favorite Geneva festivals are wine festivals.

Reason # 1. Swiss wine is pretty good. And, you’ll have to come visit us to experience it. In keeping with Swiss tradition, they only like to consume their own agricultural goods. This is based on knowing their own are of higher quality (like everything Swiss) and more historically, on WW2 and the refusal to be dependent on anyone else for food. So, by the time they drink their own supply, only 1% is left for export.

Reason # 2. Doing independent wine tasting on your own requires a lot of work. Wineries are only open 10-noon on Saturdays. I have learned customer service and pleasing the public is not on their list of to-dos. So, you’d have to be well-planned to visit more than 2 in one weekend due to the short opening hours. Plus, I am sure you have to be fluent in French for it not to be awkward to show up at someone’s farmhouse ready to taste.

Reason # 3. Past Success. You might remember our first weekend we attended Caves Ouvert , where we met A & A and also D. We were delighted to go 2 for 2 with the A’s for Geneva wine festivals. They hosted an awesome pre-game brunch to lay good groundwork for the day. Sadly, D was not with us but we carried her around on a popsicle stick all day for photo ops. 2 out of 5 (the guys) thought this was creepy. But, all the girls enjoyed the humor in it and we made sure D on a stick had a good time.

Things we learned for next year:

–Don’t show up at noon for the Russin Wine Festival. Things don’t get started until about 2pm-3pm. We wondered around a ghost town Russin until about then.

–Babies aren’t allowed to drink

–If you dress up in a Father Wine Suit, you are likely to have lots of pretty girls pose with you.

–The most important lesson comes tomorrow. Be sure to tune in.

In the meantime, for more facts on Swiss wine, check out Schwingen in Switzerland.

A day at the zoo

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Post by Lauren

I am in a photography group in Geneva. Just like in French class, I’m easily the worst one. Gabe graciously lets me take his fancy camera out so I can look like I know what I am doing. But I don’t. I keep it on the automatic setting. I have no clue what to do otherwise*.

Our leader does a really good job at giving direction and inspiration. Each month we have a theme. This time, we had an outing to the Knie Circus, which is in town. We were during the day so only had access to the zoo part of the circus. At first, I was a little bored. But, with time, I discovered new things to look for based on the enthusiasm of the others. In the end, I wasn’t ready to leave. Here are a few images:

So, moral of story: I have never had so much fun at a circus or a zoo. I think my over-productive OCD personality might finally be wearing down a bit to actually enjoy an activity past a half hour. Kudos to this group and Geneva for finally making this happen.

*If you know how to use an SLR, I’ll trade you skills. Like art skills or making jewelry. Let me know!

Thanks for a Joyeux Anniversaire, everyone!

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Post by Lauren

It was a great 32nd birthday for me. Not only did I awake to great breakfast pizzas made by my husband, but I was surprised later in the day by freshly baked goods by the S’s and an amazing birthday card and care package of treats from them as well.

The day was topped off by the fête fireworks which were remarkable. Gabe jokes that he ordered them especially for my birthday. It certainly is good timing for my birthday to hit this big celebration as they are the biggest display in Europe.

The fête commences

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Post by Lauren

Every summer, Geneva hosts an amazing 10 day festival. Or maybe its 20 days? The “pre-fête” started around July 23. There have been swarms of people everywhere, rides, music nightly on 3 stages and food vendors galore for the pre-fête over the last 2 weeks. We’ve gone there twice for drinks already and to take in the international scene. You could have fooled me and called it a real festival, but it actually wasn’t the real deal.

The real fête started this past Thursday night with a grandiose fireworks display which is actually the petite (or little) fireworks. The big fireworks come at the end of the festival. S hosted a bunch of us at their home for a fabulous dinner and we walked down by the lake afterwards to enjoy the scene.

We have a friend coming in next week so we are really glad we have the entertainment of the festival at the lake to show him!

Happy Swiss National Day

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Post by Lauren

Happy Swiss Day, everyone!!! Just to give some perspective, the 1er août (said premiere-oot) is like the equivalent of the 4th of July for Switzerland. They decorate everything all over the city, and of course, everything shuts down in true Swiss holiday tradition.

They even changed the trash bags out in honor of la fête!

We wanted to get the hard-boiled eggs featured below to celebrate in style, but forgot to get them 3 days in advance before all the stores closed for normal Sunday and Holiday Monday.

