#Reverb10: To future self

Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (December 21, #Reverb10)


1. Chocolate is good for your soul. It is unlikely that you, my future self, will ever have any doubts about the validity of this statement, but I just want to make sure that there are no weird ideas on this five years from now.

2. If in doubt, wear short. Just as chocolate, it is good for your soul. It is cold? Thicker stockings should do the trick. Wet? That's why you have those lovely wellies (your n-th pair, in fact). You don't have the shoes to match that particular skirt or dress? Puh-lease.


3. If you know where you want to go, you'll find a way to get there. It sounds simple, because it is simple; but, really, how many of you know what you want?


4. Listen to your intuition: it never failed. Your mind will find a thousand and one excuse for why you should keep the status quo, in whatever field of life, but if your gut is telling you to run, head for the nearest exit.


5. Time is a scare commodity: use it well.

Does anyone else want to have a go at advising his/her future self? It's a fun exercise--you might want to try it in between two heavy meals, TV watching and trips to the cupboard where you are hiding the sweets. Joyeux Noel!

If you had to describe 2010 in three images...

...what would those be?

I've been struggling with this self-imposed task for a couple of days now. At times it seemed that three pictures would be not nearly enough and at others I thought I could sum up the whole year in just one photo.

These are not necessarily my best photos this year, or my favorite ones, but each tells a piece of the story that was 2010.



I have a theory that one should not go back to places where one had been very happy, and so I stayed away from my university town for years. It is a strange theory, but loosely based on the idea that you cannot step in the same river twice--going back to the place that holds so many happy memories, but without people who made those memories possible, would have to be disappointing. So it was that with a big lump in the throat I sat on the bus from Sofia to Blagoevgrad, going to one of the regular alumni reunions that I never attended before.

It was amazing and completely uplifting to walk the familiar streets, to pass by all the special places, to see people I hadn't seen for years; the most amazing was a complete sense of belonging, finally. I have a feeling it was somehow the tipping point of the year--from then on there was energy, drive and happiness where it had been lacking before. For those in the know: AUBG is still AUBG.



More than any other, 2010 was the year of foot-the-ball (copyright: Terry Pratchet). First there was a warm up in the shape of the Champion's League and then came the World Cup, probably the best in years. It had all the elements of a gripping telenovella: suspense, drama, twists and turns, scandals, surprises and, of course, tears. It was fantastic, and it left a huge hole in the shape of a round ball once it was over. On a side note: if you love football and you haven't read "Unseen Academicals" yet (Terry Pratchet), do so, and you won't regret it. Hilarious!



In Bulgaria, it is a custom to put fortune-telling pieces of paper wrapped around small branches into Christmas banitsa so that you know what the new year will bring (other than cholesterol) while you are munching on cheese-filled pastry, grease trickling down the chin. My fortune for 2010 was learning and I think banitsa never got it so right. It's not just that I learned (or am learning) to dance salsa, or re-learned to ride a bike (think Critical Mass, 22km to Szentendre, and many miles clocked on the hilly terrain of Peak District) but it's more about re-learning to be me, with a huge sense of relief.

That was 2010 in pictures for me. What about you?

Winter solstice

Today is the darkest day on this hemisphere and the official beginning of winter, though with two heavy snowfalls already in these parts, we switched to winter mode (and mood) at least a few weeks ago. But today we get an official reminder that three more months of cold, grayness and possibly quite a lot of snow lie ahead. All in all, not a day with a great joy potential and long winters are not something I usually enjoy or look forward to, but today is a great day because it is, in a way, the worst of the season. It only gets better from here.

Tomorrow, we will have two more minutes of daylight, the day after tomorrow will be four, and so on. Of course we won't notice any of that for weeks to come, but at least we can be safe in the knowledge that things are getting better, and that we are moving (crawling maybe, but let's not split hair!) in the direction of something beautiful (a.k.a. spring, sun, long days). That's the power of incremental change for you.

