The 'season' begins in Geneva

I've just been into town (Geneva) after work today. It's late night shopping Thursday and I wanted to have a look around and get a few things.

There are a lot of Arab women in the city at the moment. Some in very chic designer outfits with Chanel headscarves and some in just plain black Abbayas, and then of course I remembered - it is 'the season'.

Each summer the French and Swiss sides of Lac Leman play host to some of the wealthiest people from all over the Middle East. It is said (and not all that jokingly) that half the worlds oil deals are done at the Four Seasons hotel lounge where they rent entire suites for a dozen or more family, friends and employees.

Outside the lobby there is always a continuous flotilla of top-of the-line Mercedes and stretch limousines. Not just your average businessmans expresses, but the sort reserved for Heads of State complete with immaculately attired chauffeurs.

During the day the men take care of business and the ladies and their extensive entourages go shopping and boy do they shop. Gucci, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, you name it, it is here.

One of the ladies I know used to work in a jewellery store in Geneva and told me that it was not uncommon for one of the men to come in with the extended group of family plus staff and look at some of the most expensive Swiss watches (Omega, Rolex, Piaget, etc) anc if they thought they were nice would say 'Very good - give me twenty' just like that. One hundred thousand Swiss Francs (about the same in $) without even batting an eyelid!! Other sales of diamond rings and necklaces can run into millions!!! There is some SERIOUS cash here during August and September.

Most of the time I feel pretty content that I'm doing AOK. But when I see these folks and the attendant lifestyle, I realise they and I live life on entirely different planets! Ah well, maybe if I saved reallly hard...

Holidays and highlights…

I’ve just got back from holidays a few days ago and it was fantastic.

Lots of sunshine, beautiful scenery, good food and friendly folks. I felt so relaxed and really enjoyed the pastel colours of Provence and its history, cuisine and culture.

I went to Avignon to see the Pope’s Palace (the Pope was resident in the South of France several hundred years ago), then Aix-en-Provence - a beautiful and charming city in Provence where Matisse once painted, then down to Marseille and with a final day just across the border a couple of hours away in Italy, at Pietra Ligura a coastal resort.

It was all wonderful but the highlight of highlights for me was to see, just off the coast of Marseille, the island fortress of Le Chateau D’if, made famous by Alexander Dumas in his novel ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’.

I loved this book as a kid and read it over and over. Then when I learned French, I read the original and delighted in the novel once again in its original language. To see the actual fortress was awesome. Imagining Edmond Dantes in his cell and the Father Faria next door. To see the Mediterranean where our hero swam after his escape. Too cool!

Pietra Ligura was nice and had a charming town square where husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends strolled cobble stone streets or ate outdoors in the local bistros in the cool of the summer evening.

At the end of the vacation it was time to head back through rolling Italian countryside to the Mont Blanc tunnel. Drive through several kilometres of tunnel with the highest mountain in Europe (4,808 metres of solid rock) right over your head to emerge back in France and head down the valley back to the apartment.

Well worth the trip and definitely worthy of another look later on and explore some more of the Roman history, the Gorges at Verdon, the markets etc.,etc.

I recommend the region and it is a great antidote to the workaday grind.

It’s a European thing…

Living in France near the Swiss border, you meet people from all over Europe. Italy is two and a half hours away as is Germany. In the Swiss city of Basle the river forms the northern border. Drive over the bridge and turn left and it is France. Drive over the same bridge and turn right and ‘Guten Morgen’ you’re in Germany! And of course come winter the whole place is full of Brits looking to go skiing.

With so many different nationalities all living in close proximity you get to see your European neighbours ‘up close and personal’, and have to learn to deal with their national oddities. So at the risk of entrenching stereotypes here’s my list of personal amusements!

