For a weekend in June Geneva’s old town comes alive with a series of music stages and plenty of places to sit, eat and drink.

Taking after the mighty Rick Clark (who still thinks he is going to complete Marathon des Sables) I decided to don a pair of climbing shoes and get to a climbing wall as part of a series of pursuits to test my fortitude.  This was followed three days later by deciding to go the whole hog and start climbing the mountain I can see from my apartment.  If this wasn’t quite hard core enough I thought cycling there first might just satisfy my minds need to punish my body for I’m not too sure what yet.  This ride only takes around 40 minutes but it does get a bit tricky when you hit the base of the mountain and start going up those steep winding roads to get to within walking distance of one of its many cliff faces. 

This mountain is just over the boarder in France.  It is just 10km from my apartment and fairly tall, measuring 1400m.  There is a small wikipedia article on it which you can read by clicking here if you are interested.

Doing a spot of climbing is a great way to start the day if you have had a good sleep the night before.  The physical and metal workout gets the muscles contracting and neurons firing.  The mental workout for me is two fold because my instructor doesn’t speak English.  There are now words I know in French that I don’t know in English.

UEFA Euro 2008 Austria-Switzerland.  Part of a very good year in sport for Spain as they took the title from Greece by beating the Germans 1-0 and Xavi Hernández was named as the Castrol Player of the Tournament.  The vast majority of matches in the tournament hit a very high standard of play and it was both frustrating yet refreshing not to see England there.  The down side for a British national is obvious but the upshot was being able to watch some really good football without being too worried about the overall outcome.

As one of the host cities, Geneva was a great place to be.  With the Czech Republic, Turkey and Portugal playing their games at the Stade de Genève, the large Turkish and Portuguese communities here were making the city come alive.  In fact Geneva, being such an international city, came alive to the sounds of horns and cheering almost every night.  This was also largely due to the Fan Zone in Plainpalais where you could go down to watch the matches outside on big screens, eat good food and have a few beers or caiprinhias.

15 June 20088 was the beginning of the round up of the group stage.   Group A was to be concluded tonight and this being Switzerland’s group, a few of us went down to the Fan Zone to watch.  We weren’t down there to see the Switzerland – Portugal game however.  Both these teams’ destinies had already been decided. What was more interesting was the fight for second, between Czech Republic and Turkey, to make the knockout stages.  Both teams had beaten Switzerland and lost to Portugal and scored and let in the same amount of goals in total.  This was already a knockout game that could have gone to extra time, and would have done, if Nihat Kahveci only scored one late goal that night.  Once his second went in it was clear that ten-man Turkey were through and Geneva wouldn’t sleep for another night.

We left the Fan Zone that evening soaking up all the atmosphere of the slightly subdued Portuguese celebrations (owing to their loss to Switzerland 2-0) and exuberant Turkish crowds.  In the midst of all the celebrations a Swiss reporter, working for the Swiss-German television station SF2, was interviewing some Turkish fans so I decided to go and listen in.  Before I knew it the microphone and TV camera are on me (wearing my Suisse T-shirt) and the guy is saying, “…and here we have a Schwiizer fan… bla bla bla…”.  My response, in Schwiizer-Deutsch, was, “Sorry I didn’t really hear or understand what you just said.” followed by an awkward silence, me shrugging my shoulders in a ‘what am I supposed to do now kind of a way’ and then me walking off.  I imagine I am on a TV recording somewhere looking like a total prat.  Oh well, life continues.

Each Sunday from around May through to September is Softball day (weather permitting).  Our team is the BULLS  (Sponsored by Merrill  Lynch and Mr Pickwick’s Pub).  We play in a league of six teams organised by the US marines.  Dave Buchanan (a former Merrill employee) does a great job of organising everything for our team so to write about one softball day all I need to do is include one of his match reports.  Like the posts “A visit from Mike and Glo“, this is another epic so if you intend to read all the way through make sure you have a good cup of tea to hand.  I’ve also included the scoresheet for the match in this post so those of you that understand softball will be able to see that I sucked on this one but that’s the way it goes sometimes.  Enjoy reading the report from Dave below!

