If you had to describe 2011 in three pictures...

...what would those be?

That was the exercise with which I challenged myself last year here on the blog, and I thought it would be fun to repeat it now that 2011 is nearing the end. I carefully sifted through this year's photo collection for inspiration, and, like the last time around, picked the images that are not necessarily technically the best, but most illustrating.

From 1950s

2011 was a good year for me, the best in a while by far. What made it so great were friends, old and new. When I came to Geneva last summer I had one friend living here and one acquaintance who was about to move to another country. With a little bit of luck and quite a bit of enthusiasm, I managed to meet a whole bunch of smart and interesting people very quickly. With the passage of time and a little bit more of salt eaten together, as we would say back home, some of those new relationships evolved into really strong friendships, making this a wonderful year. I hope 2012 will be the year of friendships as much as or more than 2011 has been.



One of the best things about living in Geneva--if not the best--is its proximity to beautiful nature. You can just hop on the bike and in twenty minutes you are riding on country roads, through forests and picturesque villages, in a completely different world. 2011 was the year of many a great bike ride and beginning to explore the Jura with its amazing potential for walks, hikes and, of course, skiing.


2011 was also, in many ways, the year of the esprit du sud. It all began with that long awaited visit to Lisbon, the city that forever mesmerized me and planted a seed of longing for the south. The stay in Portugal was brief, but the torch passed to fado, salsa and tango so that the sourthern sun could continue to shine, warming even the grayest winter days. "Te quiero, Sur"...

Vuelvo al Sur

Vuelvo al Sur,
como se vuelve siempre al amor,
vuelvo a vos,
con mi deseo, con mi temor.

Llevo el Sur,
como un destino del corazon,
soy del Sur,
como los aires del bandoneon.



Sueño el Sur,
inmensa luna, cielo al reves,
busco el Sur,
el tiempo abierto, y su despues.



Quiero al Sur,
su buena gente, su dignidad,
siento el Sur,
como tu cuerpo en la intimidad.

Te quiero Sur...

(Astor Piazzolla)

Always wanted to...

1. Be a DJ.

2. Sing back vocals in a band.

3. Drive a tram.

4. Have a room with walls covered with bookshelves, crammed with books.

And you?

Fiat lux

That last Sunday of October has to be the saddest day of the year. We change back the clock and suddenly we are plunged into long, dark evenings. And it gets worse by the day. Who switched off the light?

Plus, there is November: fading colors, barren trees, gray skies, lots of rain.

Novembers should be abolished by decree. We should go from October straight into the season of Christmas fairs and mulled wine, without this nuisance in between.

On the bright side, there are still so many things one can do in November: heaps of books to be read, photo courses to be tried, pancake brunches to be had with friends. Who has time to succumb to melancholic thoughts when there is enough French homework to keep one busy for a year? And of course there is salsa--great at any season, absolutely necessary in this one.

So let's create some light with frantic activity.

And plenty of red.

The old age of nostalgia

"Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined future, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced that the smallest particle of the surrounding world was charged with a purpose of impossible grandeur; ah yes, and one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale gold foliage cascading down and by the high melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, the fireflies in the perfumed heat of a summer night"

Mark Strand

À la recherche des crepes perdus

It wasn't the pancakes that brought us to Lyon on a sunny October afternoon but, once there, we remembered excellent crepes we had in December, from street vendors somewhere in the old quarter of St. Jean. We thought it would be good to pay them a visit again, as it was just the right hour in the afternoon for some good mood substances. At a crucial junction, however, we chose right instead of left (never a good idea, if you ask me) and we ended up in a different part of the old town. Which, incidentally, had even better pancakes in store (if you believe in photographic evidence, take a look at the picture above this text).



After that mega dose of Nutella we continued the walk in high spirits, happy to amble without a plan or a goal (short on objectives, too). We ran into a brass band in the middle of a square.



Normally you pass by street musicians without stopping, barely registering their presence--even when that is Joshua Bell playing on a $3.5 million Stradivarius in a metro station. But these guys were hard to ignore as they were about a dozen, and played the loudest instruments that there are. Not only that, but they kept jumping, dancing and chasing unsuspecting spectators. They so obviously enjoyed themselves that you couldn't help wanting to share in on the joy.

