Like a true global nomad, my home for the last few years (and a couple more months) is a hop, skip, and a couple flights away. Yes, I'm back in Geneva, where I can see the Alps from my balcony, and in summer, the sun sets at eleven.
Everything I love about Geneva is still the same. Even lovelier because it's spring. Clean air, fresh food, beautiful people. Green fields dotted with daisies, ice cream stands by the lake and children running in the sand. Oh spring, I dedicate my first breakfast here to you. A banana-strawberry-nectarine-yoghurt smoothie with muesli.
I know, I know. I'm a lucky girl. I'm also a little camera-obsessed. My dad was mildly amused to see that my first reaction to this gorgeous bowl of breakfast was to fetch my camera. Oh, well.
After that pink bowl of happiness, we set off to visit the Inventors' Fair, where they had the coolest things ever. (And where an inventor fed my underage sister the tiniest shot of some kind of fizzy apple alcohol.) We were bedazzled by glow-in-the-dark floor chips, electronic menus that serve you according to your preferences, bacteria-grown nanotubes to replace arteries in bypass operations, and magnets for beautiful portable leather desks so your pins and pens don't roll off. So cool.
And after that, my three
lenses family members and I went down to soak in the sunshine at the Botanical Gardens, which really sound much better when you say them in French: Les Jardins Botaniques (lay JHAHR-dahn boh-tan-EEK). They are quite possibly my favourite Botanical Gardens in the entire world. I don't remember them
ever not being sunny.
They had this awesome wire bee amidst the trees.
And peacocks! More splendid and plentiful than I have ever seen in Delhi, where I used to spend my mornings on the school bus looking out for them near Sujan Singh Park, and where, come dawn, I still hear them calling behind the wall that separates my room from the forest.
This one ventured bravely into the gardens, so he was chased into one of the manicured lawns by a train of children too excited and too young to care that they were running into not-for-public areas.
This one put on a grand show for us, calling to ensure he had an audience before he fanned out his feathers and did a three-sixty for us, eight times over.
And of course, as with any sunny day in a lovely city park, there were children playing everywhere! Here are the three cuties I caught on camera.
This one turned around to fill the pail that was lying in front of him with a cup full of sand, only to find that it had been hauled up! Aww-worthy expression, yes?
This sunned-out kid reminded me too much of Calvin to not share. He was ambling away from his family, hiding a pout and a stuffed tiger beneath his sweatshirt, I'm sure.
And then me and my sister had the loveliest time walking around the old city, where we saw this sign.
And just then, it felt like I had arrived. It felt good to be back in the bylanes I had discovered while running through in close-to minus temperatures. And boy, it felt good to be home.
