Images '08 @ Vevey, Vaud, Suisse

Lausanne's M2...

I like the way the Swiss don't seem to bother always with the second, the third or even the fourth of their languages in their country. Here in Lausanne's new Metro; the M2, you have your instructions quite clearly in French and then... English. Simple, neat, and they acknowledge that most people do speak English as a second or a third language. That should not be enough to allow the Britons to go about their business without bothering to learn another language.
These people are just taking the M2 for FUN!! Saturday and the new M2 is up and running up the hill into town and beyond and at each stop there is a musical event of some sort to inaugurate the new service...a folk group with costumes I could not identify but with most of them playing a variation of the bagpipe. Wonderful sounds of lowly laments.
And there at the Metro stop Riponne - M. Béjart, in the square outside the Musée des Beaux-Arts was an enormous stage onto which Amadou and Mariam were led - and off they went; a free concert to inaugurate a new Metro system...

Brilliant. London might do as well for the Olympics in 2012

Simple lunch, simply the best...

Siena - Italian style

The preamble around the Place dei Campo was done and dusted the imagined roar of the crowd as the horses thundered dangerously three times around the hysterical baying locals faded and lunch was sought...
The tourist trap restaurants selling beer and table wine and not offering a lot of choice in the food stakes; we sloped off to the little place in the square opposite the church.

A service was in full swing, at least the incense was; the singing of the choir filled the dome and as more people piled into the huge space, they momentarily dropped and crossed themselves while others left, and turned and crossed, dipped a knee towards the altar and the mother.

An elderly woman in her fragile later years, almost tripped as she turned and, finally on level ground her hand came up and her left thumb pressed the 'on' button of her mobile phone which lit, played a tune and told her she was in touch.


Meanwhile across the square a man was waiting outside the restaurant we had chosen. His choice of shirt & pants could not have contrasted more severely with the bunch that gradually assembled in their bored but safe selection of mid-range greys and something else...


Italian style....

Compare that to Mr Gerrard here... English style; no style.

Lac Léman sunset...

Sometimes you don't have to go very far to photograph a beautiful sunset... just as far as the balcony...

Tomato... 741 grams of fruit heaven

Aurèle called round last evening and in his hands was a large plastic bowl containing a huge tomato grown in his garden, against the south facing wall. "Sept cents quarante grams", he informed me proudly.


"Just peel it, without boiling it, slice it up", he said, "and lay it out with a few leaves of basil and olive oil..." His fingers pinched together and he kissed the tips of them, in appreciation of good food, as Italians do.


"Voilà, magnifique," he said... "Bon appetit."

He waved as he turned away and walked back across to his own house and I went back in and showed the 740 gram tomato to Mrs Pondlife and suggested we should eat it the next day.

So the following morning before going off to earn a crust, I weighed it, and it came in at 741 grams; so I peeled the tomato that weighed 741 grams and the juices ran through my fingers and into the bowl over which I was working. Then I began to slice the tomato that weighed 741 grams, and the juices began to run quickly. I opened a bottle of olive oil and took a pinch or two of coarse salt and then went out onto the balcony and pulled several fresh basil leaves off the plant that has provided so much this summer. I tore the leaves and the smell permeated the kitchen and wafted into the living room and rose up and into our bedroom above; the fresh fragrant pungent perfume of basil. I sprinkled then over and between slices of the 741 gram tomato and splashed some more olive oil and a few drops of a good balsamic vinegar I'd just brought back from Italy.

I covered the bowl and put it into the fridge thinking we shall have that tonight with some fresh bread from 'La Croustillante'; Numéro deux fils wouldn't want any as he was going into Geneva to meet with mates and find a pub showing the England v Croatia game. But I was more interested in the taste of tomatoes that can weigh 741 grams...

...and so enthusiastic was I in the taste and the supper to come, that I forgot to take a photograph of it... so you'll just have to believe me. However, I went back the following day and photographed some more tomatoes hanging on the vine, and you can see Aurèle's hand giving scale to the tomatoes hanging, still ripening in the September sunshine.

Florence - Modern Frescoes

A comment on modern life... probably much as the original frescoes were a comment on times then. A different religion?

in caso di neve...

The imagination fires up at the sight of a signpost like this... Siena left, Florence right. It matters not how one says it... It is just the same beautiful part of Italy it has always been.

Some wags had been let loose on one sign close to Firenze, writing the number 3 by Siena and a zero next to Firenze.

And driving along the hilltop roads the cool breezes blowing up and along from the vineyards below there came the signs by the road side... "in caso di neve". Hard to believe on warm September days, the grapes ripening on the vines, ready almost, to be plucked and squashed and selected; maybe for Classico.

Porcini

Having just got back from a one week scenic drive around Tuscany and eating in some very good Trattorias, Ristorantes, small Enotecas and the odd (very good) Pizzeria I was surprised when the day after our arrival home from the land where Porcini is King, to answer a knock at our front door and find our neighbour Jonna, standing their with a two fists full of cepes, or bolets, or as the Italians call them, Porcini...

Have a look at these beauties fellas...

How to deal with those ? Might just have to peruse my Antonio Carluccio cookery book, The Quiet Hunt, or maybe even Jamie Oliver's Italy... either way, they'll need treating with care...

A little caress.