Besides, 21st always means that holidays are near, and some well-deserved rest will soon be enjoyed. Or some well-deserved skiing, skating, or reading by the fireplace with a mug of cocoa (the sound of kids bickering muffled in the background).

Happy winter solstice, then, and enjoy those two more minutes of light tomorrow!

Two left feet or a dancing queen?

It has been about five years, and possibly more, since I wanted to learn to dance salsa. Come end of the year and I would put it on my mental list of NY resolutions, again. These are some of the excuses I came up with, at various times, for missing yet another dancing season:

1. I was too busy with two small children
2. Husband was traveling too much so we would miss too many classes or I would have to (shock, horror!) dance with some stranger
3. Taking classes with the said husband would imply a complicated logistical babysitting operation
4. Too costly
5. I wouldn't understand the instructions in Hungarian

All of them are so lame that I am embarrassed to even write them. The real reason? I have long suspected that I had no gift for dancing. I was convinced that I had two left feet and would very likely make a fool of myself and get completely frustrated by that dancing business. So assuming I would not be brilliant I was afraid to try and fail--enter lame excuses--but kept wanting to push myself outside of that particular comfort zone. Ah, the internal struggle...

Then I moved to Geneva, found a course next door, during lunch time, at a reasonable price, so I had no choice but to bite the bullet and face the scary and fascinating world of salsa learning. Of course, I am loving it! The joy of learning something new and the pleasure of sheer physical exercise are immense, and now that we are two months into the course, there is a certain camaraderie forming in the group. We might still not know each other's names, but everyone dances with everyone else and we end up joking and laughing a lot. It's great fun.

Certain skeptics (you know who you are) will say that salsa is simple and what's the big fuss? Except that I don't think it is. It might be easier and less sophisticated than, say, tango, but there are dozens of different steps and variations within steps, if you want to go beyond the basics. There is no preset choreography--you can mix and match the steps as you like, with only a few exceptions--so you need to read your partner's signs very well if you are to be in sync.

Salsa is the kind of dance in which the male dancer leads, so he decides what is happening next. The really fascinating bit for me is that he should communicate his intent only through gentle movements of his hand. If he wants you to turn, he lifts your arm; if he lets go of your hand, you are both turning; a gentle push on your back lets you know that the next is dille que no.

The entire communication lies in his hands, literally, which is why salsa is usually more difficult for guys to master (or so my teacher says). We are supposed to just follow the cues, even if being led does not come naturally to some of us ("You have to let him lead!"--teacher to me). It doesn't take long to realize how much smoother everything flows if the person you dance with knows how to lead as opposed to moving about indecisively. Sending mixed signals, in salsa just as in real life, is a big no-no.

Back to the title: as of today, I can officially announce that I do NOT have two left feet. Dancing queen? I'm not sure there are huge reserves of untapped talent here but the keyword is: fun.

Those quadrilingual kids

Two months ago, Boris and Andrej did not speak a single word of French. I can only imagine how completely lost they must have felt those first days in French public school, unable to make sense of anything around them. We had taught them, strategically, to say "Je veux faire pipi" (I would like to pee) and with that they were thrown in at the deep end.

Thinking rationally, I expected them to learn fast, or at least faster than your regular kid, because they already spoke three other languages fluently. But reality seemed too formidable--so many hundreds and thousands of words, plus grammar. How could they cope with that?

In a way, they had never learned a foreign language before--they simply had three native languages. I know that this is an unscientific view, since everyone is supposed to have only one really native language, the strongest of the ones you speak. But Boris and Andrej were exposed to three languages simultaneously, and picked them up more or less at the same time (Bulgarian lagged a little bit, then caught up). We could never say which one was the strongest.

During the last year of our life in Budapest they switched to speaking Hungarian among themselves, even though the quality of the other two languages didn't suffer. When they moved here, they continued using Hungarian during play. Then one day about a month and a half into their French schooling, I overheard them speak French to each other. They were parroting the words and phrases heard from other kids and it was a limited number of sentences that they used, but it was French alright. They just quietly dropped Hungarian and adjusted to the new reality. Of course, they are far from full comprehension and fluency, but ils se debrouillent beyond my most generous expectations.

