...enter the bicycle

I’m pretty sure the species of small children are closely related to the species of zombies: as soon as you have been discovered by a small child, particularly one of an inquisitive nature, its face breaks into a lopsided grin and it begins to stagger towards you, its motion unhindered by and unheeding of obstacles in its way. You may observe the Zombie Effect when riding a bicycle through the park: all of the sudden, garishly clad small creatures start wobbling, scenting a live one and moving in for the kill. As a person, I love children and I love dogs, but as a bicyclist, the two things I hate most are… children and dogs. Dogs on their own are bad, but as soon as they figure out you’re bearing down on them at 20 kph they move out of your way; the only problem is knowing where they’ll go. The only hitch: dogs on leashes. The dog notices you’re coming, and often the owner as well—and then the owner goes left and the dog goes right and you get clothesline. Children are worse; they lack the situational awareness, keen senses and self-preservation instinct of your average pooch, they move erratically and you have no idea in which direction they will move next—and unlike dogs, they often don’t respond when you call them.

Biking in Geneva has been fun. Compared to Germany the place is either a biker’s paradise or anarchy, depending on your view. In Germany, it’s considered a moving violation to cross ON FOOT against a light; therefore, the joke is, it’s always the Germans waiting at a deserted streetlight at 3 AM for the light to change. Doing so on a bike can cost you 90 euros. I couldn’t imagine biking in Italy or even in France; there, traffic is so chaotic as to make the endeavour practically suicidal. Geneva is the pleasant mix of the two: there are bike lanes and traffic lights for us—but basic traffic rules seem to be generally disregarded by bicyclists. You look, if no one is coming, you go, and you expect traffic to yield to you---and it does! However, the traffic in Geneva is worse than in Freiburg, and it is likely you will cross intersections with two tramlines, four lanes of traffic coming in at odd angles, and a mass of pedestrians, and the tram tracks provide interesting spice to your navigation of traffic. My one and only bike wreck involved me diving full-on into a creek when my tire got caught in the track on a rainy day.

I’m getting better. I can make it to class in 20 minutes and home in 25, if I’m in a hurry—and I seem to be perpetually in a hurry. I feel like I should wear motorcycle leathers, though, or a bike messenger bag instead of my usual skit and heels.

J'suis arrivée!

J’habite en Suisse, c’est-à-dire je me suis installée à Genève, à cette ville où l’on a presque le niveau de vie le plus haut du monde. Après un long et bon séjour sans maison (depuis mai 2008) je suis fière de dire que j’ai une petite chambre à la cité-u. Tout d’abord, quand je suis arrivée, je n’était pas heureuse de voire cette petite boite où je passerai la prochaine année mais maintenant, après avoir parlé avec des autres dans mon cours d’études, je suis tout à fait satisfaite. La ville de Genève est au bord du Lac Léman, appelé du monde anglophone comme « lake Geneva » et est entourée de la France aux trois cotés. Le fleuve, « le Rhône », partage la ville en deux moitiés : la rive gauche et la rive droite. L’institut IHEID, où j’étudierai, est dans la rive gauche près de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (engl. WTO) et de l’ONU (engl. UN), la croix rouge et plusieurs autres organisations non gouvernemental. L’institut est au bord du Lac dans un grand parc. À coté du Lac, à la direction de la Vielle Ville, sont le Bain de Pâquis et la gare de Cornavain. Sur le Rhône est le quai de Mont Blanc entre la rive gauche et la rive droite. Dans la rive droit il y a la vielle vile, le « shopping district » de Genève avec plusieurs magasins connus, le Jet d’Eau, et les districts de Carouge, Plainpalais et Champel. J’habite à Champel et j’ai besoin d’une demi-heure pour traverser la vielle au vélo.

La cité universitaire est située presque le bout de monde (marquée sur le plan de Genève comme « le bout de monde ») en dessus d’une berge très vertes. On peut y bien courir, faire du tennis, du football ou du basket-ball et la vue vers l’extérieur des fenêtres est tellement jolie. Il y a aussi une salle de séjour avec des journaux, les places dehors à manger ou jouer, le resto-u, un automate de café et de timbres, et une cuisine, deux toilettes et quatre douches à partager entre seize personnes. De plus, quelques-uns de mes amis y habitent aussi et on va manger ou passer le temps ensemble. Je me semble bien.

