Return to the Rose City @)->--

I've been back in the US for almost three weeks now and a few differences became apparent almost immediately:

1. In Europe there is a toilet brush next to every toilet public or private thus minimizing the embarrassment of an already lengthy trip to the loo.  

2. It's not that American's are friendlier than Europeans, but they are more likely to start up a conversation and ask about your day

3. Being able to understand the conversations around me was surprising and new when I returned, not hearing French, German, or Slovenian at every surrounding table was quite a shock at the beginning

4. I noticed the strange phrases used amongst the Geneva Study Group participants slipping into my day to day conversation such as
      - "la meme chose" or "the same thing"
      - "d'accord" or "I agree"
      - "DTC" or "down to clown"
      - "The Wif" or "WeeFee" or "WiFi" or "Wireless Internet"
      - "Ca va" or "OK/That's Fine"

5. The prices, the difference in price of my latte in Geneva at Starbucks, versus the price of my latte in portland is unbelievable-the first time I went to Starbucks with my Dad we ordered 2 grande nonfat lattes and when I saw the total I thought they forgot the second latte then realized that the price was half the franc price (unfortunately my current deadbeatness and lack of job have prevented me from enjoying this sudden affordability)

6. Getting ID'd when purchasing alcohol (sometimes twice)

7. Unlimited bread and drinks at restaurants

8.  Watching the news-despite having the Wif the whole time in Geneva, we didn't really pay much attention to news worthy events

9. Knowing when I arrive at a counter I will understand the person who is helping me and they will understand me-despite a couple of "s'il vous plait"s, "merci"s and "ca va"s end up coming out on my side.

10. Using my phone in order to make phone calls and not just as an ultra helpful more intelligent than I Smartphone.

I think the biggest surprise is that despite all the very noticeable differences, the transition has not been as hard as I expected it to be, returning to daily life was almost like I never left in a weird way, and all the trains, monuments and cultures seem like a really good dream-I guess part of that comes from any once in a lifetime experience.

I have returned with a travel bug that just wont quit, so much so I volunteered to take a trip to Memphis this summer, I also have a trip to Las Vegas on the agenda in order to celebrate my 21st birthday with my two best friends.  So as the say (cheesy as it may be) and I think (hope) this will hold true-It is only the end of the beginning of my travels, more are yet to come!

Leavin' on a Jet Plane-Don't Know When I'll be Back Again... I Really Hate to Go

The last week in Geneva I spent my work time at the Human Rights Council at the UN, far more interesting then the downtime we'd been spending in the office.  We were responsible for monitoring the sessions' spontaneous happenings.  There was also a lot of debate about the happenings in Israel which kept it interesting and I got to see the council vote on a draft resolution.  It was like my MUN experience was finally fulfilled.  We spent the evenings hanging around the cite not doing anything in particular.

Thursday Melissa, Grace, Elise and I had the day off so we decided to go to the infamous Bain de Paquis that Professor Shain always raved about, it's supposed to be a public beach where you can swim in the lake and hang out, there's a restaurant etc. and because of Shain's obsession with it,  and it being the place where I celebrated my 21st birthday it was on our bucket list of Geneva must dos.  Unfortunately the weather wasn't really cooperating and it was pretty cold.  So we decided to go in the Hammam or sauna/steam room thing.  In our typical American fashion we wore our swimsuits, the Europeans in the typical European fashion did not.  So we were accompanied by two women in their mid to late forties, naked who eventually began to scrub each other down.  Big win for us.  We stayed for probably 15 minutes or so and then hit the road to do some last minute souvenir shopping, enjoy a final kebab and try another reputable ice cream place.  My ice cream was chevre flavored (that is goat cheese) it tastes like cheesecake and was really good with chocolate.