Match Report:

Sunday, June 15th 2008.  The Bulls 13 – Quarks 3

It was not a pretty game but it was a win. The Quarks’ pitcher was struggling to throw strikes and that’s very frustrating. You either take the Base-on-Balls (4 bad pitches=BB=Walk) or you swing at bad pitches with the risk that you’ll not get a good hit. It was a bit of both on Sunday as The Bulls want to win but, more importantly, they want to play. It was a shaky first inning on defense.

The Quarks bats were abnormally hot and we were doing our circus act and all of a sudden I was a bit worried. But everything settled down and The Bulls pulled off the victory, continued their winning streak to four and finished the first round of GSL 2008 with a 4-1 record. In the end it was a good day of softball. 

We’ve been struggling to get early runs but that was not the case on Sunday. With a combination of 6 hits and 4 walks The Bulls pulled off a 7-run mercy rule first inning. Yes they gave us a bit of help with some fielding errors but, with the exception of Paul’s fly to Left distinguishing him as the only out, it was an active and satisfying offensive start. Every player was on base at least once but we stranded too many base runners throughout the game (i.e. left too many players on the bases when the inning was over=potential runs). Not counting the Mercy 1st Inning, we left 10 men on base in 5 innings. Three times we left the bases loaded. Sure, the poor pitching was a factor but we’ll need to do a bit better if we expect to compete with the Leptons on Sunday. I don’t know who was more frustrated on the base paths: Arash or Sumeet. Arash was left stranded at Third Base on all three of his occasions to the plate though he did a great job to get on base. Sumeet never made it past First Base though he also had a perfect 3 for 3 On Base Average. Martin, on the other hand scored each of his times up to bat. Jayson also scored three times and Maya and Alistair twice each.

Is Alistair no longer satisfied with Single and Double base-hit line drives? He flexed his muscles and tested new waters this Sunday. In the first inning with two men on base, he jumped on a flat pitch and drove a towering shot deep down the Left Field line that cleared the fence for a Home Run. The game was tied at 3 runs apiece. The Bulls never looked back and it appeared that the Quarks were demoralized instantaneously. His next at-bat was almost a repeat performance when he sent another one over the fence but just foul. If he could’ve gotten another pitch to swing at he might’ve gotten two HRs but had to settle for a BB. With a little help from the Right fielder Alistair also got a Triple. That’s a lot of extra bases in one game. 

Not a whole lot was working for Jayson at the plate. He wasn’t getting any pitches (he had 3 walks on the day) and couldn’t keep those that he was swinging at in-play. What’s with all the foul tips into the bushes? But when he finally did get one he got it GOOD! A shot to Right field found the gap and almost rolled into the farmer’s field (which would’ve stopped him at Second with a Ground Rule Double) and he legged it into an Inside-the-Park Home Run. OK, I won’t complain that you’re trying to go to Right

I haven’t reviewed the official rules but I’ve been awarding the distinguished Runs-Batted-In (RBI) statistics when someone takes a Base-On-Balls and a run scores. Sumeet got that honor twice and almost a third time. That must look strange on the stats: no recorded at-bats (i.e. a BB goes towards On- Base Average but not Batting Average) but 2 RBIs. It all helps. Martin helped his stats on the day and looked like a seasoned softballer with the bat as he hit singles over the infield for base hits instead of going for the long ball. He batted a thousand (i.e. 1.000) going three for three.

Karim was one of the unfortunates to leave the bases loaded and, in his case, end our only scoreless inning of the game in a very frustrating and slightly embarrassing manner. To make matters worse, I hadn’t scored his at-bat (was I in dismayed shock?) and, for the first time in Bulls scoring history, I e-mailed him the following day to see if he could tell me what happened in order to could complete The Book so he had to relive and document the experience.  On a Three-Ball and no Strike count with the bases loaded and not wanting to take the Walk (more satisfying to hit them around), he swung at a bad pitch and topped the ball, dribbling it only a couple feet in front of the plate for the easy solo force-out by the Catcher at Home of John coming in from Third. Apparently I was urging Karim to keep the ball on the ground so as to avoid an easy fly-out and keep the action going (the Quarks had been making infield errors). Maybe it wasn’t the best advice to give one of our best long-ball hitters. Oops, I’ll take part of the blame for that one. But, he made up for it with two singles in his other at-bats.

