Switzerland

After a couple of glorious days in the UK I headed to Geneva to spend a couple of days with Cliff and Sharon, whom I have known since I moved to Douglasville Ga in the mid 80s.

Cliff is wrapping up a 19-year stint in Europe after initially agreeing to a 2-year stint in Germany. They lived for most of the time in the UK and loved that as well as the time in Germany and Switzerland. Cliff works for Diebold and was largely responsible for developing the market (and their success in those markets) in the former USSR states including Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. My timing was good as they are packing up to move back to the Atlanta area in the next 30 days.

Sharon and her friend Jean were in fact leaving the morning after I arrived (not a coincidence I would like to think!). We had a wonderful dinner of planked salmon and orzo pasta complemented with some good wine from a local (as in 200 meters away) vineyard. I do not know much about Swiss wines as they seem to be grown and bottled mostly for local consumption.

Their house is out in the country about 25km from Geneva with good Motorway access close by and they are about 100 meters off the lake with the access to be able to walk down to the lake.

Michael Schumacher (F1 driver) has his estate about 4km down the road.

On Wednesday Cliff did a couple of airport runs and then went to work so I had a quiet day catching up and reading and also walked down to one of the nearby village for some exercise and the general excitement. I got the exercise but no excitement!

As one would expect in Switzerland everything is neat, orderly and clean. There is no litter and everything appears to work well. In many respects it is a European version of Japan.

I am not sure where the poor people live but the cost of living is high for many things, but a coffee and a croissant at a café in Geneva was less than $4.

Weather was good during the day but clouded up overnight and we had a thundershower as Cliff and I had dinner in a local restaurant last night.

Today (Thursday) Cliff bought me in to Geneva on his way to work and I checked my bag at the train station and headed in to town.

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I booked a 14.15 train to my next destination in the French Alps. I walked over to the Cat offices and had a pleasant lunch with Greg Gardner a long time colleague and friend.
I also stopped for a crepe on the way back to the train station. I resisted the Nutella and went for lemon juice and a little sugar. Very good it was too!

The well-crafted plan was to return to the train station and take a train to Aix Les Bains about a 75 min ride. It is close to where my friend Peter lives in the French Alps. Quelle horreur!! The French train drivers are on strike (apparently they were not when I bought my ticket at 9am this morning!) Anyway a change of plan and Peter was inconvenienced by having to drive to Geneva to collect me. I will post some more about where they live and reflections on some conversations in the next post.

More about Hippo Lodge

Somehow this one got lost and was never published! Sorry

We basically have two complete days in  the bush and while we want to have a relaxed time with family, we also want to see what we can and see the bush and animals.

I was up not a whole lot after it got light and went down and got the remains of the campfire started as it is certainly cool in the mornings at this time of year. Maybe 8-10C (around 50F).The picture in the previous post was actually taken in the early morning and you can see a little mist on the river where the relatively warm river meets the cool air with just enough wind to form advection fog.

Over the next hour or so various bodies started to appear and we had a good cooked breakfast planned.

Although the chalet is self catering, Hippo Lodge supplies a kitchen helper who also keeps the hot water heater supplied with wood. His name is Brian and he was a great guy. There when needed but unobtrusive and efficient. We had heard a loud bang around 8 the previous evening and it was our water heater, but a crew arrived and had it fixed and the water back running in an hour or so. Highly unusual for Africa that anything gets fixed that quickly so kudos the to Hippo Lodge team.

A team effort (mostly the ladies I will admit) produced an excellent breakfast complete with toast from the newly created Zambian toaster. 

This was the grill (charcoal of course) that was flipped over and the grid portion placed over the embers of the fire. It even had a heat control (Wolf lifting the grid up and down with a stick) and cousin Fan made some excellent toast!