If Death by Cheese is Possible, I Nearly Died

I got up stupid early on Friday to catch the first bus out of Chenoves headed towards the train thinking that my couchsurf plan was, for the most part, figured out. I arrived in Geneva at about 12:30 in the afternoon and after a text and phone call, I still had no response from my first couchsurf buddy. Granted, it hadn’t been officially confirmed, but I hadn’t heard a no either and I guess assuming was probably a bad idea. Seeing as how it was early, I decided to cruise around Geneva and await a call or text. I didn’t get a map or anything, just went down streets that looked important and found my way to the waterfront, passed hundreds of Rolex signs and important business meetings in a different language each time. I had a nice little day on my own but come dinner time, I still hadn’t heard anything. I start coming up with a “plan B.” “B” consists of either a hostel (but I heard that they sell out quick in Geneva since everything costs your soul and and first born), sleeping in the train station, wandering around all night surviving on coffee or looking sad at the bar and hoping someone takes me home. Obviously, the safest is a hostel and probably the most realistic.                                        My CS buddy texts and it looks like the car is full going to Lausanne and the floor is packed with people that plan further head than myself. I start looking for hostels/cheap hotels and keep getting shot down. I prepare myself to spend an ass load on a room and perhaps pretend I’m on a luxurious vacation. The last place I try had an opening! It was in the “hooker district,” but hey, I couldn’t exactly be picky at this point and hookers are usually friendly people. In the elevator I could tell the girl next to me was American also and we end up in the same room. We start talking and Kaitlin and Mandi are both from California but studying abroad in London and Sweden. In our room is also an older Moroccan woman, a woman from Zimbabwe and lastly a super cool woman from Texas who is dating an Eritrean refugee and had some amazing stories (she might be my new idol). The Moroccan woman only slept and ironed so staying in the room to hang out wasn’t too appealing. We went to get dinner and to our dismay, drinks were around 15CHF, so a little over $15. Balls. Looks like a drink is out of the question, especially when we saw that they weren’t the size of our heads (which would be the only way to make that price justifiable). We head back to the room to plan the night and Morocco is STILL sleeping. As I have said before, my ideas are usually similar to those of homeless people. We have a bottle of rum but there is “no drinking” in the room and an old Moroccan woman sprawled out in the bed. Homeless style, we take our booze to the bathroom and drink next to showers and toilets. Then we head out on the town and approach what we are 50% sure is a strip club, but it’s so close to the hostel that we have to check. It’s not a strip club and we meet the manager instead and ask where to just get a drink and relax. He takes us to a different bar he manages, buys us what I am pretty sure was a “Washington Apple,” not sure if that was on purpose, but I appreciated the west coast friendly choice either way. All night they play rap from only west coast artists and we are loving a taste of home. We stay awhile and decide to head home to sleep for our big day of exploring the next day. I climbed into my top bunk and fell asleep to the crunching of Mandi snacking on Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a good end to a good evening. Thank you lord everything works itself out. We planned on riding bikes around all day and sightseeing, but the rain ruined that real quick and we resorted to the bus.

The highlight of the day was also the same thing that nearly caused me to burn a restaurant down. Seeing as how all 3 of us get a traditional dish when we go somewhere, we decided to do it up fondue style. Now the fondue was amazing and I felt like I was 8 months pregnant with triplets by the end (not to be included with the good part), however the service was horrendous. Not sure if it was because we were American or if these old Swiss men were just straight up dicks. We almost had to start breaking shit to get attention and nothing happened in a timely matter once we did manage to pull them away from shining something to come to our table. We made eye contact with numerous waiters but they would just look at us and then clean something that didn’t need cleaning. The time was good for digestion but it was starting to get ridiculous. I have never thought about dining and dashing but out of pure anger, I tried to rally the troops to peace out, clearly they wouldn’t have noticed since they avoided our area completely. I paid reluctantly, but thought about using the fondue machinery to burn the place down. With clogged arteries and 3 cheese babies, I went off for more exploring while the other girls went back to nap. In flip flops and rain, I still managed to cover a lot of ground and get my chocolate. I had made contact with tonight’s CS plan and said my goodbyes and hopped on a bus to Gex, France. I had some time to kill in Gex, so I hit up a kebab place and watched the futbol game with drunk Frenchmen. As they were closing, Hayley and her friends arrived and we were all dead tired. They had gone to Germany all day to a theme park, so we hung out for a bit but then all passed out on the couch. Now, after an early morning bus ride and train ride, I am awaiting my next bus ride back home. All I want is a shower, nap and a talllllll glass of wine that doesn’t make me go broke. It was a great trip, I wish I could have seen more of Switzerland though! Now time to get to planning the next trip.


Switzerland Pictures:
http://www2.snapfish.fr/snapfishfr/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3392855022/a=159385193_159385193/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/