That night we had our final group party and Melissa, Ben and I were in charge of the shopping so we stopped by the cite to shower and went to meet Ben at the Coop (in Switzerland the Co-op to us Colgate kids the Coop).  We enjoyed our final party playing beer pong, flip cup, and 7s (as taught to us by Professor Shain).  Even Lady Garga, our internship coordinator, joined in the fun.  Afterward a couple of us went to another Geneva Bucket list local - Mr. Pickwick's the Ex-Pat bar, I enjoyed a nice frothy Boddingtons (as seen on Friends!)  We stayed until it closed and caught a cab back.

Friday morning was the worst part of the whole trip.  Packing.  Eventually fitting 5 months of our lives into 2 suitcases, 1 carryon and 1 personal item.  After sufficiently depressing ourselves through packing, Melissa, Grace, and I went to old town to have a beer in the finally cleared up weather.  We sat for a while and then went for our final meeting with Shain where we stored all the GSG kitchen stuff for the 2011 group.  Afterward a bunch of us went and got Pizza which we enjoyed on the roof of the cite until we were told that was "illegal" and moved the party downstairs to play kings.  Then we went to a club on Ben's recommendation where we all had a lot of fun.  We made it home in time for me to enjoy my last cite shower, and catch about 2 hours of sleep before getting up to catch the plane home.

Luckily Melissa was looking out for me because I didn't hear my alarm and she knocked on my door at 6:10 am (we had a 6:15 departure time)  Just enough time for me to throw the rest of my stuff in my bag and run out the door (leaving my room a little messier than I would have liked).  But we all got on the bus and to the airport, without being charged for overweight fees (despite all of our bags being at least a little bit overweight, the one thing Geneva didn't over charge us for).  After an uneventful flight from Geneva to Newark, I am currently sitting in Newark waiting for my final flight to Portland.  In the airport I enjoyed a giant hamburger with blue cheese and french fries.

I haven't even made it home yet, and the move hasn't really hit me, but already the changes and cultures are hitting me.  English is the biggest transition so far, but we'll see once I begin re-immersion.

In about 8 hours the trip will be officially over.  It all seems a bit like a dream.

Wine Tasting FOR FREE

Well Monday through Wednesday were spent finishing up papers at work along with a little bit of real work - a research project on the defamation of religions.  The evenings were spent doing more homework and keeping out of the way of people that also had homework.  We did eat our dinner on the roof Monday - that was really exciting.

Thursday we had a meeting with Professor Shain to wrap up the semester a little bit.

Friday I had lunch with Brenda, Melissa, Zunaira, and Grace at Les Recyclables the restaurant at Melissa and Brenda's work - we had to show Zu how great the chocolate fondant was.  After that I headed home and hung out and did a little bit of studying for my final the next day.

Saturday we had a final in the morning for 4 hours (2,000 words ~ 6 pgs) After the final it was "les caves ouverts" this meant almost all of the Genevois Wineries were open to the public for free tasting.  We got on the bus and after some slight confusion trying to figure out where and how to get there we eventually ended up at the first winery.  We got to sit at a table and request different kinds of wine and got to drink them for free.  We tried three at the first one (I bought a bottle of my favorite) and then headed to the next one where we tried a few more (I tried all the reds) and then went to one last winery, this one had a band and along with wine there was apple juice (for grown ups).  We hung out there for a while trying wine and talking etc. until a glass broke and my toe ended up with a fairly large gash, taking that as our cue to leave we headed out, barely escaping an invite to a Brazilian hosted party, but we made it out almost in one piece with all the same members we had started with!

Sunday morning Melissa and I went to a farmer's market to get vegetables for the week.  It actually ended up being cheaper than the grocery store! When we got back I made an omelette with some of the fresh goat cheese I had bought at the market.  I spent the rest of the day relaxing as the weather was bad so I couldn't do anything outside, and it was Sunday so I couldn't do anything inside, and I couldn't leave Geneva because train tickets were too expensive even to go a short distance.  So I tried to stay out of people's way as many people were still finishing homework and spent the day doing some much needed R&R though after the rate at which I've been moving for the last 5 months, I found myself getting very stir crazy very early and had bad cabin fever.

