After looking online for over a week, and exchanging emails and phone calls with SBB to get a definite quote, I booked our tickets for Paris on Wednesday the 11th. When looking at our options for trains, I noticed an interesting detail. There was a train that left at 5:35am and one that left at 7:17am. I soon discovered that the train leaving at 5:35 was CHF 100 cheaper than the latter, so I pretty much had my mind made up for me. The only problem with catching a train at that time is the Genevan public transportation system. As I have stated, this city is quite boring and closes shop very early, so most of the buses stop running at midnight and don’t start up again until 5:30am. Since we wanted to be there by 5:00 and the earliest bus around here doesn’t come until 5:12, we needed an alternative option. Luckily, Marc – the guy who runs the Knox Centre – told us that we could catch a relatively inexpensive cab, and two other people in our group who were catching a 6:15 train agreed to split it with us. Marc called and set it up for us, so we didn’t have to worry about giving out directions in French. Something finally fell into place.
I went to bed at about 9:30pm Thursday night, as I needed to get up at 4 the next morning. Unfortunately, the girls next to me continued to talk quite loudly with their door open until 11:00pm, which prevented me from falling asleep. When I finally did get to sleep, I woke up at 2:30am because my ears were killing me. I already had a cold, so I was worried that I might have gotten a double ear infection as well. Fortunately this would prove to not be the case, but it was not a very good omen nonetheless. I couldn’t fall back asleep, so when my alarm went off at 4, I was going on about 3-3 ½ hours with a long, long day ahead of me. We got our stuff together and headed outside at 4:35, to find the cab driver waiting for us in the parking lot. Now, there are no standard cabs in Geneva, the guys just drive whatever car they have and stick a light on top of it and a meter in the dashboard. This car was a relatively small sedan, and we had a tough time squeezing into it. Jason, who is 6’7”, tried to fit in the front seat, but his knees were somewhere up around his throat. I barely managed to climb into the back seat. The cab ride was very short, as the roads were almost completely empty, and it ended up only costing CHF 27; we split it four ways and left the guys like CHF 3-4 as a tip. I was pleasantly surprised.
We parted ways with Jason and Lisa and headed to our gate. The train showed up at about 5:33, so we climbed on board. The train ride was pretty uneventful; I tried to read for a little while and then gave up. We stopped at three small towns in France before we hit the countryside and started to pick up speed. The TGV stands for train à grande vitesse (anglicized to the “Train of Great Velocity”), and it lives up to its name. It covers the 335 mile-driving distance in 3 ½ hours. There were a couple of fairly skanky French girls in across the aisle from us who were playing with their phones and iPods and giggling the whole ride. When we started getting close to Paris, they began liberally applying makeup. The one girl spent like 15 minutes putting mascara on each eye. It was a bit excessive, and made me think of the late-90s SNL game show skit “Old French Whores.”
We finally got into Paris at 9:03, right as scheduled, and climbed out into the Gare-de-Lyon. Train stations are usually pretty cool in Europe, and this one was no exception. It has a very impressive glass canopy ceiling and some ornate decorations. We got breakfast – coffee and a croissant – at a place called Uppercrust (they have it at the Geneva train station too), and headed out in search of an ATM. We found one across the street, got out 80 Euros a piece, and started following the signs towards the Place de la Bastille, the former home of the infamous prison. At first the signs were a little confusing and we retraced our steps, but we eventually found what we were looking for. There is a large marble column in the center of a traffic circle with a gold angel statue on top and a bunch of names carved in the sides. Surprisingly, the column seems to have nothing at all to do with the storming of the Bastille, as it was built in the 1830s and all the dates deal with that period, not the Revolution.
After seeing this, we started walking down the Rue St. Antoine. Ashley wanted to go to the Jardin Vincennes, which is the largest park in Paris and houses a huge castle, but the weather was kind of crappy, and I soon realized that we were heading away from downtown, which I didn’t want to do. We turned around after about 20 minutes and headed back to the Place de la Bastille. After that, we consulted the small maps that I had torn out of my Let’s Go Western Europe book, and found our way toward downtown. We saw a couple of pretty cool cathedrals on the way (St. Therese & St. Paul I think), and eventually found our way to the Place des Vosges, which is the oldest square in the city. King Henri VI built the square in 1604, first erecting a royal residence on the site, then surrounding the small area with a square set of matching buildings. I had seen this place on TV, so I was pretty interested in checking it out. Victor Hugo also lived in one of the buildings while he wrote Les Misérables, and his house is now museum. We walked in but decided we didn’t want to pay the 6 euro entry fee per person, so we headed back out. There was a high school located just outside of the square, and I guess that school was on a break or something, because there were hundreds of teenagers hanging out in the area. I could tell that I was in France, because literally 98% of them were puffing away on a cigarette. And I though the Swiss smoked a lot.
After we left Place des Vosges, we continued on our way towards downtown. We eventually ran into one of the major streets in the area, and started seeing a number of enormous, extremely impressive buildings, including the Hôtel de Ville, which is Paris’ town hall (for some reason, all French-influenced cities seem to call their town halls this, including Geneva). The Hôtel de Ville is an enormous and very ornate building, in the Beaux Arts style that Paris is known for, and features a life-size statue of every one of the city’s mayors around its exterior. We took a bunch of pictures of the building, and continued walking down the street. We began to notice that we were starting to see some of the most notable structures in the city, including Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chappelle. As we continued down the road, we caught our first glimpse of the Seine and were able to start taking in the massive scale of the city. After being stuck in Geneva for almost six weeks, a relatively small and unimpressive town, walking through Paris for the first time was almost a bit overwhelming. I have been to some large cities, but I haven’t really gotten a chance to see much of them. Other than Philadelphia and Washington DC, this was my first chance to really explore a really large metropolis.
About a half-mile and ten minutes later, we arrived at the very center of Paris, the Île de la Cité, and I found one of the buildings that I really wanted to see, La Conciergerie. It was originally known as the Palais de la Cité, a 14th century royal residence, but it was converted into perhaps the most notorious, albeit somewhat lesser-known, prison complexes in Paris. I wrote my term paper for historiography last semester on the Reign of Terror and Maximilien Robespierre, so I have become pretty obsessed with the French Revolution. Conciergerie was the last building that the most famous prisoners of the Revolution – Danton, des Moulins & the Girondins, Fouquier-Tinville, Robespierre himself, and Marie Antoinette. It also later held Napoleon III after he fell out of favor. The inside of the building is a very imposing Romanesque structure, filled with vaulted ceilings and huge colonnades. All the stuff from the Revolution is contained on the one side of the prison. They have some mock cells set up, along with a list of the 3,000+ people executed in Paris and some cases containing memorabilia from Robespierre and his contemporaries. But the real center of attention is, unfortunately, the royal chapel and Marie Antoinette’s cell. I was hoping to just walk into the cell, which is rigged up with furniture and manikins, take some pictures and leave, but there was a tour group of about 25 English people and this annoying guide. We literally waited for this woman in this small, cramped viewing area for 20 minutes, while she rambled on and on with some sob story about how hard life was for the queen while in the prison. She regaled us with story after story about how she had migraines and a hormonal imbalance, about how she had to change in front of her guards, about how she had a hard time reading because she wasn’t allowed to have glasses, and about how her aide had to bring her special water from a spring in the country because she couldn’t digest the Parisian water (apparently this is quite common; Ashley told me it is full of magnesium, which is terrible on digestion, so I drank bottled water all weekend).
The woman was annoying and kind of a bitch, and I was relieved when she finally finished her rant. We took some pictures of the cell and made our way back through the gift shop and back outside. By this point, carrying around our bags was starting to take its toll. Our book bags were full of our stuff for the weekend, and we couldn’t check into our hotel until 2:30pm. This left us with 5 ½ hours of walking around with nowhere to stay, and it got difficult. I pulled the straps so tight to take the weight off my shoulders that I could barely move my arms. When I reached back to grab my water bottle, I’m pretty sure that I pulled a muscle in my next, which just compounded matters.
After La Conciergerie, we continued heading through downtown. We walked past Saint-Chappelle, the Palais de Justice, and Notre-Dame, then started walking down the quay alongside the Seine. Despite the weather, the views were pretty impressive. We continued walking west along the river, seeing a ton of sights, including the Pont Neuf, the Institute de France, Tour St.-Jacques, one of the Opera houses, the Grand Palais, and the Louvre. When we reached the bridge that crosses over to the Louvre, we finally found a bus that would take us to our hotel, the 95. It was about 1:45 at this time, so we decided to head towards the hotel and try to check in. Our hotel was extremely far south of the city center – 17 bus stops to be exact – and we kind of a had a hard time finding it, as the French don’t seem to think that they should number their streets logically. The hotel was at 62 Rue de Morillions, and the bus dropped us off at around 45. We walked down the street, since I saw 59 and 65, but there was no 62 to be found. Ashley suggested that we walk in the opposite direction to look for it, which proved to be a good decision. We found the hotel; for some reason 62 was across the street from 87. Makes sense.
When we checked into the hotel, I was surprised to learn from the guy at the front desk that breakfast would cost us 9,50 Euros per person, even though Ashley paid an extra euro a night to get the online bed & breakfast special. I didn’t press the point, because it was only 2 Euros, and there is a pretty good bakery just down the street where we had breakfast each morning, but I would find out at checkout that this guy was full of shit and breakfast was included. I love it when people try to scam me for being an American. After we got settled into our room, which was quite modest, and rested for a little while, we decided to head down to the Louvre, as it is free after 6pm on Fridays for people younger than 26. The hotel provided us with a map, which would come in handy throughout the weekend, and we knew that we just needed to hop on the 95, and it was a straight shot to the museum. I knew that the Louvre is absolutely huge, and I figured it was be extremely crowded, since it was Friday night on Valentine’s Day weekend, but we decided we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit it.
We got the Louvre around 5pm and walked around outside. The place is absolutely massive and incredibly cool. The building is covered in statues, arches, colonnades, etc. There is a replica of the Brandenburg Gate and the Jardin de Tuilieries just across the square. Regardless of whatever Parisians think, the I.M. Pei glass pyramids are really, really cool. After walking around outside and snapping pictures, we decided to look for something to eat. We found a small restaurant across that street that had take out pizzas, so we picked one up for 10 Euros and ate it on against a crowd control fence outside. It was very good, but it was interesting to eat, since we didn’t have napkins and it wasn’t precut. Then we headed back into the Louvre, took a few more pictures, and took the escalator downstairs.
The place was mobbed with people, and the lines to get tickets were probably 30-45 minutes long. Fortunately the Friday youth deal means that you can just walk in without a ticket; all you have to do is show identification. We decided to head into the Sully wing to see the two most recognizable pieces – the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. The antiquities section included an amazing collection of statues dating from Greece, Rome, and Egypt. There were several neoclassical sculptures that were from the 17th-19th centuries as well. The collection included statues of several Roman emperors, including Augustus, Claudius, Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Septimus Severus; there were also statues of Zeus, Alexander the Great, Sappho, and a number of other prominent figures. I was surprised that, despite the massive crowds around, there were relatively few people in the room with the Venus de Milo. The statue was at the beginning of the most ornate sections of the antiquities sections; there were statues and murals painted on the ceilings that, in some instances, were more impressive than the art works themselves. Some guy asked me to take a picture of him with the statue, but the moment that I went to press the button, his battery died and the camera shut off. I felt pretty bad for him; that sucks.
After walking through most of the sculptures, we headed up to the Italian paintings section, where the da Vinci paintings are located. We walked through a couple of rooms with some Renaissance era paintings, and then stepped into the appropriately-named Grand Hall. This corridor was huge and was covered in paintings, including some of da Vinci’s most famous, like the Madonna of the Rocks. We were almost overwhelmed. There were paintings and people everywhere; it was too much to process at once. We followed the huge crowds into a room just off the main gallery, which contained several paintings, most notably the Mona Lisa. The tourists in that room were just out of control. There were hundreds of people vying for position to stand near the velvet rope that stands about 15 feet away, and take a picture of the painting, which is protected by bullet-proof glass. Proper etiquette, along with common sense, dictates that you don’t use the flash on your camera at an art museum. Try telling that to the people at the Louvre. There were flashes going off left and right, which was extremely irritating. I trust that the guides are telling the truth when they say that the flash can hurt the paintings, and a number of them don’t have any sort of glass or plastic to protect them. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the Mona Lisa was disappointing, like everyone else does. It was pretty cool to see it, and I thought it looked a lot better in person, but the mob surrounding me and the crazy security measures to keep people away from it were pretty annoying.
