Cully Jazz, errant bachelors, and the only way to travel to Frankfurt…
Your loyal Happy Valley correspondent is sitting on a Kuwait Airways flight from Geneva to Frankfurt.
© Ricky Deacon | Dreamstime.com
It’s civilized, quick — and amazingly inexpensive. The wide-bodied plane is at best 10% full, which means extra-attentive service, plentiful leg-room and a level of overhead storage space that probably would put the TARDIS to shame. The flight costs about the same as the train. And best of all, the cabin is well stocked with Kuwaiti newspapers…all of which help to make the one hour flight pass faster than your correspondent can type “slightly clapped out Airbus”.
As we prepare for takeoff, a recorded prayer drifts across the cabin, and soon we find ourselves climbing high over Lac Léman (or “Lake Lausanne” as the Sunday Times apparently reported — thanks to the reader who graciously flagged this.) Out comes a copy of the Arab Times, in which beyond the headlines calling out the latest tragedies in Yemen and Iraq, I am intrigued to read that in a Kuwait City neighbourhood, “…one of the top priorities of the government” is to “put an end to the presence of bachelors in…private residential buildings…” due apparently to its “…negative effect on social and security aspects”.
One wonders whether this might be a future platform for the Lausanne wing of the UDC.
Next up: a glance at the “what’s on today” section of the paper. I glaze over postings for Scrabble-playing sessions, Mimicry performances, and expat-targeted church events, thoughts turn to activities closer to home.
Once again, I must remark on the beauty of living in this region. For when it comes to putting on festivals, are there really any places on earth that, all things considered, do a better job than the cities and villages around Lac Léman? (I already look forward to readers suggesting Montréal or Berlin. Let the discussion begin!)
Take, for example, the Cully Jazz festival, which ended last Saturday:
Top international acts drawn to a village of perhaps no more than 2,000 souls…
A wonderfully diverse assortment of free concerts, scattered across the village’s wine caveaux — and all accompanied with lashings of delightful Lavaux wine. (I am particularly fond of the Chasselas produced by local vigneronne Mélanie Weber.)
Thousands upon thousands of attendees crammed into narrow streets, and packed into even narrower venues, all in an atmosphere that’s amazingly relaxed and civilized…
The sound of guitar, drums and synth colliding violently together deep inside tHBBC (the Hundred Blue Bottle Club), intensely played by members of a Fribourg industrial rock band (yes, such a thing does exist) that Bowie apparently cited as an influence…
The shrug of a festival staff member, acknowledging with a broad smile that the festival’s souvenir shot glasses, while perhaps a better buy than last year’s souvenir buttons, have nonetheless not been a huge success… (Note to the festival planners: Perhaps souvenir wine glasses next time? Just a thought.)
And the joy on the faces of the Dixieland jazz musicians playing at Le Biniou…with an enchanted audience ranging in age from under 10s to 80-pluses…
Pure pleasure.
What, dear reader, could be better?
Tracy says
Nice to see a correspondent in the English language Swiss press use the lake’s real name Lac Leman. Although I doubt anyone in Lausanne would mind the Lake Lausanne. In Lausanne, we have a much better view of the Lake than Geneva anyways! 🙂 But we’re most definitely not part of so-called Greater Geneva. Heaven forbid. Thanks for highlighting our part of the lake for a change.