Geneva, St. Gallen, and back to Geneva

Alrighty, lets do this thing. So there aren't pictures here. Sorry, its sort of a lot of work to get them on here nicely, so I'm just gonna say, at least for this one, just go to picasaweb.google.com/WillieBlackmon to see pictures. Go! Now!

I left Seatac around 6:30PM last Tuesday and headed to London. I had the fastest night of my life. Actually it was pretty funny, they served dinner, then like 5 hours later, served breakfast. I flew British Airways, and they served tea, which I added milk to, and felt very British. I also had an interesting epiphany: British accents make all women more attractive and all men resemble Michael Caine. Its amazing.

Yep, spent 45 minutes in Heathrow Airport, then off to Geneva, Switzerland. After I landed, I headed through customs (He literally said nothing to me, no questions at all.) and to the place I was supposed to meet Bert, a friend my aunt knew long ago. He wasn't there, and I went through about 5 minutes of rising panic before he got there, and all was well. Bert and girlfriend Claudia are 50-somethings living in an apartment on the edge of town. He works for a human rights organization and she works for the UN. He speaks two languages fluently, and she three. They both are required to for their jobs. And that seems like a somewhat typical setup in Geneva. It's an international city where 40% of the population are foreign born. They don't have kids, which seems common. Often, apparently, women have careers, or have kids, not both. Childcare isn't easy to find, and kids get two hours off of school for lunch, plus no school Wednesdays. Sounds pretty awesome to me, but it does present issues for two income families. Anyway, Bert and Claudia were great about letting me into their home, feeding me good food and trusting a complete stranger with a key to their apartment.

Jet lag gave me an awesome few days of easily getting up at 7 or 7:30AM. It was amazing. On my first full day in Geneva, I ventured into the city to explore. I came prepared with a little background of German (very, very little) but was fully unprepared for the French speaking Geneva. I practiced saying "bon-zchour," "mer-see," and "par-lay voo onglay" a few times and went for it. Geneva has a fantabulous public transportation system. I paid 7 Franks, about $7 for a day pass (cheap considering everything, cost of living and wages, are much higher than in the U.S.) which gave me access to intense double accordion buses, trams, trains, and even boats.

I checked out the UN in Geneva. Although most politically important UN stuff happens in New York, most of the "behind the scenes" organizational stuff happens in Geneva. The tour was alright, nothing amazing. I mostly just walked around, learned how to use the public transit and took pictures of cool looking things. Because I didn't see the key to the apartment Bert left me, I had to stay out until 7PM when he would return, which meant I had quite a long day walking around, and ended up just taking random buses out into the countryside and back to stay warm, which was actually interesting.

Next day headed out to a city near St. Gallen, which is 5ish hours by train. The Swiss, as well as the Germans apparently, are amazing with their train schedules. I arrived on time to within 1-2 minutes of when I was supposed to, on a 5 hour trip. Its really quite impressive. Julian, a friend I met while he was studying abroad in Vancouver BC, met me and took me to his house where I stayed for two nights. I met his family, who all speak at least some English. Again, they were amazingly nice about setting up a nice place for me to stay, making food, and buying way too much for me. We went skiing in some local mountains the next day. The weather started off perfect, and it was some beautiful scenery. In the U.S. in by no means a great skier, but I'm probably a little better than average. In Switzerland, I am terrible. Little kids whizzed by me. But whatever, it was awesome. As part of a traditional Swiss festival, bands of dressed up, drunken Swiss played songs at the base of the slopes. Everyone sang and danced to the music, and nearby, people in in ski-wear sunbathed on pool-chairs sitting in the snow. Switzerland is a crazy place. That night we went to a bar with Julian and his girlfriend. A bunch of his friends ended up showing up as well. I was in high demand, either because I am really awesome and charismatic, or because people wanted to practice their English. Probably the former. One guy had a strange German-Australian accent (after spending a year in Australia) and possibly knew more about American pop culture than me.

After a few hours of sleep, I got up and headed back to Geneva to meet second cousins?...some sort of relatives...Mark, Anne, Andrew, and Eleanor.

More on that later. I'm tired and apparently going to a castle tomorrow, so must sleep.

For pictures, check out the picasa website. http://picasaweb.google.com/WillieBlackmon

tschüs! (bye!...German)