week 5
ahhhh i can’t believe i only have one week left here
wow. writing this almost 18 hours after i wrote my most recent post is a new record for me. what can i say, though? i’m really behind… i’m currently sitting in the most obscure part of the geneva airport (like i had to walk a really long way over and underground… actually pretty sure i’m in france right now . literally love how casual border crossing is here) waiting for my flight to barcelona and with it — my last weekend. yike-os. wow, this went by hella fast. i’ll spend time on all the emotions of that later, though… without further ado, i present: week 5.
you last heard from me when my family and i were boarding the plane from venice marco polo [side note: we got to see the place where he stayed when he was in venice on our gondola ride]. our flight was basically straight through a thunder storm from italy to switzerland so it got super bumpy at points and my stomach was lurching as i don’t really enjoy the feeling of dropping very far distances at fast speeds when high up in the air. we safely landed in geneva though and, as it was an easy jet flight, walked down the stairs and out onto the tarmac in the rainstorm. it wasn’t too bad when we were outside — largely just drizzling, but as we were walking through the airport it definitely worsened a lot because my family’s luggage was soaking wet and also we had to wait a long time to get it because of the lightning. in the interim, i printed out their free transport tickets so i could take them on the bus toward where i thought their hotel was — quite hilariously in the red light district.
we got on the bus and it was dark obviously but there’s not much to see on the way from the airport to gare cornavin anyways so it’s not like they missed out on anything big. i told them to get off at lyon (gare cornavin), but later found out that they had to walk a mile through the rain to their hotel since lyon (gare cornavin) is not the same as gare cornavin and is really maybe four blocks away so that was sort of awful of me. i stayed on the bus until bel air and then transferred to take the 3 all the way in to my dorm.
i was really glad my family came to geneva to see where i was living and all, but i had class so i just sort of gave them suggestions of things to do. top of my list was to take the téléphérique up the salève, but it ended up being too cloudy on monday to really enjoy that so alaina and dad went for a run along the lake instead and then they all went to the flower clock.
immediately after class, i went to go meet them at the train station since we had plans of visitng the chateau de chillon in montreux. lizzy came with me and had a hilarious three minute interaction with my fam in which basically nothing was accomplished. then, even though i was more than ready to go, since i had a lot of reading to worry about, alaina insisted we go get lebanese food. i was like ugh why do you waste my time, but then we arrived at the place and i was like score! it was parfums de beyrouth and hilariously it was the place lizzy, ryan, kyle, pansy, and i had gotten lost trying to go to on basically the second day. totally meant to be that i eventually did make it there and beyond glad i get to check french halal off of my checklist.
after we ate a delicious meal and i embarrassingly tried falafel for the first time (don’t argue with my chicken over rice order), we went back to the gare and i took them to the deli-counter line to buy tickets. alaina got to use her french which was wonderful and kind of made me jealous tbh. i will definitely be picking up another language when i head back to penn, but i don’t think it will be spanish. i’ve gotten pretty good at listening and interpreting french though so i was able to understand everything the woman behind the counter said, but obviously i couldn’t respond. we bought combo tickets for the round trip train ride, public transportation in montreux, and entrance to the chateau. then we found our platform and were off! it was another absolutely beautiful train ride and i was glad that my fam got to see more of switzerland. i’m a little sad they couldn’t go anywhere really cool though. like i loved lucerne and zurich and honestly geneva is not really that great in comparison, but whatever.
we got off the train and then i was like brilliant where do we go, but then we found a sign for the bus we were supposed to take and walked down some stairs and all was well. we arrived at the chateau about 15 minutes later. it’s really really cool and super-preserved, but also v overcrowded with tourists. it’s the most visited site in switzerland apparently, which seemed sort of random to me because montreux isn’t like a major location or anything. i guess freddie mercury spent a lot of time there coming to terms with his AIDS diagnosis, so that’s sort of cool (P.S. cristina, if you are reading this i put a flower on the statue like i promised!).
we proceeded to walk through the castle… all 55 rooms of it. like wow — at like room 20 dad was already checked out and was like well, how does one get out? i learned about the evolution of fireplaces from circular (which filled the room with smoke) to more square-shaped. otherwise, i didn’t really read all that much. i guess i’m all museum-ed out at this point. plus, the best thing to do is really just enjoy being there rather than trying to read every single exhibition piece.