L’institut à mille étudiants dont environ 60 doivent apprendre le Français avant de commencer leurs études. On les a partagés en quatre groups d’un niveau débutant au niveau avancé. Moi, je suis dans le groupe le plus avancé et nous y parlons seulement en français. Mes compatriotes viennent du monde entier : de l’Argentine, Honduras, Russie, Vietnam, Italie, Afrique du Sud, Brésil, Kazakhstan, et des Etats-Unis d’Amérique. Le cours de français dure trois heures chaque jour et l’après-midi est libre. Nous avons assez à faire et tant de travail en recevant notre permis de séjour, ouvrant un compte dans la banque (plus difficile pour moi que j’ai attendu), trouvant un téléphone portable…. Nous avons passé un après-midi à la plage, avons fait les pique-niques ou sommes allés dans une boîte de nuit. Le temps faisait toujours beau et chaud, entre 25 et 28 degrés, la soleil brillait…

Mes vacances à Genève

Let me preface my story, as fractured as it is, by saying that I packed incorrectly. Usually, I travel light. Somehow, however, I managed to fill up my huge backpack with 2 Kg of apples (approximately 4 and a half pounds), books, running gear, one pair of pants, one sweater, one pair of shorts, and one skirt. Somehow this quantity of stuff filled the whole thing, was huge and cumbersome and strangely heavy. And incorrect; instead of the pair of comfortable loafers I should have brought hipwaders; instead of the sweater and raincoat I should have brought foul-weather sailing gear à la America's Cup (which Switzerland just won, by the way). Not to impunge the honor of my trusty raincoat; it actually held up perfectly well under several utter downpours. The stuff in the pockets did not, I repeat, did not get wet. My shoes and my single and reduntantly solitary pair of jeans, however, were not encased in raincoat and were only cursorialy protected by the waste of plastic which is my pathetic excuse for an umbrella, whose flimsy supporting rods make it look somwhat of an injured yellow bird with the water resistant qualities of a leaky bucket.

You may extrapolate from this that it rained on my trip. It did. Quite a bit, but only three days, and not the entirety of three days. There was quite a bit of sunshine and it was quite enjoyable, I just haven't been properly dry since saturday.

With no further ado, I present to you the mixed-up snippets of tripness, in no particular order and with no promise of relevance whatsoever:

1. Bookstores are good places to hide when it rains, particularly ones with CDs to listen to.

2. Breakfast on the train is fantastic; there is nothing better than enjoying fresh rolls, strawberry cream cheese and a newspaper when you're on the road.


Tchoukball at Geneva Beach 2007

3. There is such a thing as Tchoukball. It is sort of a cross between volleyball, lacrosse, basketball, and....other stuff. It has five players on a team, and involves bouncing a ball off of a net, and depending on whether the other team catches the rebound, you score a point. I spent two entire evenings watching this, watching the Taiwanese cream the Swiss and the canadians. I had to move once, though, because I was sitting in the Taiwanese cheering section, and the cheerleaders (players from the women's team cheering on the men) left me deaf on the left side. The ref, standing directly in front of them, wasn't too thrilled either.

4. Do not try to be smarter than the train company, especially if you're me and try to be clever. Me trying to be clever left me sitting in Basel for two hours until I could take the correct train. Es lebe die Deutsche Bahn.


Le Festival du Jazz

5. The jazz festival au Parc de Croppettes was really cool, even if it took forever to find. A row of bands played, including one with two fantastic duelling tap dancers á la Fred Astaire (even did a number with a cane!



6. My (very white) room shared with a Japonese ballet dancer had an incredible view of the harbor. I think my french may have been better than hers, and she's lived there a year and a half. I had to move later, though, to something more approximating a dungeon to compensate for the fortituousness I received here...

