I went to see my French aunt (who is not really my aunt and could be my second mother), Michele, last weekend in Geneva. She took me to a party thrown by a young woman (originally from the Ivory Coast) in celebration of her joining the ranks of the great Swiss citizenry. The Swiss is a strange creature. Even the French-Swiss. Some of the species is able to live in the heart of Europe without being any more knowledgeable about Europe than the lama-rearing peasants of the Bolivian Andes. As a naive "New European" I did not think that, between two bites of cheese raclette (the undigestable local speciality), I would be asked by a fellow European whether Hungary was still a communist dictatorship.

Otherwise, Geneva is very beautiful, if a little provincial. It was good to spend time with Michele - last time I saw her was a painful experience; it was at the funeral of Andras, her husband, in January. She is one of those people whose opinions and worldview has had a great impact on me - almost despite myself. Michele is a "soixante-huitard", a child of the sixties and the Parisian "revolution" of May '68, hence an (ex?)-communist with strong opinions on pretty much everything. I was convinced for years that in politics "left" equals "good" and "right" equals "evil" because that is what I learned from her when I spent a year in France at the age of eight. There were many other similarly undisputable truths she taught us in many areas of life, including political preferences and literary, culinary or artistic tastes. Many of these stuck with me for years and when I later reassessed them for myself I found that on most matters I agreed (politics notwithstanding), but I did not embrace the way of thinking. For the most part, I refuse to espouse undisputable truths and I will not communicate my preferences/tastes/worldview as such to my children. (To be fair, the Sacre Coeur in Paris is really ugly, I confirmed that for myself recently...). Of course, now that I am an adult as well our discourse is quite different and we had a great time chatting, shopping, eating, etc, and not agreeing on everything is fine.