the coolest part of the chateau de chillon was definitely the prison. lord byron’s poem “the prisoner of chillon” is about the imprisonment of françois bonivard (a monk whose crime was being protestant in the eyes of the french catholic savoys) there so i guess it is sort of low-key famous. byron apparently carved his name into the column where he thought that bonivard had been chained to. it says “B. YRON” though so unclear what he was trying to accomplish there…
my favorite part was definitely the fact that people were so much smaller in medieval times, as in all the doors were built for people my size which was hilarious.
after our visit to the chateau, we decided to walk back to montreux along the lake. my end goal was to reach the freddie mercury statue, but the walk along lac leman was really peaceful and quite enjoyable. we passed a rock beach with a beautiful view of the chateau, some vineyards, really big villas, and clay tennis courts before we hit, well, whatever we hit: i was reveling in the sound of the waves of the lake hitting shore when all of a sudden i hear this dj yelling expletives and he’s like LET’S GO! and then club music is blasting and i’m like what??? it was quite a contrast to the previous serenity.
since national swiss day was the next day, montreux had set up a carnival along the lake front. after we hit casino-land, we wandered through a bunch of tents selling all sorts of food and clothing and then were upon the freddie mercury statue. i saw him (can statues be said to have genders?) first which meant i got to pick dinner according to dad, but didn’t really mean that… he only said that to mess with alaina. said that if he found fred first, we’d be eating chicken beak, which i don’t even think was a viable option.
on our walk along the lake, near the clay tennis courts — which had really amazing landscaping by the way — my dad had found a loose hibiscus flower for me on the ground. i promised the coordinator of the lab i’d worked at from when i got back from school until i left for this trip that i’d lay a flower down near freddie’s feet and this was my chance. there were already flowers there, but i made a spot for mine too. i put it down and then immediately went to “crazy little thing called love” in my head. unclear why it wasn’t bohemian rhapsody, which is arguably a lot more epic and the one queen song i actually know by heart.
then we ventured further inland to find a real sit down swiss dinner. the first place we went to was in a pretty garden and filled with empty chairs, but apparently everything was already reserved so we walked down the street to another place and ate fondue, r östi, and other swiss cuisine (alaina had some sort of “raw” ham sandwhich that confused me… am i dumb, or is ham always raw???). it was delicious and my one promised “nice” meal of the week with my parents since everything is so damn expensive in switzerland.
after we finished our meal, alaina, mom, and dad were immediately like wow we should try to go find the train station, but i was like no… we’ve got plenty of time. i guess now that i’ve done so much traveling without them, i’m a lot more comfortable cutting it closer when going to the airport or train station. also, it’s just easier to travel by yourself or with people your own age anyways who are down for anything and aren’t super stressed all the time about every step when getting from location to location. or maybe that’s just responsibility :3 but seriously, you have to just chill and revel in whatever happens when it happens and older people, especially parents, are not good at that.
i ended up convincing them to “at least” get ice cream, so we walked back to the lake and through the festival to the movenpick stand and i had the most amazing swiss ice cream ever with large shavings of delicious swiss chocolate in it. we passed a music performance which was randomly salsa… why the swiss celebrate their national day with something completely unrelated to their traditions is beyond me. also… i still don’t really understand why so many people from saudi arabia roll through switzerland for the festival. like it seems so random and unrelated, but in geneva manor even changes what it sells to cater to their interest. like all of a sudden a bunch of different middle eastern food was in the grocery store, which is cool.
after we got our ice cream, we found the train station and made the 9:47 back to geneva. montreux is all the way on the opposite side of the lake, which looks like a pickle. so basically geneva is at one tip and montreux is at the other. it’s about an hour train ride, but it was late and i had to do reading so i was kind of annoyed…
we got to the train station and went our separate ways — they headed to their hotel and i went back to cité where i finished some more of development as freedom [side note: really should be reading that right now instead of writing this… have the entire book to finish and final essays to worry about next week. scry.]
the next day was national swiss day! aka national canton unification day. it celebrates how the three major cantons unified in 1291. yeah… so that’s 726 years of unification. i don’t even know what we are playing with in america with 4th of july hahahaha. i’m joking of course, but we’re practically brand spanking new. it’s funny too because a lot of people in my class were like what is this, swiss independence day? how, though… independence from whom??? #neutralreactsforaneutralnation honestly i was super pumped that we all got to be in switzerland for their national day — i mean what an experience. this and being in france for bastille day — but that meant that practically every single thing was closed and that i couldn’t find food and had to starve… okay, a bit of an exaggeration. stuff was open at the train station, so i eventually got a sandwhich and then tried musli which is delicious and i wish i could tell you what it is but i really have no freaking clue. it’s like some sort of dairy thing thinner than yogurt but thicker than milk with granola and other fruit in it. so maybe like a pre-mixed parfait is the best way to describe it.