The repertoire was ecclectic but one of the songs they performed particularly well was that old classic, "Quizas, quizas, quizas." I was so happy to be reminded of it as I like it very much. Of the countless versions that exist I chose the one by Nat King Cole because his performance is so mellow, and his accent very sweet. Here you go.

Mushroom picking

It is a peculiar trait of our mushroom expeditions that they rarely feature any mushrooms. Two deadly fungi and a modest edible specimen was our entire bounty, when we came armed with half a dozen baskets and some extra bags to boot. But while mushrooms were scarce, the apples were aplenty. In the village of Mourex, which was our starting point, there was a festival of apples and many a glass of freshly pressed apple juice was drunk.



A festival is always a good occassion for the local artisans to showcase their craft. In this particular case there was not much craftsmanship required to measure a kilogram of flour, but the scales were wonderfully old fashioned and the flour presumably bio.



Ah, that blessed age when happiness equals a basket of chestnuts! Just look at that proud face...

Serbia, briefly

From Srbija 09

The next stop on our Balkan tour was Serbia. There was a time when my pulse would beat frantically and my hands would sweat every time I crossed the border back to the home country. That was not the excitement from being back on the native ground, but a deep-seated fear of entering a black hole with no exit. Because, there used to be a time when we were so completely isolated in every sense that we were really just a black hole on the map of Europe that no one cared about much nor knew how to deal with. It didn't feel that good to be inside. In fact, it felt like being stuck in a small elevator, for about a decade.

From Leto 2011

Those awful times are gone now, and returning no longer sets off a panic attack (although residual feeling of slight discomfort never lies too far from the surface). Serbia equals family (and a handful of friends), and now that I have children of my own I realize how lucky I was to have my grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins so near, all living in the same town while I was growing up. Boris and Andrej do not have that privilege, so making an effort to visit the grandparents is so important. It is also the only opportunity for them to hear their mother tongue in its natural environment, in all of its picturesque varieties.

The Balkans under the summer sun

This year our summer journey to the Balkans began in Croatia, on the island of Hvar. I had last been there in 1987 with my school. Back then we used to spend one week per school year having classes somewhere other than our hometown. There was an attempt to vary the landscape (a little bit of mountains, a little bit of the coast)so in the final year of lower primary school we were taken to Hvar. This was four years before the beginning of the war and little did I know that it would be many years before I will go to Croatia again; harder to imagine still that I would need a passport (even a visa at some point) to do that. But in 1987 it was still the age of innocence, soon to be rudely interrupted.



While we were watching the sea at the promenade outside of Split's old town, I tried to explain to Boris that this was once one country--my country--from there to granny's, that there were no borders from us to the sea. But of course Croatia means little to him and the Adriatic sea is just one of many, and not the measure of all things maritime. I noted with some sadness that Yugoslavia will be a completely abstract construct for him, a historical fact with no relevance. Will it be less real when there is no one around to remember it?


One interesting thing about Croatia is that it desperately does not want to be associated with the Balkans--in Croatia, the Balkans is others (primitive, backward, oriental). And yet if we take Kundera's homeland litmus test (obscenities are our strongest link with the homeland, to paraphrase) then I have to say I feel quite at home in Croatia. Swearing is rife, and curses identical (the great Croatian writer Miroslav Krleza was attributed as saying "God save me from Serbian bravery and Croatian culture," which sounds just about right to me). Maria Todorova`s fantastic book "Imagining the Balkans" would be a great read for anyone further interested in Balkan identities, both denied and acknowledged.

Why Jose Mourinho is a Serb

1. He is arrogant (but charming).

2. He makes enemies right, left and center.

3. He is a master of conspiracy theories.

4. It is always somebody else's fault.

5. He sincerely believes he is special.

Jose, Srbine!

Letters from Lisbon, part 1

I am still under the spell of Lisbon: its crisp sunshine, the promise of the ocean, Tejo in its monumental calm. A little further upstream Tejo (Tagus) is just your regular river with little to boast about, but as it approaches the ocean it suddenly expands. Andrej kept referring to it as "the sea" (When are we going to walk by the sea?)



