One Day In Geneva | Valentina Cirasola | Author and Designer

It’s midnight, dark, winter and cold, I want to take a walk on a long straight street and smoke a cigarette. Geneva is very cold this time of the year, I am not used to it, and now it’s raining too. Illuminated stores across the street invite me to look at their merchandise, perhaps in the morning, I will be in the mood to buy something I can’t buy tonight. Their lights will go off at a programmed time, but now are still shining on beautiful objects for the nightcrawlers people like me. I want to go across the street, a red light tells me to halt. As far as my eyes can see, no cars are coming from any direction and the need to get under a protected portico in a hurry is stronger than getting wet waiting for the street light to change color.

Jack Ward Unsplash – Switzerland

As I cross the street, I hear the sound of a whistle as if a policeman is whistling. It couldn’t be whistling at me, I am thinking, but he is. Where did he come from? A minute ago I was the only one in the street. He really dropped out of the blue. He is gracious at first, his voice is soft while he is giving a 10 Francs ticket for walking on the pedestrian zone with a red light. I am so surprised a small act like mine can cause a pedestrian to have a ticket, I tell him but he doesn’t listen. I also tell him that in Italy, no one gets a ticket for walking on a pedestrian zone with a red light, not even for J walking dodging cars in the moving traffic. I soon realized it is the wrong thing to say in this circumstance. The policeman hands me the ticket accusing me of not observing the law. I protest, argue with him as much as I can and he begins his intellectual speech of anarchy. In his opinion, my disobedience for crossing the road with the red light is a libertarian act, a rejection of society based on the order. My theoretical flexibility and individual action in deciding which laws to obey and which to ignore could result in a revolution against regimentation and consequently in terrorist acts, he says. Mind you at that time, the world didn’t know terrorism as we know it today.

By now, I have unleashed my persuasion arts. I am trying to tell him I am not a terrorist or an anarchist, that I have no intention of starting a revolution and that I have only crossed the road on the pedestrian zone with a red light. What harm my action could cause to others since I am the only one in the street in the deep night? He doesn’t want to listen and gives me another ticket for disturbance of the night peace.

I better shut my mouth and pay for my ticket. Walking away I am thinking some people are made in blocks on the assembly line, no creativity, no compassion, no flexibility and are not even equipped with a vision to see two inches away from their nose.

My hotel room overlooks Lake Geneva, and it has the cutest balcony. it’s an old building with stone stairs, decorative cast iron gated elevator with glass doors, the type we see in films of a different era, vaulted ceiling, and the bathroom in the corridor. I should have stayed on that cute balcony to smoke my cigarette in peace and enjoy the rain hitting the waters of the lake.

Bern – Clock Tower

Since then, I have returned to Switzerland and had great experiences. That episode had gone unnoticed in the maze of my memories until today. I don’t know why it has returned….., I guess my traveling experiences always leave an impression on me. BTW, I have stopped smoking since then, that was many, many moons ago. Ciao,
Valentina
https://valentinaexpressions.com/trips-to-puglia-2

Valentina Cirasola is a storyteller by nature. Stories are very important to her design career to convey ideas because making someone’s home or personal images is not only about building around shapes, lines, forms, and colors. It is about the story one can create around their spaces and how they want to appear to others. It’s about life experiences and how Valentina can incorporate them in her clients’ homes. She is the author of five books, all available on Amazon – Barnes&Nobles
The latest published books are ©The Road To Top Of The World
and ©Naled Lemons