We challenged their Catcher on a couple occasions during the game. Well, “challenged” may be an overstatement. Doug foul tipped a pitch in his last at- bat that hung for what seemed an eternity and dropped into the catcher’s mitt. I don’t think the catcher had to move a step. Paul started a disconcerting trend of flying out to Left field (twice in one game) which was repeated 5 times throughout the game – over one quarter of our outs were fly balls to Left! 

There’s lots of superstition in baseball and when things are working you don’t change ‘em. That’s got to be the only explanation for Arash’s hairdo because he’s been hot at the bat for a few games now and he continued by batting a thousand (Batting Average=1.000) on the day. I look forward to the dreadlocks J

The gals are given an unfair (dis)advantage because the outfielders typically move in thinking that there’s less threat of the long ball. That was the case with Maya and she was robbed of a base hit when she ripped a line drive up the middle that was snagged by the Rover. 

Steve had a great day at the plate for his “official” last game of his GSL career. He went to Right for a solid single. And then just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, and in response to my sarcastic comment about it being since 1963 that he had not hit to the opposite field, went to Right again. He then demonstrated his multi-faceted hitting capabilities with a deep fly-out to Left to score Martin from Third base on the tag-up, called a Sacrifice Fly, to get our momentum going again with our first run after a scoreless 2nd Inning.

Base coaching is a challenging and thankless role though necessary and potentially critical to the outcome of the game. We need to give them more respect. Jayson, though he’s our extra-base leader so I’m not complaining, ignored Shafqat’s order to hold at Second on a hit to the outfield, had to duck to avoid getting hit by the throw and almost got thrown out at Third (though I could barely hear Shafqat telling him to stop). Doug put a whole new meaning to the term “holding the runner” (which means stopping a runner from advancing to the next base) and literally held Martin at Third. Martin was going full steam and following Doug’s instructions to round Third and head for Home on a hit to the outfield. But, the Quarks got the ball back into the infield quicker than Doug anticipated (just as Martin was rounding the base) and it was too late to signal Martin to stop so Doug simply grabbed him by the arm as he was running past and wrestled him to a stop and dragged him back to Third. There was an overthrow and he scored anyway but the look on Doug’s face was hilarious as he turned to the crowd (it’s totally against the rules).

You could see the frustration in the Quarks as The Bulls’ defense consistently made the plays (after a few first inning jitters). Defense helps win games and you guys are maturing into a force to be reckoned with.

The day was a good test for Doug’s future role as Bulls’ pitcher. He was designated pitcher for the 14:00 Dozers forfeited pick-up game against Team 6 and pulled off the WIN though he confirmed that he’s more comfortable pitching when he’s hung-over as there were some rough moments that Angie had to work him through. But he sure plays Third base well sober. Doug was all over the place. He might’ve spent more time in foul territory than fair but the plays were impressive nonetheless. A spectacular dash, dive, grab, roll & tumble on a looping line drive into the crowd that looked like it could’ve been a rugby tackle attempt on the peacefully seated Martin. Then it soaked in that it was a third strike foul and he could’ve let it drop for the same result. A near replicate situation and another great effort later in the game, he got the glove on it but it just popped out. Mr. Hussle.

Steve gets the Golden Glove Award and appropriately got the last out of the game on one of his classic magneto-glove reflex snags of a sharply hit grounder.

Maya , whose been playing consistently solid defense at Second this season, had a couple “firsts” in the game. She turned a very quick ‘n’ clean Double- Play off a toss from the Short-Stop and throw to first. First class. And had to use her bare hand to help handle a hand-cuffing high feed on Second for another put-out.

Shafqat transferred his batting nerves-of-steel to the infield when he was faced with a mile-high pop-up playing Second Base. He did well to call it as I think every player in the field had time to get to the ball it was up in the air for so long. And he showed why he’s still in the running for starting Bulls Second Baseperson with a nice shag of a line drive.

