Les Automnales

On Tuesday, HWMBO and I attended the local Automnales (Autumn Fair) exposition at the Geneva Palexpo center.  I usually like to browse through the furniture area to see the lovely - and for the most part, very expensive - displays, especially of living room furniture.  My apartment here is furnished in IKEA, which more than suffices for my needs.  IKEA furniture is functional, practical, comfortable and reasonably-priced.  But like most, I love to dream.  The Palexpo furniture displays help to flesh out those dreams.  But since HWMBO was not interested (in retrospect, I should probably have chosen to attend with a like-minded female), we sped past the furniture area in nothing flat.

This year, I really wanted to look through the kitchen and bathroom display areas to get some ideas for updating our house in Maryland.  There were some very tempting areas to view, to be sure.  But I was quite taken aback by the aggressiveness of those manning the areas - an aggressiveness that is, in my experience, unusual for and atypical of Swiss exhibitors.  Instead of merely letting us walk by and enjoy the displays, or giving us catalogs for later perusal, the vendors literally fell over themselves, trying to capture us and get dimensions for my kitchen area.  HWMBO sailed right through without much of a problem, his lack of linguistic ability in French an asset in the circumstances.  Finally, after about three experiences with vendors so sticky that I might have been made of flypaper, we both fled to the upper area where, it appeared, most of the other visitors had gone - and likely for the same reasons.  Still, I looked back down at the area with some regret and took a couple photos, lamenting the fact that it was a marvelous missed opportunity.

Still, the upper level, with food areas, various stalls containing regional specialties and stalls with handicrafts where vendors were much less aggressive, was quite lively and colorful.

HWBMO enjoyed these examples of handicraft creativity.

Darth Vader was present, with a friend.

When we felt hungry enough, we decided to have crêpes salées (also known as galettes) and were able to watch their creation.

I had the épinards et gorgonzola (spinach and gorgonzola cheese) version, while HWMBO selected the jambon, fromage et oeuf (ham, cheese and egg) version, as shown here.

With our light meal, we had cidre (alcoholic apple cider) from France and polished everything off with cinnamon ice cream cones.  After that, we continued wandering around to view several of the booths, including one area with various breeds of sheep

and goats.

This year's guest of honor was the combined Franco-Swiss ski area known as les Portes du Soleil (Gates of the Sun) near Mont Blanc.  The area includes, but is not limited to, les Gets and Morzine-Avoriaz in France, as well as Champéry and Morgins in Switzerland.

There was clearly a feel of the upcoming holiday season in many of the displays.

And Saint-Nicholas was there too - in force - presaging festivities for December.