Back from Switzerland and missing it already. One week of skiing and cheese eating is not enough. I’m going to miss those great valleys, the Geneva Lake, the snow: Champery, Avoriaz, Morgins, Torgon, Chatel, the people, the order, the commitment to having the roads and the trains ready regardless of the weather (in Barcelona our distant-managed-from-the-capital trains just stop when it snows too much). Yes, I’m missing Switzerland already.
To my amazement I’ve discovered I speak an peu du French. We Catalonians are born bilinguals, breathing both Catalan and Spanish since we are born, so learning a third language is not that difficult as we are already wired for it. In my case my third language is English, which I am proud to say I am able to use it effectively. But when I was a kid, and TV channels were still a scarce resource, we lived close enough to the French border to watch French TV and Jean Paul Belmondo’s great action movies. (Catalonia spans a bit further north into France, cut by nation-states seeking natural limits, cutting that only a few countries survived: Switzerland is the most prominent example).
Sorry for the mental rambling. The fact is that I could understand French very well, and even managed to communicate. At the end of the week I even dared to make my first jokes in French 😉 Now, I have decided to improve my French. More things to do, still the same time. Business as usual for an MBA student. 🙂
The great view is from Torgon, in the top of the Jorette piste. If you looked backwards you could see the Mont Blanc not that far aways, if you look down you can see the Genève (or Leman) Lake. The picture was not mine as mine wasn’t that good. On the other hand we had a lot more snow.
Now, time to work again. An airport and an MBA are waiting, so is my soon-to-improve French.
Gabriel's scarcity rent - it's management stupid! 
I think one of the biggest mistakes that the Catalan (and the Spanish) educational system did in the seventies and eighties was to replace French by English as the foreign language taught as schools. Having a competitive advantage to quickly learn it, we have abandoned it, forgetting that our main export partner is France, and that the South of France is a strategic development area. One big mistake…
BTW, that reminds me that last time I was there…was 10 years ago :S
bonne reprise!
You’re right David, and since the marginal cost for our learning of a fourth language, that is French, is rather low thanks to the structures and sounds of the Catalan language (and some of Spanish too) as well as the fact that you are already trilingual (or bilingual) and your brain is already wired to switching between different structures I think it’s worth learning.
In fact our previous Catalan president wanted to include Catalonia into the Francophonie. I’m not really sure if that actually came to happen. My father used to speak in French, as many people from the previous generation did.
Update: I already found a French teacher… tomorrow is my first class LOL
Best regards to both 🙂
By the way, can’t help referencing one of Brisebois posts from early December, a great graphical way to depict where we are in the history of the stock market since 1825, impressive…
I had a great time in torgon and met alot of freind…guiessepi my instructor was amazing and i really enjoyed him teaching me tp snowboard thank you..=)