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Anna S. E. Lundberg

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Tattoos, James Blunt, and nights like this…

29 July, 2014 By Anna S E Lundberg 2 Comments

There’s nothing like a bit of James Blunt to get you all moody and sentimental.

This world is getting colder.
Strangers passing by
No one offers you a shoulder.
No one looks you in the eye.

I’m not calling for a second chance,
I’m screaming at the top of my voice.

How was I so blind to miss you crumbling inside?
Is it too late now to fix you? Let me make it right.

And as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be…

Sheesh!

Phones lighting up at the James Blunt concert
James asked us to “do like the Chinese” and hold up our phones. How very 21st century darling…

I was back in Geneva for the weekend, and at Paleo. After a crazy thunderstorm the evening was now clear and as magical as ever. I’ve been to Paleo many times, and even seen James Blunt before. Last time, we all ridiculed him until he came on stage and in fact we discovered that we knew and loved all his songs. Oops! It’s hard not to. And he sings them with such intensity, like it’s the first time, like he’s feeling every bit of pain and emotion.

So it’s hard not to get a bit emotional and nostalgic. For me, it’s all so familiar but also so distant, since I’ve been gone from Geneva for almost exactly a year now. So many memories, so many moments, playing in my mind as I listened to the angsty lyrics. And so many different scenarios playing out; what might have happened if I had acted differently, how would my life now be different?

What if… I hadn’t accepted that job?

What if… I had said yes to that trip?

What if… I had told him I was interested?

What if… I had left earlier?

What if… I had stayed longer?

What if… What if… What if…

But there’s no point in regretting the things I’ve done, or those I didn’t do. It’s gone. And so is the person that I was back then. At the time, I acted in whatever way I could. And I had fun doing it baby.

Everything I’ve done over the years, every flap of the butterfly’s wings, has led to who I am today, and to all the wonderful people I’ve met, places I’ve seen, experiences I’ve had.

Pensive frog tattoo
Maybe a big black pensive frog wasn’t the best choice… Oh, did I mention it was temporary body ink? So I only have to live with it a few days, *phew*. Although, I’ve been feeling pretty rock’n’roll since Saturday night…

Onwards and upwards!

Speaking of regret, my friend and I got a tattoo. It’s one of those things that seems like a fabulous idea in the moment, when you’ve had a couple of glasses of wine and you’re feeling like you could take on the world… but the next morning, as daylight shines onto the black ink, you think maybe it wasn’t such a great move after all. But it’s done now. You did what you did.

So: no regrets. YOLO man. (I’m so sorry.)

Here’s to the present, living in the here and now, and seeing where it takes us!

Days like these lead to…
Nights like this… lead to…
Love like ours.
You light the spark in my bonfire heart.

People like us – we don’t
Need that much, just some-
One that starts,
Starts the spark in our bonfire hearts.

Filed Under: Life, Switzerland Tagged With: Geneva, james blunt, nyon, paleo festival, regret, Switzerland

Geneva in the summertime (when the weather is hot)

29 April, 2014 By Anna S E Lundberg 2 Comments

So I finally got round to writing something about Geneva as part of my MatadorU travel writing course. They say you should write what you know so that you can go beyond the stereotypes and capture real life – and yet how hard it is to capture the details, the nuances, the essence of what it’s like to live in a place, to become part of a lifestyle, to make lifelong friends. It’s impossible, so I didn’t even try. In any case, here it is, my mid-term assignment for the course…

I spent nine years in Geneva. That’s almost a third of my life, and almost all of my adult life. It’s pretty much unheard of for a young expat to stay that long. Usually, they come for a couple of years, and then move on.

The temporary nature of people’s time in Geneva is reflected in the mindset. Most of my colleagues knew from the start that they would only stay for a two-year assignment. Many of them made no attempt to learn French (everyone speaks English anyway) or to meet people outside of work. Some spent every weekend going home to their boyfriend whom they’d left behind in the UK. They couldn’t join us on road trips, they weren’t free to go for a drink, and they didn’t really try to get to know the city or the people in it.

Geneva is also not usually high on the bucket list of places to visit. That’s not to say that there aren’t any tourist attractions – there are the UN headquarters, CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, the headquarters and museum of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and many potential excursions related to the things for which Switzerland is known: cheese, chocolate, and expensive watches. Not to mention the beautiful lake and the surrounding countryside. Most people I know who’ve flown to Geneva, though, have done so on their way to going skiing in the Alps. Only three of my UK friends ever visited me during my nine years in Switzerland. Sniff.

