Not going to Switzerland while I was in Europe would have probably meant that my family would have put a contract on my head. A risk I wasn’t willing to take, especially since I love being there. Furthermore, the Expo de Coss happened to start just a few days after my arrival. It wasn’t a coincidence since this is one of my favorite times back home. Started 43 years ago by a bunch of shop owners from Cossonay, it evolved into a regional fair housing a little over a hundred businesses under two giant plastic tents. When I was a kid, I used to run around the place, selling tombola tickets. Later, I became a simple visitor addicted to the fantastic crepes sold at the entrance. Finally, I ended up being part of it when Seor Service decided to promote their business over there. For several years, I have spent countless hours building the showcase, and the entire team would share time every evening, doing a good bit of selling and a whole lot of public relations.
As I arrived in Cossonay, my brother-in-law Patrick had just started building the frame of this year’s Seor showcase, and I very naturally gave a hand. Holding tools, moving appliances, building things, in other words working, it all was a bit weird but somehow felt right. Like those 18 months of vagabonding were already just a memory. I had a lot of fun being among such energy and dynamism, where hundreds of people were painstakingly building something that would last all of the nine days of this 43rd edition. Seeing this made me proud of belonging to this kind of place, this kind of people. A place where local businesses are far from moribund, where people still buy from the corner store and not always on the internet. A place where you personally know the local gym owner, and you went to school with the baker. A place where a little friendly chat replaces the grunt you sometimes get from the supermarket cashier. I can already hear some city slickers talking about those country boys. Still, I was born and raised like this, and nothing replaces human contact in my eyes. And believe it or not, this mentality goes a long way when traveling.
They say time flies when you’re having fun, and it did. Before I knew it, the time had come for me to leave again. I barely had time to see some close friends, but as I expected, met at the Expo with so many others that I hadn’t seen for a long time. This is also part of the magic of it, and a good reason for me not to miss it two years in a row.