I’ve always hated going to art museums with people who don’t really want to be there to appreciate the art, and my tastes were reaffirmed that night. In the room along with the Mona Lisa were a number of awesome works, including a gigantic painting of the wedding feast at Cana. This painting must have been 20 feet tall and about 30 feet wide. The artist probably painted at least 100 different life-sized people, yet pretty much no one paid any attention to it, just because they were told to fawn over the Mona Lisa, which is about 12”x18”. After getting tired of the crowd in the room, we headed into another gallery containing some French art from the 17th-18th centuries. There was also a special exhibit of three paintings by a Chinese artist that was called The Death of the Mona Lisa. The guy used different shades of white and gray to paint three massive portraits. The one in the center was a recreation of the Mona Lisa, and it was flanked on each side by two very realistic images of impoverished men who had been the victims of war and social strife. The images really looked like black-and-white photographs. It was interesting that the Louvre would be willing to critique its most famous painting with a modern social commentary, and I thought it was very well done.
Next to this room were two rooms of French paintings, including one room that I really wanted to see – the room with David’s paintings. We saw the gigantic painting of Napoleon’s coronation and two paintings that covered stuff we learned in Latin class. The first was a painting of the Sabine women trying to protect their Roman husbands from their avenging fathers and husbands. The second was one that I have wanted to see since I first noticed it in Latin I and since we talked about the story in Latin III – the Oath of the Horatii.
Once we had seen David’s works, we both realized that we were really tired. We had been awake since 4am and walking around since 9am. I was sick, and I know that Ashley was getting sick, so that just added another element. I had begun to notice while we were at the hotel that my right eye was kind of sore. When we got to the Louvre, it started to get more irritated and began to run a lot. It got worse and worse throughout the night as I kept touching and further irritating it; by the time we left, it was drooping, bloodshot, and there was puss building up. I had gotten not just one, but two eye infections from my contacts. I had planned to change them about two weeks before, but I was worried about putting in my last pair before mom got me my new set, so I kept the old ones in. I learned my lesson the hard way, and have been wearing glasses ever since.
After we left the Louvre at about 8:30, we headed straight back to the hotel. I was in pretty bad shape by this time. Both of my eyes were infected, I was coughing like a coal miner, I had no voice, and my nose was running like crazy. When we got back to the hotel, we pretty much went to bed right away. We were both exhausted from the long day, and the illness wasn’t helping. I didn’t sleep much that night, as I constantly woke up to cough (I have since found out I had bronchitis). I am pretty sure that I kept Ashley up most of the night as well, with the lovely noises that I made from coughing and blowing my nose. Despite the fact that I was sick as shit, and the day was extremely long and tiring, spending Friday in Paris sure beat the hell out of spending it in Geneva. All the stuff that we did kept me fairly content, so I didn’t feel the need to bitch about how much the day sucked, like I probably would have had I gone to bed in my closet-sized room at the Knox Centre. I’ll cover days two and three in my next post (or two).
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
A long overdue update from Geneva
So I haven't written anything in a couple of weeks. There's no real rhyme or reason to it; it's mostly that I haven't really had a lot about which to write, and I haven't really found a lot of time in which to write. I have the bad habit of being far too verbose when I write, as I feel the need to include every little detail, and this takes quite a bit of time, so I usually have to set aside at least an hour to do one of these blog posts, and that takes a bit of motivation as well. And if there is one thing that I have been lacking in Geneva, it has been motivation.
As I've told some of the people with whom I've been in contact over the past few weeks, life here hasn't always been particularly great. There haven't been a lot of big, really crappy things that have happened, just a large number of smaller nuisances that have built up and gotten me really frustrated and really irritated. I've been sick off and on since I've been here; I have had trouble sleeping on these awful beds since day one; some of the people here really get under my skin; we have to provide our own food half of the time (and food here is RIDICULOUSLY expensive - Paris was relatively affordable by comparison); the weather was mostly gloomy and crappy until this past week; my one professor, who is also the assistant program director, has been pretty unpleasant towards me much of the time - although she has gotten better in the last week or so as well; and so on.
I'm also not particularly pleased with my internship to date. I had high expectations, since I am working for the International Commission of Jurists, which is a fairly large and very well-respected international law organization. I had hoped to do some interesting work on one topic or another, but I was not really hoping to get involved in the field where I ended up - corporate issues. My supervisor, Carlos, is a Peruvian lawyer who focuses on corporations who violate human rights. The task that he gave for me - researching instances in which corporations, NGOs, and other stakeholders cooperated to form an independent investigation into accusations that the corporation violated human rights - seemed interesting enough to me, as I love to do research. He told me that there were two reports that would be the models for me, one involving Mercedes-Benz in Argentina and the other involving Del Monte and the Swiss grocery store chain Migros. I was supposed to read and summarize the reports, then look for others along these lines and do the same. It seemed like a decent enough task, but I have gotten very disenchanted with it since. I have read and summarized at least 10 reports for him, but he told me that they weren't what he was looking for. I have utilized all the channels that I can logically think of, from Google to B-W's Ohio Link databases, and have pretty much come up completely empty. I don't really try that much anymore at work; I just more or less mess around on the internet and pretend to work.
Carlos is also a pretty strict supervisor. He is a nice enough guy, but he comes across as very strict. When I tried to negotiate what hours I would work, he replied to my email and told me that I was supposed to work every Friday that I didn't have the Eurail Pass, with no exceptions. He also checks up on me and presses me to find out what I've done. He asked me to write a summary of the reports that I had read and meet with him to discuss it on Friday two weeks ago. I figured that meant that he would come find me when he wanted to meet, which he didn't do, so when it was time for me to leave and I saw that he was still working at his desk, I left. When I came in the next Wednesday, he confronted me at my desk and asked me why I hadn't met with him on Friday. I explained that it was a misunderstanding and I thought he would find me; he didn't seem to think this was a suitable answer and looked at me with a pressing stare, as though miscommunications don't exist outside of the US. I gave him my report Wednesday at about 11, and waited for him to finish reading it so I could meet with him. I kept looking into this office periodically to see if he was done, but he still wasn't finished when I finally went in to meet him at 5. He told me that I had done a pretty good job with the summary, but that I hadn't found what he was looking for and I needed to do more. He also pressed me to finish the Mercedes-Benz report, which is 125 pages and extremely dry. I agreed that I would do this, but I had pretty much given up on this project by this point. Fortunately he did tell me that if I didn't think it was going anywhere, I could let him know at some point and he would try to get a new assignment for me. I plan on doing so.
The little things about life that you take for granted back home have also gotten on my nerves. Things close very early in Geneva. Stores and some food places close as early as 5pm, and most of them are completely closed on Sundays. It's next to impossible to find a decent cup of coffee for less than CHF 4; it costs about CHF 7 to get something from Starbucks. I did laundry two weeks ago and ended up washing my dress socks for the first time. This was a mistake, as they bled horribly the white clothes that I had in the machine, and when Ashley washed her clothes after me, the dye also bled into her white clothes, turning them a lovely light gray. I also made the mistake of drying one of my sweaters in the unfamiliar dryer, which promptly shrunk it to half its original size.
Overall, these things were really starting to weigh on me, and I am sure that I have been in a rather unpleasant mood for much of the time I have been here. I have been homesick a lot, and I really miss Cleveland. People say that you never appreciate something until it's gone. Well, I've appreciated Cleveland for a while now, but now I just miss it like hell.
With all of this building up, we figured that change of scenery might do us some good. We were originally going to go to the small city of Lausanne on Lake Geneva a couple of weeks ago. A group of us had sworn that the UNIRESO (the overarching public transportation company in the area) website had said we could get a supplement to our Geneva bus pass and catch a bus there for about CHF 10. Unfortunately, when Ashley and I got to the airport train station at about 8:00 Saturday morning, we were informed that there was no such bus, and that it would cost CHF 42 to catch a train to Lausanne. Seeing as we could reserve train tickets for Lausanne online for CHF 18, we decided to go ahead and scrap this trip, leaving us with another delightful Genevan weekend.
We decided to head to a flea market at Plainpalais with a couple of people from our group that afternoon. A cold rain was falling, which I had grown to expect here, and it drove most of the vendors from setting up shop. Geneva supposedly has some really nice open air markets on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and this was one of the things we had yet to see in the city. We've already been to the UN, walked around Old Town - twice, seen the Cathedrals Saint-Pierre & Notre Dame (the latter is a small Catholic cathedral near Gare Cornavin, while the former is the main church that was Calvin's home turf and the center of the French-Swiss Reformation), seen the Parc de Bastions & the Wall of Reformation, been to the Musee d'Art & d'Histoire, listened to a presentation at the UN High Commission for Refugees for our Human Rights class, walked down the major shopping street - the Rue de la Confederation - three times, seen Jet d'eau a number of times, and explored parts of the Pregny and Grand-Saconnex neighborhoods surrounding the Knox Centre. Rome may not have been built in a day, but I can safely say that a person could adequately see pretty much everything in Geneva in two or three, tops. The Swiss aren't the most exciting of peoples (although they do have a penchant for large, fairly frequent protests), and I think they like it that way.
Fortunately, despite our initial failed attempts to see the world outside of Geneva's borders, we did have a ready-made excuse to travel - our anniversary was coming up. Given this state of affairs, I began to look into things for us to do. I initially thought we could go to Prague, since it is a very affordable and very cool city. Unfortunately, since we don't have our Eurail passes yet, we had to look into alternative travel options. There is no direct flight from Geneva to Prague on EasyJet, and when I got a quote for two tickets to Prague (not even a return trip, just one way) from SBB for CHF 455, I decided that was no longer a viable option. (We have instead decided to see Prague over Spring Break during our tour of Eastern Europe. We were going to go to Normandy, Tours, Dublin, Cork, and Aberdeen/Edinburgh to visit Aunt Anne, but she told me that some professor from Boston is coming in to spend that whole week doing research with her, so another plan went down the drain. The best laid plans of mice and men...)
I next started looking into Nice, since it's not that far away and is on the Mediterranean Sea. It was a fairly reasonable option, but then I opened my mouth and uttered the word that would end the deliberations - Paris. As soon as I said it, Ashley pretty much made up her mind, and she convinced me to come around shortly thereafter. I knew that transportation and accommodations wouldn't be cheap, but I figured that if we split the costs and tried to limit what we spent while in the city, it wouldn't be too bad. Anyways, it was two weeks before we got the Eurail, and we were two of a handful of people who hadn't traveled or really spent much money yet, so we figured we could splurge a little bit for the weekend. I was able to get train tickets on the TGV for Friday morning and Sunday night, and we tracked down a hotel in the 15 arrondissement that was pretty cheap and was still in the city. I was also able to take Friday off of work, as my supervisor had gone on a two-week vacation, so I didn't need to consult with him.
Paris was the vacation from Geneva that I desperately needed, but I will give all the details in my next post.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Observations about Switzerland thus far
Seeing as I am living in another country 4,500 miles away from Cleveland, I figured I would run into a number of new and different things. Looks like I was right. I have made a number of observations about things while in Switzerland for the last 2 1/2 weeks, some more significant than others, but they are all taking some time to get used to. Here's a few of them.
- The Swiss have crazy light switches. They are actually rectangular buttons, instead of switches, and they can usually be found in some random place on the wall somewhere around your knees. This was one of the most difficult things that get used to here. When you are in a room with other people and need to go to the bathroom at 4 in the morning, it can be very tricky to locate a light button. It may involve crouching down and groping the wall wildly for a few minutes, or you may try crawling, so you can actually be at face level with the button. It's rough.
