Whereas Pablito was more of an intellectual and could sometimes be a bit nervous or complicated, Nico was from the start a relaxed and hilarious child. He would tell stories and laugh enormously. Everything seemed to amuse him. When he was very small, he was also a bit fatter than Pablito, so we used to call him ‘gordo pancho’ or just ‘pancho’ in reference to his relaxed and easy-going demeanour.

This didn’t mean that Nico didn’t have tantrums every now and again. In the summer of 1996, when he was just two, we went for a few days to the south of France. We had rented an apartment in a hotel that included a large swimming pool. During the trip down, we had been speaking about the sea and the beach, which Nico had never seen. We had told him how beautiful it was and how much he would enjoy it. When we arrived at the hotel, he saw the big swimming pool and decided that this is the place where he wanted to stay for the rest of the holiday.

We tried to take him to the beach, but he wouldn’t move. ‘No beach for Nico,’ he said and began to cry. We tried by all means to get him to come with us, and finally just dragged him into the car. He screamed and shouted, but then, as soon as the beach was in view, he stopped crying, wiped his tears and with a big smile said: ‘Oh, I’m soooo happy, what an enormous swimming pool!’ From then on, we had trouble getting Nico off the beach for his afternoon siesta, he loved to build castles in the sand and couldn’t stop running in and out of the water.

In 1994 we sold our small chalet in Les Praz and bought a bigger one in Les Houches, a village at the entrance of the Chamonix valley. It included a large garden, with enough space to play football and a barbecue. In the summer, cows were grazing in front of our home.

As the kids got older, on Friday evenings we would leave Geneva as soon as we could and race off to Chamonix, where we always had a meal at one of the local restaurants. It was mostly fondue, raclette or pierrade. Sometimes we would order a pizza from the car and pick it up when we arrived in Les Houches, and then devour it at the chalet.

The weekends were filled with projects. I would regularly visit the Office du Tourisme in Les Houches and find out what was going on, then drag everyone to do all kinds of exotic activities, including racing on sleds pulled by huskies, listen to little old ladies in mountain huts tell anecdotes of what life was like in the Chamonix valley in the old times, buy cheese in faraway mountain farms, drink unpasteurised milk freshly extracted from cows who were spending the summer in high altitude prairies (which gave poor Nico stomach cramps that made him cry for hours), build an igloo in our backyard and drink hot chocolate in it, or eat a fondue in a hut with no electricity in the middle of the winter.

This was all in addition to the ‘regular’ activities, which involved seeing friends and skiing with them. In the summer, if it wasn’t raining, I always prepared a barbecue. And I would regularly take the kids fishing in the nearby Lac des Chavants. We would come back with a few trout, clean them in the nearby stream and cook them over an open fire. Especially Nico loved to come fishing with me. At the age of three, he was already pulling out the fish. He was so proud and happy, and I loved these moments with him.

During the winter, the kids participated in local sports contests. Pablito joined the cross-country ski team, and Nico the downhill team, both in Les Houches. I loved to take them to their training sessions and watch them. Both were very good and I felt so happy for them. I filmed them regularly and we would discuss their performances at home.

All four of us would often do hikes together. Sometimes, we would take a portable barbecue that Edi had bought for us to Charousse, a prairie reachable only on foot, about 2 km above our chalet. The children would find small sticks in the forest and we would then cook sausages on the open fire. These outings brought back memories of my childhood excursions to Bariloche, and I absolutely loved them.

On Sunday evenings, we would often return to Geneva totally exhausted.

When we were not in Chamonix, we were often in Evian, where there was a great spa, large swimming pools and an amazing golf course.