Quand la vie vous donne de citrons... aka Leith (in Romansh)

Quand la vie vous donne de citrons (kand lah vee voo dohn duh see-trohn)...when life gives you lemons, sometimes you feel like just chucking them right back in the face, plus throwing a few hard, sharp rocks for good measure. That's certainly how I feel right now, anyway. I don't want any citron pressé (see-tron pres-ay: lemonade); I'd rather have my niece be healthy, I'd rather the hot water in my apartment be working, and I'd rather be able to visit my sister in Sweden before she—and I—leave the continent. But no, sometimes life's just a bitch and you have to wait for the PMS to subside.

The past few days Iceland decided it wanted to be on my liste de merde (leest duh mehrd: shit list), so it started spewing ash into the sky, clouding any chance of my getting to Scandinavia for the week to see my sister. Full of optimism—or at the very least complete naivete—I decided to make a trip to Genève (Geneva) anyway to see if my flight from the city would eventually take off. If you read the news at all, you'd know it didn't. So I've spent the past two days wandering around this lovely city in Switzerland, where Romansh is one of the forgotten official languages.  What the heck does Romansh sound like?  I have no idea.

Geneva itself is beautiful, and fortunately I was able to score a room in an over-booked hostel and get out of Grenoble for a while. The thing is, the more I wandered around Geneva, the more I realized that the stereotypes about the Swiss are completely true: obsession over Swatches, immaculateness as religion, and shady Swiss banks are everywhere.

I've noticed you can tell a lot about a culture's values by what their buildings look like. In the States, we believe in capitalism and the free market, meaning our skyscrapers tower over churches and other less-important buildings like behemoths, dwarfing anything that gets in the way of the Corporate America. In France, they're a bit more lackadaisical about money, religion, and life in general and their skylines mirror this in a melange of white-washed concrete apartment buildings and the banks and churches that blend seamlessly in between them. In Switzerland, though, it's the banks that stand out among the crowd with their fluorescent signs that practically scream “deposit your illegal profits here”. Even the cathedrals on the hill can't help but feel inadequate and humiliated standing next to these Swiss banks that really are on every street corner.

And on the subject of money: for a country as conspicuous wealth-centered as Switzerland, I've got to say that the Swiss Franc is the fakest looking money I've ever seen. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the money while in Switzerland because, well, I forgot, but trust me: the money is just recycled rainbow vomit, and the coin francs are pretty enough but also big enough to double as tricycle wheels.

The Genevois (jen-ev-wa: people living in Geneva) are rich, the streets are spotless, the cars are all Ferraris or Maseratis or--at the very least--Audis, though the lack of grit means the city lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. What's a city without seedy hookers and petty street crime, anyway?!  Lac Lemin (lah-k lay-mahn: Lake Geneva) is a refreshing spot to relax after you've spent a day's salary on breakfast (this city is expensive!) and everyone here seems to speak at least three languages. Geneva also seems to attract a lot of Americans: I heard more American accents in Geneva in three days than I've heard in my entire time in Grenoble. I'm not quite sure what all these Americans are doing here, but seeing as Geneva's the home of the United Nations, I guess you can't help but expect everyone in the city to actually be  from somewhere else.

Anyway, as far as travel plans go not the hottest weekend ever, but since every single European on vacation this weekend was in the same boat (or lack of airplane, ha) as me, I can't say it's all due to my bad karma.