- The Swiss also have weird toilets. Instead of having a lever to pull, like we do in the States, there is usually a large box that looks like a toilet seat cover holder somewhere on the wall above the toilet, and you are supposed to push the bottom of the box in to flush, or push the top of the box in to stop the flush. If you don't find one of these, it gets even trickier. Outside of Geneva, most of the toilets have a button that you have to push hidden somewhere in the lid of the tank of the back of the toilet. Women may consider taking their makeup kit into the bathroom, as some power and a brush might come in handy - you can look for the fingerprints of people who have gone before you.
- The bathrooms in the Knox Centre, like the rooms as a whole, are tiny and kind of suck. We were told they are "American style" bathrooms, but I have no idea what that means. They are no different than the ones at our hotel in Montbovon. The showers are built into the corner in a wedge shape and are extremely small. If I stand flush to one wall, I can reach the other wall with my elbow. They are elevated off the ground about a foot, which is interesting, because the ceiling is only about 7'6" anyway, so I'm not sure how anyone above 6'6" could possibly fit. We have hand-held shower heads that come with adjustable arms so that you can shower hands-free, but the arms do not work well. If you put the shower into the holder, odds are it is going to fall out a few seconds later. In addition, every time you turn the shower on or off, the pressure or cessation of pressure from the water causes it to fall out of the holder and hit you in the back of the head.
- Side streets here (particularly in Grand-Saconnex) are small, and sidewalks are sporatic at best. You will often find yourself walking on the side of the street with two cars coming from opposite directions that can't see you or each other until they are almost on top of you.
- There are a lot of car brands here that I have never heard of and a lot more which I have never seen. The former category includes Opel and Citroen. The latter includes Pegueot, Alfa Romeo, Mazzarati, and FIAT. It also seems as if people here only own two types of cars - small, fuel-efficient compacts (like Hondas, Opels, and Smart Cars), or grandiose luxury cards (Ferraris, Jaguars, BMWs, Audis).
- The Swiss have a lot of dogs, but they are also one of two extremes: big dogs like Bernese Mountain Dogs, Labradors, Rottweilers, and German Sheperds; or tiny little toy dogs that they dress in sweaters and carry under their arms. Also, apparently not all Swiss are as concerned about cleanliness as they claim, because it is not uncommon to see dog shit sitting on the side of the road or sidewalk. There are also almost as many stray cats here as there are in Cleveland. Some of them are very friendly, while others are totally feral and are quite aggressive.
- Geneva is a very international city, with people of all races, ethnicities, and nationalities. But don't believe it if someone tells you everyone here speaks English; they don't. The people who need to speak English - IGO & NGO employees, tour guides, bank tellers, people at the airport and train station - speak excellent English. Pretty much everyone else speaks French and possibly German, but little if any English. Ashley & I went to the main post office in Geneva, which is huge, and no one there spoke English. There are four people who work in the kitchen at the Knox Centre. They speak a plethora of languages, including French, Spanish, German, Portugese, Italian, and Morrocan, but not one of them speaks English.
* an addendum to this: If you don't know French but try to order or start a conversation in it, be prepared - the person will respond in French, and it helps to have a translator with you. Also, if you ask some one "parle vous anglais," and he/she respond with "a little," that person probably speaks better English than you do.
- I knew this coming in, but it was still a bit of culture shock the first time that I encountered it head-on: Europeans are way more comfortable with sensuality, nudity, and sex than Americans. I have seen multiple couples making on the on street or the bus. I have also seen female nudity on the covers of magazines and books and even in an advertisement in the window of a pharmacy.
- Because their language involves a number of accent marks and other things we don't have in English, French-speakers have their own keyboards. This is extremely difficult to get used to. The z and y keys have been swapped, which makes typing fun. Every time I try to type you or your or today, it comes up as zou, zour, and todaz. Also, they have rearranged the keys to the right of the letters in order to fit the letter with accents. So you have to hit shift to find to find the front slash and the colon, and you have to look all around the keyboard for the apostrophe, the plus sign, the semicolon, the question mark, and so on. So if you try to talk to me while I am at my internship, of if I send you an email from there, keep this in mind.
- Swiss people, particularly young people, can be extremely rude. Don't be surprised if people bump into you on regular basis and don't say a word. Teenagers are the worst. We were looking at an exhibit at the Red Cross & Red Crescent Museum, at at least 6 or 7 different 13-year olds walked into me without saying a word. One girl walked directly into my arm while I was walking by, knocked the pamphlet out of my hand, and didn't so much as a say a word.
- The Swiss are pretty prompt, and the buses are on time to the minute about 90% of the time. But if you need to get to somewhere at a specific time and need to catch a specific bus (because certain lines only run every 20, 30, or 40 minutes), make sure you get there with time to spare and give yourself some breathing room. I have waited for buses that were 10 minutes late, and watched the only two buses at my stop roll by because they were each early.
- It is really easy to spot American tourists, even after just a few days abroad - particularly teenagers and young women. They are usually the ones wearing North Face coats, hats, scarves, and gloves and speaking far too loudly on the otherwise silent bus. There are a lot of high-school age American students here, so that just compounds the problem.
- Geneva is a very small, walkable city. It only takes about 15 minutes to walk from the main bus/train station north of the Rhone to the middle of Old Town. The public transportation system is also pretty good and covers most of the city fairly well. One could likely get away without every buying a ticket on the TPG, because bus and street car drivers never ask for them, and you don't have to put them into a machine to get on the bus like you do on the RTA. Despite that, it is smart to buy a ticket, because inspectors periodically ride the buses and trains, and if you are caught without a ticket, they will fine you heavily. It costs CHF 80 if you can pay upfront in cash and CHF 100 if you need to pay later.
- You will run into some interesting things in this city that take some time to get used to. You can see the mountains from downtown and are situated on a large lake, yet it hardly ever snows here. It is the middle of winter with temperatures sometimes dropping below freezing, yet most of the trees still have their leaves and are still green (not just pine trees, mind you). I have also noticed a number of interesting plants here. At the Knox Centre, don't be suprised to find 8-foot tall bamboo growing a few feet away from some type of palm tree. Don't ask me how, I just know I've seen it.
- I am missing a lot of the little luxuries here that I have at home. At the Knox Centre, our meal plan over covers a continental breakfast 7 days a week (which is the same thing everyday - bread, four types of cereal, coffee, and orange juice), lunch one day a week, and dinner Monday-Wednesday. That leave a lot of meals unaccounted for and two major hurdles to clear: food here is expensive (the average meal at a budget restaurant is CHF18-30 per person), and places are almost never open (everything closes by 7 on weekdays, by 5 on Saturday, and almost nothing is open before 6pm on Sundays). McDonald's is naturally the exception to this rule, but even that garbage is pretty expensive. Ashley & I were starving last Sunday, so we went there and got chicken nuggets and (yes) tiger shrimp, fries, and a drink, and it cost me CHF 17. Grocery stores are also pretty expensive, and as we only have access to a microwave at the Knox Centre, our options are pretty limited. Fortunately, fresh bread is cheap, so I've been eating peanut butter & nutella sandwiches about 5 times a week.
- For the most part, beer here is expensive and pretty shitty, but it is often very strong. I found a Dutch beer - the Amsterdam Maximator - in a 500 mililiter can that was 11.6% alcohol, but it tastes like shitty malt liquor. Most of the beers are really light (Kronenbourg 1664, Feldschlosse, Cardinal). Co-op has some better beers like Guinness and Sam Adams, but they are not cheap (CHF 4.40 for a 500ml can of Guinness and CHF 2.20 for a 12 oz bottle of Sam Adams). On the other hand, wine is extremely cheap. You can find a liter of wine starting at CHF 2.
Well, that's all that I feel like pointing out for now. If you would like me to clarify anything or add to the list, let me know.
- The Swiss have crazy light switches. They are actually rectangular buttons, instead of switches, and they can usually be found in some random place on the wall somewhere around your knees. This was one of the most difficult things that get used to here. When you are in a room with other people and need to go to the bathroom at 4 in the morning, it can be very tricky to locate a light button. It may involve crouching down and groping the wall wildly for a few minutes, or you may try crawling, so you can actually be at face level with the button. It's rough.
- The Swiss also have weird toilets. Instead of having a lever to pull, like we do in the States, there is usually a large box that looks like a toilet seat cover holder somewhere on the wall above the toilet, and you are supposed to push the bottom of the box in to flush, or push the top of the box in to stop the flush. If you don't find one of these, it gets even trickier. Outside of Geneva, most of the toilets have a button that you have to push hidden somewhere in the lid of the tank of the back of the toilet. Women may consider taking their makeup kit into the bathroom, as some power and a brush might come in handy - you can look for the fingerprints of people who have gone before you.
- The bathrooms in the Knox Centre, like the rooms as a whole, are tiny and kind of suck. We were told they are "American style" bathrooms, but I have no idea what that means. They are no different than the ones at our hotel in Montbovon. The showers are built into the corner in a wedge shape and are extremely small. If I stand flush to one wall, I can reach the other wall with my elbow. They are elevated off the ground about a foot, which is interesting, because the ceiling is only about 7'6" anyway, so I'm not sure how anyone above 6'6" could possibly fit. We have hand-held shower heads that come with adjustable arms so that you can shower hands-free, but the arms do not work well. If you put the shower into the holder, odds are it is going to fall out a few seconds later. In addition, every time you turn the shower on or off, the pressure or cessation of pressure from the water causes it to fall out of the holder and hit you in the back of the head.
- Side streets here (particularly in Grand-Saconnex) are small, and sidewalks are sporatic at best. You will often find yourself walking on the side of the street with two cars coming from opposite directions that can't see you or each other until they are almost on top of you.
- There are a lot of car brands here that I have never heard of and a lot more which I have never seen. The former category includes Opel and Citroen. The latter includes Pegueot, Alfa Romeo, Mazzarati, and FIAT. It also seems as if people here only own two types of cars - small, fuel-efficient compacts (like Hondas, Opels, and Smart Cars), or grandiose luxury cards (Ferraris, Jaguars, BMWs, Audis).
- The Swiss have a lot of dogs, but they are also one of two extremes: big dogs like Bernese Mountain Dogs, Labradors, Rottweilers, and German Sheperds; or tiny little toy dogs that they dress in sweaters and carry under their arms. Also, apparently not all Swiss are as concerned about cleanliness as they claim, because it is not uncommon to see dog shit sitting on the side of the road or sidewalk. There are also almost as many stray cats here as there are in Cleveland. Some of them are very friendly, while others are totally feral and are quite aggressive.
- Geneva is a very international city, with people of all races, ethnicities, and nationalities. But don't believe it if someone tells you everyone here speaks English; they don't. The people who need to speak English - IGO & NGO employees, tour guides, bank tellers, people at the airport and train station - speak excellent English. Pretty much everyone else speaks French and possibly German, but little if any English. Ashley & I went to the main post office in Geneva, which is huge, and no one there spoke English. There are four people who work in the kitchen at the Knox Centre. They speak a plethora of languages, including French, Spanish, German, Portugese, Italian, and Morrocan, but not one of them speaks English.
* an addendum to this: If you don't know French but try to order or start a conversation in it, be prepared - the person will respond in French, and it helps to have a translator with you. Also, if you ask some one "parle vous anglais," and he/she respond with "a little," that person probably speaks better English than you do.
- I knew this coming in, but it was still a bit of culture shock the first time that I encountered it head-on: Europeans are way more comfortable with sensuality, nudity, and sex than Americans. I have seen multiple couples making on the on street or the bus. I have also seen female nudity on the covers of magazines and books and even in an advertisement in the window of a pharmacy.
- Because their language involves a number of accent marks and other things we don't have in English, French-speakers have their own keyboards. This is extremely difficult to get used to. The z and y keys have been swapped, which makes typing fun. Every time I try to type you or your or today, it comes up as zou, zour, and todaz. Also, they have rearranged the keys to the right of the letters in order to fit the letter with accents. So you have to hit shift to find to find the front slash and the colon, and you have to look all around the keyboard for the apostrophe, the plus sign, the semicolon, the question mark, and so on. So if you try to talk to me while I am at my internship, of if I send you an email from there, keep this in mind.
- Swiss people, particularly young people, can be extremely rude. Don't be surprised if people bump into you on regular basis and don't say a word. Teenagers are the worst. We were looking at an exhibit at the Red Cross & Red Crescent Museum, at at least 6 or 7 different 13-year olds walked into me without saying a word. One girl walked directly into my arm while I was walking by, knocked the pamphlet out of my hand, and didn't so much as a say a word.
