Monday, February 27, 2006

Good boy. No fire. Eat some cake.


Okay, so I totally lucked out tonight. After taking one too many risks with trying to forcefully insert American plugs with shoddy converters into relatively-close sized outlets, I blew a fuse and my entire flat went dark. I patted down my head to verify my braincan wasn't on fire, then stumbled around until I found some matches and a candlestick. The offending fuse was hidden in the closet and is the small round thing to the right in the picture. Not exactly the kind of fuses I'm used to working with. I had no idea what was broken, but it appeared that the little blue thing in the middle of the fuse had busted and was in pieces within the housing of the fuse (much like when a filament in a lightbulb goes). I rummaged around the closet and found a size match for a "6Amp" fuse, unplugged the plugs I was tinkering with, screwed in the fuse, prayed, and heard the frige come back on. Halleujah. Screw Suisse electricite.

After patting myself on the back for a job well done, I hauled myself to my favorite place restaurant: Manora, a cafeteria-style restaurant where the only language you need to speak is the universal language of "grunt and point". It's like an upscale La Madeline. Speaking of desserts, on a co-worker's recommendation, I went to a place in Gare de Cornavin called Aperto. Besides being in the train station and one of the only grocery stores I've found to stay open late, it houses a patisserie called A. Pougnier. The cakes are about the diameter of a cookie and about 3 inches high, much like the ones that you would find in a Whole Paycheck. The decadent sacher came highly recommended and it didn't disappoint - one of the best cakes I've had in a long time. It will take me nearly a year of typing at the desk to burn off these calories.

Friday Pics

From the outing to Cafe Metis are available here. I'm your boy getting all cheeky in the last row.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

"Smart" Cars



So these things are apparently all over Europe. They're called Smart cars, but after seeing one next to a full-size BMW SUV in my building's parking lot, I didn't think they were such a good idea. Do you think airbags are very good if the bumper of the car behind you makes contact with your car a foot behind your head? You can even get one with Yokohama tires. Isn't that sort of like having a case of sweet-smelling farts or winning a gold medal at the Special Olympics?

First Outing

Last night, a few people from the Federation went to Cafe Metis in Geneva. Quaint little place with probably a total capacity of 50-60 people. We wound up fitting 30 in the loft overlooking the main tables on the ground floor - tight quarters. I'm constantly amazed that there are people in even the smallest, darkest, most remote restaurants and cafes of Geneva. Everyone seems to frequent every restaurant at all times.

I think that a small reason to this is the grocery store availability: the stores close at 7pm routinely throughout the week, with the exception of Thursday for which the stores remain open for an hour longer.

Another funny find on the way to Cafe Metis was Central Perk - a cafe in Geneva that is modeled off of the famous Friends cofee house.

Food was middle eastern, with a good helping of falafel, hummus, babaghanouj, baklava, and a few other things I couldn't identify. Came out to be around 40 CHF for the entire meal, which included a single (large) plat and enough wine to drown a monkey. Pretty expensive, but comprable to a large, socialable meal with friends in a city like NYC, but the waitstaff was nicer (which I hear is a rarity in Geneva).

More Genevois Quirks

More quirks:
  • Buses in Geneva don't require that you show your bus pass and are rarely monitored.
  • Women's sweaters are called "jumpers".
  • It's generally respected that you don't take showers or flush the toilets after 10pm.
  • Tenants of an apartment building have certain days on which they can do their laundry. You are not permitted to do laundry on other days.
  • There are large political, cultural, and social rifts between eastern (German) and Western (French) Switzerland.
  • English is now the second language taught after German to children in eastern Switzerland (above French and Italian).

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

The Fabled Bus System

Yes, it's true. MTV Europe sucks. I think they've played reruns of Viva La Bam for two hours straight. Watching French TV hasn't helped my French get any better either. In fact, a majority of French TV here in Geneva are just B-rate American movies that have been dubbed over. Watching TV here can get confusing - there are American broadcasts (CNN International, CNBC Europe), Italian shows, and French shows. It's amazing to see life imitate TV - while at work, I witnessed a person start a conversation in English, switch to French, then end in German. I, for the most part, smiled and nodded.

