The other day my colleague, Sarah, told me a story about her "worried-almost-30-friend", J's dating life. Apparently, J went on a date with an Argentinian consultant who lives in Paris and she kind of liked him but she confessed to Sarah that it put her off big time when she found out that the guy didn't know what a risotto was. Now Sarah told me the story to illustrate how absurd and difficult her friend could be. That may well be true, but as far as the "risotto problem" is concerned - I am with her, kind of. It is not the risotto in itself, of course, but somehow it is odd for a guy who spends his life travelling between two of Europe's biggest metropolises, Paris and London. Let's put lack of (basic) culinary culture aside for a moment; in the larger sense the risotto problem is increasingly there with age. I have already written about this, but the skiing trip reminded me again how the more it goes the less patience I have for attempting to create a common basis to then develop some sort of meaningful communication when it is "just not there". And it is not (primarily) an issue of a shared mother tongue or identical schooling or similar upbringing; it is that hard-to-define shared "base culture" and worldliness, which - yes, includes familiarity with the risotto.

Last week, my problem was that I found myself (mostly) surrounded by people with whom I didn't have that common base. Up to a certain degree I can be anything to anyone, an endeavour in which I am helped by the fact that I can speak languages without a foreign accent. After a while though I was discovered as this strange Hungarian woman who speaks like a French but has never really lived here before and keeps moving to places that are not her home. Most of them reacted with astonishment, some, perhaps, with a hint of resentment, but overwhelmingly I sensed bafflement and a complete lack of understanding why anyone would want to live that way. This usually makes me uncomfortable and I instinctively try to assimilate to what is around me but because of the above described decreasing level of effort that I am willing to make I usually get tired and bored quickly.

I am not complaining though - at least this makes me consider my choices from another angle. The one entertaining comment I got was from a funny Scottish guy (understood only by the sole Irish woman and me). It went something like this: so... I guess you don't like many people and that's why you keep moving around, right? No, not right...I hope.

Over halfway through the skiing trip. After a rough start it's been pleasant overall so far. When I showed up at the bus station on Saturday night after a lovely dinner with Andrea I found myself having to fight with about 200 12 year olds and their parents to "register" for the bus ride. I quickly realized that the so-called registration was another pointless patience testing exercise of the French administrators so I knocked down a couple of parents and used my authoritative lawyer persona to find another way. A few hours of bus ride followed, I slept through Charlie's Angels in French (painful) and, to my relief, found out that it was not going to be 20 middle school kids and auntie Fanni in our group: instead it is a mix of adolescents and twenty-somethings with a few thirty-ish guys and women thrown in for good measure. I am lying about my age again (28), but only because when one of my twenty year old friends, as a response to my smug comment about her not being born in the 80s responded confidently that I surely wasn't much older than her - I just couldn't break her the news. She was quite shocked, as it was....

As far as the skiing is concerned: the Chamonix valley is absolutely gorgeous, the weather is sublime, I am tanned and freckled and the ski lessons are good. I do sometimes feel like I have landed in a place that is a cross between a catholic girl-scouts outing and a boot camp: we have to get up early, do everything together, wait for everyone all the time and for instructions on what to do with ourselves. There is also the drink tickets thing at the bar (no real liquor, of course) and the bunk-beds. But there is also a fun girl I am hanging out with and some relatively cute guys, plus the sun and the mountains and the good food. By today though, I overdosed both on the skiing and the social life so I ran away to Chamonix for the day, went to the swimming pool, did a little sauna session and treated myself to an 80 euro-massage at a four-star hotel to find relief from the pain caused by the bunk-bed and the girl-scouts.

More later - I have to get back and face being reprimanded slightly for buggering off without notice...