- The Swiss are pretty prompt, and the buses are on time to the minute about 90% of the time. But if you need to get to somewhere at a specific time and need to catch a specific bus (because certain lines only run every 20, 30, or 40 minutes), make sure you get there with time to spare and give yourself some breathing room. I have waited for buses that were 10 minutes late, and watched the only two buses at my stop roll by because they were each early.
- It is really easy to spot American tourists, even after just a few days abroad - particularly teenagers and young women. They are usually the ones wearing North Face coats, hats, scarves, and gloves and speaking far too loudly on the otherwise silent bus. There are a lot of high-school age American students here, so that just compounds the problem.
- Geneva is a very small, walkable city. It only takes about 15 minutes to walk from the main bus/train station north of the Rhone to the middle of Old Town. The public transportation system is also pretty good and covers most of the city fairly well. One could likely get away without every buying a ticket on the TPG, because bus and street car drivers never ask for them, and you don't have to put them into a machine to get on the bus like you do on the RTA. Despite that, it is smart to buy a ticket, because inspectors periodically ride the buses and trains, and if you are caught without a ticket, they will fine you heavily. It costs CHF 80 if you can pay upfront in cash and CHF 100 if you need to pay later.
- You will run into some interesting things in this city that take some time to get used to. You can see the mountains from downtown and are situated on a large lake, yet it hardly ever snows here. It is the middle of winter with temperatures sometimes dropping below freezing, yet most of the trees still have their leaves and are still green (not just pine trees, mind you). I have also noticed a number of interesting plants here. At the Knox Centre, don't be suprised to find 8-foot tall bamboo growing a few feet away from some type of palm tree. Don't ask me how, I just know I've seen it.
- I am missing a lot of the little luxuries here that I have at home. At the Knox Centre, our meal plan over covers a continental breakfast 7 days a week (which is the same thing everyday - bread, four types of cereal, coffee, and orange juice), lunch one day a week, and dinner Monday-Wednesday. That leave a lot of meals unaccounted for and two major hurdles to clear: food here is expensive (the average meal at a budget restaurant is CHF18-30 per person), and places are almost never open (everything closes by 7 on weekdays, by 5 on Saturday, and almost nothing is open before 6pm on Sundays). McDonald's is naturally the exception to this rule, but even that garbage is pretty expensive. Ashley & I were starving last Sunday, so we went there and got chicken nuggets and (yes) tiger shrimp, fries, and a drink, and it cost me CHF 17. Grocery stores are also pretty expensive, and as we only have access to a microwave at the Knox Centre, our options are pretty limited. Fortunately, fresh bread is cheap, so I've been eating peanut butter & nutella sandwiches about 5 times a week.
- For the most part, beer here is expensive and pretty shitty, but it is often very strong. I found a Dutch beer - the Amsterdam Maximator - in a 500 mililiter can that was 11.6% alcohol, but it tastes like shitty malt liquor. Most of the beers are really light (Kronenbourg 1664, Feldschlosse, Cardinal). Co-op has some better beers like Guinness and Sam Adams, but they are not cheap (CHF 4.40 for a 500ml can of Guinness and CHF 2.20 for a 12 oz bottle of Sam Adams). On the other hand, wine is extremely cheap. You can find a liter of wine starting at CHF 2.
Well, that's all that I feel like pointing out for now. If you would like me to clarify anything or add to the list, let me know.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Rest of Orientation Week
I actually slept through the night on Wednesday, which was a pleasant surprise. Because we were leaving to go back to Geneva, we got all of our stuff together, headed downstairs, ate breakfast, and filled out applications for our passes to the United Nations' Library. We get access to that, the library at the HEI (the Graduate Institute) in Geneva, and to the crappy little "library" where I am currently writing this on the grounds of the Knox Centre. Once we had finished that, we loaded up the bus and headed towards Vevey, the home of Nestle's corporate headquarters.
Initially when I heard we were going to Nestle, I was excited because I thought we were going to tour a chocolate factory. A girl from B-W did this program last semester, and they toured Callier. Unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards; we were just going to hear a corporate presentation from Nestle and to tour some of their HQ. Driving through Vevey was interesting. We literally drove down this road that was lined on both sides by deteriorating urban factories, and then turned right into a very nice, upscale town center. Nestle was at the end of this road. It is a large, u-shaped, modern building that is covered with windows and sits on the shore of Lake Geneva. We walked in, were met by a couple of Swiss women, got our visitors passes, and climbed into an elevator to head upstairs. I don't know the name of the woman who gave us the presentation, but she led us into a meeting room that was almost like a small theater. There was a desk with a few chairs and microphones facing us with a large projection screen behind it, and we sat in the theater-style chairs facing the table.
Our presenter gave us a fairly long, overly-detailed presentation about Nestle's history, corporate structure, products, policies, budget, corporate philosophy, etc. I found out a lot of things about Nestle that I did not know before, mostly different products and brands that they own. Nestle has purchased Friskies, Purina, Gerber, San Pellegrino, Edy's & Dreyer's ice cream, and Carnation. They also have a presence in at least 130 different countries. Some people began to wonder if Nestle was a corporate Leviathon that was looking to take over the world, and you did kind of get that sense from this woman. She toed the company line and followed that mantra that Nestle could do no wrong. Dr. Peters asked her to respond to criticism the company had faced about 20 years ago when children in Africa got poisoned from drinking Nestle powered baby formula. The woman was quick to respond (perhaps she had rehearsed her answer before?) and told us that it was not Nestle's fault for 3 reasons.
1.) Nestle cannot guarantee that all of their products will be 100% safe 100% of time, so things like this will eventually happen, but they have very good recall procedures in place.
2.) Nestle is a great corporation who knows that there is a market for formula in Africa, because the mothers are malnourished and cannot produce proper breast milk. Nestle does recognize that breast milk is preferable, but it is not always possible.
Now that all seemed alright, until she got to #3.
3.) Most of the burden of responsibility should fall on the mothers, because they did not follow the instructions that Nestle listed on the box. Instead of putting five spoonfuls of powder into the water, they only used one or two "to just give it the color" of milk. Therefore, they are responsible for their children getting sick and/or dying.
I was blown away. I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Did this woman just blame impoverished, malnourished mothers for trying to ration their baby formula and essentially say they killed their children? It appeared to be that way. Other people asked her several more questions, about topics such as Nestle's environmental policies and the manner in which they acquire their products, particularly chocolate and coffee, but she was ready with the rehearsed response for all of them. Nestle is God. Nestle is never wrong.
After being brainwashed for an hour, we walked through the gift shop area and saw a number of exhibits and pieces of information about Nestle. Ashley did discover that the Nescafe coffee machine gave out free samples, which was nice, and the woman gave us a gift bag that included a box of Callier milk chocolate when we left. Despite this, everyone got a kind of creepy feeling from that place. Since last Wednesday, I have made a conscious effort not to buy Nestle products. It has been difficult, because only 65% of their products are sold under the name Nestle, but I think I have been successful thus far. I've already spoken to a couple of Swiss people who hate Nestle and follow similar practices, so I feel justified in doing so.
For lunch we headed to the Alimentarium, a food museum and restaurant on the shore of Lake Geneva that is run by - guess who - Nestle. The food itself wasn't too bad - there were a few different types of pasta - but the woman serving it was a bitch, and I got sick from it, again. Then we walked outside and looked around. For some reason, there was a giant fork built a few feet into the lake. There was also a statue of Charlie Chaplin, who owned a summer home somewhere in the area. Once we had gotten our fill of touristy photos, we got back on the bus and returned to the Knox Centre, where we finally had half a day off. We took it fairly easy the rest of the day. Ashley and I organized our rooms and went on the internet in the library. We discovered at dinner that they have beer and wine for sale in the kitchen, so we each tried a different kind of the Swiss-German beer Feldschlossen. I got a dark one that was really good, and Ashley had a lighter one that was also good.
After dinner, I was planning on going back to the library, but we ended up going into Chris & Sam's room and bitching about some of the more obnoxious people in the program. This went on for a few hours, and several others filtered in and out of the conversation. At some point most of the people decided to go out to a bar, so we got ready and started walking with a group of about 8 people down towards Grand-Saconnex. Ashley, Jason W., Rachel, and I got stuck at a particularly long light; since we didn't feel like getting hit with a CHF 100 jaywalking fine, we waited until the light finally changed (the Swiss government has cameras everywhere, and they want you to know that Big Brother is watching you), and by that time the rest of the people had disappeared. We walked to the Auberge du Grand-Saconnex, and Ashley & Rachel asked the bartender and some Swiss people if they had seen our group. They told us they had seen some Americans head over to a bar down the street, so we decided to go there. The group we were with wasn't there, but we ran into a few other people from our program, including Jason H. & Phil, who is fluent in German. Ashley & I each had an Erdinger (a citrusy German beer) and a Heineken (I think the Spanish-Mexican-Swiss bartender ripped me off CHF 2), then we headed back with Jason W. and went to bed. I failed to sleep, once again, however, and ended up getting out of bed at 4am. I idled away the time by reading a French phrase book and watching CNN International on the TV in our student lounge.
Thursday morning we all got ready and went down to the United Nations to get our library passes and take a tour of the Palais des Nations. Our tour guide was very interesting, even though his name was Jillian, and he made a very compelling case for the UN. We saw the original UN building, which was actually finished in 1936 to house the League of Nations. The League of Nations continued to operate in the building until the UN took over in 1947. We had lunch at the UN cafeteria, which was more expensive than advertised. They sell alcohol here as well, and it was rather foreign for me to see diplomats and other UN personnel drinking on their lunch hour. Right before Ashley and I got up to leave the table, a group of four guys from the South Korean delegation sat down next to us and blocked us in. For some reason they had all gotten the mixed sausage and sauerkraut plate, and the one guy directly next to us really seemed to enjoy eating ketchup and mustard.
We left the UN after lunch and headed over to the US Mission building. After passing through their extremely rigorous security check (which was run by non-Americans), we headed inside and sat down for the presentations from some of the members of the Mission. Six officials spoke to us about what their departments do and what they specifically do with the UN; most of them took a pretty standard, pro-administration stance regarding their issues. One woman in particular, who looked as though she was maybe 26 and worked in the political and specialized issues part of the Mission, essentially spit out Bush administration talking points. She complained vocally about countries such as Libya having a seat at the table of human rights discussions. While I can agree that there does seem to be a conflict of interest there, she seemed to take the stance that "if you don't agree with us, you shouldn't be allowed to talk." The one guy who actually criticized government policy worked for the US Trade Representative. He was Mr. Laissez-Faire and attacked both Bush and Obama for being pro-government; he particularly criticized Obama for being anti-trade.
We left the US Mission and walked back up to the Knox Centre. Along the way, I commented about how there are a bunch of buildings in the Geneva area that are really nice but need a lot of exterior renovation. I pointed to one in particular that was covered in rebar. Ashley saw the opportunity to make a joke. Invoking Dr. Haesook Chae, my Korean comparative politics professor last spring who routinely confused her Rs & Ls, particularly in the world "liberalism," Ashley said "rebararism." I thought it was quite funny.
Thursday night I began to get legitimately sick. I started to get achy and came down with a fever. I was not looking forward to the next day, which would once again involve a lot of walking, so I took some NyQuil and hoped for the best. Unfortunately it did not work, and I woke up the next day feeling like shit as well. After I got ready, I found out that I was far from the only one who had gotten ill. Ashley, Jason W., and at least 5 other people all complained of somewhat similar symptoms. Despite this, we decided to stay with the group and head over to the Museum of the International Red Cross & Red Crescent. There was an exhibit in the museum called "The Walls Between People." It was a photographic journal of walls that have been constructed around the world and the consequences of those walls. It probably would have been pretty cool, but some teacher had decided to bring his whole class of 14-year old Swiss kids to do an assignment there. These kids were quite rude. They stood in front of the text for the exhibit and routinely bumped into us without saying anything. One girl walked right into my arm, knocked the form out of my hand and kept going as if nothing had happened. The rest of the Red Cross Museum was mostly unmemorable. Our tour was really rushed, so we didn't have time to see a lot of things. We did see some cool stuff, including the original Geneva Conventions, the Nobel Prize from Henri Dunant (the Swiss businessman who founded the organization), and the stacks of POW cards from WWI, including that of Charles de Gualle. Our tour guide also told us to look out for the "Red Crystal." It was a small white flag with a red diamond on it that was created at the behest of Israel. The Israelis had requested they make at Red Star of David, but the Red Cross refused, because it is solely a religious symbol. She said we would never see it used because the Israelis would never consent to it being used.
