Sunday

We came to that realization about missing (previous post) on Sunday, a day when most stores and many restaurants and cafés are closed in Geneva.  As an American, this closing business feels like some sort of anti-consumption exercise.  The exercise feels stringent and wholesome, as if it's meant to purify you of your need to buy, buy, buy.  My little mind kept running in circles, thinking, oh, we need this and I can't forget to pick up some that, then remembering again and again that stores are closed.  Completely closed.  Not even sort of open.  And yet still I impulsively checked the hours of operation on each door.

Closed, closed, closed.

In the US, there's a shopping safety net at literally any time of day or night, so you begin to think that everything exists to serve your needs.  Here, if you need diapers, better think of that on Saturday well before 6pm or you're (literally) xxxx out of luck, unless you are willing to hike (with that baby, the one who needs diapers) all the way across town to the one pharmacy that is open - the one by the train station.  Here, you gotta have that thing...what's it called?  Oh yeah, foresight.  I figured everyone here had that Saturday night foresight, but alas, more stressful than worrying about crossing the French-Swiss border with groceries is shopping in a Geneva grocery store just before 6pm.  Those 360 degree cart wheels are gonna be digging into some heels, lemme tell you.

Sunday started off the way the days have been presenting themselves lately in the mornings - with a heavy, wet-wool blanket of gray rain clouds, the kind that make you start realizing that you might miss something.  The four of us broke out into the rain, in need of air and a space that did not require us to make decisions about where to put our belongings.  Despite the rain, we headed for the lake (Lac Léman).

To our enormous pleasure, there was a little ticket booth for a boat ride that was actually open for business.

Midway through the ride, the day did what the days seem to do here.  A blue hole opened in the thick gray layer, expanding until, there you are, in the middle of a gorgeous, yellow and blue and fluffy white page of a storybook, wondering why you are wearing a raincoat.

Our boat, the Whatchamacallit.
(That would have been nice to remember for this caption.)

We reached land and took another Sunday stroll.  With the clear sky, it was easier to understand a definite benefit for the Sunday shutdown...you cannot run an errand - it's not your fault, nor your neglect.