Pasteis de nata or, in this case, pasteis de Belem, bought in the famous bakery right next to the Jeronimous Monastery. When I say famous I mean that people come from all parts of Lisbon just to get these little custard tarts, and they don't mind standing in lines that extend well onto the street. I stirred a little bit of controversy among friends when I said, on Facebook, that I thought they were too greasy. People swear by these things! Bowing under popular pressure, I had to give them another try, and then a third, until I ended up eating them every day. They do grow on you.



The concept of privacy has to be very different when your entire neighborhood knows your favorite colors, where you buy your trousers, and what is the size and color of your underwear. Still, I loved the ubiquitous laundry and have about a hundred pictures to prove it. I would like to see some laundry in Geneva. If there is ever a radical Swiss group gathered around some progressive ideology, I suggest they hang laundry on their windows and balconies to protest whatever they must protest against--I can't imagine a bigger affront to Swiss middle-class sensibilities. It would probably also break 11 different rules, on the communal, cantonal and the federal level.

Mixed loyalties

Last night Boris was playing by himself, imagining he was at a football match and cheering for France against the Brazilians. We figured that's something he picked up from school, so we decided to ask him some questions.

R: Why do you support France?
B: Because they are so good!
J: But what if France played against Bulgaria, who would you support?
B: Bulgaria, of course! They are better.
J: And if Bulgaria played against Serbia?
B: I would be for Serbia.

So far, so good. He learned a few brownie points there, but I had one more question, out of curiosity.

J: But if France played against Serbia, who would you be for?
B: France!
J: France?! Are you sure???
B: Yes, definitely France! They are so good.

Now, that's typical Boris for you: no permanent loyalties, supporting the side he thinks is better and more likely to win. He is like that when we play games, too. He is always with the parent who is winning and, consequently, mercilessly abandoning the losing parent in the midst of the fight. Sometimes it backfires, and the moment he switches sides the luck changes, too. That can be very frustrating, but so far it hasn't taught him a lesson when it comes to loyalty.

But that whole funny exchange made me think about his identity as well, and how he might feel about it when he is a bit older to start grappling with these issues. He is naturally very adaptive, and I have little doubt that he will integrate seamlessly if we stay in France long enough. But will he feel French, or will France simply be "douce France, cher pays de mon enfance"? Will he feel, the way I do sometimes, that he does not belong anywhere; and will that be a liberating feeling or give him discomfort?

Discovering France: Lyon

I must have been very hungry while taking pictures in Lyon, because every other image is of a brioche, a cake, a tart, pralines or some aubergines thrown in for an attempt at a healthy balance. There must be something to the claim that my guidebook makes about Lyon being a gastronomic paradise. Half a day was not enough to test the claim against hard evidence, but what I managed to glimpse in the city's pattiseries was indicative in its mouth-wateriness.

This is a traditional Lyonnaise restaurant called bouchon, much like a bistro, serving simple but hearty food with an emphasis on meat. Bouchon literally means cork and there are various theories about the origin of the name.

My favorite is the one in which owners collect the corks, as the guests drain wine bottles, as a way of keeping tab. I prefer this one to the (more likely) other version which says the owners used to put a bit of straw next to the signs of their establishments, so that the travelers would know their horses could be fed (bouchonné) there. Like I said, I prefer the story with the corks even though circumstantial evidence (aka the straw, as seen on the picture) strongly suggests that theory number 2 is right and theory number 1 is wrong. Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story, as we used to say back at university, studying journalism.



Despite having read about Lyon's old town with its traboule or intricate networks of hidden passages and small streets, I somehow expected a modern city with an ugly urban sprawl and not much to see (I must be prejudiced against French big cities). In reality Lyon is a beautiful place that has grown around two rivers, Rhone and Saone. That reminded me a bit of Belgrade, with the Sava and the Danube, although that confluence that you can see from the Kalemegdan fortress is unbeatable.



Another thing I noticed browsing through my Lyon pictures: there is a lot of bright red in them. Red is one of my favorite colors so I am naturally more attuned to it. It's also that the color palette of the outside world has been in the shades of gray and brown in the last months, so any splash of color feels like desert rain.

#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...