Suiza: Part REALLY Overdue #1 . . .

For those of you who have been patiently waiting, here’s more of the details of our adventure in Switzerland.

Day One:

We flew Ryanair from Valencia to Basel, Switzerland. Ryanair, for those who have never experienced it, is an interesting airline. Its colors are blue and yellow and the backs of all the seats in the airplane are hard yellow plastic. Almost enough to give you a headache during the trip. Also, the poor flight attendants have to wear these hideous bright royal blue suits. Sorry there's no picture. I'll try to get one when I fly to Italy (didn't get one going to Paris either).

None of the refreshments on board are free, you have to pay for EVERYTHING, a little disappointing I must say. Also, they’ll sell you lottery tickets on board. Definitely a new experience. Thankfully it wasn’t cloudy while we were flying and that allowed us to view the amazing European alps from the air.

So gorgeous!! The pictures don’t do them justice.

And although the airline seems a little sketchy, cheap as it is and all, we had a safe departure, flight, and landing into Basel, Switzerland.

The interesting thing about the Basel airport is that it’s actually located on the border of three countries.

Depending on which door you exit through, you can go to France, Germany, or Switzerland. Obviously since we were headed to Geneva, we took the option for Switzerland. We took the bus into the train station and there we encountered our first problem.

We found a bank and proceeded to withdraw money in Swiss francs (luckily for us, Switzerland is actually a country whose money is LESS powerful than the US: 80 cents USD = 1 franc CHF). However, when it came Carolyn’s turn, she could remember which password was for her bank card. After several wrong tries, the ATM spit out her card, locking it, of course. Thus she had no way to buy a train ticket. We tried calling her bank back in the US through COLLECT but it didn’t work. Finally I loaned her one lump sum of money for the weekend and we continued on our way. We bought bread and cheese at a grocery store and then proceeded to wait for our train.

We made it safely onto the correct train and settled down for a three-hour trip. A couple panic situations occurred as we wondered alternatively whether we were on the right train after all, or whether we needed to switch trains. Thankfully no further action was required on our part and we arrived safely in Geneva. In the train station we located a bus route map and then successfully made it to the stop. Now in Switzerland, you buy your bus tickets on the street at whatever stop you’re getting on and the amount you pay depends on how far you’re riding the bus or how long you want a pass for (a couple hours, all-day, etc). Since we had no clue where exactly the campground was, or how many zones we would be traveling through, we stood like idiots in front of the board trying to decide. Finally a nice black gentleman who spoke English was able to help us a little and we bought tickets to get on the bus.

And you know the rest of that story.

Later we found out from Juan that we had bought more than we needed to for those first tickets. And he also told us where to go to get our change for the tickets. The stop didn’t give change and none of us had had the correct change so we all had overpaid. So at the end of our trip we were able to get our refunds. Yay for that.

And afternoon, evening, and late-night were the first day in Switzerland.

Day Two:

This was the day where we kind of just wandered around and didn’t really have a specific agenda in mind. First, on our way into Geneva, we walked through the village of Vernier (where Juan lives) and experienced a quaint little Swiss village.

We went by the town hall where we all saw our first normal-looking door that was actually was an automatic door.

It scared us when it first opened and then after we realized what it was and want to get a video of it opening, it wouldn’t open. Argg. Pero no pasa nada. We walked through a park surrounding town hall and I found a perfect pile of leaves to jump in.

That was one of the great things about this trip. It was fall and all the leaves were changing colors and it was gorgeous and there were piles everywhere for me to jump in.

By the time we actually got into actual Geneva, we first stopped at tourist information and then the post office (Mom and Dad, did you ever get that postcard?) .

Then we took the tram up to the European headquarters for the United Nations. We saw and took pictures of the Broken Chair (a monument to land-mine victims)

and took pictures in front of the entrance (I'm pointing to the approximate location of Idaho),
and then walked down to the free Botanical Gardens of Geneva. Which happened to be right across from the World Meteorological Organization, which is housed in a really cool building with lots of windows that looks like a submarine. So we took more pictures of that.

The botanical gardens were really pretty, even though it was fall, and we took lots of pics. Even got someone to take a picture of all five of us (remember to cheer for Juan!).

Then we managed to find another pile of leaves for me to jump in. This time Erin joined me and we got some cool action shots.

Oh and the Botanical Gardens also had one of the first bathrooms I've been in (outside of arcade places like Boondocks) that had blacklights in the bathroom. Or maybe they were just blue lights. Either way I took a picture of course.

Then we wandered our way back into the main part of Geneva in search of food. On the way, we saw a really cool, modernized Catholic church with a spherical-shaped sanctuary.

We ended up in a super-department store called Manor (Jacque, it was a lot like El Corte Ingles). They had a restaurant/cafeteria up on the top floor and we ate pizza for supper. Then we took the bus back to our campground and crashed for the night.

By the way, let me tell you how the camping went. The first night at Juan’s house was just fine. Everyone was warm enough and we slept decently for being on the ground without any padding under our bags. The second night (at the campground) was a different story.

Since we really hadn’t eaten much during the day, I don’t think our bodies really had enough energy to keep up warm during the night. We all slept horribly till about 3am when we all realized that yes, we were all awake, and yes, we were all hungry, and why not have a little snack? So we did and after that we seemed to sleep a little better. The third night, Kimmy and Erin decided that they weren’t going to deal with the cold for another night and they took their sleeping bags to the campground’s heated bathrooms and slept there. I opted to stay in the tent since my sleeping bag was actually a decent one and I really wasn’t that cold at night. Yes, my hips (where I had the most pressure and contact with the ground) and my toes were a little chilly, but nothing a Giem can’t handle. There’s been worse I know. The next morning we had frost but we’re still all alive and kicking.