So today was a loooong day. I ate breakfast and gathered my things up for the drive to Geneva. I was grateful that I booked another night at the airport hotel rather than try to drive back the next morning to catch an 11:00 a.m. flight. It had been raining on my trip down to Annecy, but today was partly sunny and a nice day to view the green countryside. The Haute Savoire mountains are so different from the Rockies. Everything is well groomed and taken care of here. The meadows and the green forest and the rolling hills are beautiful, as is the new autoroute which doesn't have a bump in it.
After reaching Geneva, I went directly to the area where we used to live -- two communes close together called Collex-Bossy. I was appalled to find that Collex, which 40 years ago consisted only of a farm house and a brasserie, now is a thriving suburb of apartment buildings and houses. I continued on to our little village of Bossy which I was afraid might no longer exist, but it had not undergone quite as much change. I made the right-hand exit off the first roundabout and there, and to my left was the house where we had lived. It had been newly built when we lived there by a couple who lived in the connected house and had built the one where we lived as a rental property. I stopped immediately to take a photo. A man and young girl were at the end of the driveway in front of the second house, so I thought I should explain myself as I started to take a photograph.
"I used to live here," I told the man. "That's not possible," he replied. I explained that I was pretty sure this was the house when all of a sudden he looked surprised and said, "When was that?" When I told him 40 years ago, he asked me my name. When I told him he exclaimed, "Oh, yes, les diplomats." It appears we were the only renters of the house after it was built. When we left, it was sold to a woman who still lives there. The man I was talking to was the son of the people who built the two houses and were our landlords. He remembered us, and I remembered him. He must've been 10-14 years old mowing the grass and tending to things when we were there. There had been no landscaping at the time, but now vines cover the perimeter and herbs grow in the garden. The village fared a little better than Collex. It still has the water fountain in the little square, although the resident donkey is gone. The village is still surrounded by vines, apple trees and lavendar fields, with a nice view of the Jura mountains. I went on my way happy to have tapped gentley on good memories.
Afterwards, I checked into my hotel (not far from Bossy), took a littl rest, returned the rental car, and took a bus to the Rive Droite, which was the side of the lake I was most familiar with. It was crowded, very windy, and unfortunately Mont Blanc was hidden behind a heavy cloud, but again it touched good memories. Now I'm back at my hotel, watching yesterday's Broncos football game on my tablet's connection to my DirectTV recordings at home...how things have changed!
This has been a PERFECT vacation and retreat. I have felt so out of sync with the world for the last couple of years. Seems like every plan was delayed, canceled or otherwise went awry. For this trip, I picked the right quiet retreat, I mixed in a little nostalgia, I got a little time away from pressures and responsibilities, got upgrades on both long flights, everything just went according to schedule and was perfect. If things are out of sync, they can get back into sync. If this is my swan song, it sure was a good one!
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