Let me just say how much I love not having to drive to work each day. No really – if you’re never experienced this, you’re missing out – I think my blood pressure has gone down a good twenty points based on this alone. It’s to the point where I actually kind of enjoy getting into a car again, which I never thought would happen. Apparently, the mind has a way of forgetting the bad things in life, and this weekend as we piled into a small European automobile to enjoy the fine skiing of Avoriez, France, the gods of traffic jams tried to catch up for all the time I’ve missed in the past six months.

To make a long story short, we got caught in absurd mountain traffic. Three hours into the trip, we realized the cost/benefit of skiing versus continuing on was not in our favor, so we called it a day and turned around. However, being as we were in France, we had the bright idea to stop at a bakery on the side of a road, where I single-handedly demolished a framboise tart, apple strudel, donut, loaf of bread, and something else that was ridiculously good. Greatest bakery ever! We also stopped at a grocery store to load up on red meat and wine which we could then smuggle into Switzerland (prices are less than ½ of what we usually pay for things like meat), so Soph was in heaven. Yeah – if there’s anything that Europe can’t do as well as the US, it’s grocery stores – especially Switzerland. Just not one of their strengths. Anyway – since the weather was a warm 60+ degrees, we then invited some friends over for an impromptu deck party, and sat in the sun sipping on French wine until the sun went down. Good times.

Winter in Geneva has been pretty much perfect so far, weather-wise. We’ve had to wear coats and everything, but we haven’t had the bitter cold or freezing winds I expected, considering our latitude is the same as Vermont’s and we’re only a handful of miles from the Alps. I probably shouldn’t jinx it until we’re at least through mid-March, but I also feel I should pay homage to it, so that it understands it’s appreciated and will come back next year. Something like that, anyway…

Couple of things on the blog I want to point out to the four of you who are actually reading it…first, it has come to my attention that pictures have not been uploaded for about, oh, five months or so. I hadn’t realized this until the other day, and I apologize – I’ll hopefully have them up by the end of the next week or two. Second, is the formatting. Blogspot unfortunately has a terrible preview function, in the sense that when I preview how it will look, it doesn’t actually end up looking like that when I post. The result is that it’s almost impossible to get the spacing, pictures, etc. to look how I want them to, which really bugs me, but probably goes unnoticed by everyone else. Anyway – I made the decision about eight posts ago not to let this bother me, and while it clearly still does, I’ve at least gotten over messing with it for more than a few minutes each post.

Here are some pictures of us goofing around while walking through Geneva on Sunday. Sometimes I wonder if we need to grow up...

Next weekend: First visitors!

Just another lazy weekend...

This weekend we decided to step up the fight against our lingering sicknesses, rather than our tactic of the past few weeks which involved not sleeping, hanging around outside, physical exercise, and just pretty much anything else that would be considered stupid. It’s unfortunate in that it turned out to be a nice weekend (yet again), so in some ways it was wasted. However – in order to make the most of it, we decided to go on a spending splurge at the local supermarket and outdoor market! Yeah, we are high-rollers when it comes to buying fresh veggies, and this time we prepared ourselves for the great fresh-made pasta cookoff! This involved buying a couple types of homemade pasta from the various vendors, to see if they were really worth the extra franc they charge. The result? Totally worth it – not even a question. Gotta love authentic Italian pasta! Then we bought some cheeses, sauces, and anything else that looked remotely appealing. Broke the rule of "not going grocery shopping when you’re hungry", but sometimes there’s just no way around that. Who says Sundays in Geneva are boring? Well, everyone, but that’s another story…

One severe problem with Geneva (which might be solved with an upcoming referendum) is smoking in restaurants. Not only smoking in restaurants, but smoking in bars, malls, confectioner stores – pretty much anywhere you put up 4 walls, there is a problem with Genevans smoking inside of them. For instance – I went out to lunch the other day to get a nice pizza, sat in the non-smoking section, and less than a foot away was another table which happened to be in the pro-smoking section. No barrier, no fan, nothing, except my lone table had a small removable plaque on it with a picture of a cigarette and a line crossing through it. The result is that I had to go back to work smelling like an ashtray, meaning I fit in a little bit more. However – the bright side of this story is that I finally found a restaurant with excellent pizza. In Geneva, the proper way to serve pizza is to put an egg on top. That’s right – you put the pizza together, break an egg in the middle, and then cook it as normal. You may laugh, but I’m a huge fan – it’s one of those great ideas that someone should have imported to the states years ago.

