And the adventure begins/Bienvenue a Geneve--September 19, 2006

Regular readers of jarent.blogspot.com will recognize our new guest contributor Steve. You may remember him from such posts as “Packing for our next adventure(s),” Fun on the lake,” and “Big News: We’re Engaged!” Steve will be contributing off and on over the next few months in addition to Jaren’s regular updates.

The Flight (or rather, the flights)

It wasn’t supposed to be this bad. Our original tickets had us flying from Syracuse to DC, give us a two hour layover at Dullas, and then fly to London. Once at London Heathrow we were going to spend a day -- more accurately 30 hours – playing tourist and then flying out of London Gatwick to Geneva. Jaren was getting fired up for some fish and chips, and I had my sights set on a pint or two, sounded nice -- in theory.

The trouble started at lovely Hancock International Airport in Syracuse (by international, I mean they fly the 45 minutes to Toronto). Our original flight was cancelled due to a mechanical failure. Fine, I’d rather not be flying on a bum plane. But that little flight was the root of our problems.

The next flight out of Syracuse put us in DC two hours after our flight to London took off, and the next flight with open seats was the following day at 6PM. Well that just wouldn’t do, because that flight to London put us at Heathrow at 6:30 AM, giving us about three and a half hours to through customs (conservatively an hour and a half) and across London to Gatwick (another hour and a half) during morning rush hour (check that, two and a half hours). Clearly this wasn’t happening.

We inquired in Syracuse about alternative routes, departing out of NYC, DC, Boston, Toronto, Philly… essentially anywhere on the northeast corridor that flew to London. Complicating matters, the young lady behind the counter could only have cared less if she was dead (for the record, we were flying United. That’s U-N-I-T-E-D. No wonder they’re still in Chapter 11). Instead of problem solving, she just gave us a myriad of excuses and a “Tough Noogies” attitude.

Finally we decided we were better off taking our chances with a customer service rep in DC. This was a blessing and a curse, as our flight now left at 9PM and arrived in DC at 11PM. The blessing was that the two hour delay gave Jaren a chance to catch up with family and me a chance to watch the end of the Patriots-Jets game, the last football I’ll be watching for some time. The curse, however, was that the airport bar in Syracuse closed at 7:30 (I know, Podunk). We mainly spent the last hour and a half entertaining ourselves with the abbreviations in the personals section of the free independent newspaper.

Flash forward two hours to the customer service counter at Dullas Airport in DC. We were clearly not the only ones who had their itineraries screwed up, and ended up waiting in line for another hour. After finally getting to the counter, we were helped by a far more useful (seemingly useful, that is) member of the United workforce. As far as troubleshooting out flight dilemma, she informed us that there was also a morning flight to London, however it was already oversold and standby would be a waste of time, leaving only the 6PM which wasn’t going to work. After explaining the London-Geneva link on another carrier, she opened up the possibility of the airline flying us directly to Geneva in lieu of reimbursing us for our London hotel and missed flight. A zero sum game in our eyes, we jumped at the chance. She identified a flight to Frankfurt the next afternoon, where we could then connect to Geneva.

On the airline’s nickel, we headed to the Washington Dullas Hyatt, reasonably assured that we would be going to Geneva via Frankfurt the next day. The Hyatt folks were great (really), and even had the chef whip up cheeseburgers and chicken sandwiches for us to blow our airline vouchers on. Jaren even gave up the last chicken sandwich for the Indian guy who would have otherwise gone hungry – somebody raised that girl right. Smart too, as she wondered aloud “For all the money United is losing on hotel and meal vouchers, wouldn’t it just be cheaper to keep the planes in working order?”

Monday morning, and after a sleep and a shower, we were back at Dullas at 8:30AM. After being passed off by a few agents, we ended up at the counter of Jean Jacques Franz, a.k.a. our night in shining armor. He heard our story and after a quick consult with his supervisor decided that the cost of reimbursing us for our hotel, missed flight, and roundtrip shuttle to Gatwick (assuming we missed the flight, we were going back to Heathrow) and replacement ticket, it would just be cheaper to get us there. However, Frankfurt was no longer in play, and after about a half hour of various flight permutations, we were heading to Zurich at 6PM and connecting to Geneva.

At this point, you may be asking yourself “Wait, your flight is at 6PM and its only 9:15AM, that’s a very big time gap, eh?” (ok, the eh was added for the Canadians). Not wanting to risk another missed flight, one for which we would have no excuse for, we decided to forgo a sojourn into DC proper and instead stays at the airport all day. So we took a long walk through the short terminals, rode a few very odd people movers , had a LONG lunch, tried an ultimately failed fantasy football trade with a player who shall remain nameless, taught Jaren to play Gin Rummy (Jaren taught Steve to play va pecher—that’s go fish en francais) and caught up with some family.

Ultimately, we killed enough time and they let us on the plane. Fairly uneventful flight, got to watch a few movies (X-Men 3 was a disappointment, Over the Hedge was ok, and I will have to agree with my sister that An Inconvienent Truth was half documentary and half annoying campaign commercial). Zurich was a breeze, and the flight to Geneva was an up and down. I did get my first taste of Swiss chocolate on the latter flight, and I can say it was so rich and sweet, it actually made my fillings hurt.

But we made it. After 45 some odd hours in transit we made it. As I write this, I still can only vaguely figure what day it is – Monday sort of never happened for us. But we’re here, our new home.


The Apartment

After the travel mess, having an apartment to come to instead of a hostel was a big plus. Flashback: Back in July, Jaren started looking for a sublet in every possible nook and cranny of the internet. We found a few that sounded ok, nothing that was immediately exciting, and one that lead us to one very emotionally unstable girl. After getting a forward from an old classmate of our friend Laure (coincidentially, a woman who took a class from my Uncle Morrie at the University of Minnesota last year), we were turned onto a University of Geneva housing board, which ultimately led us to Manuel and his apartment.

The only problem was that with all of our new flights, we were in Geneva about 6 hours early, and Manu’s neighbor with the keys was not around. We walked the 4 blocks to the apartment from the train station, but nothing. Jaren knew of a hostel nearby where we could rent a locker, and so we dragged our bags a good 8-10 blocks, fighting exhaustion the whole way (we later found out we could have rented a locker at the train station and saved ourselves some physical stress).

After a few hours, Jaren was able to reach the neighbor and we got in. We laid down our bags, and then breaking the cardinal rule of travel, we laid down are heads for an hour.

Pictures of the Apartment


Main Room

Fairly straight forward, heavy emphasis on the stereo and speakers. Judging from the posters on the wall (Coltraine, Femi Kuti, Charlie Parker) and books, Manu is a musician. What is absent, for better or worse, is a TV – not that I could understand it anyway. I think we’ll be ok though, might just have to read a book or something.





View from Window

This is the church across the street. Directly across from it is a primary school.







Salle de Bains (Bathroom to the rest of us)

Your eyes are not deceiving you, the tub basin is about the size of a stall shower base, however the shower head is suspended at two and a half feet above drain. For the first minute I was bone dry from the waist up.

The water pressure is an equal challenge, as my first shower with an unattached head resulted in me blowing the shower curtains off and drenching the bathroom. Another one of those panicked moments where you can’t stop giggling because you know it would look hysterical.


Kitchen

No real surprises, although everything is still very small. That, and I will have no hair left on my knuckles by the end of the week as the gas stove has no electric ignitor, just a Bic lighter nearby. And for those who know me – yes, I turn off the main gas line after every use so I will not be blowing us up anytime soon.


Oh, and Jaren assures me that the water running out of our taps is Evian, which is just up the road.