Karim changed gloves, much to the chagrin of the superstitious coach, because he’s made several spectacular snow-cone catches this season and he claimed he was looking to give himself a longer pocket to work with. So far he’s proved right as he fielded well with the new glove. Paul’s been covering left field and playing solid defense. He’ll get more chances to prove himself against the Leptons this coming Sunday. Was his hitting to Left an attempt to demonstrate his superiority over the Quarks Left Fielder? I wonder what he’d do if I put him at Catcher

Jayson made some good plays at Short-Stop and made a gallant effort as he dove for a grounder up the middle but just came up short. It looked good from the sidelines but he said it hurt. Alistair took a 3 inning break to share playing time and came back thoroughly revitalized. He stepped back in, made a couple smooth grabs and snap throws to First. Martin diversified yet again and had his first go playing Third Base. He literally had pre-inning warm-up to learn the position and, though it was not an easy debut, managed convincingly. Charging the ball and sacrificing your body is key as a Third Baseman and Martin learns quickly. It paid off with a put-out at first off a dribble grounder. Angie covered for Ron (Happy belated first Father’s Day!!) and had several put-outs with some nice stretches at First. 

Rick and Theresa joined Nina, Lianne and Sharon (who was generous in her proposal to sit this game out as we already had 13 players) on the sidelines to cheer on The Bulls and enjoy the BBQ and beers. It’s great to see so many supporters out there! Dianne, whose been ill and not joined us for a few games, showed grit and made it to Pickwicks for the ride but wasn’t feeling well and opted out of coming to the game. Get well soon! Lianne, as official team photographer, snapped off a few action and team shots. Expect a link soon. 

We rotated around lots on defense which gave many of the players a chanceto partake in the BBQ. On several occasions players asked to be left sitting down so they could finish their dogs. Maybe I should keep Bratwurst and Beer stats.

The post-game celebration was one of our better turnouts. Or it might’ve just seemed that way because we were forced to settle for sitting inside. Steve was presented with a Bulls’ autographed commemorative softball as a token of our appreciation for his contributions over the years (great idea Jayson) and to go along with his 2007 Season jersey as souvenirs of his time with The Bulls. I guess we could’ve thrown in some after-shave as memory of the ILO/Old Spice days He’ll bring the ball with him when he visits in July so some more of you can sign it. Thanks Steve!!! And good luck in The States. 

the-bulls_scoresheet_20080615-1

Will that ever get old?  No.

International Star Wars day is better known amongst my friends as John’s birthday.  I’m sure it’s a time that many came to loath over the years as they would have to hear me banging on about it in the two-week run-up and on occasion be coerced into wearing something ridiculous.

This year I thought I would try something different.  I still went for a party at my place but didn’t really tell anyone it was my birthday.  To ensure I still got cake though I took inspiration from Fen, who came out to visit me, and held a dessert party.  This is where you encourage everyone to eat before but bring their dessert to the party.  It is something we did before when living on Uxbridge road in Shepherd’s Bush.  Like the last time, it worked well.  Not a single dessert was the same.  We had a banana cake, profiteroles, pears in wine, Swedish apple pie, Angie’s famous Jello shots, a chocolate mousse, lolly pops, ice-cream, strawberry sponge cake, chocolate cake and more.

Not telling many people it was my birthday and having people find out only half way through the night felt a bit strange.  Even though Fen was the only person at the party I knew longer than a year this was awkward because it’s natural that you want your friends to know when your birthday is.  I think in the future I will carry on shouting about my birthday.  It’s good to have a day that’s all yours and perhaps a little unfortunate if you have a twin or a good friend with the same birthday.

Tuesday

Luckily there’s a bus from outside John’s flat that takes you right to the airport, however, having used up most of our money on chocolates the night before, we found ourselves searching our pockets and wallets desperately trying to find coins while the bus drove slowly towards us. Luckily we got our tickets in time, waved goodbye to John and headed to the airport, our adventure over. Well not quite, there was of course time to kill in the waiting lounge and duty free, more fighting over the window seat (again I won and Mike slept) and then getting home from the airport. I arrived home, after an amazing week, totally beat and nostalgic of my university days.

As John had scarily said at one point over the weekend, this is it, this is our lives from now on. We get up, we go to work, we come home and on weekends we go out. While we may meet amazing people and have good times with them, it will never be the same as the good old days back at uni. We have jobs, careers, salaries, flats etc to think about. He may be right, we’ve all entered new phases in our lives, but it’s still nice to have the odd weekends away to look forward to, where we all meet up again, relax and have fun!

