At eight yesterday morning, our host took delivery of a new dishwasher and a new fridge, which required fitting in to their existing kitchen by two delivery men who spoke with the characteristically droll accent of the young Genevois. This early awakening got us up and out of the house in good time to catch the 11h14 train to Bienne. It's a lovely journey along the side of two lakes and wooded countryside, flanked by the south facing slopes of the Jura, carpeted and patterned with vineyards and orchards. The last time I did the trip, eighteen months ago, was in mid-winter under grey skies with a half carpet of snow. This time we saw the landscape in all its technicolour glory.
Laura met us at the station, herself in transit at that moment, to give us instructions for reaching her house later. Then we had several hours to eat and discover the town centre. There's a mediaeval village with the remnants of its fortification spreading upwards from the base of a south facing hillside, and several old squares (I think they were all triangular shaped), and a large town church. These areas were in the throes of being transformed with stages and ad hoc restaurants for a festival - a rather leisurely hive of activity in the heat.
Above the old town, on the other side of a country railway branch line, the tree clad hillside is a network of steep steps and narrow winding roads rising up 400 metres from the plain, distributed with houses of varying age and design, many with their own terraced gardens and a view of the twentieth century town centre beneath. The Rolex factory is dominant on the hillside and visible all along the main shopping street below.
The railway station stands with its Greek portico facade about a kilometre from the old town quarter. All the area in between forms the modern commercial heart of the town. It looks as if it's developed with less thought for aesthetics than function, a mixture of irritating if not jarring styles and shapes, in contrast to the more ancient domestic and civic forms of the old town. We climbed up the hill to try and get an overview for a photograph but this proved difficult. The many trees, dense housing and garden walls obscured the panoramic view. If we'd been able to find and use the funicular railway to the summit, no doubt our quest would have been rewarded, but not on this occasion.
At tea time we went out to the eastern suburb where Laura lives, and found her at home in her new Swiss wooden house. Say that and you immediately think of an alpine chalet, but this is a modern eco- house, built on a mound from which it projects over a garage cum storage space. Pictures here show the building before its present vegetation had grown up, and doesn't do it full justice. It's a large one storey flat roofed assembly of wooden boxes inside a box, with a quarter of a metre space between inner and outer walls packed with insulation (hemp fibre). The entire house is heated by two smallish wood burning stoves. The outer surface is clad in armoured glass, giving the building its dark brown earth colour. It's surrounded by trees and bushes whose reflections make the large flat surfaces come alive with movement.
All the doors are designed to be wide enough and the rooms large enough to move around in a wheel chair and never feel cramped. There are no steps, but there is a gentle gradient from the entrance of the house up to the bedrooms. All the interior surfaces are high quality wooden composites in a light beech colour. Little furniture is needed apart from chairs and tables because entire walls and corridors have tall built in cupboards enclosed by effortless sliding doors, providing ample space for domestic needs, and making it possible to banish all clutter, outdoor clothes, cleaning appliances, TV, hi fi, computers etc.
The centre section of the box is cut away to form a sheltered courtyard. Lounge and bedroom windows look out on to this. Apart from one corridor window, no rooms look outwards to the neighbours. I guess this requirement didn't figure too highly in the owner's design priority of making the best of the time and space he had left with his wife who was in the latter stages of terminal ilness. Sadly, she didn't live to see it completed. Let's hope that the planning journey gave them both great joy. The house is a place of beauty and inner spaciousness, a tribute to their domestic vision.
All this gave us lots to talk about, as Laura prepared us a superb meal, which involved me in half an hour of turning the handle of a pasta machine. I 'm now motivated to get ours out of the cupboard when we get home, and revive the habit. It's amazing to think that when we went to Geneva, church secretary Laura had recently given birth to Camilla. She wasn't there with us on this occasion, but over in Fribourg hunting for lodgings ahead of the start of her first semester as a law student in university there. It was just great to catch up on all the news around the supper table in the relative cool of the evening, before heading home in the dusk on a succession of well timed connecting trains, all the way to Meyrin by eleven fifteen.
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