We now are beginning our last week in Geneva and of our study abroad program.  Feelings are pretty mixed, people are excited to be done writing papers, and see friends and family, but we are also sad to be leaving the place and people we've spent the last 5 months with.  It's a weird feeling to be leaving because it's truly the end to a once in a lifetime experience.  The general mood floating around the cite is sullen a lot of comments about "this is the last time we will..." But there's also strong feelings of accomplishment and pride.  Nobody really has any regrets.

Happy: to be leaving

Sad: to be leaving

Nervous about: leaving

What's there in Geneva to See?

Thanks to the national Swiss holiday of Pentecost we all had a day off of work today, a couple of us decided to use the opportunity to do some long over due sightseeing.

Melissa, Grace, Olga, an unusually pleasant Parker and I started by taking a ride up the FUNicular to the top of the mountain that I can see out my window, it was so exciting to actually be on top of the mountain I see every day.  From the top of the funicular we hiked up a little further and sat and had a picnic lunch.  We all packed separate lunches and listened to music and had a little beer at the top of the mountain with a view of Geneva and Lac Leman on one side and the French alps on the other.  We then hiked back down to the funicular and made our way back to ground level.

We then took the bus downtown, dropping off Olga on the way and, due to my insistence on accomplishing all things touristy today, we stopped by to see the flower clock, unfortunately it was being reseeded and was thus even lamer than ever due to it really being more of a weed clock today.  We met up with Katie and Zunaira near the Jet d'Eau and went back to get some of the best ice cream in the world and walked toward the jet with our ice cream.  When we pointed out the pedal boats we had rented Parker decided they were not up to his boating standards and decided to head back to the cite with Zu and Katie.  Melissa, Grace and I proceeded to our 4 person pedal boat complete with Toboggan (aka SLIDE!) and pedaled our way out into the middle of Lake Leman where we sat back, relaxed in the sun, and enjoyed some beer while listening to some music.  Eventually my need to pee overcame my fear of the cold water and I jumped into the Lake, the initial shock was such that I couldn't really speak and the need to urinate was momentarily suspended and my graceful climbing onto the boat had never been better.  But Grace and Melissa soon followed suit jumping into the Lake, the water was clean and felt very different from normal water-so refreshing.  We obviously used our slide and did the standard jumping into the water pictures and were disappointed when our hour and a half rental was over far too soon and we pedaled back to shore.

Our dip inspired another trip to the best ice cream in the world and we were able to exercise enough self restraint to only purchase one boule (scoop) each.  Then we caught the bus over to the Parc de Bastion where the giant chess boards are located, the tourist attraction we had been eager to visit since we first passed it and took a couple pictures followed by a game of very poor strategy between me and Grace (I blame the heat for impacting my logical decisions) and then we caught the bus three and headed back to the cite where we showered and fixed dinner and ate outside on our exclusive roof.  After dinner we made coffee in order to force ourselves to work.  I was more productive this evening then I had been all day yesterday when I cooped myself up inside to do work so I could have this wonderful day of enjoyment-and while the work yesterday was minimal this was easily the best day we've had in Geneva.

Biggest Mystery: Despite a plethora of emails few GSG members were lured to our day of fun and excitement

Finally: We played chess in the chess park!

So Close: to being DONE with finals!!!!

I Spy...

Monday morning our boss was in Spain, but we were supposed to be at the office in order to wait for a delegation from Spain who was holding a conference on Tuesday at the UN, so we went in to the office, with no assignments and did homework, waiting for Spain to show up which, they of course never did.  The one work related task I was able to do was accompany our new coworker from India to the United Nations to sign up for her "ALL ACCESS PASS!" aka UN badge.  Fortunately, I was able to finish quite a bit of homework.  That night I polished off my 25 page research paper for Professor Kott.

