Switzerland

So this past weekend we (Me, Hannah and Katie) went to Geneva, Switzerland. I liked it, but me and the country had a rocky start.


We left Friday morning. Our flight was at 8am so I got up around 5ish. We met up at the train station and went to the airport. They say you are supposed to be there at least 2 hours early, but we literally we were waiting at our terminal in under half an hour. We didn't have to wait online and security was kind of a joke. The plane ride was about a little over an hour and they gave us chocolate on the plane. When we arrived, we had to go to the train station part and take a train to the center of Geneva (about 6 min) and then we followed the Google Map directions I had written out to our hostel. The hostel was pretty nice and really big. We took up 3 out of the six beds in our particular bedroom. The 3 girls were from Chile, Brazil, and France. The only one who actually talked to us was the one from Brazil. She was a bit older. She said she was visiting on vacation, but had been there before for work. She was traveling to more than one place and only was there the first night. The hostel was pretty clean. The gave a douvet cover for the blanket, a fitted sheet for the bed, a pillow case, and a large locker that opened with one of those hotel type keys. We had a floor bathroom for girls that pretty much looked like any college floor bathroom.

After we saw our hostel, we left our stuff in the lockers and went out to find the United Nations. I stopped to grab a sandwich, which was about 9 franks (pretty close to dollars). We then made a note that we wouldn't be eating much in Switzerland. We walked for a while and then arrived at one of the tram stops. The tram coming said Nations, so we figured it would take us in the right direction. The hostel had given us a free pass for 2 days on the trains and buses in the immediate area, so we hopped on. We couldn't figure out where we were supposed to pay, and when we got off, we had never payed. From that point on, we watched people, and no one else seemed to either. However, there were ticket machines at every stop, so I'm still not sure how it works. When we got to the UN, we took some pictures and then went to the gate to take the tour. However, a guard told us it was closed due to special circumstances (They speak a lot of English there). The special circumstances, as it turns out, was that there was a huge protest about the genocide in Somalia. Katie was pretty freaked out by it, so we got away before the protest really started. We walked to a nice big park and went inside some museum that turned out to be the dullest museum I've ever been to. It was ceramics that were painted with floral designs from many time periods, and the place was huge. I was just glad it was free to get it. We then hopped back on the tram and took it for a while. We got off when we saw pretty things, including the huge geiser. However, after twenty minutes or so of walking towards it to take pictures, it shut off. We walked past some other nice buildings that of course all had construction going on in front of them to ruin the pictures. We ended up at starbucks to make us feel better. We ate a kebob place for dinner, because it was the only thing that was even reasonable, and ate gyros which were 10 a piece. We also went out looking for bars and clubs, only finding 2, one that was almost completely empty and the other ridiculously expensive. At that point, we were ready to get out of the country, and were seriously missing Barcelona.

On Saturday, after borrowing a travel book to look at from the hostel and with a little more of a renewed sense of hope, we woke up to try again. We ate breakfast at the hostel, which included cereal bread and coffee. We got our money's worth by drinking a lot of coffee. We then took the tram to the Red Cross Museum. The museum was really nice and I felt very educated after walking through it. It was also kind of depressing with the more recent things they showed, including a room full of kids in pictures with numbers, all children not claimed after a genocide. We spent quite a few hours there, and saw everything there was to see. Afterwards, we found the chocolate store we had found the day before and bought presents for people. We also took a picture of the lady there, who we all fell in love with, because she was just such a cute old lady. We then went back to the geiser, which was still turned off. However, this time we walked along the lake until we found a dock that stretched pretty far into the water. We got closer to a pretty lighthouse and took some really nice pictures. We also almost froze to death. Then we found a supermarket and bought loaves of bread and cheese (Swiss cheese!). We also got some fruit. We then sat on a bench and ate our makeshift lunch outside of a laundrymat.

We then asked a guy in a tobacco shop for directions.
...not complete...