Vive Geneve!!

I might possibly live in the most gorgeous city in the entire world. It reminds me slightly of Madison. It's about 200,000 people, most of whom live a pedestrian lifestlye. There's a big lake that's the focal point of most activities. The biggest differences are the mountains in the background, quite absent in Madison, and the multitudes of rich Saudi's escorting their fully-burqa'ed wives through the streets of Geneva, thankfully absent in Madison. I have nothing against full burqas...well, that's not entirely true...but that's a post for another blog.

This weekend marks the end of the "Fete de Geneve", essentially a celebrating coinciding with Geneva's National Day (like our 4th of July). The entire lakefront, rive gauche to rive droit is litttered with amusement rides, food stands, music groups and hordes of people.

On Saturday night 300,000 people showed up to enjoy the fireworks spectacle. I say spectacle because this was like nothing I have ever seen before. Tim and I were encouraged to arrive early since the population of the city plus 100,000 other people crowd along the shores of the lake to watch the show. We packed a backpack with apricots, fresh mozzerella, basil and heirloom tomatoes and a bottle of wine.

I've realized one thing I love about Europe. They are totally, 100% ok with public drinking and intoxication. When we left the apartment I was telling Tim that we would need a way to hide our wine. He looked at me and shook his head as if thinking, "silly american, we don't participate in your prudent ways." So, off the wine went with us.

We sat on the boulders just north of the beach and across from the Parc la Grange to watch the show. It was 45 full-minutes of explosions, sound and light. It was spectacular spectacular. Four different fireworks companies compete to show the best 12 minute fireworks display. They each pulled out all the stops. This was a light parade in the sky. I oohed and aahed and felt patriotic for a country in which I'd just arrived.

I may be new here, but all I can say is Vive Geneve!