After the Red Cross tour, we were supposed to go on a tour of Geneva's Old Town. By this time I was sicker than ever and about to throw up, so Ashley & I decided to head back to the Knox Centre and lie down. I ended up taking a four-hour nap and spending the rest of the day there, so there's not much else to tell.
Initially when I heard we were going to Nestle, I was excited because I thought we were going to tour a chocolate factory. A girl from B-W did this program last semester, and they toured Callier. Unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards; we were just going to hear a corporate presentation from Nestle and to tour some of their HQ. Driving through Vevey was interesting. We literally drove down this road that was lined on both sides by deteriorating urban factories, and then turned right into a very nice, upscale town center. Nestle was at the end of this road. It is a large, u-shaped, modern building that is covered with windows and sits on the shore of Lake Geneva. We walked in, were met by a couple of Swiss women, got our visitors passes, and climbed into an elevator to head upstairs. I don't know the name of the woman who gave us the presentation, but she led us into a meeting room that was almost like a small theater. There was a desk with a few chairs and microphones facing us with a large projection screen behind it, and we sat in the theater-style chairs facing the table.
Our presenter gave us a fairly long, overly-detailed presentation about Nestle's history, corporate structure, products, policies, budget, corporate philosophy, etc. I found out a lot of things about Nestle that I did not know before, mostly different products and brands that they own. Nestle has purchased Friskies, Purina, Gerber, San Pellegrino, Edy's & Dreyer's ice cream, and Carnation. They also have a presence in at least 130 different countries. Some people began to wonder if Nestle was a corporate Leviathon that was looking to take over the world, and you did kind of get that sense from this woman. She toed the company line and followed that mantra that Nestle could do no wrong. Dr. Peters asked her to respond to criticism the company had faced about 20 years ago when children in Africa got poisoned from drinking Nestle powered baby formula. The woman was quick to respond (perhaps she had rehearsed her answer before?) and told us that it was not Nestle's fault for 3 reasons.
1.) Nestle cannot guarantee that all of their products will be 100% safe 100% of time, so things like this will eventually happen, but they have very good recall procedures in place.
2.) Nestle is a great corporation who knows that there is a market for formula in Africa, because the mothers are malnourished and cannot produce proper breast milk. Nestle does recognize that breast milk is preferable, but it is not always possible.
Now that all seemed alright, until she got to #3.
3.) Most of the burden of responsibility should fall on the mothers, because they did not follow the instructions that Nestle listed on the box. Instead of putting five spoonfuls of powder into the water, they only used one or two "to just give it the color" of milk. Therefore, they are responsible for their children getting sick and/or dying.
I was blown away. I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Did this woman just blame impoverished, malnourished mothers for trying to ration their baby formula and essentially say they killed their children? It appeared to be that way. Other people asked her several more questions, about topics such as Nestle's environmental policies and the manner in which they acquire their products, particularly chocolate and coffee, but she was ready with the rehearsed response for all of them. Nestle is God. Nestle is never wrong.
After being brainwashed for an hour, we walked through the gift shop area and saw a number of exhibits and pieces of information about Nestle. Ashley did discover that the Nescafe coffee machine gave out free samples, which was nice, and the woman gave us a gift bag that included a box of Callier milk chocolate when we left. Despite this, everyone got a kind of creepy feeling from that place. Since last Wednesday, I have made a conscious effort not to buy Nestle products. It has been difficult, because only 65% of their products are sold under the name Nestle, but I think I have been successful thus far. I've already spoken to a couple of Swiss people who hate Nestle and follow similar practices, so I feel justified in doing so.
For lunch we headed to the Alimentarium, a food museum and restaurant on the shore of Lake Geneva that is run by - guess who - Nestle. The food itself wasn't too bad - there were a few different types of pasta - but the woman serving it was a bitch, and I got sick from it, again. Then we walked outside and looked around. For some reason, there was a giant fork built a few feet into the lake. There was also a statue of Charlie Chaplin, who owned a summer home somewhere in the area. Once we had gotten our fill of touristy photos, we got back on the bus and returned to the Knox Centre, where we finally had half a day off. We took it fairly easy the rest of the day. Ashley and I organized our rooms and went on the internet in the library. We discovered at dinner that they have beer and wine for sale in the kitchen, so we each tried a different kind of the Swiss-German beer Feldschlossen. I got a dark one that was really good, and Ashley had a lighter one that was also good.
After dinner, I was planning on going back to the library, but we ended up going into Chris & Sam's room and bitching about some of the more obnoxious people in the program. This went on for a few hours, and several others filtered in and out of the conversation. At some point most of the people decided to go out to a bar, so we got ready and started walking with a group of about 8 people down towards Grand-Saconnex. Ashley, Jason W., Rachel, and I got stuck at a particularly long light; since we didn't feel like getting hit with a CHF 100 jaywalking fine, we waited until the light finally changed (the Swiss government has cameras everywhere, and they want you to know that Big Brother is watching you), and by that time the rest of the people had disappeared. We walked to the Auberge du Grand-Saconnex, and Ashley & Rachel asked the bartender and some Swiss people if they had seen our group. They told us they had seen some Americans head over to a bar down the street, so we decided to go there. The group we were with wasn't there, but we ran into a few other people from our program, including Jason H. & Phil, who is fluent in German. Ashley & I each had an Erdinger (a citrusy German beer) and a Heineken (I think the Spanish-Mexican-Swiss bartender ripped me off CHF 2), then we headed back with Jason W. and went to bed. I failed to sleep, once again, however, and ended up getting out of bed at 4am. I idled away the time by reading a French phrase book and watching CNN International on the TV in our student lounge.
Thursday morning we all got ready and went down to the United Nations to get our library passes and take a tour of the Palais des Nations. Our tour guide was very interesting, even though his name was Jillian, and he made a very compelling case for the UN. We saw the original UN building, which was actually finished in 1936 to house the League of Nations. The League of Nations continued to operate in the building until the UN took over in 1947. We had lunch at the UN cafeteria, which was more expensive than advertised. They sell alcohol here as well, and it was rather foreign for me to see diplomats and other UN personnel drinking on their lunch hour. Right before Ashley and I got up to leave the table, a group of four guys from the South Korean delegation sat down next to us and blocked us in. For some reason they had all gotten the mixed sausage and sauerkraut plate, and the one guy directly next to us really seemed to enjoy eating ketchup and mustard.
We left the UN after lunch and headed over to the US Mission building. After passing through their extremely rigorous security check (which was run by non-Americans), we headed inside and sat down for the presentations from some of the members of the Mission. Six officials spoke to us about what their departments do and what they specifically do with the UN; most of them took a pretty standard, pro-administration stance regarding their issues. One woman in particular, who looked as though she was maybe 26 and worked in the political and specialized issues part of the Mission, essentially spit out Bush administration talking points. She complained vocally about countries such as Libya having a seat at the table of human rights discussions. While I can agree that there does seem to be a conflict of interest there, she seemed to take the stance that "if you don't agree with us, you shouldn't be allowed to talk." The one guy who actually criticized government policy worked for the US Trade Representative. He was Mr. Laissez-Faire and attacked both Bush and Obama for being pro-government; he particularly criticized Obama for being anti-trade.
We left the US Mission and walked back up to the Knox Centre. Along the way, I commented about how there are a bunch of buildings in the Geneva area that are really nice but need a lot of exterior renovation. I pointed to one in particular that was covered in rebar. Ashley saw the opportunity to make a joke. Invoking Dr. Haesook Chae, my Korean comparative politics professor last spring who routinely confused her Rs & Ls, particularly in the world "liberalism," Ashley said "rebararism." I thought it was quite funny.
Thursday night I began to get legitimately sick. I started to get achy and came down with a fever. I was not looking forward to the next day, which would once again involve a lot of walking, so I took some NyQuil and hoped for the best. Unfortunately it did not work, and I woke up the next day feeling like shit as well. After I got ready, I found out that I was far from the only one who had gotten ill. Ashley, Jason W., and at least 5 other people all complained of somewhat similar symptoms. Despite this, we decided to stay with the group and head over to the Museum of the International Red Cross & Red Crescent. There was an exhibit in the museum called "The Walls Between People." It was a photographic journal of walls that have been constructed around the world and the consequences of those walls. It probably would have been pretty cool, but some teacher had decided to bring his whole class of 14-year old Swiss kids to do an assignment there. These kids were quite rude. They stood in front of the text for the exhibit and routinely bumped into us without saying anything. One girl walked right into my arm, knocked the form out of my hand and kept going as if nothing had happened. The rest of the Red Cross Museum was mostly unmemorable. Our tour was really rushed, so we didn't have time to see a lot of things. We did see some cool stuff, including the original Geneva Conventions, the Nobel Prize from Henri Dunant (the Swiss businessman who founded the organization), and the stacks of POW cards from WWI, including that of Charles de Gualle. Our tour guide also told us to look out for the "Red Crystal." It was a small white flag with a red diamond on it that was created at the behest of Israel. The Israelis had requested they make at Red Star of David, but the Red Cross refused, because it is solely a religious symbol. She said we would never see it used because the Israelis would never consent to it being used.
After the Red Cross tour, we were supposed to go on a tour of Geneva's Old Town. By this time I was sicker than ever and about to throw up, so Ashley & I decided to head back to the Knox Centre and lie down. I ended up taking a four-hour nap and spending the rest of the day there, so there's not much else to tell.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Orientation Day 2 - Gruyeres & Moleson Gruyeres
By the time that I went to bed at about 10:30pm Monday night at the Hotel de la Gare, I had been awake for about 38 hours. I was hoping that I would be able to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep for a while, but this was not to be so. This was the first of several sleepless or semi-sleepless nights for me. I woke up at about 4am because I was sweating like crazy and had to go to the bathroom. I came back to bed and tried falling asleep with no luck. I finally got up at 5am, took a shower, and read The Plague by Albert Camus until 6:30. I went back to bed after that and finally managed to fall asleep until my alarm went off at 8:30.
When I opened my eyes, I was amazed to discover that I could see two peaks in the Alps through the window in my room without even lifting my head. After getting breakfast, Dr. Peters held a meeting for those of us who have internships. I am working for the International Commission of Jurists, which is an organization that promotes human rights and the rule of law by advising governments and organizations on how to create and implement their laws. It sounds like a good organization, but Dr. Peters said that no one in the Kent program has ever worked with them before, so I have to negotiate with my supervisors about scheduling my hours and setting aside time to travel.
At 10:30 we packed up and walked across the street to the train station, where we hopped on a train towards Gruyeres. It was extremely warm on the train, but we passed some extremely beautiful scenery. After about a 20 minute ride we arrived at La Maison Gruyeres, which is the central hub of the Gruyeres cheese industry. They have a restaurant here, and the caves where they age the cheese are here as well. We made a quick pit stop in the gift shop, and then got on the bus to head up to Moleson Gruyeres, a mountain that is 2,002 meters (6,568 feet) tall. There were a bunch of Swiss elementary school children on the bus (I'm not sure if they were done with school of if they were going home for lunch), but I don't think I've ever seen a group of people so excited to see Americans. One kid was literally jumping up and down and smacking the window when he saw us. As we climbed onto the bus, the boys started high-fiving us, yelling, and running up the aisles. It was kind of crazy.
