Life in Switzerland

I have really liked living in Geneva. It’s definitely a metropolitan city, but there are lots of green spaces, it’s not all that big, and the pace of life is slower than some other big cities I have been to.

Some things I have noticed while living here:
· Everyone in the city center lives in apartments (like any big city, single family houses are only in the suburbs) but they have HUGE dogs. I’m talking about dogs that could possibly be wolves or horses. How do these dogs and their owners fit into little apartments?
· The main side dish at all restaurants in Geneva is….drumroll please….French fries. This is in the nice restaurants as well as the cheap ones. I have never seen so many French fries in my life.
· The public transportation system is obsessed with time. At bus stops, there are little tvs letting you know which busses come to that stop and how many minutes you have to wait for your bus. The trains always leave on-time, and I was told if they are late the clocks in the train station will stop to make people think that the trains are on time. I haven’t witnessed that happen yet.

Some things I like about Geneva:
· In the produce departments of all grocery stores, instead of the produce being weighed at the cash register when you check out, produce is set in bins with numbers labeling each bin. You take however much you want over to a scale, put your product on the scale, and press the corresponding number on the number pad above the scale. It prints out a sticker with a UPC label and the price of what you’re getting. No surprises at the check-out line!
· The weather. Guess I should have done my homework better, because I was expecting to be living in the Swiss Alps. Not the case. There are no mountains in sight, and Lake Geneva keeps the weather here relatively temperate. We have had many more sunny days than rainy ones, and the coldest it has gotten has been about 50 degrees one night. Today I went shopping and was hot in jeans and a light shirt.

Some things I don’t like about Geneva:
· My shower. It is literally just a 3ft x 3ft platform raised about 2 inches from the bathroom floor with a shower curtain surrounding it. Every time I shower, I flood the bathroom. Also, the bathroom door doesn’t always shut all the way, so there is sometimes a draft coming into the bathroom which causes the shower curtain to blow and stick to me. I miss my shower with the glass door that doesn’t attack me.
· Trying to watch my favorite American tv shows. There are a ton of websites that allow you to watch your shows online, but not here; they just tease you. You are allowed access to the website, pick the show you want to watch, sit back and relax, hit “play” and BAM—a cordial message appears saying something like, “This video is only available to our viewers in the United States.” How does the computer know I’m not in the US?!?! I have resorted to actually paying for my shows via iTunes. I think I forsee some iTunes gift cards in my Christmas stocking this year.....