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.

Big Brother

When I have nothing better to do, I sit on the grass or on a bench and watch people. The people by the river tend to be relaxing, walking slowly, savoring each step like Black Forest cake; or else, they are joggers of all persuasions, ages, and speeds: old ones; young ones; couples with and without strollers; some looking as if they are enjoying themselves and others looking a cross between self-pitying and resolute as they absolve their daily training regimine. In town there are shoppers and strollers, many clutching small children and ice cream cones in the summer; elderly push through the crowds followed by bands of pre-teen girls like a gaggle of mini Paris Hiltons.



It is interesting to observe how people treat the beggars and panhandlers. Someone once told me the only moral or ethnical quandry with which a Western individual is really faced is whether or not to give money to beggars; purely economically, giving change to a beggar will probably not break anyone's bank. Yet not everyone gives: some pretend to ignore the panhandler; others flick their eyes over the mendicant and then, squaring their shoulders and lifting their gaze, march on past without taking further notice; still others sort of sheepishly scuttle by, as if guilty in their decision not to give money. (Personally, I don't give money to beggars because, though I can afford the change or the Euro or two, if I gave change to every beggar I saw, every time I saw one, I would be broke pretty quickly; secondly, if I have spare change I would rather give it to the kid with the recorder).

Rituals of acquaintence are also quite amusing. In France and French Switzerland there are bisous, kisses on the cheek, given to anyone with whom you are on any kind of a named basis, two or three depending on whom you are kissing. Some groups of friends do this; in mixed groups, including Spanish, Italian, French, Swiss, or anyone else likely to trade bisous, as soon as one person starts everyone has to do it. In Germany, mostly, it's hand shaking, except for hugs for friends, and usually only for hello and goodbye. You can tell who is befriended with whom by whether they shake hands or hug each other. Sometimes people get confused, intending to kiss someone on the cheek, but that person wasn't prepared and it turned into a mix between bisous, a hug, and a handshake and everyone laughs awkwardly.

Conversation styles differ greatly. I've noticed, when I am speaking with someone, I tend to watch their mouth. Sometimes I watch their eyes, but extended eye contact tends to freak people out so I quit doing that so much. And when a person talks to me, he or she probably spends 75% of the time looking at the wall behind me or above me, his or her eyes roaming while thinking. Sitting across from someone and carrying on a meaningful conversation is difficult; I would imagine a first date would be much more comfortable walking side-by-side and talking rather than sitting across from one another at dinner, for instance. The individuals who are amusing dinner guests (or good public speakers) not only tell funny stories, they make eye contact or at least sweep their eyes over their audience, visually including and drawing in the listeners.

I often wonder what the stories are behind these lives that I see in town, among friends, or at the river. I am always interested--and grill my coworkers and fellow students--as to what they study/have studied, what they have or have had as a job, where they have been, where they come from and where they are going. I want to know why they moved someone, how they met their significant other, how their parents met, everything. Perhaps my directness is offputting, but I have the sense of learning a little bit of how life works from the reflections of other peoples' lives. Many people have told me I'm not normal--and it's been a long time since someone accused me of being 'Typically American'--and I have no conception of what normal is, except for occasional glimpses into the lives of others or a brush with pop culture. I can't define it, and I can't say I want to be "normal"--aa good friend told me long ago that "being normal is highly overrated". The axiom is true, I think, particularly if normality is defined as conformity. Still, I am interested in what has made people who they are--insofar as the past has predicated the future, if the relationship is causal as well as temporal--in the dubious hope of perhaps discoveing my future in my own past.

I'll let you know in 10 years how it turned out. And maybe I will even look you in the eye.

I am an old woman
Named after my mother
An old man is another
Child whos grown old

If dreams were thunder
Lightning was desire
This old house it wouldve burned down
A long time ago

Make me an angel
That flies from montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin
Is just a hard way to go
--Angel from Montgomery (John Prine)