The bus ride was interesting, as we weaved our way up the winding mountain roads, some of which curved almost 180 degrees. I was extremely excited when we arrived at Moleson Gruyeres. We got our tickets, then climbed onto the funiculaire, a small, glass-walled mountain tram that takes you half-way up the climb to about 3,200 feet. Once I got off the funiculaire, I was able to look up at the summit of the mountain and see it clearly for the first time - it was incredible. Dr. Peters told us that the schedule was extremely tight and she didn't think we would be able to go the cheese factory, have lunch, and go to the summit of the mountain, so we had to choose two of the three. Ashley and I made our choice immediately, and headed up to the ticket office for the cable car with a group of about 5 other people. We had hoped that we would be the only ones, as there were a handful of girls who had said they were afraid of heights and didn't want to go up, but by the time the cable car operator came over to give us our tickets, the entire group had shown up.
It only took about 4 or 5 minutes for the cable car to ride the rest of the way up the mountain. When we stepped out of the crowded car onto the platform, I was blown away by the scenery - it was absolutely breathtaking. The sun had come out, and because we were above the lower layer of clouds, you literally had an unimpeded view of the Alps and the adjacent valley for hundreds of miles. We walked up a staircase and out onto the observation deck and were surrounded by mountains. While we were frantically snapping pictures, a nice older Swiss man who was wearing skis told us in French that if we looked over a certain mountain ridge, we could just see Mt. Blanc, a mountain that straddles the French-Italian border and which is the highest point in Europe at 15,781 feet. The whole thing was fairly surreal.
While we were being bombarded by the scenery, a handful of people from our group decided to head up the last 250 feet or so of the mountain. I asked Ashley if she wanted to do it, and we both agreed that it would be pretty awesome to say that we had climbed to the top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps. It was a difficult climb at times, because most of the snow was packed and slippery, but we made it all the way to the top and were rewarded for our efforts. The altitude started to have an affect on my by this point, as I found it more difficult to breathe and was starting to get sore, but I really didn't mind.
When we had gotten our fill of the scenery, we headed back down to the cable car. It took a while for the next car to make it up to the platform, and we all started to get anxious. Dr. Peters warned us that the last bus for Gruyeres left at 1:42pm, and it was 1:27 when the cable car finally showed up. We made our way back down to the funiculaire and then down to the bus stop at 1:43, but there was no bus there. Dr. Peters and Gertrude told us that the bus had come and gone and that we would have to walk the way back to Gruyeres. Gertrude started to bitch us out, despite the fact that she and Dr. Peters had allowed us to go up the mountain, we had made it back by the time that we were given, and we were delayed several minutes by circumstances outside of our control; but don't ask her to be understanding. This was the first and only bus that I have come across in Switzerland that was not exactly on time, but it had serious consequences. Dr. Peters began frantically making phone calls to try and get us a bus. She also had to call the cheese factory and the Chateau de Gruyeres to cancel our tours. All the while, Gertrude continued to scold us like 6-year old children.
When it became clear that we had no other option, we began the long hike back down the road to Gruyeres. It was a long and winding route and took around an hour to finish; Ashley estimated that it was probably a 4-mile walk or so. Gertrude and Dr. Peters just so happened to hitchhike their way down, so they didn't have to deal with the walk. We got to La Maison Gruyeres and sat down in the restaurant for lunch. I was looking forward to this, because they used the Gruyeres cheese that they made on the premises, but I was disappointed. I thought I had ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, but it was just a few pieces of cheese on French bread with some mustard and a pickle about the size of a tic tac, along with a salad of shredded vegetables covered in Ranch dressing which I did not eat.
After lunch we walked up to the medieval town of Gruyeres, where the Chateau de Gruyeres is located. It is a tiny little one-street town that is surrounded by its stone walls. It might be the coolest place that I have ever been before, other than the mountain. Dr. Peters told us we could have cake and coffee in the restaurant or walk around the town, so Ashley and I started walking up the street immediately. We took a few pictures of the buildings and the fountain, noticed that they had some tables made out of ice complete with ice ash trays outside of a small restaurant, and headed to the tourism center, which is a converted medieval church. The tourism center was small and unimpressive, so we walked outside after a minute or two. Just outside of the door, we ran into a brown, female tabby cat. She obviously interacts with people on a regular basis, because she walked right up to and let Ashley start petting her. As soon as Ashley touched her, she began purring like crazy. We pet her for a few minutes, and she started standing up on her hind legs and putting her front paws on Ashley. I walked over to give her some more attention, and as soon as I leaned over, she saw the opportunity and jumped right onto my shoulders. I stood up, stunned, and she walked around my shoulders, purring and letting me pet her. It was unbelievable; I have never seen a cat act so friendly before.
After a few more minutes, we bid goodbye to our new friend and headed further into the town. Through the next archway, we came across the Musee IR Giger, which is a museum for the artist who made all the costumes and scenery for the Aliens movies. This nice Canadian man standing at our gate at the Newark airport had told us about this museum. He said that he had spend a year living in the city of Lausanne in the Lake Geneva region and had been amazed to run into this museum in this little medieval town. We didn't go into the museum, since it isn't our cup of tea, but there was a small bar just across the street that was themed around the museum. There was a bunch of furniture that was fashioned in the style of Aliens. Next, we went up to look at the Chateau de Gruyeres. We didn't get a chance to tour it, as it had closed at 4:30pm (we got there at 4:31), and I didn't feel like paying for the tour. We just took a bunch of pictures, looked around at the outside, and headed back to the restaurant to join back up with our group.
Only our group wasn't there. Three students had seen us walking toward the Chateau, but they apparently didn't realize we hadn't come back yet. We walked into the restaurant to look for them. Thankfully Ashley knows French, because when she asked the waitress where the big group was, she told us they had already left. We hurried down the hill back towards La Maison Gruyeres, and came across a group of guys whose car was broken down at the base of the hill. Ashley asked an Asian Swiss man with a mullet if he had seen our group, and he told her that they had gone by a few minutes before, so we continued down the road. We saw them at at the train station a few minutes later, and we managed to rejoin the group a few minutes before our train came. I guess that Dr. Peters and Gertrude weren't very familiar with the area, because they tried to get onto a train heading in the wrong direction. Then after we got onto our train and started heading back to Montbovon, Gertrude tried to get off at every exit starting four stops before ours. She's kind of clueless.
When we got back, Dr. Low had arrived to talk with us about the economics of climate change. Dr. Low is the chief economist at the WTO who teaches two econ classes for the program; he is a pretty brilliant man. I found it kind of difficult to listen to his talk, however, because his fly was unzipped and he kept dragging on, talking about tedious economics theories and equations. Probably the highlight of the talk came during the Q&A session, though. The obnoxious girl whom I mentioned in my last post asked a doosy of a question. She brought up the concept, and rightly so, that planting a tree outside of the rainforest doesn't do a whole lot to curb carbon emissions. Had she stopped here, she may have saved face. Instead, she continued, saying that she could have sworn she had read somewhere that planting a tree can actually be bad for the environment, because it can somehow speech up global warming. Dr. Sheridan, the program director and geography professor/climatologist said that the only way this could happen is if the tree was cut down and burned. Even after he made this point, which was clearly a joke meant to end the discussion, she asked for clarification on this point again. Her brilliant insight has led some of the people to begin referring to her as "tree girl."
The owners of our hotel made us fondue for dinner that night. It was pretty good, but not all that great. It tasted like they had poured 5 bottles of wine in the pot, and they only gave us bread to dip. I got sick after dinner, again. I got sick after every meal Monday-Thursday, with the exception of Wednesday's breakfast. I think it may have been due to the altitude. That's it for this post. Hopefully I can wrap the rest of the week up in one more post, because we haven't done a whole lot since Tuesday. There are also a number of observations that I have made about Switzerland that I wanted to point out for all of you who are States-side.
When I opened my eyes, I was amazed to discover that I could see two peaks in the Alps through the window in my room without even lifting my head. After getting breakfast, Dr. Peters held a meeting for those of us who have internships. I am working for the International Commission of Jurists, which is an organization that promotes human rights and the rule of law by advising governments and organizations on how to create and implement their laws. It sounds like a good organization, but Dr. Peters said that no one in the Kent program has ever worked with them before, so I have to negotiate with my supervisors about scheduling my hours and setting aside time to travel.
At 10:30 we packed up and walked across the street to the train station, where we hopped on a train towards Gruyeres. It was extremely warm on the train, but we passed some extremely beautiful scenery. After about a 20 minute ride we arrived at La Maison Gruyeres, which is the central hub of the Gruyeres cheese industry. They have a restaurant here, and the caves where they age the cheese are here as well. We made a quick pit stop in the gift shop, and then got on the bus to head up to Moleson Gruyeres, a mountain that is 2,002 meters (6,568 feet) tall. There were a bunch of Swiss elementary school children on the bus (I'm not sure if they were done with school of if they were going home for lunch), but I don't think I've ever seen a group of people so excited to see Americans. One kid was literally jumping up and down and smacking the window when he saw us. As we climbed onto the bus, the boys started high-fiving us, yelling, and running up the aisles. It was kind of crazy.
The bus ride was interesting, as we weaved our way up the winding mountain roads, some of which curved almost 180 degrees. I was extremely excited when we arrived at Moleson Gruyeres. We got our tickets, then climbed onto the funiculaire, a small, glass-walled mountain tram that takes you half-way up the climb to about 3,200 feet. Once I got off the funiculaire, I was able to look up at the summit of the mountain and see it clearly for the first time - it was incredible. Dr. Peters told us that the schedule was extremely tight and she didn't think we would be able to go the cheese factory, have lunch, and go to the summit of the mountain, so we had to choose two of the three. Ashley and I made our choice immediately, and headed up to the ticket office for the cable car with a group of about 5 other people. We had hoped that we would be the only ones, as there were a handful of girls who had said they were afraid of heights and didn't want to go up, but by the time the cable car operator came over to give us our tickets, the entire group had shown up.
It only took about 4 or 5 minutes for the cable car to ride the rest of the way up the mountain. When we stepped out of the crowded car onto the platform, I was blown away by the scenery - it was absolutely breathtaking. The sun had come out, and because we were above the lower layer of clouds, you literally had an unimpeded view of the Alps and the adjacent valley for hundreds of miles. We walked up a staircase and out onto the observation deck and were surrounded by mountains. While we were frantically snapping pictures, a nice older Swiss man who was wearing skis told us in French that if we looked over a certain mountain ridge, we could just see Mt. Blanc, a mountain that straddles the French-Italian border and which is the highest point in Europe at 15,781 feet. The whole thing was fairly surreal.
While we were being bombarded by the scenery, a handful of people from our group decided to head up the last 250 feet or so of the mountain. I asked Ashley if she wanted to do it, and we both agreed that it would be pretty awesome to say that we had climbed to the top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps. It was a difficult climb at times, because most of the snow was packed and slippery, but we made it all the way to the top and were rewarded for our efforts. The altitude started to have an affect on my by this point, as I found it more difficult to breathe and was starting to get sore, but I really didn't mind.
When we had gotten our fill of the scenery, we headed back down to the cable car. It took a while for the next car to make it up to the platform, and we all started to get anxious. Dr. Peters warned us that the last bus for Gruyeres left at 1:42pm, and it was 1:27 when the cable car finally showed up. We made our way back down to the funiculaire and then down to the bus stop at 1:43, but there was no bus there. Dr. Peters and Gertrude told us that the bus had come and gone and that we would have to walk the way back to Gruyeres. Gertrude started to bitch us out, despite the fact that she and Dr. Peters had allowed us to go up the mountain, we had made it back by the time that we were given, and we were delayed several minutes by circumstances outside of our control; but don't ask her to be understanding. This was the first and only bus that I have come across in Switzerland that was not exactly on time, but it had serious consequences. Dr. Peters began frantically making phone calls to try and get us a bus. She also had to call the cheese factory and the Chateau de Gruyeres to cancel our tours. All the while, Gertrude continued to scold us like 6-year old children.
When it became clear that we had no other option, we began the long hike back down the road to Gruyeres. It was a long and winding route and took around an hour to finish; Ashley estimated that it was probably a 4-mile walk or so. Gertrude and Dr. Peters just so happened to hitchhike their way down, so they didn't have to deal with the walk. We got to La Maison Gruyeres and sat down in the restaurant for lunch. I was looking forward to this, because they used the Gruyeres cheese that they made on the premises, but I was disappointed. I thought I had ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, but it was just a few pieces of cheese on French bread with some mustard and a pickle about the size of a tic tac, along with a salad of shredded vegetables covered in Ranch dressing which I did not eat.