In other European news, Kosovo recently declared their independence from some country that didn’t exist ten years ago. As a red-blooded American, I’m very happy for them in their quest to get away from taxation without representation. But seriously, all you Kosovoans - you don’t need to drive around Geneva honking your horns all afternoon. One pass around the park would have been enough – that would have even been cool. But five hours of it? Come on…take a cue from the Egyptians who just won the African Cup (soccer, I think). They went out and started a street party. Street parties are fun, and if it’s near me, I might even come out and join in. Driving around honking your horns is not fun, and I will not join you. So be warned…

Next weekend: Ski weekend trois!

Ski Weekend Deux

5:45 AM. This is when we had to get up to catch the train. Now, some of you may be thinking "wow, that’s cool they’re making the most of their time in Europe". Most of you, though, are probably saying to yourselves "they’re lying – we know those two, and they simply are not capable of getting up that early". Unfortunately, this appears to be the price of skiing, as we’ve had to get up before the sunrise a couple of times now, much to my chagrin. However, since this was going to be our first true "Swiss" skiing experience (the other times we’ve technically gone to France), it was worth the crippling pain of getting out of bed that early.

Anyway, Verbier is known as one of the top ski destinations in the world, by those in the know. At least, that’s what their website says, and as we’ve established the fact that the Swiss are light years behind in Marketing, then I think it probably has some truth behind it. Unfortunately for Soph and I, we were forced to start the skiing by going down a truly insane hill, and while she had the good sense to walk down it, I figured that going about halfway, doing a backflip, not sticking the landing, and then sliding down the rest with one leg bent under my head would be a better idea. Sometimes I wonder how I’ve made it this far…but once the initial hill of death was over, we were able to find a good spot to practice the rest of the day, which happened to also have a nice little restaurant next to it.

What is also great about Verbier is that it’s a true "ski-town"; that is, it has a pretty decent restaurant and nightlife. In truth, it puts Geneva’s nightlife to shame – but so does just about any city with a population of 5000 (Geneva, while it has a terrible nightlife, does have a thriving expat community, which makes up for that shortcoming). So after a long day of skiing, all of us met up together for some apres-ski, which is another great Swiss or French custom that needs to be brought to America (it’s basically just hanging out on a deck in your ski gear with a view of the mountains, but it makes it that much more fun when you use a semi-translatable phrase to describe it).

Now that we’ve gone skiing a couple of times, I think we’re prepared to give some opinions on it. The good? Well, first of all, the scenery is fantastic at all the resorts here – really impressive stuff. Then there’s the fresh mountain air, and of course the actual act of skiing in and of itself. Soph’s favorite part is the chair lift, because she can just sit and look around at everything, and I see her point. The bad? Definitely the act of carrying your skis back and forth, and just organizing everything. That part is really annoying. The ugly? Pretty much any of our falls, of which there have been quite a few. In my defense, I’ve seriously reduced how often I fall, but unfortunately now my falls are monumental in scope, and involve being airborne for some measurable amount of time, and often landing on my head – sort of like a reverse cat or something.

Next weekend: Sleeping in!

Serious planning week...

Time to get down to business – business being, places we’re going to go this year! Unfortunately, my European vacation allocation of 30 days + holidays isn’t quite enough to get everything in, but we’re doing our best to plan the year in advance. One note – if you happen to visit, you might make the blog – just keep that in mind. That’s almost as cool as catching a foul ball, or getting spit on by Bon Jovi, so if you needed any extra incentives, I thought I’d throw that out there for any budding Europhiles…

The adventures of the past week and a half, while not quite as intense as going break-neck speed down an alpine meadow filled with snow, have seen their share of craziness. We had our first Wii party, our second Gossip Girl marathon, our third trip to IKEA, and more importantly, I finally figured out a way to hang all our pictures up. Yeah – all our paintings and everything had been leaning against the walls in their designated spots for the past 5 months, because we have some sort of sheet metal about a half-inch behind the crumbling substance that is our inner wall. And, as we have no hardware stores here, I couldn’t exactly pick up random items to experiment with. No matter – we now have everything in place, and Sophia was able to complete her shrine of pictures of people back home. As an added bonus, we picked up some materials to re-start the garden we were forced to abandon upon moving here, and while it’s not going to be the monstrosity we had in Elkton, it will serve the purposes of giving us fresh tomatoes and peppers…hopefully.

