Thursday, November 7, 2013

A quiet opening before the storm




Café de Geneve quietly opened its doors yesterday, 6 November 2013, after a little over two months of a challenging renovation and design process and five months after our move from Switzerland to the Philippines. The result is a cosy, neat interior (still a work in progress), and as our first born, I think it quite resembles its young parents. Lots of excitement, pain, sweat, tears and love went into this modest little project, and I look forward to the many hours I will be devoting to it in the months to come. Our new friends in Cebu have been incredibly supportive in providing suggestions, contacts, and moral support along the way, and I am so very grateful to you all!

Funny how over dinner last week with one of my particularly supportive friends here, she advised me – speaking from experience – to take a little break before opening the restaurant doors. Both my husband and I had been through a lot over the past few weeks and I was both exhausted and tense. But I had already made arrangements with my small team on a start date and did not want to postpone it. Then yesterday, our opening day, news of the supertyphoon erupted, as well as a Government order to stop work at noon today to prepare for its landfall… so I called my staff not to come in, and since we had reservations we opened for lunch but closed right after. In the end, I got my little break. Now let’s hope that the storm looses strength before going over the country...

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