Tuesday we were supposed to attend and take notes on the conference that Spain had come to hold.  Our boss though that the badges we had acquired to use during the UPR would extend through this conference, they did not.  Alison had forgotten her UN library badge so we had to make a whole to do about getting inside which of course alerted security to our presence.  After my backpack went through with my water bottle (which I've taken into the UN many a time), I was told to drink out of it, which I did, it is a camelback so it has a straw which I was drinking out of and the security guard said, no drink drink, and I continued, until she made me take the top off and was like I told you to drink and then she saw the straw and everything became clear.  Then we tried to register for the conference with the forms our boss had handed us before she ran off to the meeting reminding us what room it was in as her coat flew behind her.  So we tried to register but couldn't, and then the security guards made sure we didn't get into the conference so we returned to the office to do homework etc. and our boss didn't return until later, later being 5:30.  She asked what happened and when we told her she basically told us we should have just snuck by the UN security guards and that we all learned a lesson.  Unfortunately for her sneaking by intergovernmental security forces is NOT in my unpaid internship job description.

Wednesday work involved more homework all day long but more importantly OUR FINAL CLASS WITH KOTT! and TURNING IN MY 25 PAGE PAPER!!! HORRAY!!!  To celebrate we thought we would try the free champagne bar again.  However apparently when the next day isn't a national holiday it's not nearly as crowded.  This means 7 GSG members and maybe 10 other people? What is this the best kept secret in Geneva or something? 

Thursday at work we found out our boss was taking Friday off to make her long weekend longer (DAY OFF FRIDAY!) then she asked us when we came into the office not to let strangers poke around as we've had issues with spies... (what?) apparently they're convinced that certain governments have spies coming to check out our stuff-and apparently they have a decent case.  

Since I had Friday off (or I just came in really late and left really early) I planned on meeting Melissa and Brenda for lunch.  Then we went to Starbucks and Melissa's dad met up with her!! I finished another paper and relaxed the rest of the evening with beer and pizza on the roof.  Then we had heard about a club that was supposed to be low key with good music so we thought we'd check it out.  Music good, atmosphere good, creepy older men offering to buy you drinks bad, only about 20 people inside bad.  Do people in this city EVER go out?? But we stayed for a couple hours anyway dancing.

Saturday morning I went to a cafe with Grace and we did homework for a while.  Then we got some Kebab and walked over to the Jet d'Eau and saw it up close and personal.  The weather was AMAZING, so we stopped in an ice cream place that looked good-it had a line out the door, and we both got banana and chocolate ice cream which was some of the best ice cream I've ever had: Arlecchino.  http://www.larlecchino.ch/4598.html <-- SO GOOD! Then we stopped at McDonalds to do a little bit more work (it was cheaper than Starbucks and on the way to the grocery store), and did our weekly grocery shopping.  Since it was so nice a couple of us decided to play Beer Pong outside which was fun, the weather was beautiful.  Afterward I was so tired I fell asleep by 10:30... whoops! 

Best Discovery: Arlecchino

Most Excited For: Monday Sight Seeing

Ready to: Eat chipotle and see everybody again

and then we went to Starbucks to do work, and then we went to Starbucks to do work, and then we went to Star...

Wednesday night, Wednesday night... I shall tell you what I remember of Wednesday night (try not to read too between the lines there...) After Kott's class we finally decided to try a night out in Geneva.  For a city that is proclaimed by that lovely Brooklyn woman in Venice (refer to earlier blog post) as, "expensive and boring!" (accent is necessary when reading that quote, we sure found an exciting and cheap way to do it.  You could go the whole night and spend exactly $0 and still be quite out of your right mind.  Club Platinum is THE place to be for those on the cheap in Geneva-but only on Wednesday night-Ladies Night. We went to the club, nobody had to pay to get in and there was free champagne all night.  The only things we paid for were checking our coats (note to self next time don't wear one) and the cab ride home (if necessary we could have walked).  Anyways the club was fun and very budget friendly.

Thursday was a national holiday in Switzerland, the Ascension of the Lord so nobody had work this day-a perfect opportunity to sleep off club platinum for a little bit.  Once semi rested we headed to Starbucks to continue working on our papers.  We spent several hours at Starbucks and then headed back to the cite to eat dinner and then do some MORE work on our papers.  Quite an enjoyable day!