The Germans are organised hard working people and that continues into their holidays. Go to a beach resort in Italy, France or Spain and there are lots of Goethe’s descendants soaking up the sun. Only problem is their national habit is getting up at the crack of dawn (very solid work ethic!) and putting towels on the beach chairs to ‘reserve’ them. They return for breakfast, get changed and eventually saunter out 2-3 hours later wanting to lay on ‘their’ lounge. In Germany this is perfectly reasonable – ‘I got up early and so bagged a chair – you didn’t’. The early bird catches the worm. This drives Brits crazy though as through their eyes ‘use it or lose it’ is the primordial ‘quasi-legal’ concept. Needless to say there are the odd discussions between Joachim and Henry as each side argues the merits of their case!

The Spanish are easy to spot – just close your eyes and listen for the loudest people around. They are passionate! Alternatively, Spaniards lurvvv to party and although they start later in the evening, anyone still going strong when their EU cousins are tucked up in bed counting sheep is probably from the land of Don Quixote!

The Brits love drinking pints and singing songs and discussing the merits of football (soccer) matches going back years, sometimes decades. These guys can’t remember their wives birthdays or where they put the car keys last night but can tell you Manchester United’s starting line up for the 1955 F.A. cup final like it was yesterday!

The French are the worlds family oriented gourmets. Come lunch time, they stop whatever they are doing (skiing, hiking, sailing), and adjourn to return to base and catch up with the family over something delicious. Afterwards, all is the well with the world and they head back out to jet-ski, bungee jump or hurl down mountain ski slopes.

The Italians on the way to their holiday remind me of George Costanza from a Seinfeld episode where was racing upstate (but had lost the others) yet was ecstatic to be ‘making good time’. It doesn’t matter if you are passing world class scenery, look at the car flashing past you on the auto route and it’s probably Luigi determined to get to Cote D’Azur in 2 hours neat!

The Swiss are outwardly confident but sometimes wonder whether they should be more organised like the Germans, gregarious like the Spanish, or have more ‘joie de vivre’ and ‘panache’ like the French They wonder though why everything isn’t quite as neat as it is back in Switzerland…

But everyone gets along because at the end of the day, the boss is Italian, the wife is Swiss, the mother-in law is German, the company is British and the main market is in France.

It's like the annual family get-together complete with all your weird relatives!

Dr. Strangelove and friends

My apologies for the cliched image, but has anyone been watchin the U.S. presidential nominations lately?

Anyone getting very worried about the 'I'm so much tougher than you are' rhetoric coming forth from some of these wannabes?

In the last two weeks, we've had some sort of highly dangerous bidding contest where each nominee is trying to outdo each other on national security to appear tough.

'I'm prepared to invade Pakistan'. Errmmm. Aren't they an ally?' And 'How would you feel if Russia invaded and bombed New Jersey because there was a Chechen terrorist cell there?' What's good for the goose is good for the gander after all.

What got me was the automatic assumption Obama had that he felt he could just invade/bomb any country whenever he felt like as if it was no big deal.

Another candidate says 'I'm prepared to drop nuclear bombs on Mecca'. Ermmm, wont' that completely p**s off the other one billion Muslims worldwide and start WWIII?

One nominee said 'I'm prepared (and will discard the unwritten 'no first use' rule that's stood for the last 50 years) to use tactical nukes in the battlefield'. Just like they are normal munitions! The world is trying to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and to prevent some countries using them as they 'could be potential threats', but yet these candidates are suggesting tossing atomic bombs around as casually as hand-grenades. Bit of a double standard wouldn'tcha think?

Pakistan has already protested saying that nominees should not use their nation to indulge in political chest beating.

Being 'strong' on national security has turned into a one-way ratchet where potential Presidents keep dialling up the rhetoric, are never allowed to talk to enemies, must act with extreme aggression to all and any threats, are prepared to authorise more invasions of privacy, more wiretappping, more state powers, more weapons, more spy satellites , more, more, more. Both parties are at it too.

If I were an American I would vote 'none of the above'.

At least Kennedy et al, despite all the public bravado over the Cuba crisis, had the good sense to go round and knock on the back door of the Soviet embassy and say 'Hey fella's, what say we work something out here before this thing gets outta control'.