June 23, 2012
The rabbits are largely harmless: Poncin - Geneva (Switzerland)
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IF WE SEE rabbits, Stéphane says, we are not to be scared. They are not only largely harmless but they are tame. They live on the camp-ground where he is the smiling, quietly-spoken and slightly rotund man in charge. He speaks fluent English with a French accent.
'My mother was Irish,' he said. 'When she was young - this is before the second world war - her family moved to America. And she met a pianist there and they got married. When America came into the war, he joined the US army and he was at D-Day and so on. After the war he came to Switzerland as a military judge and that entitled him to Swiss nationality. I was actually born in France, in Paris, but I’m Swiss. I also have an American passport because of my father, but unfortunately he had a stroke when he was 39. He lived until he was 92 but he could only say one word at a time. So he could say Bread but he couldn’t say he wanted some bread.
'So I’m American because of him but the last time I used my passport was when I took my mother's ashes to a little place between Los Angeles and San Francisco, called Carmel. I love that beautiful road along the coast there but I don't suppose I shall ever see it again."
We got to Veyrier, a posh village outside Geneva where rich folk live and a handful of bike riders - Laurent Jalabert and Richard Virenque among them - used to live. We got here after an afternoon of busy and tolerably unpleasant main road. It was an exercise in getting somewhere, a contrast to an idle morning of riding through hills and drinking coffee on cliff-top verandas.
But it gives us the satisfaction of spending the night just inside Switzerland, safe against marauders because of the guard rabbits.
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Tomorrow, we'll take the bus into Geneva and I'll report back from there.
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