Friday morning I once again had to journey to Apple because this time my charger broke! (I'm still waiting on the call that says the part is in for my optical drive...) so that was annoying, this computer has really seen better days.  After that Grace and I (we both had the day off again), went to Melissa's work to have lunch with her and Brenda.  Their job supports micro-financing and has a cafe to help employ refugees so we thought we'd try it.  The food was actually really good (the coffee was mediocre) and the chocolate fondant was AMAZING (like chocolate lava cake).  Grace and I then headed to Starbucks to do some more work for the day.  Then headed back to the cite to eat dinner and... you guessed it! Do more writing!!!

Saturday morning began with our weekly grocery shopping and then literally doing work for the rest of the day.  The one thing that made this day a little more exciting was a planned a Fiesta for the group to have! We did it potluck style and everyone brought something and all but 2 of us sat downstairs in the common room together eating.  It was a lot of fun and nice that everyone took a break to interact with humans for a little bit.  After dinner I hung out for a while with some of the group going crazy due to all the work we've been doing (we actually did a love train congo line down the hall ways-did I just post that online for everybody to read?)

Sunday I slept in-mostly on accident and then for something new and different I went to Starbucks to do some work! I ended up spending a lot of the time there watching the live stream of Colgate's graduation online-

CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 2010!!! YOU DID IT!!!  

Now as I write this blog I procrastinate my night of doing more work!

Hopefully next week will bring something a little bit more exciting to write about.

1 year from yesterday: I will be faced with the "G" word

3 weeks from yesterday: I will be climbing off a plane back on American soil reunited with family whom I haven't seen in 5 months

14 weeks from yesterday (more or less): I will be once again on campus reuniting with friends whom I haven't seen in a year

(Short) Project Week

Work Week two was designated as "Project Week." Alison and I each received individual project assignments to be working on this week. When we originally received them we were told to do a "Mapping Exercise." When asked if we understood what that was I asked if it was like a comprehensive outline (we'd both received large stacks of print offs). She said no and asked if we knew what a map was then proceeded to explain to us how a map has tram lines and one way streets etc. so you can find your way. This still did not really help us with understanding what exactly she wanted us to do for our "mapping exercise." So when Monday morning kicked off project week I asked again for clarification on my defamation of religions project-I got a little more direction but not enough to be confident in my work. Due to lack of direction and mass amounts of homework I split my time between my project and my 20-25 page paper on the Yugoslav Wars. However, at about 10 am a class of Italian students came for the training session on the UPR that is held in our office so we told our boss we were going to the UN to work until the class was over. This information seemed to fluster her and asked if we would be returning, we told her we would and when would she like us back? She then asked if we would be back after lunch and we said no problem and headed to the Serpent bar at the UN to do some work

pictures of the bar where we work from the UN-in the one on the right you can kind of see Lac Leman
After lunch we returned to the office, and continued our split attentions until 6:00 then when we were about to leave the woman from Kenya asked me for help sending an email attachment.  Normally this would have been very easy-however the settings on the computer were in Korean-not my first language.  I was eventually able to navigate through the Korean and convince her more or less that she couldn't just staple the hard copy to the computer for it to work and then it was time to go to class with Professor Krause.  His class is only one tram stop from our office which is nice.  AND he decided to weigh our final grades heavier on the paper than on the final exam (which is good as we haven't really been keeping up with the readings since our pile of work landed squarely on our heads).  After class we headed back to the cite and went to sleep.

Tuesday morning when we arrived at the office our boss quickly showed us to a room (the third of the three in the office) where we could work uninterrupted by the class and then not end up at the UN.  So we now work in a smaller room with a pseudo desk set up and spent the day again splitting our work between our papers and our projects.  The woman from Kenya came in to say goodbye because she was headed back to Nairobi as the UPR on Kenya had officially ended.  Then a little before four our boss had to leave to pick somebody up from the airport so we got off early.  I headed back to the Cite where I hung out for a little bit before making dinner and then went up to our classroom in the cite to do some more homework-quite the exciting life I lead these days.

