First week in Geneva

From my window, I can see a Catholic church, a skate park, streets, buildings, some very odd looking trees someone told me recently are Chestnut... and behind it all, on days when it’s not foggy, a mountain.



The second evening I was here I noticed what I thought was the silhouette of a mountain around dusk, but the next morning, it had disappeared and I was sure I had somehow hallucinated it because I WANT a mountain view out my window. The next few days were perpetually gray and I had no way of knowing, but finally, the sun broke through and my mountain is back.

So I am sitting at this sunny kitchen table, staring at it in a grateful stupor for the second sunny day in a row, eating my “pain perdu” and listening to the noises of birds and street traffic and distant voices.

My first week in Geneva has been many things, but mostly like my confusion over the existence of this mountain. Nothing is the way I had pictured it – it is dangerous to create mental pictures, but also impossible – but I am starting to really appreciate the place that I’m in. There are moments when I am overjoyed to be here, and moments when I have doubts. But if the first week is always the hardest, and my first week has had so much good in it, then I am sure the semester will be unforgettable; there's so much to discover that is sometimes concealed behind fog at first glance.

The weather in this city has such a drastic effect… when it’s gloomy, no mountains are visible, the color of the nicer stone buildings sort of washes out, and I swear people look less friendly. But yesterday, on our tour of “le vieille ville” I was thrilled to get to see some absolutely beautiful parts of this city – older stone alleyways and cathedrals…







Probably the most amusing thing was a sign pointing down to “Parking & Archeological Site":

apparently, when Geneva's fortifications became useless, they were converted into a parking garage haha

So some general and personal, good and bad and neutral (this is Switzerland after all) things I've experienced/noted so far:

1. Everyone here has a scooter. I have seen 50 year old men with briefcases and scooters. Not the motorized kind - the kind kids ride on sidewalks with helmets and knee pads...

2. it is definitely expensive to eat out. the conversion rate isn't bad, but a veggie burger on my street is advertised outside as being "only 20 francs" Still, if you buy food at "Migros" and cook for yourself, it's not bad at all.

3. The sirens here are almost quasi musical. But sound like sort of a deranged carnival, or a mangled ice cream truck… plus little more incessant… and also they either go flat or it’s the Doppler effect and my musical sensibilities are sort of going haywire. But earplugs solve everything, I’ve found.

4. It's sort of exciting to know I can take the bus to France. I plan to also get a Eurorail pass and try not to have classes on Fridays so I can travel a lot of weekends... and hike!

5. There is a french religious holiday that is celebrated by making crepes. No one I asked seemed to know why, but apparently the higher you toss the crepe when you flip it the more prosperous your year will be? or fertile? I wasn't clear on which...

6. Last night, I met a distant non blood relative who is very nice and lives here in Geneva with his wife and 3 kids. He was at a nearby cafe with a group from his "student society" which sounds a lot like a fraternity... but as he called it a "vertical friendship" where there are people of all ages, all disciplines, etc, that come together to socialize. I also learned a german/ french drinking song. There was a lot of elbow and fist banging on the table. And Kayla looked souped for the singing haha. So I learned about a student society in Geneva called "Stella."

6. The culture is very interesting here because while Geneva is an "international city" in the sense that there are lots of foreigners studying here, I have heard less English on the streets etc than I expected to. French is the primary language, but no one is monolingual and everyone seems to know a different combination of languages... so it creates a really fascinating cultural dynamic. I had known that ahead of time, but not quite how it would look because I've never been to a country with more than one national language.

The people in my apartment for instance, have quite a mix of languages. There are two girls from france, one who has spent a lot of time with us and been extremely welcoming... and both are wonderful, another girl with the smith program from Swarthmore who's fantastic. and vegan, which makes it easier for me to be vegetarian, though this isn't a hard place to be vegetarian at all. I think that would only really be an issue if I were living with a family. Anyways, so there are 4 girls and 3 guys - one from Senegal, one from Italy, and one from Vietnam. I haven't seen as much of the guys, but everyone who lives here is really pleasant and I hope I'll get to know

7. also, this probably is just exciting to me, but a girl from the fall or a previous year left a guitar at the smith center to be passed on!! And no one else wanted it or else everyone was just being nice... so now I have a guitar to play! Which is wonderful because that's been the way I de-stress and the sort of filler activity in my life for a long time and I felt pretty naked without one. But when my program director, Jonathon Gosnell, entered the room with a guitar, I really though it was going to be a Julie Andrews moment and he was going to sing us a song, maybe about the history of Geneva or something... too bad it wasn't both haha

Well it's getting time for me to stop writing and go exploring. Today I'm going to take a long walk to a park, and try to pass my probably internship on the way to be sure I can get there alone!

Now that the sun is back - in more ways than one - I'll try to write somewhat often.