my family came to cité after class and i showed them my room and they got to meet a couple more people from my classes, including jamie, aaditya, josh, and phil— phil actually made me take his new student visa picture (“they might deny me a visa because of the way i look” lol ) before i went downstairs to let my fam in. i legit got on a chair to take it because he’s so much taller than me hahahaha… but then the kenyan embassy wouldn’t accept it or something so idk at least i tried. then, we were off on the bus to CERN.
before i left for italy, i was super disappointed because i’d checked the website and it said that there weren’t any more available tours for the rest of the time i was in geneva and i was like you have to be kidding me. i come all the way to switzerland and i’m right outside of cern and i’m not going to get to go??? but i’m super lucky that my friend, madeline, works there so i hit her up and she said she could take us around which was seriously such a blessing. i was actually about to be pretty sad if i’d missed out on the opportunity to go there.
we rode the 18 all the way to the end of the line and then we were there. CERN. the center for some of the highest-tech physics research in the world. the place where they’d discovered the higgs-boson. the place that i’d read about in (once again) dan drown’s angels and demons and been immediately intrigued by the world of dark matter so honestly probably something that got me more interested in science. all this — in the midst of some of the ugliest nondescript decrepit 80s looking buildings i’d ever seen (complete with broken venetian blinds and all). as madeline said as she walked us around, it’s the physics that matters. and that’s all happening in the large hadron collider underground so who honestly cares what it looks like from the outside. seriously such cool stuff, though. we got to stand in the auditorium where the higgs-boson discovery announcement had been made and see the control room (madeline snagged her advisor’s ID for this access).
then, we tried to take a picture in front of the globe and couldn’t figure out for the life of us how to get in for a solid forty minutes… so there’s a lovely fence in the background of most of our pictures. madeline had to go before we finally found an entrance and then we walked around the orb and saw the sculpture with all the major scientific and mathematical discoveries of all time. the sculpture is set up like a ribbon so technically it can be extended, which is pretty brilliant. we found PV=nRT on it, which is one of dad’s favorite equations i guess. unforunately, we could’t go in since i was already late for a meeting with my simulation group… yeah, we literally went through like four rounds of decisions in the span of two days because we’d been reset... all good stuff though. at the end of round five, we were profitable!
i got to our meeting pretty late since CERN is sort of located directly opposite of where my dorm is. we inputted a decision and then i ran upstairs to take a shower before kyle, josh, lizzy, summer, and i met up to go downtown to celebrate national canton unification day (phil couldn’t come because he had to figure out the student visa thing). i rolled downstairs with wet hair (as usual) and was like lmao we are all matching. like literally kyle, summer, lizzy, and i had all done some sort of combination of pink/red/white in honor of the festivities. since somehow josh wasn’t ready, i ran upstairs to throw on contacts and makeup. we aimed to take a fam photo along the lake before fireworks. i also aimed to find my parents and sister at some point in the evening and had thrown a bottle of wine in my bag to share with them (kyle also insisted i take his beer with him so i was carrying all the alc).
we got out at bel air and walked along the lake until we found a decently-priced (at least by geneva standards…) restaurant along the water. it was still light outside so we had plenty of time before the fireworks went off. i got lamb with parmesan risotto and potatos. seriously one of the best meals i’ve had in geneva. kyle literally ordered a .75 beer for himself and then both him and the waiter failed to pour it correctly without inducing a hell of a lot of foaming. it was really funny though. top frat boy can’t even pour his own drink.
after dinner, we walked along the lake through another carnival. i was shocked. i mean there were people out and about at night. like that never happens in geneva. i had told my parents to meet me at parc du lagrange, so i split off from the group to go find them and deliver the wine bottle, but then i got to the park and my family was objectively very far away. like all the way on the opposite side of the bridge before the jet d’eau. i’d even asked dad if he was in the park and he’d said yes, but they were clearly confused or something so i had to book it back to where they were at before my dad had to leave for a conference call.