Monday

The last day, Mike decided that he was too exhausted to do anything and would therefore spend the day in John’s flat. I think the exhausted part, was a large exaggeration and he was only interested in playing the minion game that he had gradually become addicted to over the weekend [Overlord on x-box 360]. Since I was taking an architectural photography class, I grabbed my camera and tripod and headed out to explore Geneva and its strange and wonderful buildings (admittedly most banks). I was slightly worried someone might come up and start shouting at me about permission to photograph these banks  (in London I would have definitely got into a lot of trouble), however, apart from a few strange looks nobody bothered me.

I returned a few hours later after a nice walk on a gorgeous day, with lots of new photos, to find Mike still on the sofa drinking beer and playing the minion game. What can I say… there’s something about Imperial guys and their video games….

Anyway I managed to entice him away from the sofa with the prospect of shopping for presents (ie chocolate) and we headed out to tour the supermarkets. Having spent our last Swiss francs on all the chocolate we could find, we headed back to the flat and watched Blade Runner while packing.

Another evening spent in watching TV with an early night as we had to be up early the next day to catch our flights back to London. 

Sunday

Sunday morning yielded another early start and more sleeping bus rides. This time I decided to be a bit less adventurous and go for the skiing option, as I’ve been skiing quite a few times and would hopefully not spend the day on my arse. However, I was still pretty sore from the day before and having not been skiing in 6 years, it took me longer than I thought to get used to it. Again we went our separate ways. #

Half way down one of the slopes I decided to stop and take a few photos, as it was a gorgeous day. Just as I’m putting my camera away, I notice John go speeding past me. Since his outfit was red, he was pretty unmistakeable, although everyone does tend to wear pretty bright colours on the slopes. So I decide to follow him down and catch up with him. However, still quite rusty with my skiing, John was a lot faster than I was. I reached the end of the slope and see John walking just ahead of me with his board, as there’s this flat bit that joins the slope we’ve just been on with the next slope. I shout out, but he doesn’t hear me. I attempt cross country ski moves towards him, still shouting his name out, but to no avail. Just as I’m within poles reach and am about to poke him, he sets off again down the next slope. With nothing better to do, since I’m now half way down the mountain, I chase him down again, realising that this is totally futile as not only is John faster than me, but he’s wearing earphones. At least this explained his apparent deafness. I reach the end of the second slope in time to see John joining the cable car queue, still listening to music and completely unable to hear me. I’ve sort of given up trying to catch him by this point, but seeing as I wanted to go for another run down the slopes before lunch, I join the queue behind him. Eventually at the top I catch up to John, who sheepishly admits he’s been listening to music and as well as failing to notice me, he had totally not heard Mike calling him earlier either, he only noticed him when he coincidentally pulled up next to him. Having never listened to music on the slopes before, John admits it’s maybe not the best of ideas… We head off together this time and stop to take some photos before joining up with Mike for lunch. John who’s always prepared for everything, had ensured we brought sandwiches with us on Saturday so that we wouldn’t have to pay extortionate ski slope restaurant prices. However, after Saturday skiing the shops had shut by the time we got back, so today we have to hit the restaurant instead. We order mulled wine and lasagne, which although it tasted amazing, Mike hadn’t quite realised was vegetarian lasagne. Another language barrier, having let John and I translate the menu, somewhere the vegetarian part got overlooked….Whoops!

We split up again and head off for our last runs before we have to head back home. Towards the end of the day I run into Mike only half way down the mountain with 20min to go before we need to meet at the bottom. He’s looking pretty sore and tired and I’m wondering whether he’s going to make it down in time, however, as I wait at the bottom, he soon appears. All week we’d heard the story of John and Satan (aka James) missing the bus back to Geneva and having to take a taxi back, which you can imagine cost a fortune [Yet another mishap with Satan and I which I hadn’t even mentioned in my blog post on A visit from Satan…]. So John has drilled into us the importance of being at the bottom on time. However, as 1700 arrives on Sunday evening with the bus off soon, John is nowhere to be seen. At the last minute he comes running up, he was enjoying himself so much he lost track of time….  Thankfully he’s here and owns his own gear so we don’t need to return it to the rental store. We gather our stuff and head to the bus, for another long sleep home.

