Life in the 21st arrondissement
Friday, May 21st, 2010Since we’ve been living together in Geneva for nearly three months, it’s probably about time I posted an update on what life is like here and what we get up to.
To start with, we are both really enjoying ourselves and our new European life after a year-and-a-half of virtually non-stop travel in Asia and South America. As a city, Geneva has nothing on Rome or Paris (despite the Parisian reference in its nickname cited above), but it’s brilliantly located near the Alps and the Jura, as a gateway to Lake Geneva and beyond to France, and it’s smack bang in the middle of Western Europe. Many people label Geneva as ‘nice but boring’, but we don’t see it that way at all and are very content here in such an international city.
We live in Paquis, which is a supposedly seedy area of the city but in reality is perfectly fine, at least in the part of Paquis that we live in. Our apartment is on a pedestrian-only street, just 1.5 blocks from Lake Geneva, the largest lake in Western Europe, and half a block from a nice square with a fountain and some restaurants. From Paquis we are walking distance from everywhere of interest in the city, so that’s how we get around – it takes Wendy about 30 minutes to the Palace of Nations each day and it takes me about 12 minutes to walk to school.
Our passion to experience and discover new places still burns brightly, so we spend our weekends exploring Switzerland if the weather’s fine. So far we’ve enjoyed four-day weekends in both Ticino (the Italian-speaking part of the country) and German-speaking Central Switzerland; a castle-spotting weekend away in Thun and Spiez in the German part; and quite a few day trips to the areas around Lake Geneva in French-speaking Switzerland (‘Suisse Romande’ – literally Roman Switzerland, which I thought was quite a nice touch for us). There’s another public holiday next Monday, so this weekend we’re going to German-speaking Northeastern Switzerland to visit the famous medieval library in St. Gallen and a few other places of interest.
When we have free time in Geneva itself, we spend it walking and rollerblading/skating around the lake a fair bit, trying different restaurants, hanging out with a nice group of friends we’ve made here, reading, working on languages and watching (ice) hockey. Having spent the 2010 Olympic hockey tournament living with two Canadians in Whistler, I got a bit hooked on the sport and that carried over when I came here as the Swiss league playoffs were on and our local team, Genève-Servette, made it all the way to Game 7 of the finals before losing to Bern. We went to a couple of games including the hugely exciting Game 6 of the finals, and then we watched all of Switzerland’s games in the World Championships on TV until their elimination yesterday. I’m also following the NHL playoffs and gladly noting that the team I arbitrarily picked as my favourite three months ago, the Montreal Canadiens, are suddenly doing very well.
As for keeping myself busy while Wendy is at work, I’m going to French class at an excellent school for three hours each afternoon during the week and enjoying it quite a lot. With my background in other romance languages, French was pretty easy for me to pick up (relatively speaking), and in two months of classes I’ve advanced to a level that is supposed to take 10 months to reach. So I’m pretty delighted with that, even though not everything has sunk in yet and I’m still fearful of speaking outside the classroom and the apartment.
As for our future, we are hoping to find out soon if Wendy will be offered a permanent UN posting at this time since there are a couple of spots available here in Geneva. If so, our move will be ‘official’ and we’ll finally settle down after all these years of travel (though, naturally, we’re hoping to squeeze in a few more months of wanderings between the end of her freelance contract and the start of her permanent one). If not, then we’ll continue to work around her freelance contracts with 2-3 month trips here and there, which isn’t half bad either. So it’s basically a win-win situation, one that we’re very fortunate to be in.
In the more immediate future, I’m heading to Croatia/Bosnia/Montenegro for a couple of weeks next weekend for a visa run which I’m quite looking forward to, since I have never been to the Balkans despite wanting to go for years. Then on my way back to Geneva we’ll meet up in Rome for our annual visit to the Eternal City. As always, we can’t wait…
Nick