Murphy's Law

... apparently applies in Switzerland. Because anything that could've gone wrong on our first day in Geneva, did.* It all began with the astonishingly awful bus ride from Normandy to Geneva.

National Lampoon's Study Abroad Vacation. 

*Disclaimer: This post is not meant to read as a complaint or a whine. Rather, it highlights the "hope for the best, but expect the worst" mentality of international travel. Really I find the absurdities quite amusing. 

We departed from the city of Caen at 8:00 in the morning, leaving behind the comforts of high-pressure shower heads and the last luxurious breakfast buffet. Had I known the latter, I wouldn't have felt any shame in swiping several croissants on my way out of town, but being on Cloud Free-Breakfast-Buffet for the past three weeks I assumed that food would not be an issue. Wrong. But I shall discuss that later.

Geneva is about an 8 hour bus ride away from Caen, but total travel time including all the bathroom breaks and snack stops summed up to nearly 11 hours. Getting out of our seats to walk around every 2.5 hours made the trip better than an 11-hour plane ride, but I still had stiff Barbie legs by the end of the journey. And no matter how hard I tried to be productive, I ended up sleeping for over 85% of the trip. I couldn't even finish an Instyle magazine. Volkswagen made a mistake in casting that baby to fall asleep every time the Jetta accelerated--I would have done it for free. 

Nevertheless we arrived in Geneva essentially without a hitch. Unfortunately the road trip was the last thing we should've been worrying about. Turns out our residence in Switzerland for the next week is not a hotel but rather a set of off-campus dorms from Kent State University in Geneva. Which would be all fine and dandy if they were anything like dorms at UCLA, but there were several issues impacting our stay:

1) No air conditioning. I'm generally not an A/C snob, but when it's 90 degrees every day and the temperature barely drops at night, that's a different story. At least my sauna of a bedroom at home includes a box fan. 

2) Bunk beds. What is this, freshman year? I pulled the short straw of the top bunk, meaning I must ascend into my peaceful (albeit sweaty) slumber via a rickety ladder. The entire bed rattles as I climb it, so I can't get up or down without waking my sleeping roommate. And in those last moments before I slip off into dream land I say a prayer that I won't have a Step Brothers moment in the middle of the night.

I think we all remember the events that followed.

3) No supervision. Our professor is staying at a hotel across town and our TA goes MIA at night, leaving 37 college kids in a building all to themselves. This situation is quite analogous to parents leaving their high school student alone at home for a weekend, as both of them can only result in one thing--a house party. I'll leave out the minor details but the end result was a nasty argument between our prof and the poor Swiss "R.A." this morning and a threat of nightly room checks for the remainder of the program. One kid even checked into the four-star hotel down the street to avoid the mayhem.

4) Everything's closed on Sundays. Because it's a Calvinist country according to my professor. Either way, arriving on a Saturday night couldn't really have been any less convenient. Nothing was open, except the Four Seasons Hotel bar and a few clubs geared toward tan, stick-legged escorts in 8-inch heels accompanying rich old men. Not exactly our scene. But really all of the above were the least of our problems, the greatest being:

5) No food. Anywhere. Every single grocery store is closed from 6pm Saturday till 9am Monday morning. Meaning we couldn't have arrived at a more inopportune time. Thankfully my daily 1000-calorie overages in France, which could have prepared me for an entire winter's hibernation, have generally curbed my appetite for any food whatsoever, but still the act of eating itself is necessary for my body to feel normal. Praise baby cheeses, one thing Geneva has an abundance of is McDonald's. Friends, never take the dollar value menu for granted again. Because in Europe, 3/4 of a U.S. Mickey D's snackwrap costs 3.50 swiss francs. For those of you too lazy to google the exchange rate, that's almost 5 dollars. Oops, that reminds me:

5.5) All the currency exchanges are also closed on Sunday. I had run out of time to exchange in France so I am still currently franc-less. 

No food, francs, or the foggiest idea of what to do in a city designed for rich business travelers naturally equated to frustration on my first night in Switzerland. Since yesterday however, things have gotten much better. I still have yet to consume my first Toblerone at its birthplace, but at least things are looking up. I promise to deliver a post with Rick Steves enthusiasm tomorrow on the latest developments in Geneva, but in the meantime I'm using this lack of activity to finally fill you in on my last days in Paris. 

I know, I'm more than a little behind. The problem is as soon as we got our midterms and had lots of work to do, time in France started to fly by. I'll break up the past week into a few posts so as not to overwhelm you readers, since I know y'all are more likely to read it all in pieces because it looks less menacing (although I hope reading my blog isn't considered a chore).

Stay tuned for lots of photos and French follies in the next couple hours!