Geneva pt 1

I had my winter break already last Thursday till Tuesday of this week. I got the chance to take advantage of a deal of 25% off at Easy Jet, but by the time I found the deal, it was ending at midnight that night, so I booked the two places I could go to, Geneva and Amsterdam. Before leaving Ana made me two sandwhiches because I would be missing dinner. I ended up packing them for breakfast the next morning and just raiding the kitchen for a yogurt and cookie dinner. My flight left at 8:30 PM thursday. I hoped that two pairs of pants, 1 pair of briefs, 6 pairs of socks and 3 shirts would be enough. A good traveler always brings a surplus of socks, everything else is expendable.

The flight Geneva was fairly smooth. I tried to ask for Sanka because that's what I heard when they were listing the drinks in Spanish. So I asked for it but of course it ended up being the stewardess' name and said she was not for sale. I got in to the airport around so to save money, I thought I could just save money and sleep in the airport that night. I had many places to choose from but I thought it was most fitting to set up camp in the Swiss Chalet seating area.. It was here that I met the first person on my journey, Nil Goldman.

Nil is an Israeli soldier from Tel Aviv I met sleeping in the air port Swiss Chalet. We both had set up 4 chairs apiece to rig up some sort of chair-bed. Of course neither of us were able to sleep so we ended up talking about things from Hezbollah, Duquesne, training, youtube, life in Israel, Life in America and whole bunch of other things. He said he could have joined ranks with something about intelligence he kept on saying, but decided to stay in the army because of the shortage of soldiers. In Israel, it is very hard to get hired unless an applicant has been in the army. He went on say some other interesting stories about the war, some funny and some sad. He says that the American soldiers are massive compared to Israeli soldiers and he blames it on the fact that in Israel, soldiers are fed slop and Americans are given meat fruit and vegetables for their meals.

I got some sleep, I got woken up by some cleaning crew guy. He was speaking in french and was angry. It obvious that he was mad because I had my shoes on the chair. From their it was some time around 7-8 am. Took a train to from the airport to Geneva. I'm pretty sure that I saw everything in Geneva besides the 2 places I only wanted to see upon visiting. The UN building and the only man made thing that can destroy Earth, The Large Hadron Collider. Nils told me I had to book a visit at least 3 months in advance anyway.

For the first half of the day, I explored the up town. I had one of Ana's sandwiches, a baguette and churrizo sandwhich. Uptown consisted of some cool architecture (notre dame basilica, a neat clock tower), as well as some souvenir shops, very expensive. I walked North and went through a park that went along Lake Geneva as well as the Rhone. I turned around because the city was starting to disappear behind me. I heard a large noise and turned around and saw the Jet d'eau. I went to a small pier with a light house at the end of it to get some pictures of it as well as some swans that seemed to everywhere.

Afternoon I went the cottage cafe for some coffee right behind the Brunswick monument and the fountain in the distance. The place looked exactly like a cottage, complete with the smoking chimney and mossy brick. I think in all of Europe, all coffee shops use the same machine to make the same frothy coffee but each place sells it at different prices. This was by far the most expensive. But i got to have it outside in some very nice weather.

Here I met 2 girls that I got to have coffee with. One was Mi from the Phillipines and Amina from Bosnia. Both were vacationing in Geneva for the day like I was. We were exchanging places to check out as well as the usual foreigner-to-foreigner conversation (where you from, where you study etc.) Mi was trying to get me to go Philippines next as if I had no direction home. Amina thought I was a backpacker. It was here that I actually felt like a vagabond. The phrase continued through my head for the whole weekend. I looked at mirrors as often as I could to see how far my beard had grown and how greasy my hair had gotten since last i saw it like a true backpacker.



We parted ways and took some pictures. I was heading into the City across the Rhone by 12PM. the city was much like Madrid in that there were no skyscrapers, yet very different in it own style. building were about same size and shape, and just about all of them had some brand advertised. Mostly Rolex and Victorinox. On the map it looked very much like the shape of Pittsburgh with two rivers converging into one with a city in between. Rather than spending money on museums in French, I wanted to see all the green spaces in the city on the map. One park stood out in that it was the highest part in the city. from here the whole city could be saw as well as the huge fountain splitting the city down the middle. the Jet made it easy to navigate the city as it could be seen everywhere in the city. Parts of the city reminded me of Toledo with the small walking spaces between buildings as well as the street performers. One guy was playing tambourine man who was pretty good. I went to the point of Geneva after exploring  in the city, nothing much out there, but coming back along the Rhone with the sunsetting was pretty neat. Pretty sure I saw everything in Geneva and my shoulders and feet were starting to burn for it. I went to a cool Pizzeria within one of the parks along the Rhone and got the chefs special Pizza. It was peppers, cheeses, other veggies, ham and sunny-side up egg cracked right on top in the middle. It was good but starting to miss pepperoni. After wards I took the train back to the airport. Staked out my spot at Swiss Chalet until it closed and set up shop till morning. My flight leaves for Amsterdam at 6.