day trips with christopher

Chris and I in the ice palace

Bryan has bothered me to update my blog so I am. Actually, the only good thing about going into the office everyday was that I would generally start the workday by writing in my blog. Since I've been skipping out on work a lot, that hasn't been happening. However, I'm here now, so some updating on what's been up since Chris got here.

Chris arrived on Saturday sans luggage (as usual)…I was waiting for him to come out of the terminal, waited and waited, lots of people came out and I had a fleeting thought that he might have lost his luggage or not made his flight (this was unlikely, as I had checked his connection online). Lo and behold, his luggage was lost, which was somewhat hilarious considering he walked out with a backpack full of nothing. This happened in summer 2004 as well when he came to visit me in Bangkok and Korea Air lost his luggage in Seoul. For those of you who don't know, Chris generally has incredibly bad luck travelling. Luggage is lost, flights are delayed, unforeseen bad circumstances and stars align to make sure that he cannot get to his destination on time. In fact, last time he came to Bangkok he was rerouted on like three flights or something AND his luggage was lost. Similar events have happened when we have travelled together (unfortunately, my good luck does not cancel out his bad luck), including when we got stuck in Philadelphia on the way to Paris during Spring Break 2004.

In any case, we scrapped our plans to travel since we had to wait for his suitcase to be delivered and hung out in Geneva for the day. Over the next few days, we went on day trips with our Eurail passes. Highlights follow:


me on a glacier

1) Interlaken and Jungfrajoch , Switzerland (train rides through little mountain towns including Wengen, Lauterbrunnen, Grindenwald, etc)…and the 'Top of Europe', Jungfraujoch. This whole day was essentially spent riding a series of trains to the top of this mountain with hella lots of tourists. I got a little altitude sickness when I first got up to Jungfraujoch (11,333 feet) but sat down and felt better. While we were at Jungfraujoch, we walked on a glacier, slid in the ice palace (basically a series of underground tunnels carved into the glacier), and thought about getting on a dogsled but decided we weren't appropriately dressed. On our way down the mountain, we stopped for dinner at this swiss chalet and ate rösti, which is basically hash browns fried with bacon, onions, and other yummy things. Chris got the mountain style rösti with eggs, bacon, and cheese, and I got one with polish sausage and cabbage. Yummy. We also walked through Interlaken, where chris was fascinated by the Hooters he found there, and then caught the train back home to Geneva.


mmm ... hashed brown potatoes, bacon and eggs


Chris needed to take a picture of this

2) Avignon, France - we had originally planned to go to Marseilles but I was sick of being on the train so we just got off at Avignon. This is a super cute town with the largest Gothic castle in Europe that was built by two popes when the papacy had to flee Rome for awhile. There's also a famous bridge, Pont d'Avignon, that only goes like halfway across the river since it was bombed or damaged during different wars. In Avignon we wandered around the cobblestone streets for awhile and ate a decent set meal at this tourist place in the center square (everything else was closed by the time we got there…most European restauraunts are open a certain time for lunch and then close until dinnertime). After eating, we walked around the castle with our individual phoneguides (basically, you get this phone when you go in and punch in numbers in different rooms if you want to listen to the background of it), checked out the bridge, and then came home. Chris was grumpy because he was hot near the end of our journey but he denied it. By the time we got back to the train station, the ticket counter lady informed me that second class was sold out and I couldn't use my Eurail pass, so we had to buy a regular priced ticket. Grrr. Chris also had to sit in first class, which was sad. I sat by myself and listened to all of Chris's mp3's on the way home. Chris said he slept all the way home in first class.

3) Annecy, France - this is another cute little town that's only an hr away (about 35 km) from Geneva. We went there on the bus. Known as the Venice of France, there are a lot of little canals and gardens running throughout the vielle vieux (who knows if im spelling this right), which is like their 'old town'. Tons of cafés line these cobblestone streets with overflowing flower boxes, balconies, and bridges. Chris and I enjoyed local specialties of tartiflette and patiflette (potatoes and pasta, respectively) baked with cheese and onions and ham, but were disappointed to find out that all the local attractions were closed for some reason (two castles, one that served as a prison in WWII). We settled for admiring the outsides of them and took a long walk through the park on the cleanest lake in France (more see through water here) and then returned home for me to do some 'work' in preparation for a meeting with my supervisor. This 'work' never happened but we did hang out with Pan for awhile and had a talk about future, the soulless nature of business, and other fun things.


Annecy

Yesterday I was generally productive all day in preparation for my meeting with my supervisor, which was actually really good and is helping me think about how I want to spend the rest of my time here (too bad I didn't really do anything for the first few weeks, but this is inevitable whenever you're abroad I think). I'll write a little more on that when I figure out exactly what I'm doing, but right now I'm mainly figuring out how to get more extra pages in my passport so I can get visas to Thailand and also to wherever Chris and I decide to go on our honeymoon (Brazil is out now after the recent gang violence there). Any suggestions would be welcome. Chris's criteria is that it has to be outside of the US and warm.

Finally, Kim and I have been hanging out and trying to find cool cafés and not so expensive places to eat. We had more pasta at Manor yesterday and were totally unable to find intern happy hour and another café kim had read about in a nytimes article so ended up café willi's, which was filled with guys smoking a lot of cigarettes on WORLD NO TOBACCO DAY. What is up with all these people smoking in Europe? Seriously.


Kim and I

Chris and I are off to London for the weekend, and then he is going back to Michigan while I return to work at the WHO. More details on travels to come. Monday is some random holiday, which I didn't realize until after Chris had bought my ticket back to Geneva on Sunday. Oh well. I'm not sure if it's worth it to go anywhere since I assume all of Europe will be shut down for these very frequent 'holidays' that they have here.