Fancy

I had an interesting conversation with a German this week. And I mean interesting in the traditional English sense of the word (thought-provoking), not the Frenglish sense (weird). And let me state, for the record, that I have a few German friends, have probably spent more than a year in Germany, all told, have some German art hanging on my wall, and think they make great beer and can do things with pork that defy description.

But no one else can use "fancy" as a curse word quite like a German.

I like beautiful things. And some of the beautiful things I like are, indeed, fancy. I don't like something just because it's fancy; I also don't dislike it just because it's fancy. When I hear someone use the word, I am prone to think "ornate", but I'm pretty sure that, for a lot of Germans, a more accurate translation would be "frivolous".

One of the things that I love - and have loved - about living in Geneva is the chance to explore a much, much bigger world than I ever knew existed. Bigger in terms not of just geography, but in terms of ideas, of cultures, of passions and motivations and political views. To be able to have worked all over Europe, in the Middle East, and to really get to know people from so many different places has led me to love - and be fascinated by - people in a way that I couldn't really have imagined before. And it's changed me significantly. I think this example is a little funny because it's just so completely foreign to how I think, but mostly I just love that it exists.

Up with people, eh?