Snippets

A few things from today:

-In perhaps an incredibly revealing tidbit about where we live and French attitudes, I learned tonight where to buy good beer: the Santoriz. That is, the health food store. I, for one, am not surprised that beer is a health tonic!

-The milk farmers in France and Switzerland are protesting for a variety of reasons, including lack of price protections for milk. This morning, as we were walking down the super steep, small road next to the Mairie, I started smelling something amazing and realized that in the middle of the night, the farmers placed a large sign up across from the Mairie and dumped quite a lot of hay over the sidewalk.

-A few days a week we both head into Geneva early and wait for the bus in the same place and at the same time as all the high school students. I love the ritual of greetings -- every time a new person arrives to the group, they have to do the three cheek kisses with every other person. When the groups get larger, there can almost be no conversation because each time a new person comes in, they have to stop for several minutes to greet everyone. This is not just a teenage thing; if I leave work with a group of coworkers, we all have to exchange the kisses and individual pleasantries before saying goodbye. It is also interesting because it is perfectly appropriate to exchange the bises (cheek kisses) with a person with who you are still vouvoye with (i.e. one that you do not call "tu" but "vous"). Interesting, there are also different terms for different types of kisses. Bises are the cheek kisses, bisous are romantic kisses.

-It is expected that some people do not have cars and use the bus for all of their transportation needs. Therefore, the buses allow people to bring items not allowed on buses at home. For example, one's dog can ride the bus, but you have to buy it a full price ticket. This is how we found ourselves on the bus at 7:10 this morning listening to a series of plaintive meows as a young guy had his cat in a carrier on his lap. On the big bus, everyone was crammed in and his carrier was on the floor, so most people didn't notice it and whenever the cat yeowled, the riders glared at the guy who was listening to loud heavy metal on his headphones, thinking the sounds were part of his music.