Geneva. 8/29/2018

Bon Nuit

August 29 2018

Hoping all is well.. or as well as it can be – as we follow CNN and hear the utter craziness increasing back home.. So now he’s after Google! And talking about “violence” and “poverty” if he is impeached. 

Life in Switzerland is calming!

Headed out for breakfast this morning to our favorite little café called Birdie. We ate breakfast here every morning on one trip.. so we headed back. Great hot porridge with milk and apples and honey and almonds and many other things. 

Walked back to the hotel and then I headed downtown to meet up with Emma, while Mike did email (I figured I could do all of my emails in the afternoon while everyone else planned to head to what is known as the UN Beach – a private area at the lake’s edge that is reserved for card-carrying UN officials ??!! Since Elizabeth was rather high ranking at W.H.O. she carries such a card and has access.). So the plan had been that I would walk back to the hotel and everyone else would pick Mike up and head to this beach. But as luck would have it, it started to rain so plans changed. Julia and Julien picked us up and we all had a wonderful lunch at our hotel. Then I went to the room to do work and emails; Julien and Hem both had conference calls to take and did that in the hotel and the car. And Mike, Emma, and Elizabeth hung out until Emma and Hem had to get to the airport to catch their plane home to London.

At about 4:00, Mike and I headed out and walked (about a mile in each direction) to see the Smurf Houses (?) – a complex of affordable, subsidized housing located a few blocks from the train station. I had read a little about it and we had never seen it. What a charming surprise! The photos do not convey enough of the fun, the uniqueness, or the fascinating (somewhat Gaudi-esque) structures. Nor do they explain everything going on at this site which includes at least 500 units, with about 200 being subsidized, I think.. The project was designed by Swiss architects Christian Hunziger, Robert Frei, and Georges Berthoud, and it was built between 1982 and 1984. 

Included in the project is a child care center, an infant center, a theater, some private offices, including a small architecture office, parking garage, a café, gym, beauty salon, health clinic, art rooms, and more. The large courtyards were filled with kids and seniors and young parents; Swiss, Africans, Muslims, Asians, and more — more diversity than I’ve seen in all the times I’ve been to Geneva.

To set this geographically, the neighborhood is called ‘Les Grottes’, and it is behind the Geneva railway station. It was home to political refugees in the 1930s and considered a very impoverished area. At some point, the city decided to buy the entire area with the intention of demolishing it. But as WWII approached, the project was shut down and nothing happened until sometime in the seventies. At that point most of the houses in the area were vacant and many stores were illegally operated. Squatters were on the site and they refused to give up their homes.. They wanted renovation, not destruction. The authorities finally gave in and brought the area back to life. They created a social and architectural experiment that appears to be quite successful. 

Got caught in the rain as we walked back to the hotel… Did some work and met up wit Elizabeth for dinner. We leave tomorrow evening for London.

Au revoir…por le moment…

Fern