Let it snow, let it snow, let it SNOW

Ahhh this white gold has continued to fall from the sky in Geneva (and hence in the Alps - yeah for skiing next year) for days, and today even started to leave some imprints on buildings and streets! And it has also fallen continuously in Stockholm since the beginning of the week - with a promise of a real White Christmas :D

Hence, I can now stop just dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know, with glistening treetops, and sleigh bells in the snow - and actually start believing in one. A white fluffy beautiful Christmas where the cold will turn us all into small red-nosed Rudolphs but will provide us with several silent nights before Santa comes to town.

So I just wanted to say: Let it snow, let it snow, let it SNOW!

Halles-des-iles

Just back from a very nice evening! First some Swedish warm smoked salmon and all the rest to make up a lovely dinner, and than a few drinks and some dancing at halles-des-iles. First time I was there for a drink at night and it was really cool! Will become a new favorite I can feel.

Great evening, good to be out again and realised just how long it has been. But tomorrow the plan is also dinner, drinks and dancing. Time to make sure that I finish the year in style :D

Just wish my lovely N was here!

How do I dare?

Many people ask me how I dare to plan to quit my job and leave on a travel around part of the world, as I have no back-up plan for afterwards. I will come back with very little money left, without a job, hopefully still having an apartment (but who knows), with a CV that some employers might find more interesting, but many will probably find less interesting.

So how do I dare give up my good job where I have a good salary, good colleagues, an ok boss, and where I can most probably feel safe for years to come?

Well, I found this quote today from Mark Twain, which explains quite well how I think about life - that life is for living now rather than regretting later. I of course hope that I will not regret my choice later. But I am sure that I would regret not living my dream! So I am going to try to live it. I am done working my life away in an office. I am ready to live!

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream."

Halfway to fufil my dream...

Today my savings account can proudly show a total amount which is approximatly half of the recommended amount one need to bring for a year of travel, and a bit over a third of the money I am trying to save before leaving (my budget is about 30% over the recommended budget to allow me a bit more flexibility and to have a safety buffer for when I come back and have to try to find a job).

As a posimist one can say that I am now halway to my dream! :D

So exciting! But good that I have saved this much money already as there is now only about 8 months left before I set out. Hence only another 8 months to save the rest of the money. Luckily we get a 13th salary in Switzerland...

yeah! the world I'm soon coming :)

dreaming....

Dreaming about travelling. Doing something different. Getting away from the daily repetitions of life. Dreaming about a sort of escape perhaps.

I will travel in 10 days to Macedonia for work which will be interesting. I will then travel to Sweden and Portugal over the holidays which will be wonderful!

But when I'm dreaming about travelling, about getting away, this is not the kind of travel I'm dreaming about. I want to leave for a longer period to experience the world, to live something different, to feel more alive... Luckily my plan is to leave in less than a year :)

Today I'm dreaming...

Different cultures, different lives - ohhh so exciting

I didn't write that much about my trip to Beijing last year at the time. Funnily enough, although the reason I set up this blog originally was as a travel blog, I have ended up writing perhaps the least when travelling. There are so many things to see, to experience, to enjoy that the time feels too short often to find an internet access and submit an entry. And once back from the travels, often it feels a bit too late. So the blog has ended up less as a travel blog and more just a personal blog for my life in Geneva. Hopefully this will change the day I set out for my one-year long travel...

All this to lead into an entry about Beijing and Chinese people with more than a years delay. These thoughts are brought on by my dear boyfriend currently being in China for 2 weeks and hence writing and telling me about what he is experiencing on a daily basis. He loves it! Like I did! It is also brought on by the experience of some friends who happen to be travelling in China at the same time although they have been there a lot longer. They do not seem that happy. Actually in one of the last entries one of them, E, wrote that she hates it and that she cannot wait to leave. It seems that we experience things differently. What my lovely N and I seem to take as an interesting cultural difference, such as the constant attention one gets, E and M are taking differently. Perhaps it's because they have been there for more than a month now and it has worn them weary, perhaps it is just different ways of perceiving life.

For me Beijing was a great experience. I loved it so much that I wished someone would offer me a job there for a year or so to allow me to live there and really explore everything!

And I did not find the Chinese rude. When my mother and I walked down one of the main streets in Beijing, but one a little bit off the tourist paths where you hardly see any foreigners, people would stare and smile, children point and laugh. I took this as a positive thing. I understand them completely; we must have looked like aliens to them - both of us taller than many of the men, me very blond, my mum with white hair, fair skin, foreign - we look so different.

However, to tell a short story, not so many years ago, approx. 30, when my cousin then aged 5 moved to Paris with her family, she soon decided to wear a bonnet the whole year around as people wouldn't stop touching her very blond hair. This was hence the way Parisians behaved seeing a Swedish very blond child 30 years ago! For me therefore, it seems very logical that the Chinese stare when seeing European people 30 years later. And at least they are well behaved enough not to come up and touch our hair :D

As for the friendliness, we encountered it almost everywhere! From the taxi driver who couldn't understand our map (tip: get a map with Chinese characters on it as many people do not seem to be able to read a map but the taxi drives know what different streets are called) but tried his best to help us, even getting a police man to come with his map so that I could point out the right street there, to the hole in the wall restaurant in on of the Hutongs where the staff only spoke Chinese and the menu was in Chinese, but where they found someone they knew to come and help us order and we ended up having on of the best meals for hardly any money.

Sure there were some rude people around. And yes, we did walk out of one restaurant where we didn't really feel welcome. But people being rude to us happened perhaps twice in 8 days, while when in Paris in August this happened at least twice in 2 days! (Yes, Paris as the example again - it seems that I cannot get away from it ;)

I loved Beijing, and I am longing for the day I can go back and visit Beijing again and discovering some of the rest of the country! If you do go, try to enjoy the cultural differences as much as you can! That's the fun part of travelling to places far away from yours - people act differently than to home, life is different than to home and that's what's soooo amazing!

Autumn

Today was a lazy day of staying inside, making scones for breakfast (super yummy with goat cheese and honey miam), a sticky chocolate cake and pumpkin soup for a lovely dinner with a friend (with candles lit for the first time after the summer), and unpacking 2 boxes of winter clothes to repack them with summer clothes. Autumn is really here now, although it feels as cold as January outside with a maximum temperature of 10 degrees and la bise blowing freezing cold winds. The summer has packed up and left abruptly after a slightly prolonged stay. To be missed dearly and longed for, although days of beautiful snow and great skiing will lessen the memory slightly.

Today was a lazy day indeed. A day when I felt very happy not to be a swan ;)