dreams

Half-sleeping, dreaming
A life. Silent snow settles
On (my) Switzerland.

Apologies for that sort of rushed blog post yesterday. Free Wi-Fi in Europe is not trivial to come upon, and I'm just not willing to pay for it very often. Even to get that connection required having a mobile phone to get an activation code... which meant making friends with random foreigners. It wasn't so bad, haha. Everyone is friendly when you meet them similarly stranded in a snow-bound airport at 02:00.

I wish I'd just taken the initiative to go into London yesterday, instead of camping around Heathrow. My flight LHR->GVA was delayed something like 3.5 hours due to a random snowdump that poured onto Europe. Everyone I've spoken with says that this is "the most snow we've seen in {20,25,30} years!" That seems okay in England, I guess, since they seemed to have 8 or so inches (I didn't actually make it outside to see, but that's what it looked like), and I don't really picture their getting snow so often. Switzerland, though, has a bit of a different story in my mind. The Geneva airport was delaying flights for up to 6 hours yesterday due to their winter work, but walking around today I saw no more than 7 inches of snow anyplace. This is the Alps, isn't it? Maybe Geneva really is more temperate than I'm giving it credit for. Someone told me that their average snowfall over a year is 30 feet, but I suspect that his conversion was just not quite right. There's no way they could get 30 feet in a year and be stumped by 6 inches at a time.

I've met a few great characters since my YOW post. I did like that British fellow who sat next to me on the YOW->LHR flight. He took a sleeping pill immediately upon seating himself, then spent the next 6 or so hours trying to watch the final 30 minutes of "Inglourious Basterds," which he utterly failed to do. One of my favourite thoughts about airlines is that they inspire such strangenesses: hot coffee all day perks travelers jetlagging West and free alcohol (I had some delicious scotch) sleep-shames the others on their Eastward trips.

Another pretty great set of people were the American family who were also heading Geneva-ward. I guess they've lived around these parts for a little while, at least, and their 8-year-old tried to teach me French in the boarding queue.

My best friend on this trip so far, though, has got to be my stuffed llama. We're buds.

Along the route I've seen some pretty amusing sights, as well. I had something resembling dinner (a fabulous veggie scramble with Earl Grey tea) during my time in Heathrow. It was behind security, but the silverware we were provided did include a knife. It was just entirely rounded, blunt, and useless. Go figure.

Swiss International Airlines has at least one plane that I suspect will never not make me smile. It was approximately the funniest thing ever when we all tromped out into the lightly blowing snow at midnight in England and were greeted by a plane bedecked with Swiss people herding cows and goats through the Alps. I laughed aloud. I guess no-one else did. Pah.

I'm hoping to score an address tomorrow. I'm actually waiting on a reply from my boss-to-be regarding exactly what I need to do in the morning. I'm checked in at a hostel right now, but I guess if I don't hear anything I'll just assume that I can find some hospitality among my new co-workers and drag all my junk to CERN on the tram tomorrow. I can always find someplace to sleep if worse comes to worst... like the airport. ;)

Ah, how I loathe cash economies. I forgot that about Europe this time, and I came here with $15 American and no recollection of my debit card's pin number. Hopefully I can survive with just a credit card until I get paid or get a hold of Bank of America somehow.

Oh! Fun fact about Switzerland: it's REALLY FRIGGIN EXPENSIVE. I was meandering around downtown today, admiring the snow, and I came across a McDonald's. Their Big Mac (here called a "Royale with Cheese", if you've seen "Pulp Fiction") was 9.80CHF, which is roughly $10 American. (Having a nearly 1-to-1 exchange rate makes budgeting a little bit simpler, hooray!) Sheesh.
I hope I don't starve over here. I guess I could always learn to lasso seagulls from the lake or something, haha.

Hmmm... there isn't so much to say. Sleeping on one's bags in an airport for scarcely two hours and then zombie-walking, foodless, around a city for a day doesn't really lend itself to curing jetlag. I got some rice stuff, and I think I'm going to go to bed pretty soon, although the hostel's promise of a movie showing tonight could keep me up for at least a couple more hours. A shower earlier today let me feel like a human again (believe me, wearing an outfit for 2.5 days straight is not the most comfortable, or the most pleasant-smelling, of ideas), and a two-hour nap in a proper bed helped a lot, too. We'll see what happens, I guess, as usual. :)

I've got to find a Windows or OSX box someplace that I can plug my camera into. Screw proprietary drivers, seriously. Maybe I just need to hack some of my own together. But photos soon, I promise.