Lots of alcohol...

The plan for yesterday was a fairly full one... Firstly, it was Open House Day for the wineries in Geneva, a day when the wine made from the previous autumn’s harvest is put on the market and most of the wineries are open for tasting. Then there was a going away barbeque, followed by the Eurovision 2009 final. *grins*

Open House Day was fun. Seriously, how could it be bad with the combination of a lovely sunny day and free transport, food and wine? It was nice to be able to try more wine from the region since the wineries are usually only open for a couple of hours on Saturday morning for casual tasting. Swiss wines are fairly consistent. It's hard to find an undrinkable one, but it's also hard to find a really good one. Doesn't really matter for a tasting day though, since they all start tasting the same after the first few. *winks*


We decided to take the Navette Pinot Noir on the left side of the lake even though there are more wineries on the right side because none of us had ever been on those villages and they probably would be quite pretty with views of the lake and the mountains. We were a little disappointed with the bus, since the driver didn't know anything about the wineries in the area, and the bus didn't stop near them most of the time. But we did go through a village where we could see a few wineries within walking distance of each other and the bus stopped every close to them, so we got off to enjoy the wine, the sunshine and the picnic food which we brought with us. *smiles*

The barberque and party was also fun, despite me not knowing many of the people there. I was kind of looking forward seeing Eurovision live in Europe, though I didn't actually know it was this week until I saw news paper articles about how Switzerland didn't make it into the final in the Swiss papers.

Then I remembered the Russian singer, violinist and Olympic ice skater last year on what was probably the world's smallest ice rink in Finland. It was kind of weird watching the show with French commentary, though we could hardly hear it or the music over all the people in the room. But really, since Eurovision is more about the spectacle than the music, I guess we didn't miss anything by not being able to hear it. *winks*

None of us voted, but it was interesting to notice that the new voting system didn't really change the well known political pattern of countries giving the greatest number of points to their neighbours, or dilute the effect of immigrants voting for their home countries. Though the fact that Norway won with points from almost every country kind of validates the change, particular because it was actually a farily good song and performance, by Eurovision standards.