The ICRC
The International Committee of the Red Cross was established in 1863 on the initiative of Swiss businessman Henri Dunant

At first, I was part of the two-year gang. In fact, I remained in that temporary mindset for the whole time I was there. Originally, I had come for my master’s degree and planned to leave as soon as I finished my thesis. I stayed on in Geneva, though, accepting a role at Procter & Gamble. The European headquarters office is like a university campus, full of energetic young foreigners who work hard and play hard. Life in Geneva is expensive, and it becomes much more attractive once you can afford to say, “No problem, let’s split it!” when the bill arrives after a meal.

Looking back, I see now how my lifestyle changed over the years in stereotypical fashion. The nights out, the metres of shots, the dancing and laughing into the morning hours – all that gave way to wine and tapas and movie nights; until those too were replaced with pots of tea and countryside walks. Although I didn’t get married and have children myself, I adopted the habits of my friends who did. At one point, I was verging on an existential crisis as I watched not just my girlfriends but also my playboy colleagues settling down in marital bliss (those expats who do stay on in Geneva do so wholeheartedly!), while much of my network left Geneva in classic expat fashion. Alone and lost, I pondered the meaning of life… but I soon found a new rhythm, balancing comfortable nights in with my baby friends with sometimes venturing out into the night with my younger colleagues.

Every year, in winter, I would decide to leave Geneva. And every year, come summer, I would change my mind. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the skiing – I really missed it this first winter away as I endured my friends’ gloating over their “no filter” pictures on Facebook.

For me, though, Geneva is all about the summers.

Summertime

In summer, happy people spill out onto the streets; tables and chairs appear outside cafés and restaurants and are populated with rosé-drinking people-watchers; teens jump off the bridges into the Rhône river; and we argue over where to get the best ice cream (I vote for Eaux-Vives, although conventional wisdom favours a little place in Pâquis).

Perhaps the first sign of summer is when La Terrasse opens. This is an outdoor bar down by the lake to which well-dressed professionals flock after leaving the office. “Who’s going to La Terrasse?” is a common, though largely unnecessary, status update on Facebook, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to run into someone you know. There you can share a bottle of rosé as you watch the sun set behind the hotels and office buildings, enjoying the view across the nearby yachts to the white peak of Mont Blanc on the other side of the lake.

La Terrasse is right by the Bains des Pâquis, public baths dating back to the late 19th century. There, bodies fill every available surface, including a special area for women where bare breasts are a common sight (and a solitary man is often seen to wander in “by mistake”). People will happily go for a dip despite the many ducks and boats leaving various things behind in the water. If you prefer to stay out of the dirty water, you can hop on one of those boats to your chosen destination around the lake, such as Nyon, Lausanne, and Montreux on the Swiss side or Evian and the medieval town of Yvoire over in France.

La Suisse boat
The “Belle Epoque” paddle streamer, La Suisse, was brought into service in 1910, with a Swiss flag on one end and a French on the other. I took many a trip over the years to Yvoire, a medieval town that lies on the French side of the lake and features pretty little houses whose balconies are decorated with perfectly kept flowers. The town’s chief appeal, to my mind, comes in the form of the crèpes sold through a little window up on the hill. Yum.

On the other side of the lake we have the more sophisticated Genève Plage and the Wakeboard Centre, where people go to do 360 spins and jumps in the early hours before heading into the office. At night, the hoards descend onto the rocks when the Glocals expat organisation has its annual beach party (which always ends abruptly and far earlier than desired when the neighbours call the police to complain about the noise).

Festival fun

Summer is also when the music festivals arrive in Geneva and the surrounding area.

“Did you get tickets for Paleo?” comes the eager question, followed by the answer tinged with a degree of self-satisfaction:

“Yep, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.”

Tickets for this annual festival, held 15 minutes outside of Geneva in Nyon in July, are released at noon on a day in April on which the system inevitably crashes and all tickets are gone within minutes.

Paleo was originally created in 1976 as the Nyon Folk Festival but has since evolved with a broader repertoire. The big names make the headlines – Manu Chao, Lenny Kravitz, Franz Ferdinand, James Blunt – but it’s the smaller acts that I’ve always found make for the most memorable evenings.

Aside from the music, the food is a major feature: I favour the chocolate chip waffles, while friends with more savoury tastes rave about the magret de canard (duck breast), the Molokoffs (fried cheese balls), tartiflette (a cheesy potato dish) and the portable fondue (melted cheese poured into a hollowed-out baguette). It’s all about the cheese.

Another, maybe more internationally famous, festival is Montreux, the second-largest jazz festival in the world. It was founded in 1967 by the national treasure Claude Nobs, who sadly passed away last year. Having featured legends like Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald in its early days, and being immortalised in Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water (which tells the story of the fire of 1971), Montreux has since continued to attract audiences with a line-up including BB King, Annie Lennox, Johnny Cash, Pink Floyd, and, this year, Pharrell Williams.

Montreux
Montreux is located at the other end of the lake from Geneva, five hours by boat or an hour by train. Its Château de Chillon, located on a little island, inspired Lord Byron to write a poem on The Prisoner of Chillon.