Based on taking French from two Swiss-French teachers, I actually know some history on this holiday. My AIWC teacher, Esther, loves to teach us little things about history in basic French, which is really appreciated by all of us. So, here goes:

In 1291, in early August, there was no Switzerland. There were constant attacks of other countries wanting to conquer the areas which now are Switzerland. Three independent republics made a pact saying they’d protect each other, which formed the groundwork for the later development of the Confederation Helvetica, or CH.

Still today, all the cantons operate independently, with their own police, transportation, taxation and school systems. There are four different languages spoken in Switzerland, and the canton official language depends on your geography. This system allows different geographic regions to still exercise their historical preferences, but still be a part of the overall country of Switzerland.

Based on this date back in 1291, they have a fête on the 1st of August every year to celebrate this confederation of Switzerland.

We checked out the festival this evening in our city, Geneva, which has quite a big to-do. However, this type of festival takes place all over Geneva in all the little towns and villages. They say you can go out to the mountainside and it is quite a sight to see the bonfires in the distance. S taught me that the bonfires symbolize the communication the towns had with each other as that was their only method back in the day. Therefore, bonfires and lanterns are some of the characteristics of the 1er août fête.

Check out some of the scenes from the fête as well as a video of the huge bonfire in the park!

 

Gratitude Friday: The Great Outdoors

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Post by Lauren

One of the things I am so grateful for in Geneva is the beautiful parks and green spaces. I wrote about this on a previous post when we first arrived.

However, I am just continually impressed by how the community uses these spaces, especially in the summer when the fountains are on for the kids swimming pleasure. Even better, the ville de Genève hosts tons of extraordinary events outside. These don’t just happen every week, or once a month. There is something literally every day and usually two happening in the same evening. Sadly, we haven’t been able to experience it much this week because of the monsoons, but here are just two ways we have enjoyed it in the last 2 weeks:

# 1 – Free concerts in Parc a la Grange – these are twice a week – Wednesdays and Fridays for the entire summer. There is seating, or you can choose to bring a picnic. Large groups of people meet and picnic together, listening to the music. Gabe and I biked there and enjoyed a little picnic for two.

# 2 – Free movies in Parc Perle du Lac – this happens four times a week. Gabe really wanted to see Top Gun, so we spread the word and had a really nice evening with A & A, D, and C & M last Saturday night.

We loved the spirit of the movie-goers. Someone dressed up as an air-traffic controller, and others brought sparklers. However, the funniest part were the Swiss spoofs on Top Gun they did before hand. You can see the spoof videos as well as more detail on the evening here on A’s post about the evening.

We look forward to trying out the other things but in the meantime, we are just so thankful that Geneva offers these programs and we get to enjoy them in the beautiful open air, gratuits!!!

Bon weekend, everyone!

Fête de la Tomate & Carouge

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Post by Lauren

Friday night, we checked out the Fête de la Tomate in Carouge. The Swiss love their festivals (we have seen/been to 4 already in our short time here) and we equally love going to them. Mainly, because it provides a neat outing and more tasty & affordable cuisine than we can find in the restaurants.

The Fête de la Tomate was a really enjoyable evening, but this festival was a lot smaller than the others. Especially as I think it is a bit more lively on Saturday vs. Friday night since it apparently was the first year its been open Friday night. Maybe everyone didn’t get the memo including the vendors as the tomato stands, tomato sauce stands, etc. weren’t open.

We explored it for a bit, enjoyed the band, had some food, and then headed back into Carouge to have a glass of wine and dessert.  Ironically, we ran into friends A & A and their pups during our walk.

 

Montreux Jazz Festival

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Post by Lauren

We had so many neat adventures this past weekend that I wanted to dive deeper into a few so that you could get the full experience. Luckily, guest Henry Birmingham is an amazing photographer so the next two days of posts are going to have more eye-candy than you are used to (all of the photos are his).

On Saturday, we traveled to Montreux Jazz Festival. According to wikipedia, Montreux Jazz Festival is the 2nd largest music festival in the world, after Montreal’s. If you recall, Gabe and I had been to Montreux on our first trip to Geneva – most of the sunset photos on our first post are of its beautiful Alp-view shoreline and the Chateau Chillon.