In other news, we recently got a roommate. We’d been bouncing the idea around for awhile, and one of our good friends here happened to be getting hosed by their former Regie (a common occurrence in Geneva), so it seemed like a good time to test it out. So far it’s been good, with the exception of her and Soph teaming up to usher in the horrible idea of "boardgame night". Shudder. I’m trying to fight back with a poker night, but unfortunately all the guys I know here are also married, which means they will be forced to attend their own boardgame nights in retaliation for their leaving the house to play poker – and I just don’t know if I can live with that kind of guilt.

One final note – Soph made some kimchi again. She left it on the kitchen table to "ferment" (why you would actively want bacteria growing in your food is beyond me – unless it’s a dairy product - or some other food I eat that is unknowingly made in that process – but the point I’m making is you should never initiate the bacteria growth yourself – you leave that to the professionals.) So our French tutor comes in, goes through my entire lesson trying to ignore it, but still giving it the evil eye every ten minutes or so, and then, when Soph’s turn comes, she kindly asks her to remove it from the kitchen due to its stench.

And this is why I’m starting to think the French might be okay after all.

Next week: Ski weekend deux!

Ski Weekend

Ski jackets: check
Goggles: check
Ski pants: check
Thermals: check
Tard helmet: check
Money for rentals: check


And off we went to ski the Alpine pistes of Combloux-Jaillet, France, in the shadow of the Mt. Blanc massif! For those of you who haven’t heard about our skiing histories, let me rehash it a bit. To put it mildly, we are probably the worst skiing couple you know. The one time I went (in the ice-mecca known as mideast Missouri), I ended up breaking my ski pole…with my chest. It wasn’t pretty. Sophia, always able to one-up me, skied off a cliff – yes, you read that correctly – she went off a cliff. She had to be pulled out of the netting by a snowmobile. So needless to say, I was a little worried about how our first skiing experience – not only in Europe, but as a couple – would go.

Surprisingly, we both accomplished more than we thought we would. I was able to keep on my feet with a moderate amount of speed by the end of the day – even figured out how to do basic turns – while Sophia made a couple runs herself without falling. Of course, I did come extremely close to plummeting into a ravine – and it would be true if someone said that I ended up on the wrong side of the mountain at one point and had no idea how to get back (and these are Alp-mountains here, so it’s kind of a problem to be on the wrong side). Meanwhile, Soph hit her head on a fall and had to end her day a little early (she’s alright, except for maybe her pride, as she had been mocking me for wearing a helmet). But all in all, neither of us ended up in the hospital, so it was a good day.


So – as far as skiing in the Alps goes – it’s amazing. Granted, I don’t have much to compare it to, but there were a variety of slopes, quite a few for beginners, and all seemed fairly long. More importantly, you never had to fear running into other people, because there simply weren’t that many others out skiing. The slopes we skied had great views as well, with Mont Blanc directly in front of us, and when you factor in a near-cloudless sky and amazing weather, it made the experience one we’re itching to repeat. Almost makes me want to start exercising, just so my body won’t hurt so bad afterwards next time!

Welcome 2008!

Now that we’re back in the groove of Geneva life after a nice trip to the US of A, it’s time to reflect on how international living has changed us. Or, we could sit around and play the Nintendo Wii we bought and go out just about every night! Tough call…

So we’ve been playing Wii and going out a lot since we’ve been back. That, and shopping, because the entire city of Geneva is on sale right now (first time we’ve seen anything on sale since we’ve been here – don’t get me started on how far behind Swiss marketing is). This on the heels of smuggling in 3 suitcases worth of new stuff from our trip back, which in hindsight, didn’t net us nearly as many things as we had planned. But it’s been a good couple of weeks – with the exception being the attack on Sophia by a rodent of unusual size in the laundry room (don’t worry future visitors – the laundry room is 6 floors below us).

Anyway – nothing really interesting to write about just yet, but I did want to get the posting started for 2008 (don’t get me wrong, there’s been plenty of interesting things going on, but it doesn’t seem to translate very well into a blog entry). And with that, I leave you with some pictures from Christmas and New Years!