Wednesday we went to work working on our projects and our papers (surprise surprise). And later tonight we have Kotts class (which I already know will go poorly), for dinner since it's a quick turn around between work and class dinner will be purchased from the chicken man who parks in the parking lot of the cite and sells chicken on Wednesdays-yes this is a real life thing.  After class we are going to go to ladies night at Club Platinum-this is where I tried to go out on my birthday but failed due to silly music department policies at Colgate-so we are trying again.  Hopefully there will be some good updates from that.

And in about 4 hours my work week will be over because we have Thursday off as the Assumption is a national holiday in Switzerland (Europeans take every opportunity-more than I do to take work off).  Then our boss is going to Spain until Monday so she said we could have Friday and Monday off too!  Yugoslavia HERE I COME (but only in the paper writing sense...)

Goals: 

• to finish the outline of my first paper tonight
• to see some of Geneva this weekend
• to catch up on sleep
• to have an amazing time out in Geneva as we have yet to successfully enjoy the nightlife 

If we Could Turn Back Time... WE WOULD

So, day two-we once again show up at 9:00 am only to find the door locked again, so we sat down in the hallway to wait for somebody to arrive and open the door. Eventually the woman from Kenya came (at 9:35). We went in and read some documents we'd been given on Kenya (our "project" for the week was to report on the UPR of Kenya) and waited for our second class to begin. This time along with Adrian came Elise and Olga from the study group. We all had to sit again and listen to the official version of The UN for dummies. We had a meeting with a delegate from Argentina essentially trying to lobby him to raise "our issues" at the Kenya UPR. The two women (our boss and the lady from Kenya) went through their whole spiel for him to say at the end that he really already knows what he's going to say. After that we attended part of the UPR on Lesotho. We headed back to the office, where our boss eventually showed up at 5:58 to have an hour long meeting with us. Allowing us to get off at 7 instead of 6 like we were supposed to. However one of the most beneficial things that happened was that she told us we should come in at 9 or 9:30 but not 9 and then gave us a key for when we get stuck outside. That night after dinner we did some homework-I had a presentation on Wednesday so I worked mostly on that.




Inside the UPR Meeting Room (UPR Kenya)



Wednesday morning we didn't arrive until 9:30 and it was glorious. Today we had a "side event" on Kenya, these are supposed to be informative meetings between actually sessions of the UN to learn more about topics being discussed and are usually hosted by NGOs in some capacity. This one brought in 4 people from Kenya to discuss the human rights issues. After that we attended more UPR sessions and then at 4 we had a meeting with a delegate from Korea. While this meeting went slightly better than our meeting with Argentina the results were more or less the same. After work we had class with Professor Kott and I gave my presentation. You could really tell she wanted to be there even less than we did and was quickly frustrated by our lack of focus. But we got through it and finally finished our day at 9:30.

Thursday was the big day we'd been waiting for! Kenya was up for their UPR. We were there at 9 to take notes and spent the next 3 hours typing furiously trying to keep up with the two minute speeches. The goal was to find out which countries raised which issues-especially the ones we lobbied. After the UPR we had lunch and headed back to the office. Our boss had gone to Paris and the Kenyan woman had some follow up meetings so we were able to squeeze in some homework before the Kenyan woman got there and told us the three of us needed to consolidate our reports on the Kenya UPR, we worked on this for a while but then decided to finish it the next day as it went very slowly (and our boss said she didn't need it until Monday morning). After dinner I did some more homework!

