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Filets de Pêrches
If you go into a restaurant in Geneva area then there is a good chance that one of the dishes on the menu will be Filets de Pêrches – fillet of perch. After living here for sometime, a colleague of my husband remarked that it was a wonder anyone could swim in Lake Geneva, the amount of Perch that was on offer in the restaurants. He was of course alluding to the fact that the restaurants give the impression of offering fresh fish from the lake, when it is anything but. It is imported frozen from other countries. Some restaurants do sell perch from Lac Leman, as Lake Geneva is…
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The Swiss School Run
That when we were young, almost everyone walked to school. I can’t remember any school friend being driven to school, even one friend who lived quite far away walked. Today, when doing the Swiss school run, I had the impression that quite a few of my childrens’ classmates were driven to school, and from what I hear from friends in UK, I would imagine that most British parents drive. According to the UK Department of Transport, road traffic accidents involving taking children to school have doubled in the past twenty years. Today on Twitter, I undertook a very unscientific study, and found that although some people lived too far from the…
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Classic Cars, Lake Geneva and Sunshine
A pretty good combination, if you ask me. A couple of weeks ago we went to the Morges British Classic Car Meeting. It is an annual event, attracting over 1500 cars and motorbike and over 20 000 visitors. The town of Morges is situated on the banks of Lake Geneva. The pedestrianised shopping street is not far from the promenade and is particularly inviting on Saturdays because of the Farmers’ Market. We had a wander amongst the French antiques, soaps and delicacies before heading down to the Lakeside where the cars vied for attention with the lake and the mountains beyond. We had a pretty good spot, opposite the harbour. There…
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Saint de glace – or why it is is cold today
At the school gate today, I complained to one of the locals about the cold weather we are injuring at the moment. After several weeks of balmy Spring days it was quite a shock to have to put the heating back on and dig my winter jacket out of the cellar. I was expecting an exclamation of “La Bise, La Bise!” which is normally what happens when the cold wind whistles down Lake Geneva. Non. It is apparently the Saint de Glace, the Ice Saints. I can remember from my years in Germany that there was a rule to wait until after the Eisheiligen to put the flowers onto the…
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Avec la bise, lave ta chemise – it is washing day
I don’t think that I have blogged about La Bise, the bitingly cold Northwind that whistles down Lake Geneva from the Alps. Probably because if La Bise is blowing, my fingers are too cold to type. Anticyclones (whatever they are – I am copying from the fascinating Winds of The World section on WeatherOnline.co.uk) over North West or Central Europe push the air through the gap that Lac Leman was formed in, whooshing down to the end of the Lake where some silly fool decided to build Geneva. Gust can reach 7bft, which I have discovered means 60km/h. That is faster than you are allowed to drive in Geneva, I…