I don't think they are exceptionally gifted--they just grew up in weird linguistic circumstances, and many of our friends' children are exactly the same. When you think about that ability of children to absorb whatever language is thrown at them you wonder why, even in countries with multiple official languages, bilingualism is such a hard sell. In places like Switzerland you'd think they would had bilingual kindergartens from here until next week but, in reality, multilingualism simply means that different regions speak different languages. That is a real shame (on the positive side, that means I can live here and not have to learn Swiss German--whew...).

Switzerland 101

Before moving to Switzerland I associated the country with chocolate, secret bank accounts, and murky role in the WWII. Add to that the Alps and the iconic cows (think Milka) and that would be the extent of my knowledge.

For the first time in my life I am living/working in a country of which I know so little, and whose history, culture and society hardly even registered on my map prior to coming here. I was equally a foreigner in Bulgaria and Hungary, but these countries meant something to me through centuries of shared history. It might have been shared at knife- or gun-point most of the time and we might interpret it very differently, but at least there was shared recognition of historical events.

No such thing here. Even living in the UK was very different because I had been so steeped in British literature, language and pretty much anything Britain-related that it never even felt foreign--just quirky, and mostly in a likable kind of way. With Switzerland, there are neither commonalities, nor prior interest, only some vague ideas and stereotypes.

I tried my friend Amazon for some Switzerland 101 resources to boost my shaky knowledge base (it is embarrassing if all of your information about a country comes from a guidebook) but it is surprisingly difficult to find books in English that try to explain Switzerland to foreigners beyond the practical advice on living, working, getting around by train or buying property. Many of the books that the above-mentioned guidebook recommends for further reading are either out of print or strangely expensive (must one be rich to be interested in Switzerland?).

One that I manage to get through a colleague was excellent; it's called Why Switzerland by Johnatan Steinberg and it tries to answer why we should care about Switzerland and what it is that makes it so special. It's a good overview of Swiss society, with chapters on history, culture, religion, etc but the most amazing--and also the most confusing--was the one about the voting. I have never heard of a voting system so complicated. I may need Swiss voting for dummies but in the meantime I am going to try something called Swiss Watching--yet another Brit promising to unmask Switzerland beyond banks and skis. It's got raving reviews on Amazon, was Financial Times 2010 book of the year, so even if it is half as entertaining and informative as it is branded, it must be a good read. I wonder if it will cover voting?

If anyone can manage snow...

...that should be the Swiss, right? The country of Alps, Jura and Saleve gets plenty of it every year and lives off it quite nicely, too, so you would not expect any surprises there.

And yet, Geneva was plunged into absolute chaos few days ago when it snowed for 24 hours, resulting in about 30cm of snow cover. Traffic was mad, people spent hours stuck in jams, buses were completely out of schedule if they came at all. Wednesday morning TPG decided to cancel all buses and trolleybuses, then changed the decision few hours later, but nobody had any idea when or if the buses were going.

On the French side it was even "better"--our prefecture simply decided to cancel both of the buses that link us to Geneva, and we were left to either navigate uncleaned roads, or walk to work.

What was that all about?! I heard a few explanations:

1. The Swiss don't use salt or grit on roads (for environmental reasons or not to damage roads) so cleaning is very difficult
2. Geneva does not typically get that much snow so the city was caught by surprise

I would venture a third: maybe we just live in the wrong part of Switzerland? We consider the Swiss the paragon of efficiency and punctuality, and Switzerland as the place where things just work smoothly (at least that was my opinion before moving). But that might be Switzerland on the other side of the rostigraben, and not Suisse Romande? Here we could easily slip into a discussion on what it really means to be Swiss or if there is such a thing as being Swiss, but we won't--not on the account of 30cm of snow.

There is a silver lining, though--possibly because they don't use salt on the roads, the snow remains clean and very white, so we've had a truly fairy-tale landscape these days. The funniest thing is that I haven't enjoyed snow this much in decades, traffic jams and all...