Friday, as our boss had told us we no longer needed to attend the training sessions with Adrian we avoided them by coming to the UN to do work. There is a nice bar/cafe that we are able to work in. So we finished our consolidation report-emailed it off and I used the opportunity to actually have access to the library to print some research for my papers (the UN library is only open during normal business hours when we now all have to work making it difficult to ever go). Since our boss was away and we'd finished our work for the week it was a pleasant opportunity to get some homework done. We had a meeting scheduled with professor Shain for that night to check in on the internships etc. When he finally raised the issue of how manageable our work load seemed I told him (as most people were awkwardly nodding) that nobody wanted to seem whiny and we understood what we were all committed to do but that the work load seemed really really heavy this got into a fairly emotionally heated discussion in which he told us things like his group in 2008 had a lot of work and in fact they all stayed in the cite in their pajamas doing work for 2 weeks straight to which our response was WE'D LOVE TO HAVE THAT TIME!!! But the discussion ended unfortunately-and even some of the students were unsympathetic (why I don't understand as lightening the work load would hurt nobody), after the meeting with Shain eventually ended we spent some time venting to each other which ended in a dance party outside on the roof of the cite which we can access through some of our windows.

Saturday was an early morning to start the mountain of paper writing we all have to do. We went to Starbucks and worked for a couple hours, than we went to Manor (our favorite grocery store and recommended restaurant) for lunch. I had an appointment at Apple as my computer is once again not fully functioning-this time the front load optical drive is broken-luckily it's a one day repair so I should be able to drop it off on a work day and pick it up that evening. I headed back to Starbucks for a little bit more work and then we did our grocery shopping (The grocery stores also maintain regular business hours and are closed Sundays so Saturday is the only day we can shop). That night I just ate dinner and hung out for a bit in the cite before bed.

Sunday morning I went to church (en francais) and then went to support Melissa in her first HALF MARATHON!! Her goal was to finish in under 2 hours. We cheered for her as she ran by us the first time and then while she was off running we went to Starbucks for some HOMEWORK!! We went back to catch Melissa as she finished her race in about 1 hour and 47 minutes!! We went to a cafe for lunch (just some hummus and coffee as we'd been planning to go out to dinner) and did a little more work. I was exhausted so decided to go home and sleep for a half an hour and then do some more work but I slept through my alarm by 2 hours... whoops! So I only woke up in time to take a shower before dinner. Melissa, Zu, Grace and I then went to Chez ma Cuisine (another recommended restaurant) which has a very simple menu, I had chicken, potatoes, and a salad with an upside down apple pie thing for dessert it was delicious! By the time we got home and I fixed my lunch and dinner for the next couple days there was really only time to go to bed.

All the homework in case you were wondering:

20-25 page paper on Ethnic Cleansing in Yugoslavia

4,000 words on: Democracy in Russia

15-20 page: final for Shain

8 hour final exam for Krause: TBD

The Catch: Doing all of this while leaving for work at 8:30 am, returning at 7 pm (if we get out on time), night class 2 nights/week, no library/printer access...

Hello Geneva Goodbye Railpass

Monday morning-so begins the final stage of our tripartite semester. This final 5 weeks will comprise of 3 weeks of 2 of our classes-at night to account for our 5 week, full time internships we will be working during the day. I will be spending the next five weeks working with Alison and an organization called Pax Romana, it is a Catholic Non Governmental Organization (NGO) that works to promote Human Rights:

http://www.icmica-miic.org/

So we were all to report to our organizations Monday morning at 9 am. Alison and I arrived at 9 am found the building went up to the 4th floor found a door with several organizations on it including Pax Romana and thus proceeded to open it. There was a long dark hallway, I felt around for a light switch eventually finding it and illuminated an all white-fairly ghetto looking hallway, at the end of which was another door with Pax Romana written on it. We tried the door only to find it locked (no this is not the beginning to my new mystery novel but actually how our first day began.) After about 20 minutes somebody came and unlocked the door for us.

