La Fete du Chocolat! and other things lately

So I had a fabulous weekend last weekend. I ate more than should be humanly possible--really good food, too--and, more importantly, had some great company.

Friday night was Sarah's going away dinner at Gabriel's apartment. She has finished her internship at the hospital here and is moving on to an internship in Lucern before returning home to Berlin in a few months, presumably to be a real adult and (more daunting, and terribly adult) to be a real doctor. We had 2 really lovely lasagnas--one beef, one vegetable--plus tiramisu and strawberries with whipped cream, along with several glasses of wine throughout the night. It was one of the best dinner parties we've had, with all the people mixing well and making great conversation. Liz's hilarious cousin Phil was visiting from Italy; he was a great dinner companion. Afterward, Liz, Phil and I went to a very secret underground bar in Geneva--no name on the door, no indication whatsoever that there is something fun going on upstairs. Liz knew of it from others, which is apparently the only way to find it. As luck would have it, it was "German Night", which, obviously, meant lots of drunk guys in lederhosen and polka music banging from the speakers into the one-room "bar". It was great fun, and I finally felt as though I was finding Geneva's (very hidden and under-developed) sub-culture.

Saturday afternoon I dragged myself out of bed for the one thing that could get me out of bed: a chocolate festival. It was in Versoix, celebrating the chocolate makers there in in the surrounding villages. Liz, Phil and I basically went for the free samples. I'm pretty sure I ate at least a pound of chocolate in about 20 minutes, and felt subsequently ill until I had a basket of fries to counteract the sweetness. Healthy day, right? The festival was great fun though, and life doesn't get any better than free Swiss chocolate.

(I apologize for the shoddy camera work--they were taken with my phone)

Saturday night, my recently-made friend Kunal invited me to a dinner party a friend was throwing in Carouge--a very young and trendy part of Geneva, containing one of my favorite jazz bar/clubs, the Chat Noir. Kunal is a pastry chef here--I know, and Indian pastry chef seems a little ridiculous, right? But he's fabulous. It's a good thing I'm reasonably sociable, because when I arrived he was still cooking so he just introduced me to everyone and scurried back to the kitchen, leaving me with a room of 4 strangers. They were all very interesting and nice. One is an environmental lawyer here who gave me some great tips on working in international law. It was a very adult dinner party, which I found so enjoyable because I so often feel like a teenager doing a summer babysitting job. And the food was fabulous--the chocolate cake with strawberry cream finish was particularly amazing.

Sunday morning the eating recommenced with a big American brunch back at Gab's apartment. I made buttermilk blueberry muffins that were, if I do say so myself, fabulous. Actually, it was quite an international brunch, more-so than American. Liz made crepes, Florian made pain perdu (which is what the French call french toast--it's made with baguette instead of slices of toast), and Phil made up what we are now calling the Buffalo Special (potatoes, onion, courgette, l'herbes de Provence--it's fabulous). 

After all of the eating, I basically slipped into a food coma for the remainder of the weekend and commenced work on Monday a little heavier in the waist but lighter in the heart (I am apparently in a poetic mood right now). 

The week has been nothing overly interesting. Leo has been particularly badly behaved when Alice is around--I think he's still punishing her for going out of town 2 weeks ago, and he's just getting older. It's Friday now, which I'm pretty excited about. Particularly because I'm heading toward a 4-day weekend--I leave for Prague Sunday morning (6am flight!! making Daddy proud) to meet Lauren and Erik there. Then I'll work Wednesday through Friday when the family leaves for Australia for 2 weeks and I head off to Spain, Paris and Rome. Life's rough this month...

Isn't my baby boy adorable??