i saw them and basically had the most depressing hasty goodbye ever because dad had to go back to the hotel, but then i made alaina stay with me for the fireworks. we stood along the lake and were entirely surrounded by fireworks. true, it might have been cooler to have one big show right in the center of the lake, but i thought it was awesome anyways. plus, geneva looks beautiful when it’s lit up at night. i brought alaina to where my friends were, so she could meet lizzy (i guess re-meet lizzy), kyle, summer, and josh. we split a beer and then the majority of the firework shows had stopped so i decided i should walk alaina back to the hotel so she wouldn’t have to wander through the red light district alone. (some guy literally stopped us and was like “would you like something?” and i was like good sir, no)
so basically i took alaina back and then family time ended and i was all by my lonesome self again. it’s too bad they couldn’t stay in europe longer and go more places because once you are here it’s seriously so easy to get around and i honestly don’t know why you’d ever want to go back anyways.
i headed back home on the bus and then my friends coincidentally got on the same bus and i got to hear about how kyle destroyed his rental car door and on top of that got like $2000 in speeding tickets the weekend i was in italy… it’s honestly a pretty amusing story, especially since he somehow managed to hit a multi-colored pole with his brand new white car and that people were flicking him off on the highway for driving too slow, but then you see the bill and realize he blew like $5000 in one weekend and you’re like yike-os for real…
the next day we went to the WTO which was honestly the coolest field trip we’ve had this entire time. security was super strict as well. like we had to give the guy behind the desk our passports and go through what amounted to basically airport security in order to go in. i guess given qatar’s recent complaint (as in literally this monday — two days before we went) to the WTO about the UAE, bahrain, and saudi arabia’s boycott it really was the most relevant place we went to.
the WTO is located in the old ILO building, which means three things: it’s almost 100 years old, very palatial, and there’s a bunch of labor-themed art everywhere. the head spokesperson for the ILO took us around, gave us a tour of the negotiation rooms, the big conference room, the brazil room, and also showed us a powerpoint about the WTO. for the first time, our guide was american. it was his first year giving the duke in geneva students what can only be called the WTO experience. apparently the spanish guy that used to do it and was alex’s close friend got promoted or left or something. either way, i thoroughly enjoyed this guy. he had a pretty dry sense of humor and was very candid to us about the WTO (like not trying to be biased and like “this organization has made the world a much much better place” sort of a deal). we actually asked a lot of questions on the tour and that was kind of a first… so yeah, he was pretty engaging (ryan still fell asleep, though). i asked about qatar and he was telling us how the minimum 60-day negotiation period had just started two days ago and that the WTO was praying that the conflict would either be resolved or that the issue would fall through (sometimes countries just do things like this to stir up the pot… in this case obviously for political reasons) so that they wouldn’t have to rule on the issue of national security, which would be unprecedented and have long-reaching affects.
the guy giving us the tour was also from chicago, which was hilarious. i was like same! where are you from? and then he told me he went to thornwood high school and i was like oh we totally ran track against them at lyons township. so we chatted for a bit about that… then the real question came: cubs or sox? and i was like cubs. and he was like how if you are south and i was like no matters we still won the world series. and then he joked that he wouldn’t let me in the next room because “no cubs fans” allowed. so yeah, i thought he was pretty cool. (also for the fact that was like — yep. see you can go anywhere. no need to stay in chi your whole life)
we all had a lot of fun finding countries in the main assembly room as well. i literally started hyperventilating when ryan found liechtenstein. like actually got so red and squeaked and phil and him made fun of me, but whatever. also, we pretended to be members of the secretariat and so on. i actually can’t wait to post these photos to facebook (speaking of which i realized my self-imposed ban of social media was dumb by this point and i ended it) because they are just too good.
so yes. that wraps up week five for the most part. i’m sitting on our terrace in barcelona just enjoying the lovely shade and also thinking about how much reading i have to do, on top of our three final papers which will likely take up all of my time next week. more on barcelona later, but as i said in the beginning, i’m kind of freaked out that this went by so quickly. like i need to find time to do so many things in geneva next week on top of all the other work and activities we have planned. also, this is coming to the almost end of my blog as well, which is insane. only two or three more posts to write. it takes a lot of time, but i know that it’ll be worth it when i’m older and want to read back on the incredible experience i had between my freshman and sophomore years of college that probably fixed me in more ways than i’ll ever know.
anyways, i’m going to go enjoy barcelona now so hasta luego!