Last few weeks...

Have a couple weeks worth of writing to catch up on, but rather than catch-up, I’m going to go with the semi-quick version:

* Thanksgiving: We invited some people over, found a turkey, cooked it, ate it, and all was merry.

* The following weekend: Wow – I can’t remember what we did this weekend! I think we sat around and watched a movie. Watching movies rules.

* Same weekend: Ok, I remembered what we did – the movie part is true, so I don’t need to reiterate that. But on Sunday, we went to Montreaux for their famous (or at least mildly well-known-within-Switzerland) Christmas market. Yeah – Soph was pestering me something fierce to take her to a Christmas market, and for whatever reason I caved. I need to enact a zero-tolerance policy for that, as my caving just reinforces her behavior – but enough about psychology and how to deal with terror tactics. So we went to the Christmas market, it was kind of cool, we had a good time, and went home.

* Last weekend: This was a pretty good weekend. We left early Friday afternoon for Lucerne, and stayed there for a night. Lucerne is similar to Geneva in that it’s on a lake, has a river running through it, and is surrounded by mountains – but it seems to be a lot prettier. Not to take anything away from Geneva, but Lucerne was something new, and therefore we had city-surrounded-by-mountains envy. Hey – it happens to the best of us. Anyway, we got in kind of late, hung out a little, got up early the next morning, and then walked around the city the rest of the day. Turned out to be beautiful weather, and the combination of cobble-stoned streets and fresh mountain air made for a wonderful, leisurely day.

* Side-note: there is some festival going on in the park by where we live. This town always seems to have some festival going on, which is nice I guess, but I find it odd to have rollercoasters and such in the middle of the city. Makes for cool pictures, though.

* This weekend: Stayed in Geneva, went over and hung out with some friends one night, and then had some people over another night. Also, walked around a little and happened upon some sort of zoo. Yeah – you find odd things in Geneva if you just kind of wander – not that a zoo is odd, but it sort of simply appeared in a place where it didn’t make any sense to have a small zoo-like park. But, it was fun, so whatever.

Ok – so that was the quick version. Now, I'll talk a little more about Lucerne, since it’s worth describing in more detail. I didn’t realize this, but Lucerne is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Of course, since pretty much all of Switzerland is in the German-speaking part except for Geneva, this should have come as no surprise, but it kind of did. The point is, I realized I only know 2 words in German, and one of them is "blitzkrieg", so it kind of narrowed down the amount of communication you can do when in Switzerland. That was fun – as if I haven’t yet experienced having to try and speak in a language I don’t know or understand. Sigh. Anyway, we were able to make due on the speaking end, which was good because the markets in Lucerne were so vastly superior to the Geneva markets, that we pretty much flipped out. And by "flipped out", I mean we started running through the streets with cheeses and sausages flailing from our limbs. Seriously – the cheeses were amazing – stuff I had never even thought of before. Geneva is pretty big on the "stinky" and "veined" cheeses, and then a couple of solid standbys such as Gruyere and Tomme (which might just be the French word for "generic", but it’s still good stuff). But Lucerne – whoo Nelly! I still have no idea what some of them were called, but they ruled. Unfortunately, none of them survived the trip back to Geneva. Because we ate them all. But we did go on a cheese run on Sunday, and now our refrigerator reeks as a result – but it’s a good reek.

Anyway, that’s about it. Lucerne will probably go down as our final 2007 European trip, although since we’ll be flying through the Frankfurt airport on the way back to the States, who knows what adventures lie ahead of us. Probably an airport prison, if our last Frankfurt experience is any indicator, but that’s a whole other story.

Next week: the 2007 Europe awards!

Paris!

Although I’ve said this before, it never gets old; one of the great things about living here is that you can so easily pick up and go to a really cool destination. This time, as I had some vacation I needed to use and the weather was blizzarding east of Geneva, we decided to make it a five-day trip somewhere west – and where better to go than Paris? So with one day of planning we hopped a train, got to our cheap hostel, and started to explore one of the world’s most famous cities.

