Swiss chocolate, swiss knives, swiss cheese..

Hi all!

I just returned from Geneva, Switzerland a couple of hours ago. We didn't spend much time there. Our train got us in at 12:30pm on Monday and we left Geneva on the 5:00pm train tonight. When I think of Switzerland I think of ski lodges on snow-covered mountains, rich people storing their billions in banks, and neutrality. Unfortunately we had a tight schedule and we barely left our hotel neighborhood so I didn't get to see the pretty mountain towns that I'd imagined..or even walk past a ginormous and intimidating modern-looking bank.

When we arrived in Geneva it was very cold and pouring rain. Luckily our hotel was a one-minute walk from the train station. The hotel hadn't assigned rooms to people, so Bruno (our teacher and the head of our public health program at Sciences-Po told us to match up on our own and tell him what we decide. People started pairing off left and right and I felt like I was back at middle school worrying that no one was going to ask me to room with them. I was even more worried that I would have to room with one of the people on this program that have no notion of how to not be an annoying person. I took initiative and asked one of the girls I get along with who wasn't paired up yet to be my roommate.

At 2:45pm we headed for MSF. We were going to walk there but because of the train we took the cable-car bus two stops and walked into a very unassuming building. There is no way I would've ever guessed that inside this building was the headquarters to Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders). I didn't even see a sign. We listened to a speaker talk about the history of MSF for an hour and a half, something we had all already learned while in Paris (not to mention that we're all global health minors and probably knew it before coming to France).

His lecture was very dry and I found myself struggling to keep my eyes open. I entertained myself by drawing the MSF logo on my notebook. After his lecture we were supposed to hear a doctor speak to us, but because of the Haiti cholera goings-on all of the staff were all over the place so we got a last minute lecture from a more lively woman (who had reporters waiting for her once she was done), she talked to us for a half an hour about a new nutrient supplement and the controversy surrounding it. Apparently there are intellectual property rights battles surrounding the liquid. It is made of peanuts, milk, water, and something else. I couldn't figure out what she was calling the stuff, it was either "plumpy nuts," "plant peanuts," or "plampinuts." There was nothing else scheduled for us at MSF so we were released at 5:00pm and told to meet in the hotel lobby a couple hours later to walk to dinner.

As we were leaving I noticed the front desk was displaying MSF apparel for sale. I asked the guy behind the desk if they were for sale and he said yes but they only accept Swiss Francs and they don't accept credit cards. Yomna and I decided we'd try to look for an ATM and then we'd return to buy something. We were told that the closest ATM was back at the train station near our hotel. We started walking that direction, searching earnestly in the pouring rain for any sign of an ATM. As we left a pharmacy that couldn't give us change in Swiss Francs we quickly realized that ATMs were not located every couple of blocks like they are in Paris. We tried to go into a bank but found the place completely empty.

Look closely at the picture below. The ceiling was made to look like the night sky!!

We left the bank feeling very confused about our preconceptions of Swiss banking. This was supposed to be Switzerland! Land of banks! Where was the top security? We walked in like we owned the place and only saw one person in an office behind a curtain.

As we left the bank we saw a bureau du change across the street! Yomna and I changed over 50 Euro and hurried back to MSF. The man didn't seem happy to see us, he informed us that the guy who was in charge of the apparel wasn't around, and that they didn't have all of the merchandise there. I was about to get nasty and tell him that we'd take the shirts they had behind the glass in the counter until he said he would make a quick phone call. As we waited Yomna pointed out a white board that listed all of the staff who were departing for service over the next several days, their debriefing meeting times, and their location of work. People were listed as going to Sudan, Swaziland, Niger, and one or two places in the Middle East that I can't remember. Eventually he got off the phone and was about to tell us that the merch guy wasn't there but then cut himself off and said "oh, he's right here." The man behind us asked us what we wanted and he went downstairs somewhere to bring up sizes. The sweatshirt was 80 Francs (about 70 Euro)! I didn't get a hoodie but I got a t-shirt, which was much more reasonably priced.

When we returned to the hotel I drank some tea and tried to ignore a sinus headache. I tried to get into my room but we were only given one key and my roommate had it and she wasn't there. I got one from the desk and took some sinus medicine and laid down for 20 minutes, channel surfing.

At dinner we were served traditional Swiss fondu.

There was a band singing, yodeling, and playing traditional Swiss instruments like the saw, the accordion, and this thing:

First they brought out orange le creuset pots with handles full of slightly boiling cheese and placed them on little...hot plate things with a little flame inside. We watched Bruno show us the proper procedure. First you take the long skewer/tiny fork onto which you secure a hunk of bread and you dip the bread into the hot cheese using the skewer/tiny fork. Bruno let his bread sit in the hot cheese for a long time before taking it out but the bread gets really soggy that way. I decided that what I liked the best was to dip half of the little hunk of bread into the cheese to improve the proportion of cheese to bread. We had two birthdays on Monday; Yomna and Amanda's 21st birthdays! The band brought them up a few times to play their Swiss instruments and it was really cute. When it was time to bring out the hot pot of chocolate fondue and the fruit trays the band played happy birthday as we all sang.

The experience was great but the food wasn't good enough to make up for it being so absurdly unhealthy. I don't know why, but food in France has a tendency to be made with alcohol. Almost all of the desserts (except for the ones at patisseries) taste like someone poured two shots of rum on them after cooking them. Well, Geneva is in the French speaking-side of Switzerland and, true to form, the cheese tasted faintly of alcohol. We had really good white wine with our meal, but I hate when my food tastes like alcohol. Also, the cheese they used didn't even taste that good. Several people said they didn't like the cheese that was used. The chocolate was delicious but they served it with apples, oranges, cantaloupe, and pineapple. I was really surprised that they didn't give us strawberries or bananas. Nothing went well with the chocolate, and the cantaloupe with chocolate tasted like vomit. All criticisms aside, it was a very fun dinner!

It was still raining by the time we left the restaurant around 10:00pm. I was dead on my feet when I got back to the hotel. Sunday night the new people in the room next to me had friends over and they were up past 2 am. They kept doing that random loud bursts of laughter thing. Remember the girl I spoke about before from New York who spoke like my Ben & Jerry's co-workers? I could hear her voice clearly. I could hear every word she said. I had waited since I went to bed at 11:30pm for them to quiet down, but I finally knocked on their door at 1:30am and asked them politely to keep it down because I had to get up at 7:00 to go to Geneva. My roommate came back from her weekend in Brussels and Amsterdam at 6:00 am and didn't see the point in sleeping for just one hour, so she stayed up. So I only slept from 2:00am to 6:00am the night before. At the hotel my roommate wasn't back yet so I changed into my PJs, vowed to ignore any knocks on my door, watched BBC news for half an hour in bed, and then went to sleep at 10:45pm.

I will post day 2 in Geneva soon!

Love,

H.