Bonjour de la Suisse

Hello from Switzerland! ~~ The adventures of a California girl who got married to a great guy, G, and traded in her old life for the chance to live in a foreign land and live the expat life for a couple years. We live in Geneva, Switzerland with our globe-trotting cat, Scout.

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Lieu : California, United States

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." ~ G.K. Chesterton

samedi, décembre 03, 2005

Are we in Disneyland?!?

About a week and a half ago a strange metamorphosis began to take place in town. It wasn't so obvious at first, but slowly, surely everyone here has gone Christmas crazy! It's wonderful, but I kind of feel like I'm living in a holiday Disneyland. Every time I think that there cannot possibly be more decorations, the next day there are more!!

First, 20 foot live trees were inserted into the sidewalks all over town (they look like they are growing right out of the ground!) and covered in lights. They are massive, spanning about 2/3 of the width of the wide sidewalks and they are so many! There are about 20 in our short block alone. As for the trees that were already here, almost all are decorated and many have been surrounded by giant snowballs of light or giant snowmen.

Absolutely everything is covered in lights and many buildings have white lights that cover every inch of the facade. There is a small island in Lake Geneva that is about a block or so from our house. All of the trees on the island are covered in blue lights and there is some kind of light show that goes on here almost all night. When it is snowing it's really beautiful.

There are little wooden huts that have sprouted up all over town where people sell all kinds of holiday wares, a holiday ice skating rink was put up last weekend near the old part of town, and the department stores have cleared entire floors that are now dedicated to Christmas goods. I really love it, but I have never seen a city with more holiday decorations in my life! The level of detail is just amazing, even the ceiling of the train station is covered with green & red.

That’s what's new in Geneva! This weekend, Gary and I are heading to Milan, Italy for a weekend away. I'm eager to see how many decorations they have up! :) Next week I start intensive French lessons. I'm a little nervous, but I can't wait to get started.

Oh, and the highlight of the week: Gary and I went to our first "America's Club" meeting! It was fun, we mingled with people and then met a great girl from San Diego who also just moved here. We met some other really nice people too, including her very international friend who brought along her Swiss boyfriend. We all went to a big, traditional fondue dinner and drank some fantastic local wines! I sat next to one of the organizers of the dinner who grew up in a nearby town (and went to school in the states). They were all teaching us local customs and more fondue etiquette. We didn't get home until late into the night! It was great!

Have a wonderful weekend!

2 Comments:

Blogger Costa Rica Chica said...

I love the fondue thing. Especially when I don't have to clean the pot after. Glad to hear you are making so much headway and getting out there working it. Like you wouldn't!

The decorations sound a lot like my apt. I just went to home depot and bought some house plants and plugged in twinkly lights. And that will do it for my holiday season. Thanks and good night!

7:19 AM  
Blogger Swiss Miss said...

We just pulled the fake Christmas tree out of the basement that the girl who lived here last year left us. I bought some lights too. I LOVE the twinkly lights!

You know Chica, if you needed house plants, you could have had some of ours... ;)

Oh, and if you are wondering, I have already bought 4 new plants for our place here... Gary's idea of course! ;) Hehehe...

7:26 AM  

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