Before I move on, let me state a little fact about Paris; everybody secretly tries not to like it. You know you’re guilty of it – you might not be able to put your finger on why, but deep down, while you may want to go there, another little voice in your head tells you it’s all a giant scam. The problem being, Paris has too much hype surrounding it; not only is it the focal point in a lot of popular media, but everyone knows someone who’s crazy about the city, and a part of you thinks there’s an element of them saying they like it simply because they were there. Also, there are apparently a large number of pompous French people living there. As a result, it’s easy to say “I don’t want to go there”, and I have to admit that I wasn’t overly excited about using my vacation time in Paris. But – I can now say – I was wrong (I would never say that about any argument I’ve had with Soph, mind you). Paris is a pretty cool place, and not for the reasons normally given.

So, let’s start with the tourist attractions. The Eiffel Tower – yes, it’s big. Yes, it’s pretty. Yes, we took 67 pictures of it. But that’s not the point. It’s just this huge tower, right? Well – yeah. But it’s still pretty cool. In our defense, we didn’t actually go up it (going to Paris and not going up the Eiffel Tower is one of the world’s major tourism sacrileges!) But this trip wasn’t about tourism – it was about trying to get to the underbelly of the city and taking it in our hands, and twisting it and bending it to our will! Well, that and drinking a lot of wine and coffee while not going to work – but I digress…

Next, the Louvre; the Louvre is, simply, the world’s greatest museum (partly because the French never gave back a lot of the artifacts they stole from other countries back in the 18th and 19th centuries…but again, I digress…) So we basically spent a day there, and didn’t even come close to seeing it all. It’s ridiculous, but in a good way. And yes, we did go over to the Mona Lisa and take pictures – we can’t break all the tourism rules! Even though I’m vehemently opposed to aforementioned rules, for reasons I may or may not get into in a separate blog entry, as it’s worthy of more space than I will give it here. Gotta stop digressing…

Notre Dame is next on the list. We went while a mass was going on, which was good in the sense of having grown up going to churches (I stress the term “church”, as there are no “cathedrals” in the Midwest, at least none that I know of), I always thought the ceremony would seem sort of empty if there was so much space. On the contrary, a loud organ and a nice choir fills up the cathedral quite nicely, and changes the experience quite a bit. Anyway – Notre Dame is worth seeing also – but my favorite cathedral in Paris was St. Sulpice, because unlike Notre Dame, it was cold, dark, empty, and had an otherworldly quality to it.

Finishing up the cathedral tour of Paris, we went to Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, another fine example of aforementioned gigantic works of architecture. Montmartre, a neighborhood set on Paris’ only real hill (I think it’s the only hill – it’s a big hill though), was once a haven of artists from all over the world. This is important because Montmartre tries so hard to pretend it’s still bohemian, but the reality is it’s been gentrified beyond all recognition of whatever glory it once had. That being said, that’s probably a good thing, as the winding streets and alleys are now filled with fun shops and cool restaurants, making it a fun place to explore.

In this vein, we spent the rest of our trip. We would pick a couple of neighborhoods each day to go to, and then just walk around and stop in cafes or lunch spots when we needed to rest. We saw Marais, the Latin Quarter (“Latin” because people used to speak Latin there, not because they’re Hispanic), St. Germain des Pres, and a few other areas around the river. Lots of walking, lots of cafes, and a lot of fun. What we learned during these travels is that Paris gets a bad rap; we ran into a bunch of really nice people, all of which were French, and not a single snob! In fact, all the French we’ve met so far in Europe have been pretty cool, so I’m going to start giving them a little credit. Maybe.

The only problem we encountered on this trip – and it wouldn’t be a trip if there weren’t at least one problem – is that on Wednesday, our final day in Paris, there was a transit strike. As you might know, the French are notorious for working fewer hours and getting paid more than pretty much all other countries in the world. So what do you do if you have it good? Apparently, you go on strike. Ok – not to be bashing workers’ rights or anything – but our train, which we had booked and paid for, no longer existed when we got to the station, so I was a little annoyed. Also – as a result of the strike – we got stuck on what was the worst subway ride ever, in rush hour, due to the fact that only about half the trains were running. Our subway was too crowded to get in, so we had to take the train going the opposite way, half an hour to the originating station, stay on it as it turned around, and then take it back another 45 minutes to our destination – the entire time being completely jam-packed with armpits only inches from our faces. Check that – with European armpits only inches from our faces. Absolutely brutal.

