Minibreak: Geneva

It was with a twinkle in my eye and a spring in my step that I handed in my Master thesis. 100 pages and more than 3 months of reading, writing, thinking and going grey behind me. It was over.

Previous experience has taught me that such events, that seem so important when they lie in the future, actually prompt no strong emotions of any kind. When you hand in a Master thesis there is no real closure, no defining end point, you just suddenly don’t have to think about it anymore. Well, I like end points, I like closure, and I like celebrating my little victories life.

So I booked return flights to Geneva to leave on the day when I was originally going to hand in my thesis. Suddenly I had a deadline that if I missed, would have grave consequences for my own personal levels of happiness. That holiday was my reward and my last three months had definitely earned it. I am organised, some would say it is one of my strong points, and I didn’t miss my deadline, in fact I beat it and said farewell to my thesis a whole two days before I was due to take to the sky. As it happened I had to go through one day of anticlimax but that day was more than just the first day without a thesis, it was also the day I had to pack for my trip.

And so, on Friday 29th June 2007, I boarded Lufthansa flight 3666 and said goodbye to my Master thesis and smiled a very satisfied smile. My Master thesis was written, handed in and complete; my Master thesis suddenly became a thing of the past. I had the closure I desired.

Just over one hour later and I was in Geneva suddenly remembering that it really doesn’t matter how good you are at German in a French-speaking country. All of a sudden I was one of those irritating Brits abroad who just presumes that everyone will speak English and that there is absolutely no need to even bother trying to master the local tongue. Hmm. And I also realised I had forgotten my little ‘teach yourself French’ book. Oops.

Well, lucky for me, the words ‘billet’ and ‘jour’ came flooding back from the depths of my thesis-saturated head. I practised the sentence before reaching the ticket man: “deux billet du jour sil vous plait” and was feeling almost confident in my French skills. It turned out my confidence was misplaced: I got to the desk and looked at the Swiss ticket man and completely forgot the word for ticket and day, and by that point ‘sil vous plait’ wasn’t really much use. Luckily the ticket man spoke perfect English, and after trying to say my pre-prepared sentence twice and receiving only blank looks and a “day ticket?” response, I confidently said “two day tickets for Geneva, please” in my best English accent. We got the tickets and I only felt slightly embarrassed for making the man’s native tongue more difficult to understand than his second or third language.
We followed the helpful signs saying “Geneve centre” and found a train waiting on a platform, complete with sign saying where it was going – starting with Lausanne, ending with Milan. It looked like quite a big train and didn’t mention Geneva in its list of destinations. As we stood on the platform trying to decide whether or not to board the Milan-headed train, a man dressed in a blue and orange uniform, looking quite a lot like a guy that empties the bins on trains, walked by and was promptly asked whether the train in question did in fact go to Geneva. He seemed to think it did and we decided to trust his knowledge, despite the fact he really didn’t look like someone who would know or even care. Oh well, we thought, Lausanne is probably a nice place, and Milan wouldn’t be bad either…

The train rolled off with us on it and we were on our way to an unknown destination.

Lady Luck must have been smiling down upon us, or maybe we just got on the right train. Either way, just ten minutes of slightly stressful travelling later we disembarked and found ourselves in Geneva. We had arrived.
Ahead of me lay four days in which my sole aim was to have a jolly good time. Seda, my travelling buddy, was looking at three weeks of a UN conference on human rights. I know which one sounds more impressive, but I’ll save the UN conference for another occasion. My stay in Geneva, instead of being spent amongst diplomats and important international folk, was laced with whisky, wine and good food; there was beach volleyball, pedalo action and steak; sunshine, cheese and aperitifs; a daytrip to France and a night in Lausanne for more food and whisky, and even a bit of Westlife. If I were to sum it up in a few random words I guess I would say ‘sante’ and ‘bon one’ fit the bill. It was ace.

Geneva is a city of rich people, big banks and very expensive cars. But it is also the city where my good friend Ange The Whisky Ambassador resides and so for me, it doesn’t so much represent the filthy rich, as the best place to find good whisky outside of Scotland (here I mean Ange’s flat, rather than the overpriced pubs and bars of Geneva). Geneva is probably the most expensive place I have ever been to. I went to the local supermarket and my four items (a packet of crisps, some gruyere cheese, a pain au chocolat and some beef carpaccio) cost me 19 CHF, that’s about 14 Euro, although I prefer not to convert…

Despite the ridiculous cost of everything, we had large amounts of fun – the beach volleyball that we stumbled upon was free and one of those super random but also quite cool things that you sometimes get to experience in life. A bit gutted that it was women playing but just thinking of how jealous all my male friends would be when I told them got me through that minor negative. We ate some rather good steak at a cute little café in the old town and opposite us sat James Bond’s car. Unfortunately, the driver wasn’t Daniel Craig but the car looked pretty nice. We pedaloed around Lake Geneva, quite taken aback by how little effort was involved, until, halfway through our one hour, we turned around and realised that no matter how hard we pedalled the boat seemed to go backwards. I guess that had something to do with the wind or the current in the water, who knows. That evening we donned our mosquito repellent and headed out for a rather posh picnic (Geneva style) complete with red wine, lots of scrummy cheese, melon and freshly baked bread. Once we had eaten a worryingly large amount of cheese (we all dreamt well that night – I gained superpowers and had to defeat an evil Chinese man who was corrupting all my classmates) we thought it would be funny to take pictures of ourselves pulling stupid faces. As it turns out, it was rather hilarious. The next day we headed to the land of wine and awful drivers, France. On arrival in Annecy we turned into a car park to find every single car reversing. That was bizarre. Needless to say we chose to park somewhere else. Annecy was cute, lots of little streams, old buildings, smelly cheese and fairly stupid amounts of tourists. We had an aperitif and then some local cuisine and then a pretty weird cappuccino that was apparently a really strong black coffee with a bit of froth on top. Hmm. Then we walked to the lake for our second pedalo in as many days. Nice views and we made it to the car just in time for the downpour to start. Our journey back to Geneva was complete with thunderstorms and torrential rain.

Before I knew it, it was the final day and this was a day all about whisky tasting. Ange had an event in a restaurant in Lausanne so we went along in the afternoon to set up and then I sat back whilst Ange did her thing, en francais, and then we got merry on seven different whiskies and a three course meal in which each course was prepared with whisky: raw ostrich tart with Aberlour, king prawns sautéed in Scapa, and tiramisu with a 12 year old Glenlivet. All very good. Then I was introduced to the magic that is Chivas Regal 18 with dark chocolate. Seriously, trust me on this, it is amazing.

My long weekend ended with the trip from Lausanne to Geneva airport. It could have been a hungover, tired, mildly sad experience but we had Westlife on the stereo so it turned out to be a drive of loud, out of tune singing and reminiscing. A good way to end a jolly good minibreak.