Then, imperceptibly, the trip’s energy reversed, in the same way a crowd at a play or concert begins to filter back into the theater even before the lights blink.
You could feel it. We were in the final phase.
Some of the women’s shopping took on a joyful seriousness. The men napped even more often on the bus.
We visited Geneva on another lovely mild day. Its idealist-bureaucracy quarter – the neighborhood housing the U.N., the International Red Cross, the World Council of Churches, the International Committee for Refugees et al – felt “Twilight Zone”-ish with its early ’60s architecture and corny landscaping and sculptures and fountains. A bit sad, really, and I felt ashamed for having that reaction.
The city’s Calvinist heritage suffered from our city guide’s shtick. She was entertaining, but rendered a sameness to all things serious and frivolous.
Much more contemporary feeling were the blocks of lakefront late-19th century edifices housing Versace, Lacoste and the other fashion brands. Here commerce roared.
We contributed our own little squeaks.
I wasn’t in the market for a $250 scarf, so I was glad to make my way a few blocks along and find myself in a bustling street market that closed off the Boulevard Helvetique on this Saturday morning. It seemed less a boutique for eco-sensitive patricians than a thriving market for rich and non-rich alike. An entire stall of varieties of mushrooms. Another of olives (I counted over 20 varieties). Pumpkins and squash. Fish. Ravioli. Chocolate. A merchant of nuts as well as pods and other dessicated inedible-looking things that no doubt are delicious when cooked by a European. A butcher with an enormous haunch of beef in a rack, carving slices the size and thickness of playing cards under the watchful gaze of an old woman who was his customer.
I walked through twice. I’m always comfortable around (and envious of) hippies.
We spent our final afternoon on perhaps the most charming drive of the whole trip. Not in terms of grandeur or jaw-dropping panoramas - just charm. It was along the south shore of Lake Geneva toward the village of Yvoire. The landscape was something like our own South Shore of Lake Superior but with a softer, liquerian feel. Instead of the convenience store in Maple or the empty intersection of Oulu, you come to a tiny French village with a war memorial, a fountain and an ancient church. At the roundabout stand men with hand signs to direct us safely in the presence of bicycle racers zooming through the area.
As we passed through Montreux, of jazz festival fame, guide Petra sounded two discordant notes (ha!). She pointed out a large and centrally located statue of Freddie Mercury of Queen – how bizarre is Europe? - and recounted that the dreaded ’70s anthem “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple was written when they were across Lake Geneva in Evian and saw guess what from a fire in Montreux.
Speaking of Evian, the site of the famous bottled water, she had a good line about paying for water: “Evian is ‘naïve’ spelled backward, eh?”
Yvoire is an almost incredibly beautiful village that wins awards for its architectural and cultural preservation. It also surprised many of us with the best shopping of the entire trip, especially for textiles. The goods were local or regional, and not prohibitively expensive. The town also had one of the prettiest country churches, with a modified onion-dome steeple in what appeared to be stainless steel.
We passed chickens pecking in a meadow they shared with sheep to make our way, sun scrubbed and exhausted, to the bus for our final trip back to Le Prieurie.
As we drove, my thoughts returned to impressions from the past week.
... One of those “only in Italy” moments: An elegant white-haired man in an impeccably tailored suit strolled next to a stone wall. He seemed deep in thought with gaze downward, facial expression rueful, and – I love this! - one hand in pocket and the other holding a thin stick whose tip he scraped gently against the wall at, oh, knee height. Soulfully. Existentially. Stylishly. You’d just never see that in Duluth, even on the Lakewalk. Unless the guy was drunk or off his meds, so you wouldn’t see it for long because the po-po would come and take him away. We don’t do public existential in Duluth. Especially our seniors.
In the time I enjoyed a cigar, a large hawk (pale face and underside, deeply forked tail, cinnamon colored back) glided silently in front of me three times, patrolling the hillside. Gentle breezes brought sounds of real life. Children playing at recess. A small plane doing touch-and-go’s at a grass landing strip. It was also reassuring, after a bit too much tourism, to see once again the deeply productive the country side. Fields of corn ready for harvesting or already dried, or in stubble. Hedges between plowed plots. Wheat.
... The sense of fun and discovery shared by Judy and Greg Bonovetz of Duluth, who have gone on five St. Scholastic trips, even though they’re not alumni.
“After the first one we knew we could count on the quality,” said Judy, “and we’ve never been disappointed. We like the company we find ourselves in.”
Greg’s favorite surprise on this trip was the Chamonix restaurant L’Impossible: “It’s one of the best restaurants we’ve ever eaten in. The food was spectacular.” Bonus: the bartender was able to make a good martini.
... The closer must come from guide Petra, who said with a nod to bus driver Robert – as she did at the end of almost every day - “Thank you folks for your company, thank you Robert for your driving, and thank God for the weather.”
On to Ireland, Saints abroad, in '08!
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