Annecy

---

Annecy,

Great fun. Good times were had in Annecy. Not least for the beautiful food, Annecy will forever be remembered by me as somebody with a long standing addiction to cheese as the place that introduced me to fondue savoyarde and raclette. The Raclette being all you can eat to boot and a meal I will never forget. The only problem with it being that I realised my exploring of melted cheese shouldn't have been left at the processed cheese, tomato sauce, toastie, after school stage and that I had lost many good years of gourging in the meantime. Oh well I am in France so I couldn't be in better place to make up for lost time.

While gourging on raclette another strange coincidence happened. We were tucked away in a restauraunt on a sidestreet, where only french people were dining. On about my 7th serving, a couple sat down next to us and began speaking German. I could hear that they were not German and I noticed that they used a lot of expressions and words from the dialect of German that I have been most exposed to. So I couldn't withhold my curiosity and I butt into their conversation to snoop. As it turned out they had met in Leipzig, where I was last year. He was English and she was French. And whatsmore he was best friends at university and studied the same German degree as an ex work colleague of mine who I had spent a lot of time in Leipzig with.

So sitting in a restauraunt, in a reasonably well known in France but not so well known out of France mountain town, I met a French girl and Englishman speaking Saxon in a restauraunt with about 20 guests, tucked up a side street at around 10pm in a non touristy period. I'd like a calculator to figure out the odds on that one happening, let alone happening again. But the scariest thing about it for me, is that it's not the first or the most random coincidental meeting I have had. I will never forget and would pay to find out how I managed to meet a Mexican that I had met in Auckland and done two Spanish-English exchanges with and then completely lost contact with, after a motorbike lost control and ploughed into me and a Canadian friend at 4am in Chang Mai, Thailand. She had been walking on the opposite of the 4-5 lane street and had only seen me because her friend who happened to see the accident from the other side of the street pointed me out sprawling on the ground in shock. I could keep blabbing on but I'll leave the rant with two words 'Mind turning'...

So back to Annecy. Other than eating good food I managed to convince my travel partner to try and walk around the lake there. It was only supposed to be about 26km or so, so I figured it should be no problem as we were both pretty fit and had rollerbladed around 50km around Paris a couple of weeks before. As it happened, 26km was a bit off. Luckily we met a very nice couple from Corsica who took us in their car for the last 15km or so...

What else happened in Annecy - We walked up a hill, checked out the view and the church, drank some good wine, ate some more good food and used it as a base to explore Geneva.

My opinion of Annecy is very high and I would recommend anybody who gets the chance to go there, beautiful spot, great food and a very nice place to chill...

---