Throughout the week, artists such as B.B. King, Ziggy Marley, Carlos Santana, Natalie Cole, Jimmy Cliff, Seal, Quincy Jones, Paul Simon, House of Pain, Liza Minnelli, and everyone’s favorite Ricky Martin were playing in the different venues set up on the lakeshore. With us going the first Saturday, all the shows were sold out, but nonetheless, we decided to go check it out. Also, we heard there was a Jazz Train and Latin Music boat that could be cool options if we wanted a different pace from the land part of the festival.

We set out upon our day and had a little bit of a hiccup as it was the International Gay Pride Festival and they had started to close off the Geneva streets close to the train station. We finally decided to jump out and walk the last part. Here, Gabe is doing a victory cheer for beating the bus (bus in the distance)

After an hour train ride, we arrived and were immediately greeted by great music, beautiful art and our favorite find….reasonably priced AWESOME food. We are used to paying ridiculous prices for average food back home in Geneva. We prioritized and immediately split up to go get some eats and meet back at a table. This one kind of had a nice view.

The jazz train and salsa boat (above, bottom left) did look like fun, but we ended up just hanging out in the park watching the free jazz and wandering along the coastline to all the cool vendors.

We found the experience to be really cool, even without checking out one of the shows. We calculated that we can buy train tickets to Montreux, eat delicious festival fare and it will still cost less than an average low-budget meal in Geneva. Based on that, we may try to go back before it ends in 2 weeks. Maybe even to a real show this time!

 

A fantastic 4th of July with Henry Birmingham

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Post by Lauren

Sorry for the tardiness of this post, but Gabe and I have been trying to recuperate from the weekend and it has taken us some extra time to get back in the swing of things, due to its epic proportions.

As most have caught on, we give our friends abbreviated names often times to protect their privacy. So, instead of a simple abbreviation, our fun-loving guest chose his alternate name as Henry Birmingham. It is a combination of the street he grew up on and his first pet or middle name. Some of you are catching on….

Anyhow, Henry was in Europe for work and we were quite excited when he announced he was coming to see us at the end of his trip for the 4th of July. We had so much fun, we have dedicated this post to…..

Top 10 reasons why we love to travel with Henry Birmingham

#10 – The flower clock reads 3:30 on Friday July 2. Gabe would normally be at work at this time but motivated by his buddy being in town, he took off and we were able to have an incredible Friday afternoon spent exploring Geneva and lake-bar-hopping. Awesome!

#9 – He is always up for Donor Kebabs and trying new beers!! Exactly what Gabe likes to do best so I am glad he had someone to do it with wholeheartedly!

#8 – Ingenuity – I mean, who else can create a cup-holder so resourcefully in a country known for no cup-holders in cars!?

#7 – His appreciation for art – he got some amazing shots at Jazz Festival

# 6 – Love of adventure. I mean, this guy just had knee surgery like 3 weeks ago and he scaled the wall for this photo. However, along this same theme, I may need to deduct some “awesomeness” points in this category as his encouragement of a third bottle of wine on the train may have given the author a headache the next day and prevented the timely posting of this entry.

# 5 – It would have been anticlimactic if Gabe and I saw T’s doppleganger by ourselves

#4 – We haven’t made late night food in a long time. Thanks for re-igniting the magic.

# 4 – We couldn’t have justified ordering both raclette-for-two AND fondue if there weren’t three mouths to feed.

# 3 – We finally have photos of both Gabe and I in Switzerland, not just one of us taken by the other one. Thanks for all the incredible shots 🙂

# 2 – His interest in snow & ski led us to pick this 2nd day trip to Chamonix / Mt. Blanc which is only 45 minutes from our house. Keep in mind folks, this is June. Outrageous!

# 1 – It was just awesome to see a great friend and have the luxury of spending a nice weekend catching up and making new memories. Thanks for coming — we had a blast !!

Fete de la Musique

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This weekend Geneva hosted the 20th annual Fete de la Musique in Old Town – three days of non-stop music, ranging from classical, to jazz, to reggae, to rock. It was only a 5 minute walk from our house, so really close.

We tried to go Saturday, but were rained out after about 45 minutes. We returned home rain drenched but happy as we got delicious “to-go” fair food from the Madagascar tent and sausage tent.

We returned Sunday in the better weather and enjoyed the different artists and venues they had set up in 30 different locations, all over Vielle Ville. Here are a few photos below.

What a great weekend! Those wanting to come visit next Summer, should definitely try to come for the Fete de la Musique.