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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: louel who wrote (131244)	3/2/2017 1:06:45 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217572

I still have family in Lausanne, but for Swiss cities I now prefer Luzern as Geneve has become soulless and the entire Vaud region horribly over-built losing a lot of their green-belt - although in no way similar to the anthill which Monaco has become - yet. One relative is an architect, who like most Swiss architects does primarily period recreations. The former family home in Lutry is now an office condo and the family dock is now a municipal pier, which is a more sensible use for both. Lugano and Locarno are the best of Italy being that they're not Italy and have better Italian food that you can find in Italy. But there's now a disturbing percentage of the bad type of Italians living there who operate their businesses in Milan. The sort who wear extremely costly clothes to make them feel better about walking among the shit on the sidewalks of Milan. They don't really fit into Switzerland. There's nothing in Zurich worthy of anyone's time other than an airport I've never used and a train station. But cities are not the primary appeal of Switzerland. In spite of all of the changes though, Switzerland has kept it's frugal, rural small town mentality. It wasn't really that long ago that you paid for your gasoline by inserting 2 and 5 franc coins into unattended gas pumps and everyone carried leather bags of coins. It's a nice place to call home, the sort home where you grew up but no longer live after you moved to Germany - which is what I would have done had I lived there, but it would be nice to be able to get away to Palma de Mallorca during parts of the Winter. When my Great-Grandmother and her young teen kids had Christmas dinner in Hollywood wearing a Summer dress she realized she was now home and would not be going back to Europe except to visit. She rented a home in Hollywood while she had one built in a more rural farm area which is now West Hollywood. Her husband Pierre remained in Moscow which in his Swiss mentality had proved to be an excellent business opportunity, being distantly related to the Czar. But as my Great-Grandmother noted it was still dark and cold in the Winter and hot, humid, dry and dusty in the Summer. They went back to see Pierre once after WW-II ended. He told them never to return because it was too dangerous (Stalin era) and besides he was remarried. Swiss-boy Dr Pierre A. Herzen in his office at what was now the People's #1 Hospital in Moscow wearing Orders of Lenin on his business suit. My grandfather and his brother and sister later met their half-sister, who was a retired Doctor, for the first time in 1978 in Paris - presented by a relative they were visiting. My Grandfather dredged up his Russian from his childhood and asked her when she left the Soviet Union. She replied in French, last Thursday. He told her in French, in America we had heard it was very difficult to leave Russia, "Oh no," she said, "I come to Paris two or three times a year to go shopping." Yes - but she was probably not more than a handful of ten Soviet citizens who did. She had parlayed her connection with her Great-Grandfather Alexander Herzen into a job as curator of the Alexander Herzen museum in Moscow - along with a two bedroom flat off Red Square and a chauffeured Zil limousine. The family in Paris offered her a home, but she told them she had everything she could want in Moscow, "If I moved to Paris, I'd just be another old woman."