What's disability to you?

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities and my colleagues have just launched the first in the series of videos in which people with disabilities talk about what it means to them. This is the story of Faustina from Tanzania--I think she is fabulous.

Chestnuts

Despite the ever colder mornings and crisp sunshine that does not warm you up, the change of seasons has not quite registered with me. When I look out from my office window, I still see only green, even though the mountain peaks in the distance are getting a bit foggy.

But as I walked around Basel with my friend P., trying to ignore the biting cold and rain, I noticed a street vendor selling roasted chestnuts. That's when I knew that autumn is here for real, there is no mistaking the fact. The season of short days and comfort food is creeping in.

I love the smell and taste of roasted chestnuts. Somehow, when you roast them at home they are never as tasty as those you buy on the street, in a newspaper cone, but they are still delicious. Friends have told me that people here go to the forests and collect chestnuts at this time of the year, and that's something I would really like to do, especially with the boys.

We used to collect horse chestnuts in the Varosmajor park, on our way home from the kindergarten--bag after bag of them. The entire park was covered with conkers and Boris was keen not to leave a single one behind. We had tons of horse chestnuts all over our house, and there was nothing we could do with them, except make jewelry and toys, but I am a very very talentless person in handicraft department. Which is why this year I am looking forward to collecting something that is both aesthetically pleasing and edible. A winning combination.

Wives and lenses

This summer I finally bought my first DSLR, a second-hand Nikon (it had to be Nikon after so much peer press persuasion) D70. I didn't mind a second-hand camera, but I wanted to have a new lens, the only problem was that I didn't know which one. To find an optimal ratio between price and functionality is not easy, especially when you are a beginner with so much to learn, but a fussy beginner who does not want a standard kit either.

Dozens of reviews and much consultation with friends later, I set my mind on a 50mm f.1.8. This is a fixed-length lens, also known as prime lens. It has no zoom, something I thought would be hard to get used to, especially when graduating from a point&shoot--you get so used to pressing that button for zooming in and out. In practice, it just means that you have to get closer if you want to get a close-up, or step back if you want to get everyone and everything in the picture. So it is a little bit more hard work inasmuch as you have to walk back and forth a little bit more.



It is an excellent portrait lens, though, and it has a 1.8 maximum aperture (standard lens kits usually have 3.5-5.6) which allows you to experiment with depth of field, and also to shoot in low light conditions without flash. Since I'm in love with apertures and the whole appeal of having a DSLR lies exactly in being able to play with depth of field, this lens has been a true love.







I am definitely having fun with this lens. But, of course, at some point you start thinking that maybe you need something for nature photography and landscapes, and zoom has its advantages as well. And so it begins again, the lens searching bug.

One of my new colleagues is a fantastic photographer, so we had a little chat recently about all things photo, including--inevitably--lenses. He warned me to choose wisely, because, as he said, lenses are like wives, they tend to stick around.

I have little experience with lenses and even less with wives, so I asked a friend--an amateur photographer himself--whether the same would apply to husbands.

His answer?

"Husbands are like bodies, they get out of fashion and outdated..."

Andrej's boats

When I broached the subject of moving to Geneva with Andrej (clever Boris had figured it all by himself much earlier), in an attempt to sell Geneva's advantages over Budapest I told him it had a big and beautiful lake. The conversation went something like this:

"Are there boats in it?"
"Lots of boats and you will really like them."
"Big boats?"
"Big boats as well."
"It's okay then."

So the other day I went for a stroll by the lake, just to check if the boats I had promised to Andrej were still there.

And so they were, in many different sizes.

And colors. But then I spotted the winner:



For the boy who likes big boats...

What's in a name?

"...That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Before I got married I considered changing my family name to that of my husband, but the consideration was brief. Even if the thought of administrative hassle would not have been enough of a deterrent, my new name would simply not sound good and, given how my husband's family name was spelled at the time, it would have given rise to awful mispronunciation.