After lunch we walked up to the medieval town of Gruyeres, where the Chateau de Gruyeres is located. It is a tiny little one-street town that is surrounded by its stone walls. It might be the coolest place that I have ever been before, other than the mountain. Dr. Peters told us we could have cake and coffee in the restaurant or walk around the town, so Ashley and I started walking up the street immediately. We took a few pictures of the buildings and the fountain, noticed that they had some tables made out of ice complete with ice ash trays outside of a small restaurant, and headed to the tourism center, which is a converted medieval church. The tourism center was small and unimpressive, so we walked outside after a minute or two. Just outside of the door, we ran into a brown, female tabby cat. She obviously interacts with people on a regular basis, because she walked right up to and let Ashley start petting her. As soon as Ashley touched her, she began purring like crazy. We pet her for a few minutes, and she started standing up on her hind legs and putting her front paws on Ashley. I walked over to give her some more attention, and as soon as I leaned over, she saw the opportunity and jumped right onto my shoulders. I stood up, stunned, and she walked around my shoulders, purring and letting me pet her. It was unbelievable; I have never seen a cat act so friendly before.
After a few more minutes, we bid goodbye to our new friend and headed further into the town. Through the next archway, we came across the Musee IR Giger, which is a museum for the artist who made all the costumes and scenery for the Aliens movies. This nice Canadian man standing at our gate at the Newark airport had told us about this museum. He said that he had spend a year living in the city of Lausanne in the Lake Geneva region and had been amazed to run into this museum in this little medieval town. We didn't go into the museum, since it isn't our cup of tea, but there was a small bar just across the street that was themed around the museum. There was a bunch of furniture that was fashioned in the style of Aliens. Next, we went up to look at the Chateau de Gruyeres. We didn't get a chance to tour it, as it had closed at 4:30pm (we got there at 4:31), and I didn't feel like paying for the tour. We just took a bunch of pictures, looked around at the outside, and headed back to the restaurant to join back up with our group.
Only our group wasn't there. Three students had seen us walking toward the Chateau, but they apparently didn't realize we hadn't come back yet. We walked into the restaurant to look for them. Thankfully Ashley knows French, because when she asked the waitress where the big group was, she told us they had already left. We hurried down the hill back towards La Maison Gruyeres, and came across a group of guys whose car was broken down at the base of the hill. Ashley asked an Asian Swiss man with a mullet if he had seen our group, and he told her that they had gone by a few minutes before, so we continued down the road. We saw them at at the train station a few minutes later, and we managed to rejoin the group a few minutes before our train came. I guess that Dr. Peters and Gertrude weren't very familiar with the area, because they tried to get onto a train heading in the wrong direction. Then after we got onto our train and started heading back to Montbovon, Gertrude tried to get off at every exit starting four stops before ours. She's kind of clueless.
When we got back, Dr. Low had arrived to talk with us about the economics of climate change. Dr. Low is the chief economist at the WTO who teaches two econ classes for the program; he is a pretty brilliant man. I found it kind of difficult to listen to his talk, however, because his fly was unzipped and he kept dragging on, talking about tedious economics theories and equations. Probably the highlight of the talk came during the Q&A session, though. The obnoxious girl whom I mentioned in my last post asked a doosy of a question. She brought up the concept, and rightly so, that planting a tree outside of the rainforest doesn't do a whole lot to curb carbon emissions. Had she stopped here, she may have saved face. Instead, she continued, saying that she could have sworn she had read somewhere that planting a tree can actually be bad for the environment, because it can somehow speech up global warming. Dr. Sheridan, the program director and geography professor/climatologist said that the only way this could happen is if the tree was cut down and burned. Even after he made this point, which was clearly a joke meant to end the discussion, she asked for clarification on this point again. Her brilliant insight has led some of the people to begin referring to her as "tree girl."
The owners of our hotel made us fondue for dinner that night. It was pretty good, but not all that great. It tasted like they had poured 5 bottles of wine in the pot, and they only gave us bread to dip. I got sick after dinner, again. I got sick after every meal Monday-Thursday, with the exception of Wednesday's breakfast. I think it may have been due to the altitude. That's it for this post. Hopefully I can wrap the rest of the week up in one more post, because we haven't done a whole lot since Tuesday. There are also a number of observations that I have made about Switzerland that I wanted to point out for all of you who are States-side.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Monday of Orientation Week
Ok. So we arrived at the John Knox International Reforme Centre at about 9:00am GMT +1:00. I was unpleasantly surprised by how small and relatively unimpressive the facilities were. I found out on Sunday afternoon during our meeting that I was supposed to be in a double room with Luke, a kid from Miami University. I finally met him Monday morning when we got our room keys. He's a very nice kid, but he had two strikes against him going in - he goes to Miami, and he's from New Hampshire so he's a Boston sports fan. He's been a good roommate, though, so I've put these issues to the side.
When I walked into my room, I was again quite underwhelmed. I knew the rooms were small, but that doesn't even begin to describe this. If I stretch out my arms, I am about two inches away from touching both walls. I haven't measured, but if I had to guess, I'd put the dimensions at 6'6" x 11'. We have bunk beds that aren't really bunk beds (they are two beds placed on top of one another and attached with four wooden beams on the legs), a desk that isn't really a desk (it's a rickety table with no drawers), a bathroom that isn't really a bathroom (it's a sink with a small medicine cabinet & a light), and a closet that isn't really a closet (it's a built-in thing with a couple of shelves & an area to hang some clothes). The mattress on my bed is possibly the most uncomfortable thing I've ever tried to sleep on before, including the ground. It's made for some restless nights.
After we dropped off our things at the Knox Centre Monday morning, we headed downtown to pick up our Geneva bus passes and exchange some money. We walked to the bus stop in the center of Grand-Saconnex, which is the small suburb to the northwest of Geneva where we are situated; it's about a 10 minute bus ride from downtown. We got to the central bus hub, or the Gare Cornavin, and split into two groups. Ashley, some other students, and I went with Gertrude, the old German woman who's in charge of the homestays, to exchange money. I wanted to go to an ATM but didn't see one initially, and I still had $24 USD from what mom and Kevin had given me Saturday & Sunday, so I decided to exchange. The exchange rate was about $1.06, but I didn't realize that there was a CHF 3 service fee to make the exchange, so I ended up getting CHF 22 for $24. I was not very pleased.
After this, we went to the TPG (Transports Publics Genevois) office to pick up our passes; we get a one-month pass included in our program fee, then we are responsible for re-upping it. While we were standing in line, Dr. Peters (the French woman who's kind of in charge & teaches two of my classes) and Gertrude began passing out the ticket with our pictures that we needed. This is where I got my first taste of how pleasant Gertrude is. When she got to my slip, she chose not to call me by name. Instead, she said "Boy, boy, boy. I've got a boy, boy boy heeruh." Then she kind of snidely handed it to me and read the name of the next girl in her list.
Once we had gotten our passes, we headed over to the Manora Restaurant in Manor, a gigantic Swiss department store. The restaurant is on the sixth floor (?) directly next to the HDTVs, digital cameras, DVDs, and video games. We were told the food was cheap, but it still cost me CHF 9.20 to get a bowl of rigatoni and a dinner roll. I guess this was my introduction to the cost of living in Switzerland; food is not cheap, so don't bother trying.
Now, I decided to give the people in my group the benefit of the doubt, because I have to live in close quarters with them, but there's a few people whom I cannot stand. There is one girl in particular who fits into this category. She and her roommate don't seem to get the idea of trying to act like locals while abroad. They like to make a scene wherever they go. While going up the escalator in Manor, this girl turned around, leaned over the handle and started saying "high five, high five!" While waiting to take the bus back at the Gare Cornavin, she spoke quite loudly about completely inappropriate subjects. These included how her OB-GYN misread a scan and told her she was pregnant, and how she doesn't need to take birth control while she's here, because she isn't "going to get laid until May anyway." Ashley and I moved as far away from her as we could so that we wouldn't be associated with her, but the damage was done. Once on the bus, she talked about how she had brought 16 pairs of shoes, but claimed that it was okay because she "could justify each one of them." Needless to say, these two are living next to me at the Knox Centre, and the walls are paper thin. Ain't life grand.
Once we got back, we grabbed our the stuff we needed for the next three days and hopped back on our chartered bus. We headed west out of Geneva and into the country. While we were on the freeway, I was blown away by how much graffiti there was on the walls. Almost every inch of every freeway divider and wall was covered in it. I'm assuming that it's seen as more of an art form than a nuisance here, because it's all over downtown Geneva as well. There is another girl in the program of whom I am not a fan. For some reason, this girl decided to come back to Geneva and spend her second consecutive semester with this program (how can she be allowed to do that?). Because she has been here for four months already, she seems to think she knows everything there is to know about Europe. The only problem is, she doesn't really know what she's talking about. She's not really unpleasant on a personal level, but her act gets annoying. While on the bus to Montreux, she talked about going to the Swiss supermarket Coop (pronounced Co-op, because it's corporate philosophy is that it is a co-op. The letters Co are also in orange, while the op are in red; it's not too hard to figure out). She pronounced it "coupe." She also talked about how someone speaks Swiss German, or Schweizerdeutsch (pronounded Szv-EYE-zer-doytch); she pronounced it "shoe-zee-doytch." Grrr.
After about an hour and 15 minutes, we arrived at the outskirts of Montreux. It is a beautiful old city situated on the sloped foothills of the Alps at the shore of Lake Geneva (Lac Leman). The city has some wonderful architecture. Most of the buildings either look like the standard wooden Swiss mountain chalet or like the grandiose 18th-19th century Beaux-arts architecture that you find in Paris. On the eastern outskirts of Montreux, situated on a small rocky island that juts into Lake Geneva, is the Chateau de Chillon, a beautiful old castle that dates back to at least 1150. Chillon was the summer home in Switzerland of the powerful Savoy family who rose to power in this region and came to rule Italy. The family has included the first King of the Italian Republic, Victor Emmanuel II (reign 1861-1878); the last King of Italy, Humbert II (r. 1946); and the man who currently claims he is the "King of Italy," Crown Prince Victor Emmanuel, the prince of Naples.
Chillon was really made famous by the English poet Lord Byron, who wrote a Gothic ballad about a man who spent 6 years here as a Savoy prisoner. The man, Francois Bonivard, was a Catholic monk from Geneva who was arrested because he would not convert to Calvinism. The Savoys took him prisoner because he was seen as a political dissident, and he spend four years chained to a column in the castle dungeon. After his release, he converted to Calvinism, married four times, and fathered I believe 16 children. What the fuck? Anyways, Chillon was really cool and extremely impressive. I liked our tour guide; she was quite informative, and I was able to check "touring a European castle" off my list of things to do before I die.
After the Chateau de Chillon, we hopped back on the bus and drove to our hotel, the Hotel de la Gare (Hotel of the Train station), which is located in the small town of Montbovon a few miles outside of Gruyeres. I ended up staying in a room with four other guys - Jason W., Jason H., Chris, and Dan. The room wasn't too bad, but it was either too hot or too cold, and the door to the bathroom didn't lock (the shower door was glass). The hotel was more of a hostel; it was run by a Swiss family that also cooked our meals everyday. We were the only guests there, which was nice. Overall, I was satisfied with the hotel. The food was adequate, and, even though they had an old POS iMac with a French keyboard, we had temporary internet access.
This was an extremely long and rambling post, but I finally managed to write a lot of the things I wanted to say down, so I will write about the rest of orientation in (a) subsequent post(s).
When I walked into my room, I was again quite underwhelmed. I knew the rooms were small, but that doesn't even begin to describe this. If I stretch out my arms, I am about two inches away from touching both walls. I haven't measured, but if I had to guess, I'd put the dimensions at 6'6" x 11'. We have bunk beds that aren't really bunk beds (they are two beds placed on top of one another and attached with four wooden beams on the legs), a desk that isn't really a desk (it's a rickety table with no drawers), a bathroom that isn't really a bathroom (it's a sink with a small medicine cabinet & a light), and a closet that isn't really a closet (it's a built-in thing with a couple of shelves & an area to hang some clothes). The mattress on my bed is possibly the most uncomfortable thing I've ever tried to sleep on before, including the ground. It's made for some restless nights.
