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).