My decision did not mean that I didn't care about marriage as such (I certainly did more than my spouse), or that somehow I cared about my husband less than if I had taken his name. Nobody around me raised an eyebrow, except, typically, my best friend M., who said that he would not have tolerated something like that. Luckily--as he had been told countless times--I am not married to him.

I remember having a conversation with my grandfather (my father's father) back when I was in high school and marriage was a very abstract issue. I told him that I intend to remain Jelica V if and when I get married, and he said that would be the right thing to do. And although he did not live to see me marry, I thought of him when I was signing at the registry, knowing he would be proud.

I am also sure he would have been just as bemused as I was the other day, when Credit Agricole repeatedly tried to make me put my husband's family name as my prenom, on the grounds that this is how it was done in France.

My interview for opening a bank account was going swell, I was managing the conversation in French and was very proud of myself, when the lady noticed that my lease agreement lists me and Ruslan under different family names. That's where she started fretting. In France, apparently, you are supposed to take your husband's name.

"I know that in some northern countries there is a choice and, obviously, it is the same chez vous (her face at this point reflecting the effort of someone trying to place chez vous on a mental map, but alas it all gets fuzzy to the east of Germany) but here in France it is not like that."

At first, I am amused and I smile at this unexpected cultural difference, thinking to myself that at least chez nous is more progressive in something, which is rare. But unfortunately she starts trying to make me change my name on the bank account, so that it doesn't say Madam V but Madam Z.

"Excusez-moi, mais Madam Z n'existe pas!"

At this point I would like to give her a lecture about democracy, progress and women's rights, as well as to remind her that we are in France and not Saudi Arabia, but my brain is slow in French and a tirade ridden with grammatical errors would surely loose punch. Besides, she notices that I am getting annoyed so she drops the subject. After another half an hour of talk she mentions the "name issue" again (I swear this is how she refers to it) at which point I look at her menacingly and say very slowly, and with emphasis.

"Madam, this is my bank account and this is my name. Let us leave my husband out of this."

And so we do, but I still don't have my bank account. I would like to think that is because I am yet to submit proof of address (justificatif de domicile) and not because my name is problematic. But I am preparing my lecture (see above) just in case. The next person who dares suggest I change my name has no idea what's coming at them...

My blonde life

My one-year blond phase is now officially over. I had enough of very blond and wanted something more subtle, along the lines of strawberry or ash blond, but my hairdresser had other ideas, so I ended up with the color of expired chocolate. Enough said.

It has been a fun year, though. I could finally verify for myself whether gentlemen prefer blondes (they do). I felt a certain lightness of being which is not characteristic of my true brunette self. I took myself a little bit less seriously and I think I was also taken a bit less seriously by others, which was a welcome change.

When you are blond, people tend to smile to you more and generally have a more positive predisposition. Beats me as to why it should be so. Maybe I just looked less intimidating than usual?

There seems to be, apparently, an evolutionary explanation for why men prefer blonds:

A blue-eyed male with a brown-eyed mate would not have the same assurance the resulting brown-eyed infant was his child and therefore worthy of a slice of the mammoth he risked his life trapping and slaughtering and then spent days dragging back across miles of icy tundra.

Now it dawns on me that the origin of that fantastic Bulgarian proverb, which says that there is no hungry blonde ("ruso gladno niama") probably date back to those mammoth-hunting times.

In retrospect, I did enjoy it. I also think I was a pretty convincing blonde, attitude and all. So there might be a second phase to this experiment. In the meantime I am sticking with chocolate.

An afternoon in Luzern

On Saturday I hopped on the train to Luzern to see my friend Dana and her husband, who drove down from Strasbourg for the weekend. Exactly two hours and fifty minutes later I was there, surprised to discover a town much more beautiful and lively than I had imagined.

Just like many Swiss towns, Luzern is also situated on a lake and a river, Reuss. When I arrived, it was early Saturday afternoon on a mild and sunny day, and the cafes and restaurants on the river bank were overflowing with people. There is nothing like a combination of sun and body of water to create a holiday feeling--must be some sensor in the brain, especially for us who come from a bit more South European latitudes.