7. I am spoiled by German bike routes, where everything is signed and marked and there are lots of paths through fields and woods. Geneva has bike paths, I think four different routes, which are mostly nonexistent, or pointing in the wrong direction. I stopped to look at the map, for the fiftieth time. Except I didn't really have a map, just a general sketch of where the towns were. The route was supposed to be marked, but...wasn't. Sporadically. I wanted a bike tour, not a scavenger hunt...



8. The contemporary art museum is housed in an old factory, and has very strange installation exhibitions. No, we don't want your jackson pollock, just give us a ping pong table out of concrete that's built crooked...

9. Next to the University there is a park where you can play chess and checkers. The pieces go up to your knee.

10. I managed to mistake the WTO for a library. I kept not understanding why the words WTO were stencilled on the doors.

11. The HEI administrative building is housed in a former villa. The institute is located in a park on the shore, up near the UN buildigns. THe Leage of Nations tried to buy up all of the parks (there are four or five private estates with villas which are now parks) but one widow refused to sell. So, the City of Geneva offered to swap the LoN property for the Ariana park, where the UN is now located, and the former grounds are now parks. The villas house museums or Institute administrative buildings.

12. I visited the United Naitons. I tried to go in the delegate's entrance. They didn't let me. "Oú est-ce que vous voulez? C'est l'entrée pour les delegués" Ups... Across from the UN is....a giant chair...which is missing a leg. The symbolism is beyond me.

13. Walking at night, alone and female, didn't bother me. Except everywhere I went, the guys sitting on benches: "Bonsoir madame, ca va? Ca va bien?" followed by some stupid comment when I wouldn't answer.

14. But sitting on a park bench seems to be an invitation.... twice in one day I had someone sit down and start talking to me, eventually inviting me out for the evening. The first guy was Turkish, with quite good French (much better than mine, but I got by). His opening line: "Il fait beau aujourd'hui", and my stunningly clever response: "ah, oui, ca va. Euh, c'est meilleur que la semaine dernière...." Cool, weather talk. Fun. The second guy was from the Gambia (they speak English. He speaks English, Spanish, French, and whatever language he spoke to someone on the phone in) who asked me for a cigarette, than later says he doesn't smoke and just used that as a tactic to talk to me. Do I exude some sort of "please talk to me! I am desperately lonels!" scent? And I lied to any personal questions; in the span of several minutes I managed to create a separate false identity for myself. Usually I say I'm German, my name is Kati, and I'm meeting friends later.



15. While checking my email at the university, a guy in his forties comes up to me and starts talking to me, which turns out to be an entire speech on love, bread, and happiness based on the pretext of asking me a question (which he never did). He spoke decent German, so I got to have a Brot oder Liebe tirade until my ears turned blue and my smile fixed to my face as if glued by a four year old (sloppily, and only a matter of time till it falls off). Why me??

16. I spent a rather restless train ride from Basel to Freiburg. I passed on the first compartment cause it smelled funny, moved into the second where I was stuck with a really irritating older couple, one who states the obvious and ends every sentence with "gel?", a regional accent which just gets on my nerves. So I go back to the first compartment, sit down, and realize that the reason it smelled funny was because it was the smoking section, so I move into the second compartment, having forgotten why I left. The old woman spent the entirety of the ride plaguing her husband with inane comments in a desperate attempt at communication, leaving her fending off her fifteenth inquiry as to their arrival with the resignation of a tired traveller on a well-worn road. "Do you have the tickets" Yes, I have them. Pause. "Well, when do we get there?" At 9 55, like I told you. "oh." Silence. "You know what I find interesting?" No. "The clouds there, how they are light and dark" Mmmhh. "But you know, not really dark. What do you think?" They're clouds. "But they're dark! They're different!" (AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!)



17. Le pain, le pain, le pain non plus : My meals consisted almost invariably out of bread, yoghurt, raw carrotes, a zucchini, and perhaps a bit of cheese or an apple. Yummy, yes, but after four days I was desperate for anything cooked, anything hot, and anything that wasn't any of the above. The bread was good, yes, and better in France, but after your eighth meal of white bread and some kind of cheese (or even dry) you start dreaming of alternatives.