But the rest of the trip was great. Good food, beautiful architecture, fun shops, tons and tons of monuments, and so much more. In truth, travel is always better when you’re not rushing to see everything, but when you get to simply relax and enjoy yourself (and maybe seeing just a couple of things) – and luckily we had enough time to do this. So to summarize, if you like big cities, then Paris is awesome – the street upon street of history and sights is great from a tourist perspective, but the hidden neighborhoods and underlying spirit also make it worthy of being called a cultural capital. I definitely recommend checking it out, even though you’re probably secretly thinking it’s not that great…

Budapest

This weekend we went to Budapest – probably my most anticipated city to visit in Europe. Years ago, post-cold war Budapest was one of those ultra-secret backpacker destinations that was dirt cheap, yet had a lot to offer. Times have changed a little since then, and while it’s no longer the “live like a king on $10 a day” mecca it once was, it’s still cheaper than most of the other major European destinations, yet it now also is a bit more tourist-friendly than it used to be (i.e. there’s little risk of crime). On one bank you have Pest, which is a teeming, expansive city with all sorts of interesting buildings and tree-lined streets. On the other side is Buda, a hilly knoll with castles and cobble-stone streets overlooking the winding river. Together, they form an amazing sight, one which in my opinion rivals the beauty of any city I’ve seen so far.

Budapest has a very long and storied past, which is important in that each period of time has contributed to the city as it currently stands. There are a lot of Turkish influences, which can be seen in some of the architecture; Viennese influences, seen in the cafes; communist influences, seen in the lack of wealth among the older generation; and western influences, seen in the fact that only 20 years after the fall of communism, a huge portion of the city speaks fluent English. That was the thing that surprised me the most; every waiter, shop owner, vendor, etc., all of them could speak English. More than people in Geneva, even. This borders on shocking due to the fact that it’s occurred so quickly; there’s no way English was taught in schools until recently (if even now), but everyone learns it – even though geographically, there are no English-speaking countries nearby. Made it much easier to travel, although we did try to use the simple Hungarian phrases we memorized. Anyway, on to the trip…

The first morning, we navigated the fastest escalators on planet earth into the subway, on our way to the Szechenyi baths. Here, I donned my speedo and bathing cap in joining the locals in an old-school thermal bathhouse! If you ever get the opportunity to go, the thermal baths in Budapest are great; we went early in the morning, and there was still a nice chill in the air as we sat in the extremely comfortable 85-degree water. I can’t think of too many better ways to start the day, or to continue it, as we stayed a couple of hours just floating around.

After this, we got serious, and decided the best use of our time would be to aimlessly walk around. The weather was perfect – not too hot, not too cold – and the leaves were in full autumn color-changing mode. There’s a great road cutting through the center of Budapest, full of squares, statues, and other assorted sights. One of their big monuments, Heroes’ Square, is simply monstrous – the pictures truly don’t do it justice. We walked throughout the rest of the afternoon, and ended up going to an opera later that evening. It was at this point I remembered I don’t particularly enjoy opera, but since it was a cool opera house it was alright for a couple of hours.

The next day was started by going to the greatest café in Europe – a very unpretentious, 20-ft-ceilinged establishment serving great coffee and amazing breakfast sweets. To me, this typified the entire Budapest experience – the city is still in a stage where it doesn’t have enough money to be snooty (kind of the opposite of Geneva), so you have these venues that are gorgeous and really nice, but have normal prices because they still rely on the lower and middle classes for business. In ten years, I imagine this café (and many others like it) becoming high-priced and not necessarily having better quality; but for now, it’s just right. Anyway – we finished up the day by seeing a traditional Hungarian folk performance, complete with dancers and a folk ensemble. Simply put, it was really cool.

The final day was spent roughly in the same manner – the common theme being that we tried to see something in the morning, walk around during the day, and eat as much food as possible anytime in between. Because the truth is, not only is Goulash an extremely fun word to say, but when it’s prepared correctly, it’s quite good. So we ate. And ate. And ate. We ate so much that, at one meal, Soph actually left some food on her plate due to being full! In my 6+ years with her, I’ve never been witness to this phenomenon, and it scared me. But the point is – we ate a lot. And it was good.