By this point we’re all totally exhausted from a really fun, but sleepless (apart from the bus rides) weekend, so we decide to stay in, cook and relax in front of the TV. Having never watched The Mighty Boosh before (those who know me, will know that English comedy is often lost on me) John and Mike insisted that they had to introduce me to it and that I would enjoy it. John said that the characters were just like him and Iain. The latter part I have to agree with! I forget their names, but in the episode we watched, they went camping in the woods or something. While one of the characters is super organised and packs only the bare essentials, ensures he has all the survival kit he could need and tries to organise everyone else to do the same, the other one seems more concerned with his vanity and looking good while away. As a result he ends up packing his entire wardrobe. I’m sure when it comes to packing I’m worse than Iain, however, the vanity part was spot on. We moved onto watching peep show, before retiring to bed. 

Saturday

By some kind of miracle we managed to wake up and make it to the bus stop on time. One of John’s friends who works for Caterpillar had managed to get us places on the company bus to Les Contamines. It’s safe to say for once Mike wasn’t the only one asleep. We were all pretty exhausted, however, upon arrival the fresh mountain air soon woke us up. The first problem was finding a place to rent boards (John had kindly offered to teach Mike and I how to snowboard). The rental place only had skis available, however, we were told there was another one up the mountain. So up we went. Thankfully we were in luck and not long after we were on the slopes flat on our arses. In skiing when things start to go wrong, you just do the snow plough and pray your skis don’t get crossed. When you’re learning to snowboard, the only way to stop is to literally fall over. So you are guaranteed either very sore hands (if you fall forwards) or a sore arse (if you fall backwards). John was somehow extremely patient, even though I was absolutely terrible. They say knowing how to ski already makes things a lot easier, which was true once I was going, however, standing up was proving to be a bit of a problem….

After a while we all split up and I spent the afternoon attempting to get down the icy slopes. It was a really fun day, however, I was relieved when it was over as most parts of my body were starting to ache. Despite complaining about Mike’s habit of sleeping all the time, again we all joined him for a nap on the way back to Switzerland.  A quick shower later and we headed out to a friend of John’s flat for an amazing dinner. We were treated to Indian home cooking and it was really delicious. However, I think all of us were visibly tired and glad when we were finally able to climb into our beds.

Friday

Having had a nice sleep in Mike and I were ready to explore the town. On the map, Geneva looked pretty small, so we decided to do this on foot. We had found a website with a list of things you have to do in Geneva, so we marked them out on the map and left John’s flat. First stop was Plainpalais flee market, which apparently runs everyday. After a few wrong turns we arrived to discover a huge empty square. We made a few enquiries and we were definitely in the right place. It turned out the market only runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. So much for trusting the internet….

We moved on to the reformation wall and then walked up the hill to the old town and our next stop: Saint Peter’s Cathedral. 157 steps to the top of the cathedral, but the view is worth it. You can see for miles around you, including the Jette d’eau/wee. We descended back into the centre of town and started the long walk up to the UN buildings. By this time it was getting quite late and by the time we got there the park and buildings were closing. However, it was well worth the walk and very impressive. We took a few token photos and Mike started to panic as we had about 20min to walk back to John’s flat which was quite a few km away. We arrived back late and were greeted by a horrified John who couldn’t believe we had walked everywhere. Apparently it’s really far…. It seems life in Geneva was starting to soften the “we only walk, cycle or take the free (bendy) bus” London student way in him.

Dinner was one of the hugest pizza’s I have ever seen (and I lived in Italy for a very brief four months). I don’t think anyone managed to finish theirs (to anyone else who goes to visit John, I certainly challenge you to try!). We all quickly regretted having ordered starters and when the desert came I am not sure how we managed to eat any of it! The waiters were strangely comical, when I present them with the piece of plastic I found in my salad, they quickly whisked it away without so much as an apology… and I’m not sure they coped with our mixture of English and French. However, the food was unquestionably good. We washed our meal down with Amaretto (this might not mean much to most of you, but it was one of our token drinks at Imperial video game/barbecue parties back in London) and then hit the town. It was supposed to have been an early night as we were due to be up around 6 the next morning for skiing, however, several shots later we were still in the bar, celebrating John’s boss’s birthday. We eventually made it back to the flat and bed, where Mike was banished to the living room as apparently he snores and had kept John up all the previous night. I have to say the pair of them sounded like a married couple fighting about it all day!