I’m not really a festival person (I’ve never been to Glastonbury – the horror!), but these festivals and concerts were a central feature of my life in Geneva. I remember one night in particular at Montreux when Lauryn Hill cancelled at the last minute and we instead had Wyclef Jean improvising a set, which ended with us all dancing on the stage with him until long past when the concert was meant to finish. And a couple of years ago at Paleo it finally rained, and I got to wear my proper festival chic, wellies and all.

The Fêtes

The peak of Geneva activity, and my all-time favourite time of the year, comes in early August during the two weeks of Fêtes de Genève. Evenings are spent drinking mojitos and caipirinhas, riding rollercoasters of questionable safety, and screaming deliriously in the not-so-scary haunted house (top tip: it helps to have a couple of those mojitos before you go on).

Fêtes de Genève
A drink, an open-air concert, and a cheeky ride on the ferris wheel at the Fêtes de Genève make the working week that much more bearable during the month of August.

The grand finale of the Fêtes is an absolutely spectacular, but ridiculously extravagant, firework display that lasts for 45 minutes.

When the final firework has fizzed, the international food stands, the cocktail bars, the rides, are all packed up and shipped off to some new location. The lakeshore becomes barren, the streets empty of people, and the outdoor terraces close down.

After a brief, torturous period when wakeboarding season has ended but before the ski season has begun, we all head off to enjoy après-ski in the mountains and gorge on fondue in our chalets.

Secretly, I would always be counting down the days until summer returned.

This year, though, I won’t be in Geneva to enjoy it.

Filed Under: Europe, Switzerland, Travel Tagged With: bains des paquis, fetes de geneve, Geneva, la terrasse, matadoru, montreux jazz festival, paleo festival, procter & gamble geneva, Switzerland, travel writing course, un headquarters

Dinner in Geneva (in 500 words)

27 January, 2013 By Anna S E Lundberg 1 Comment

So I finally got round to submitting the first assignment for my travel writing course. The brief was to write a guide on some aspect of my hometown in 500 words. Photo courtesy of fondue fiend Louise Imbsen.

Dinner in Geneva: fitting in with the locals

Well, when I say “the locals”, I’ve only on rare occasions met a true Genevois. Of Geneva’s 200,000 or so inhabitants, almost half are expats, and many of the others are Italian, Portuguese or Spanish immigrants from the 1960s and 1980s. This makes things a little complicated when it comes to social etiquette.

First things first: saying hello. In Geneva, we kiss three times, starting with the right cheek. This already becomes problematic as the French and the Italians tend to start with the left cheek, and kiss just twice, with potential for a more intimate greeting than you had intended as you bump lips. Depending on how attractive the other person is, this may or may not be a bad thing. Then there are the Swedes, The Huggers; the Brits, who prefer the formal handshake; and yet others who stick to the cool nod, avoiding physical contact altogether.

To sample a classic Swiss dish, you can’t go wrong with a fondue. The pot of melted cheese mixed with white wine and Kirsch is a social meal and perfect for those wintry nights. Order a platter of viande séchée with pickles to start. Correct fondue protocol is as follows: after the obligatory “Bon appétit!”, break a piece of bread into small chunks, then stick them one by one onto your fork and dip into the cheese. If you drop your bread in the pot, you must down your wine. (My dad claims this is just a ruse by men to get me drunk.) Do stick to wine, as water will make the cheese coagulate in your stomach. (Bleurgh.) Make sure you look the other person in the eye as you clink your glasses, or you’ll have bad sex for seven years. (This tends to lead to some exaggerated glaring to avoid this terrible fate.) “Santé!”

If the temperature of the fondue has been kept just right – adjusting the flame of the burner throughout the evening can be the source of some contention – you will eventually arrive at la religieuse, a layer of crusty cheese at the bottom of the pot to be savoured at the end of the meal. Then it’s time to order a moitié-moitié, a digestif of one half Williamine liqueur and one half Williamine eau-de-vie, to help break down all that cheese. After that, coffee. Okay, this is the Italian influence, but it is unacceptable to drink cappuccino or latte in the evening. Milky coffee is for breakfast; after dinner, you may have an espresso or, even better, a ristretto.

Finally, we arrive at the controversial topic of tipping. Tip is included in Switzerland so in theory you “shouldn’t” leave anything but some still think that’s rude. A compromise is to at least round up the total. As you leave the restaurant, you smile to the waiters, “Merci, au revoir, bonne soirée!”. The kissing ritual is repeated with your friends. Et voilà! You’ve survived your first dinner, Geneva style.

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: fondue, Geneva

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Anna Lundberg is a success coach and business strategist who helps experienced corporate professionals reimagine success outside of the 9 to 5.

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