After we dropped off our things at the Knox Centre Monday morning, we headed downtown to pick up our Geneva bus passes and exchange some money. We walked to the bus stop in the center of Grand-Saconnex, which is the small suburb to the northwest of Geneva where we are situated; it's about a 10 minute bus ride from downtown. We got to the central bus hub, or the Gare Cornavin, and split into two groups. Ashley, some other students, and I went with Gertrude, the old German woman who's in charge of the homestays, to exchange money. I wanted to go to an ATM but didn't see one initially, and I still had $24 USD from what mom and Kevin had given me Saturday & Sunday, so I decided to exchange. The exchange rate was about $1.06, but I didn't realize that there was a CHF 3 service fee to make the exchange, so I ended up getting CHF 22 for $24. I was not very pleased.
After this, we went to the TPG (Transports Publics Genevois) office to pick up our passes; we get a one-month pass included in our program fee, then we are responsible for re-upping it. While we were standing in line, Dr. Peters (the French woman who's kind of in charge & teaches two of my classes) and Gertrude began passing out the ticket with our pictures that we needed. This is where I got my first taste of how pleasant Gertrude is. When she got to my slip, she chose not to call me by name. Instead, she said "Boy, boy, boy. I've got a boy, boy boy heeruh." Then she kind of snidely handed it to me and read the name of the next girl in her list.
Once we had gotten our passes, we headed over to the Manora Restaurant in Manor, a gigantic Swiss department store. The restaurant is on the sixth floor (?) directly next to the HDTVs, digital cameras, DVDs, and video games. We were told the food was cheap, but it still cost me CHF 9.20 to get a bowl of rigatoni and a dinner roll. I guess this was my introduction to the cost of living in Switzerland; food is not cheap, so don't bother trying.
Now, I decided to give the people in my group the benefit of the doubt, because I have to live in close quarters with them, but there's a few people whom I cannot stand. There is one girl in particular who fits into this category. She and her roommate don't seem to get the idea of trying to act like locals while abroad. They like to make a scene wherever they go. While going up the escalator in Manor, this girl turned around, leaned over the handle and started saying "high five, high five!" While waiting to take the bus back at the Gare Cornavin, she spoke quite loudly about completely inappropriate subjects. These included how her OB-GYN misread a scan and told her she was pregnant, and how she doesn't need to take birth control while she's here, because she isn't "going to get laid until May anyway." Ashley and I moved as far away from her as we could so that we wouldn't be associated with her, but the damage was done. Once on the bus, she talked about how she had brought 16 pairs of shoes, but claimed that it was okay because she "could justify each one of them." Needless to say, these two are living next to me at the Knox Centre, and the walls are paper thin. Ain't life grand.
Once we got back, we grabbed our the stuff we needed for the next three days and hopped back on our chartered bus. We headed west out of Geneva and into the country. While we were on the freeway, I was blown away by how much graffiti there was on the walls. Almost every inch of every freeway divider and wall was covered in it. I'm assuming that it's seen as more of an art form than a nuisance here, because it's all over downtown Geneva as well. There is another girl in the program of whom I am not a fan. For some reason, this girl decided to come back to Geneva and spend her second consecutive semester with this program (how can she be allowed to do that?). Because she has been here for four months already, she seems to think she knows everything there is to know about Europe. The only problem is, she doesn't really know what she's talking about. She's not really unpleasant on a personal level, but her act gets annoying. While on the bus to Montreux, she talked about going to the Swiss supermarket Coop (pronounced Co-op, because it's corporate philosophy is that it is a co-op. The letters Co are also in orange, while the op are in red; it's not too hard to figure out). She pronounced it "coupe." She also talked about how someone speaks Swiss German, or Schweizerdeutsch (pronounded Szv-EYE-zer-doytch); she pronounced it "shoe-zee-doytch." Grrr.
After about an hour and 15 minutes, we arrived at the outskirts of Montreux. It is a beautiful old city situated on the sloped foothills of the Alps at the shore of Lake Geneva (Lac Leman). The city has some wonderful architecture. Most of the buildings either look like the standard wooden Swiss mountain chalet or like the grandiose 18th-19th century Beaux-arts architecture that you find in Paris. On the eastern outskirts of Montreux, situated on a small rocky island that juts into Lake Geneva, is the Chateau de Chillon, a beautiful old castle that dates back to at least 1150. Chillon was the summer home in Switzerland of the powerful Savoy family who rose to power in this region and came to rule Italy. The family has included the first King of the Italian Republic, Victor Emmanuel II (reign 1861-1878); the last King of Italy, Humbert II (r. 1946); and the man who currently claims he is the "King of Italy," Crown Prince Victor Emmanuel, the prince of Naples.
Chillon was really made famous by the English poet Lord Byron, who wrote a Gothic ballad about a man who spent 6 years here as a Savoy prisoner. The man, Francois Bonivard, was a Catholic monk from Geneva who was arrested because he would not convert to Calvinism. The Savoys took him prisoner because he was seen as a political dissident, and he spend four years chained to a column in the castle dungeon. After his release, he converted to Calvinism, married four times, and fathered I believe 16 children. What the fuck? Anyways, Chillon was really cool and extremely impressive. I liked our tour guide; she was quite informative, and I was able to check "touring a European castle" off my list of things to do before I die.
After the Chateau de Chillon, we hopped back on the bus and drove to our hotel, the Hotel de la Gare (Hotel of the Train station), which is located in the small town of Montbovon a few miles outside of Gruyeres. I ended up staying in a room with four other guys - Jason W., Jason H., Chris, and Dan. The room wasn't too bad, but it was either too hot or too cold, and the door to the bathroom didn't lock (the shower door was glass). The hotel was more of a hostel; it was run by a Swiss family that also cooked our meals everyday. We were the only guests there, which was nice. Overall, I was satisfied with the hotel. The food was adequate, and, even though they had an old POS iMac with a French keyboard, we had temporary internet access.
This was an extremely long and rambling post, but I finally managed to write a lot of the things I wanted to say down, so I will write about the rest of orientation in (a) subsequent post(s).
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The flight to Geneva
I've finally gotten the chance to get on the internet and start documenting the whirlwind week that we've had thus far. I got to Hopkins Sunday morning at around 10:45 with mom and Kevin. I met up with Ashley at the Starbuck's next to the check in desks, and we went through security shortly thereafter. The plane was delayed a bit on the tarmac due to traffic in the New York/Newark airspace, but we eventually took off at around 1:10pm. The flight to Newark went relatively smoothly, and we touched down at EWR on time at 2:15. Unfortunately, as we were boarding the plane to Newark (last people to get on), we were forced to check one of our carry ons. As a result, when we got to EWR, we had to go down three floors to baggage claim, get our bags, go back up to the main floor, and go through TSA security again. This would be the first drawback of many.
When we got to Newark, I was surprised by how nice the airport was. Ashley had told me it was cool, but it was less airport and more mall; there were even Westfield advertisements on the walls. At 3:00, we had a group meeting to get to know one another and get a better idea of what was going on. When I walked in, I wasn't particularly enthused by the group that was there; this was compounded a bit by the fact that while Ashley and I sat in the back, apparently almost nonexistent to the other people, the rest of the group spoke very loudly and somewhat obnoxiously.
After the meeting, we went to lunch in the massive food court. We ended up getting Chicken Teryaki from Sakkio's and then a crappy smoothie from Jamba Juice. I wouldn't recommend going there - Robek's is way better. There was quite an interesting restaurant in the airport - Gallagher's Steak House. Apparently they decided that it would be a good idea to make the walls and door to the meat fridge out of glass - there were rows of what looked like cow torsos. It was lovely. Our flight to Geneva was delayed, and the plane didn't get to the gate until we were due to take off. We finally boarded at about 6:10 (we were supposed to leave at 5:35), and then sat on the tarmac while ten other planes took off from our runway. Thankfully, Ashley, Sam (another kid in the program from Miami U.), and I had seats in the front row of coach. This gave me a little extra leg room, and I'm sure it's not going to make Kevin very happy. I was not able to sleep at all on the flight, so I eventually gave in to this fact and read the book that I bought on Swiss culture (Ashley and Sam were both able to sleep). It didn't make them seem like overly pleasant people, so I wasn't sure what to expect when we got there. During the flight I had a lot of water, two cups of coffee, a small bottle of wine, some crappy chicken and penne dinner, and a small breakfast of a croissant and a fruit cup. There was some turbulence on the flight, so the seatbelt light was on about 90% of the time. After I finished my book, I watched the end of an episode of CSI and a full episode of CSI: Miami. I guess that Continental has a number of themed channels, including movies and one devoted entirely to CSI.
We landed in Geneva at about 7:25am GMT +1:00 (1:25am in Cleveland), and headed into the Geneva airport. Like the city itself, the airport was very small, and it was littered with watch advertisements every 3 feet. George Clooney must be huge in Switzerland, because he had three separate ads in the airport for Nespresso Coffee and Omega Watches. We waited in line to enter the country and got a stamp from the Swiss guy at the entrance and officially entered the country. Then after waiting 20 minutes at baggage check, we struggled to carry our bags through customs and get to the bus that would take us to our home for the next four months - the John Knox International Centre in Grand Saconnex. The French-Swiss bus driver had quite a time trying to fit all of our bags in the bus' luggage compartments, and he eventually placed a handful of them in the bus itself. Then we pulled away from the airport and arrived at the Knox Centre about 20 minutes later. More to come.
When we got to Newark, I was surprised by how nice the airport was. Ashley had told me it was cool, but it was less airport and more mall; there were even Westfield advertisements on the walls. At 3:00, we had a group meeting to get to know one another and get a better idea of what was going on. When I walked in, I wasn't particularly enthused by the group that was there; this was compounded a bit by the fact that while Ashley and I sat in the back, apparently almost nonexistent to the other people, the rest of the group spoke very loudly and somewhat obnoxiously.
After the meeting, we went to lunch in the massive food court. We ended up getting Chicken Teryaki from Sakkio's and then a crappy smoothie from Jamba Juice. I wouldn't recommend going there - Robek's is way better. There was quite an interesting restaurant in the airport - Gallagher's Steak House. Apparently they decided that it would be a good idea to make the walls and door to the meat fridge out of glass - there were rows of what looked like cow torsos. It was lovely. Our flight to Geneva was delayed, and the plane didn't get to the gate until we were due to take off. We finally boarded at about 6:10 (we were supposed to leave at 5:35), and then sat on the tarmac while ten other planes took off from our runway. Thankfully, Ashley, Sam (another kid in the program from Miami U.), and I had seats in the front row of coach. This gave me a little extra leg room, and I'm sure it's not going to make Kevin very happy. I was not able to sleep at all on the flight, so I eventually gave in to this fact and read the book that I bought on Swiss culture (Ashley and Sam were both able to sleep). It didn't make them seem like overly pleasant people, so I wasn't sure what to expect when we got there. During the flight I had a lot of water, two cups of coffee, a small bottle of wine, some crappy chicken and penne dinner, and a small breakfast of a croissant and a fruit cup. There was some turbulence on the flight, so the seatbelt light was on about 90% of the time. After I finished my book, I watched the end of an episode of CSI and a full episode of CSI: Miami. I guess that Continental has a number of themed channels, including movies and one devoted entirely to CSI.
We landed in Geneva at about 7:25am GMT +1:00 (1:25am in Cleveland), and headed into the Geneva airport. Like the city itself, the airport was very small, and it was littered with watch advertisements every 3 feet. George Clooney must be huge in Switzerland, because he had three separate ads in the airport for Nespresso Coffee and Omega Watches. We waited in line to enter the country and got a stamp from the Swiss guy at the entrance and officially entered the country. Then after waiting 20 minutes at baggage check, we struggled to carry our bags through customs and get to the bus that would take us to our home for the next four months - the John Knox International Centre in Grand Saconnex. The French-Swiss bus driver had quite a time trying to fit all of our bags in the bus' luggage compartments, and he eventually placed a handful of them in the bus itself. Then we pulled away from the airport and arrived at the Knox Centre about 20 minutes later. More to come.
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