It took a few days to get used to, but I figured out the bus system. And yes, it's everything you've heard. Clean, efficient, on time. Tickets are sold at kiosks at every stop and they come out on bar-coded receipts. You board a bus and there is no checking - no validation by anyone. You are expected to pay the cost of the bus ticket and everyone does. There are roaming police patrols on the buses to check, but I have yet to see one. The Swiss seem to have a higher expectation of their society and its constituents ante up.

While coming back home from dinner last night on the bus, I had a Firefly moment - a woman answered her cell phone in French and promptly switched to Chinese. For the rest of the conversation, I heard her switch easily between French and Chinese and thought of my own problems trying to integrate the Serenity curse words into my daily lexicon.

Geneva Quirks

I've been here four days and am finding small quirky things about the Genevois or Switzerland in general. Don't know how prevalent any of these are throughout Western Europe, but I'll find out as I travel more extensively. I will keep updating this post with more comments as I come across them.

  • There are a TON of "coiffure" or hair places. For as many places there are to do hair, one would expect that the Swiss would have great hair. Not so.
  • You can send email and SMSs from pay phones in Geneva.
  • The Swiss have working pay phones.
  • Jewelry shopkeepers don't bring their window wares in at night.
  • Newspapers are serve-yourself and the charge is on the honor system.
  • European keyboards have the "z" and the "y" keys switched, as well as the special character keys like !, @, ?, ', etc.
  • Swiss consider all of the rooms of a house "habitable", with the exception of a bathroom. If you can fit a table in a kitchen to eat, it's considered a room. So a "3 pieces" house could actually be a two bedroom with a large kitchen.
  • A book of matches is actually made of real wood.
  • Diet Coke is called Coke Light.

Episode 1

Like most good adventures, I was hoping that my story would start out with a slow beginning, allowing for the natural development of plot, characters, and the uncovering of some evil crime syndicate. Hour four of the flight to Frankfurt sucked: after a crowd-pleasing showing of Walk The Line followed by a half-hearted attempt at “acting” by Antonio Banderas in the Legend of Zorro, the cabin was subjected to torture at the hands of Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin. House Sitter has got to be the most God-awful movie I've seen. Second maybe to White Oleander.

First impressions of Frankfurt: Europeans definitely have looser definitions of a “smoking area”. In the airport, apparently, “smoking” areas are separated from “no smoking” areas by what appear to be gigantic Soviet-era air conditioners that attempt to suck in the offending smoke and recirculate "clean" air. The way these guys were wrapped around these things, it looked like a dude doing it with a Star Wars droid. And I don't mean any cute R2D2, I mean those weird boxy ones that the Jawas drag around.

In the event that the asian woman who was in line with me at the Frankfurt airport is reading this, I apologize now. My spidey sense was tingling five minutes after we spoke and I realized that we were, in fact, in line to exit the airport through customs, not to go to the B terminal as the misleading signs seemed to indicate. I’m hoping that you too figured this out and I apologize. My excuse in the event I found you on my flight was to say that I misunderstood your question of “B?” as “leave?”.

My impression of Geneva and Frankfurt airports were both the same: I can’t freaking believe how quiet, orderly, and uncluster-fucky everything and everyone is. Try going to BWI on a Saturday morning. It’s like you’ve entered the Astrodome and the ticket counters are handing out free TP. Geneva folk seem to tolerate a lot of crap - maybe its their Calvinist nature or maybe the fact that arguing with the French just got too tiring. I was witness to a child who incessantly kicked the chair in front of her for a majority of the flight – and the man sitting in it, at times. Did he turn around and glare at the mother with the oh-no-she-din't look? Did he let out audible gasps in hopes that someone within viewing distance would empathize? No. He simply read his copy of the Lufthansa magazine. Amazing. There was a quote about the Swiss in one of my guidebooks that this reminded me of: “The Swiss are polite, law-abiding people who usually see no good reason to break the rules… Good manners infuse the national psyche, and politeness is the cornerstone of all social intercourse.” Someone should have told that to the fighting French couple in my building – it’s like listening to an episode of Gilmore Girls in French through a wall. Thank God I can’t hear the makeup sex.

Aventures à Genève

Welcome to the blog that documents my travels, tribulations, and joys while abroad in Geneva.