After briefly consulting our various guidebooks, we decided to walk in the vague direction of the old town. There were certain things we wanted to see but I always found so much more pleasure in accidental discoveries. At some point we ditched the map, too, and relied on (mostly Radu's) intuition, which is how we ended up on a small, arty street, just off a major boulevard. Whether it was the pastel colors of the facades, Gothic looking types on the street, or the murals, but that short street felt like some isolated, parallel reality.


Brief break in the small park, by the famous lion statue--commemorating Swiss mercenaries at the service of Louis XIV, killed at the beginning of the French revolution. Dana and I got a free chocolate each just by agreeing to fill in a questionnaire for the tourist office--now, that's what I call an incentive.


It occurred to me that Luzern was my first venture outside of Suisse Romande, or French-speaking part of Switzerland. It was definitely a good starting point. Now that I am armed with two guidebooks, one book about history of Switzerland and a half-fare railway card, I can't wait to continue my explorations.

Boys

Geneva has a lot of things going for it--don't believe those who easily dismiss it as boring--but what it does not have, yet, are these two fellows in blue, pictured here in the kitchen of my parent's home. I have never been separated from them this long but tomorrow there'll be cuddles and tickling and jumping and screaming and tonnes of kisses. Less then 24 hours to go...

Summer snippets

Sipping Greek coffee by the beach, while studying the map of Thassos. Or is the coffee Turkish? A quintessential Balkan dispute--petty, but always potentially dangerous. What matter is that the seeds are roasted right, not too mild but not too burnt either; that you heap generous amounts of coffee into the water; and that you brew it not one second longer than necessary (if you like a practical demonstration, send me an email :)

In a taverna under a century-old Platanus orientalis (Oriental plane) you eat a piece of toasted bread with some olive oil and a pinch of basil, and the world feels right. Especially once the grilled meat arrives.

A village, a promenade, a beach--Skala Marion in a nutshell. An ordinary place, where families run tavernas and grocery stores and rent out room for tourists. There are no hotels, aqua parks, carousels, or stands selling fake designer bags and cheap trinkets. It's a place which lives off tourism, but has a life without tourists as well, and this is why it is so beautiful.

A boy with a yogurt mustache, who just told me he wanted to come and live with me, so that he can start speaking French...

Through Lavaux

The first weekend in Geneva was spent exploring the Swiss side of the Geneva lake. The guidebook was full of praise for Lavoix, a wine region between Lausanne and Montreax, so we took the train to Cully and started from there.

A pedestrian road winds through the wine villages, each a few kilometers away. The view is fantastic--on the one side, wide expanses of neatly-ordered vines, and on the other, a view on the lake and the Alps in the distance. The houses are few and far between, which makes the landscape even more beautiful.

We passed through the village of St. Saphorine on our way to Vevey. Although quaint and picturesque, it would not have been different than any of the others we walked through had we not glanced at one of the local restaurants and noticed a menu of 150CHF. That was a no-nonsense introduction to Swiss prices that took some time to sink in. For the record, we went to Vevey and had a gyros for 15CHF.

I could not pass up an opportunity to take a photo of some boats. When you see them like this in a small marina, you could be forgiven for thinking you are somewhere by the sea.

And if you don't own a boat, you can always get on one of these regular cruisers--the view of the mountains is even better from the water.

From Budapest to Geneva

Budapest, shortly before I left

And also from Budapest bits to here. I deliberated for weeks on what to do with my old blog–to continue to write under the umbrella of “Budapest bits” seemed strange, even though that blog was never really about the city of Budapest. To change the title also did not feel right, after three years and more than 200 posts.

And so it looks like the most logical thing to do is to start afresh. Perhaps the sight of a completely empty archive will motivate me to write more, because I haven’t blogged much lately. I missed it, but the emotions around the move were too much for words.

But now I am here, and it is time to resume life at the normal level of excitement.