Category Archives: Holidays & Traditions

Girls just wanna have fun

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Post by Lauren

I was gleeful when I ran into a group of singing French girls on my way home from the gym Saturday morning. They carried a huge basket of candy. I immediately associated it with Halloween and trick-or-treating.

But, alas, no. They were a bachelorette party making their way through the streets of Geneva. They approached all men for cash and would give them a piece of candy in return. Not sure if the cash was for the bachelorette festivities or the wedding fun.

Anyhow it brought a smile to my face as the boarded the pink tram (decorated for Breast Cancer Awareness month).

Notice the person in the foreground looking aghast at the horror of it all.

Halloween in Geneva

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Post by Lauren

In Europe, Halloween isn’t such a big holiday. Gabe & I had a few friends over so that we could properly celebrate.

First, he carved a pumpkin, which is a necessity for Halloween. By the way, large pumpkins are sold sparingly at the big grocery store, labeled Gros Halloween, or Fat Halloween.

Then, I made a few “scary” dishes:

Then, a few friends joined us for the fun. Note, most of them came on public transport and got lots of odd looks. Including people who were taking photos of them. Again, Halloween is very strange here, especially to dress like characters (see yesterday’s post).

You are probably wondering who won the pumpkin? Well, the big prize goes to The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo.

Congrats and Happy Halloween!

The American

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Post by Lauren

Since Gabe’s company has headquarters in the US, they encouraged all the employees to dress up Friday. Here is Gabe dressed as Magnum PI. It was relatively easy to pull off since he had a Hawaiian shirt and cap and S & S had given us a bunch of mustaches (you’ll see why for tomorrow’s post). Anyhow, comparing the two, I think he did quite well for a costume pulled together in ten minutes, morning of.

Since only about 5% of his office is from the US, he knew that people may not know Magnum PI. However, he figured he would get equal education in their characters….maybe some politicians, movie stars, etc. However, people only dressed up like witches and goblins.

We now know the European definition of Halloween is to dress up like a scary thing, not characters, historical references, or pop culture icons like we do in the US.

Lesson learned.

At the end of the day, they circulated an email featuring everyone who participated. People had subtitles of Goblin, Witch under their photos.

Gabe’s simply said, “The American”.

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!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-JM6lCMMuk

 

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 !!

Canadienne Buffet: USA Style

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Post by Lauren

This week, we had a patriotic Canadienne Buffet. Not to celebrate Canada Day which was Friday I think, but a potluck picnic to celebrate the Fourth of July. If you are just catching up with our blog, my French teacher taught me that the best way to say potluck in French is “Canadienne Buffet”. We love the phrase and I plan to use it until you are tired of hearing about it. Sorry in advance.

And here is the birth story of the CB: In Switzerland, we read in our Swiss Rulebook that if you make plans for dinner with people in a restaurant, the tradition is that you should always pay — the concept of “dutch” on anything simply doesn’t exist. This wouldn’t be a big deal back in the US. To treat friends to dinner at our favorite restaurants – Alexander Michaels, The Penguin, Big Daddy’s, etc. – would be no big deal and could cost us 50, 75 bucks – maybe $100.

However, when the average decent meal out with friends in Geneva could be 250-350 CHF (300-400 USD), we found that the “potluck” allows for the social aspect of a dinner out with friends but without having to refinance the house to enjoy a night out. Plus, we think the food our friends make is better than 95% of the restaurants in Geneva.

This weekend, in honor of the holiday, we decided to grill out in the park beside the lake. We are pretty sure we aren’t supposed to grill out, but we figured it was 4th of July and that could be our excuse if we were apprehended – in our country, it is actually ILLEGAL not to grill out on 4th of July. Also, we had our friend Henry Birmingham visiting from the US, so if all else failed, we planned to blame on him and act as innocent Swiss bystanders to these crazy American ways of lighting fire to food.

It was a pretty lovely evening spent with fun folks. Happy Birthday, America!! And thanks to Henry for the fabulous photography!