This was a great trip for a lot of reasons; first, the city is just amazing. Words really can’t describe how nice the buildings are and how great everything looks. Second, there was the fact we got to go shopping and eat out a lot. Buying things is fun. Third, there were so many cool things to do – there were the Baths, the Central Market, music – there’s even a 1000-year-old mummified hand in the city’s Basilica! That’s just cool. And lastly, the history of Budapest, and Hungary in general, is at such a crossroads of different cultures and time periods that there’s a lot to understand and absorb – which we were able to attempt over coffee and cakes in the wonderful cafes. And how can you not enjoy a little deep thought and introspection over a cup of coffee?

Non-Desperate Geneva Housewives

That is what my new friend Melanie has named our little luncheon group, and I have to admit that one of the highlights of not working (among many) is being able to meet up with some like-minded gals who love food and experiencing different things as much as I do. Plus the advice exchange is invaluable! Our new mission statement involves trying out as many different Geneva restaurants as possible (in a reasonable price range obviously) every week. One of the first weeks we went to a teahouse called Le The, which served the best tea and dim sum I've ever had. Granted, I don't eat dim sum very often, but hey the point is, it was great. And now that the weather here is getting cooler by the day, warm tea is very appealing to my anti-cold personality. Plus it's right around the corner from where we live! I'm so glad that we chose to be in center city because it affords us an opportunity to be in the action and close to everything. We're in a more student inclined area, which is fine by me, because jeans and sneakers fit in perfectly, and there are more thai restaurants in the vicinity of our house than I can shake a stick at, which is great for me, and doom for Tyler. :) He thinks I'm slightly obsessed with Thai food, which is probably true because it is surprisingly so easy to get all the supplies you need to make really great green curries and drunken noodles. It's helping ease the pain of not having a lot of korean food around, ok AFFORDABLE korean food around. A kimchijigae (kimchi soup) back home would have cost maybe 7 bucks, here it's thirty. Ah Geneva. However, I did get some kim (seaweed laver sheets) in a care package that I've been gobbling down with rice, so that's been helping alot, and I even gave a try at making kimchi. That wasn't so successful as I think I didn't rinse the salt enough off of the cabbage before dousing it with garlic and red pepper powder. So it's a little too salty, but I think I've learned my lesson and am ready to try try try again, much to Tyler's chagrin, ha ha. Can't believe he invented a new bad word just to describe kimchi!

So I can get really lazy, and as such this is the continuation of the draft blog I had started awhile ago. Part of it is Tyler's fault, as he now calls this blog HIS blog, and he has become very possessive of it (love you honey!!!!), but it's rather cute. So since going to Le The a few weeks ago, the Non-Desperate Geneva Housewives (otherwise known as NDGH) group has expanded to around 10 members, and we've gone to Vietnamese, Indian, and Sushi. The Indian was very yummy and a great deal because it was a buffet, the first buffet I've seen in Geneva! And let me tell you, I went to TOWN on that buffet. Talk about getting your money's worth! Although the service was absolutely atrocious; I nearly got into a fight with the snotty waiter. They don't get paid on tips here, and unfortunately it is reflected in the service sometimes. Everyone who knows me, knows that I'm a really easygoing, non-trouble-wanting kind of person, but this guy just made me want to throw down. Regardless, I paid him back by polishing off all of the chicken dishes in the buffet line by going up for seconds and thirds. Ok, not really. Ok, maybe :)

The lunchgroup has just been so much fun and such a great way to meet new friends; one of my biggest fears coming over here, was not being able to establish a network of friends very easily. I'm just a very social person and there is nothing more I like than to have a good chat or just to commiserate. Well, I'm very lucky to have found that in these girls, as well as some other people we've met through the expat network sites. I think our transition to living here has gone so smoothly because of that, and I know Tyler likes that I'm not pining away waiting for him to come home. Well, I know secretly he'd like that, but after awhile I think it would start to annoy him.

Today the NDGH group had lunch at Sushi Misuji, which is literally maybe a six minute walk from me (love that!) and I was surprised by how good my spicy tuna roll was. And the miso soup. I was expecting some kind of spicy mayonnaise gob concoction, but what came out was a very nice sized roll with large chunks of avocado and tuna, sprinkled with sesame and spicy pepper. Very yummy, and totally satisfied my sushi kick. There's something to be said about a really good sushi roll laden with wasabi and soy sauce...I felt very content, sitting there with my chopsticks poised on its way to bringing me goodness, listening to the gab around me. Life is good.

Next up: Budapest!