Marmite de l'Escalade

This time of year it is traditional for the Genevans to commemorate the only fight they actually came out of victoriously.

On the night of December 12th 1602 a French army, sent by the duke of Savoy (encouraged by the Pope), marched towards Geneva along the river Arve. The locals largely ascribe the victory to Mrs. Royaume who, for unknown reasons, was busy preparing a large cauldron of soup in the wee hours of December 12th. The Royaume family lived near one of the city gates and when the French soldiers attacked they had Mrs. Royaume's hot soup coming down on their heads. This killed one of the attackers (presumably by being hit by the cauldron itself - otherwise it might not be so flattering for the local culinary reputation), and the rest of the city was woken up so they could defend the city.


Therefore, in the days leading up to December 12th, one finds lots of chocolate cauldrons in different sizes in the shops. On the day itself people gather around such a pot and find the youngest and the oldest person in the group. Together these two will smash the cauldron while yelling in French "Thus perish the enemies of the republic". Afterwards one eats the chocolate and the marzipan vegetables it contained. As it also quite widespread to dress up for this candy feast, there seems to be a few parallels with Halloween...

Patriotic Mail

People sometimes have funny tendency to want to show off their flag - we know it from Denmark (which unfortunately we don't have a good picture of), from Switzerland (the other little huts also had flags on full right next them), from France (notice particularly the trees along Champs-Élysées in the upper left corner of the collage).

As such it shouldn't really come as a great surprise that the phenomenon is also found in the US. But we were still a little amazed to find this mailbox exactly in Ojai, California - hippie-town Ojai is mostly known for all their purveyors of alternative treatments, and for not allowing chain stores within the city limits.

The Mail Train

This little mail train from Goleta has certainly been waiting its turn to get on the blog. Not least considering it is one of the mailboxes that gave us the idea for the mailbox theme in the first place.

But here it is.

Snow on the Juras

During the last 2-3 weeks, the part of the Jura mountains that we can see has been snow-capped. The extent of the snow varies from day to day because so far we have been blessed with mild weather and some lovely sunny days - quite often on Sundays which we obviously don't mind.
We are also grateful that we currently have approximate two more hours of day light than what we were used to from Denmark this time of year.
All this contributes to our not missing the Californian winter weather TOO much...

Scandinavian Christmas and Cookies

Saturday we went to Globus (the Swiss equivalent to Macy's) and noticed that their Christmas theme this year is 'Scandinavian Christmas'.
According to the catalogue this has been interpreted as black and white geometry but in all fairness it should be mentioned that in the store we did also see decorations in green and red as well as plenty of mooses and birch.

The promoted products are the 'usual suspects' such as Georg Jensen, EvaSolo, Iittala, Lego, salmon and Akvavit so nothing new and exciting in this respect.

We must have let the theme inspire us in our Christmas cooking though since we spent Sunday making 'Finnish Bread' and 'Swedish Chocolate Breads' - not unlike last year. Although one would think the current 4 tins of cookies should be sufficient for the two of us (even if it's rather small tins, they are in addition to the tasting samples Tue brought to lab today!), Tue is now contemplating whether it is possible to make 'Vanilla Wreaths' - an infamous Danish christmas cookie - without the special shaping tool ... If he succeds we will surely keep you posted.

Facades in Carouge

In order to avoid only having posts of what we do when we're away from Geneva we'll share with you today a small observation from our own city. On the other side of the river Arve one finds the neighbourhood Carouge, where we go - either by foot or by bikes - every now and again. On one of these little trips we noticed this house:


Seen from the front it is quite impressive - perhaps even pompous. But going a few meters further along the street one quickly realizes it's all in the style of the late Potemkin.

Correios

We hadn't been in Lisbon for long before spotting our first mailbox there (see above) - it wasn't exactly easy to miss it. As it turned out, this model with built in stamp vending wasn't actually the standard. The rest of the weekend we saw a lot more of these somewhat smaller, but still highly recognizable mailboxes (see below).

From Lisbon the world was conquered...

Portugal's past as a proud sea-faring nation is obviously also part of present-day Lisbon and thus we went to Belém - the neighbourhood where all the voyages of discovery in the 15th and 16th century were launched.

In Belém a very beautifully situated monument has been erected which is adorned by Henry the Navigator (the front figure above) and a number of his contemporaries. It also provides the option of going to the top of the monument from where one has a sweeping view of Lisbon, the mouth of the Tejo river and the Atlantic Ocean and not least an overview of the compass mosaic below the monument that dates the years of the Portugeuese discoveries.

And yes, the bridge across the Tejo is inspired by the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco.

Transportation in Lisbon

By now trams are not so unusual for us - when not riding our bikes we primarily use the trams here in Geneva - but these old wagons in Lisbon were more fun than the modern ones we have here. The very steep and narrow streets they ran up and down were also far more interesting and at times we wondered if the brakes could actually keep the tram from sliding when stopping for a red light.
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Unfortunately we didn't have time to try out Lisbon's furnicular but Lisbon offers a - for us - brand new method to tackle differences in level: an elevator!

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In 1902 they simply built an elevator to make it easy to come from the city centre to the higher laying Bairro Alto neighbourhood. There are wonderful views from the top of the elevator (where there is a café as well) and it is possible to walk via a pedestrian bridge to Bairro Alto without worrying about finding a tram or putting unnecessary wear and tear on one's knees.

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The architect (i.e. Raul Mesnier du Ponsard - for the elevator connaisseurs :-) was a student of Gustave Eiffel, which the construction might bear imprint of. At least, the idea of an elevator in Lisbon is almost as excentric as the idea of a gigantic viewing tower with three elevators in Paris

Ode to Lisbon

Okay, let's admit it: we love Lisbon!

The city is old - in certain places even dilapidated - and modern in a charming blend and there are numerous, quite different neighbourhoods to explore. It is beautifully situated by the Tejo river which is so wide that it seems like an ocean and the climate suits us very well (i.e. sunny in November!). Furthermore, when the cuisine consists primarily of grilled fresh fish and the Portuguese all seem to speak English perfectly, well, then it's hard not to be enthusiastic about the place.

That we also stayed at the absolutely best hostel/hotel we have visited so far only adds to the experience. Lisbon Lounge Hostel is located smack in the middle of the city centre and is very clean and cleverly furnished - and offers great breakfast and very nice employees.

Portugal and Lisbon as well as the Lounge Hostel should all expect to see us again some time in the future.