We went inside and saw a small office with bookshelves on every possible wall, there were two private offices to the left and a slightly larger conference room on the right-this is where we went with the woman who let us in. She explained that she was from Kenya and here for her countries review-we didn't really know what this meant so we nodded and continued to awkwardly sit at the table until our boss got there. When she finally arrived, she welcomed us and more or less began quizzing us on our knowledge of UN acronyms (as you can imagine the UN has many acronyms very few of which we knew), she also seemed to be under the impression that we had previously worked internships with various organizations in Geneva, when we explained these were actually visits with a short tour, lecture and question and answer period she seemed slightly annoyed and began lecturing us on what the UN was and the UPR (Universal Periodic Review) After a little bit of lecturing she explained to us that without a more comprehensive knowledge of these topic we wouldn't be able to report on the UN very well. So, we were to attend a training being held there everyday from 9-12. Today it started at 10, a man named Adrian was leading it-she explained that attendance would fluctuate, but today it was me Alison, the Kenyan woman and Adrian. Adrian is a short, sort of disproportionate man who looks kind of like he could easily be drawn as a caricature of what one would expect a european professor to look like. Adrian basically spent 2 hours explaining the very basics of the UN and the UPR, none of which could have helped us to answer our bosses earlier questions and all of which had been covered in our academic course on international institutions. After the course ended we were brought to the United Nations to receive our badges so we could attend the Universal Periodic Review. After receiving our badges we actually got to sit in on the UPR. Basically a country brought a board of "experts" who reported on the countries state of human rights and then the rest of the countries could sign up for 2 minute speeches where they congratulated, recommended and asked questions on the report (all of these speeches were of course done before hand so didn't really address the recently delivered report), then the country was able to respond to the speeches. The entire proceedings are 3 hours per country. After this first session ended, we went down to the UN cafeteria for lunch. Our boss had told us to eat there and then return to the office, which we did only to find nobody there. The third (and from what we can tell final) person who works in the office finally came in and told us that our boss was at a meeting with Japan and would be back around 4:30 and that we should read our manuals (which should really be titled: The Idiots Guide to the UN). So we skimmed it and then did some homework, internet stuff, napping etc. Until our boss came back to do our briefing. She gave us several topics which we could choose for our individual projects but that we should wait and think about them before we told her what they would be. Then we were able to leave for the day to head over to our class with Professor Krause.

We were all much better dressed than we normally were for his class however our snappy outfits didn't quite match our already tested attention spans from spending 9 hours at work. So while we were all more wound up and chatty than usual-very little of our focus was on the narrow versus broad definitions of security we were supposed to be discussing. After class, we caught the tram and boarded bus three to finally end our day around 10 pm (We had all more or less left for work around 8 am). This left little energy for tackling any homework so we went to bed.

This post is already too long to continue for the week so I'll try to do the next couple days in a different one.

Highlight of Day 1: Walking down the dark hall being very nervous about what to expect

Lowlight of Day 1: realizing the actual length of our days...

Behind the Iron Curtain

12 days, 7 cities, 5 countries, and 3 night trains later we've returned from our final trip.

We left Wednesday night after class-this meant sitting through our already lengthy class for 2 and a half hours then bolting back to our rooms to grab our already packed luggage and catch the bus to the train station. A couple quick changes and we were on our first night train to Berlin. Fitting 6 girls and almost 2 weeks worth of luggage in one surprisingly small train compartment is exactly what it sounds like. We arrived in Berlin around 7 in the morning-and contrary to what we all thought we were not staying in a hotel but another hostel. The hostel was fairly lively with a bar and everything (Jaegarmeister around the clock) the only downside was Melissa's bed which broke the first night and despite badgering the desk on several occasions stayed broken all three nights. After we all dropped our stuff off and tried to freshen up as much as possible we went to go see the Berlin Wall, the most interesting part of this section of the wall was that when I had to guess which side was east and which side was west I was wrong. After perusing the wall we headed for a meeting with Transparency International-I believe the final count was 7 people fell asleep (haha not me suckas!!). We grabbed some lunch (Kebab-I heard they were invented in Berlin but I say that's up for debate). After lunch we had a guided tour at the Memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust it was a field of giant gray slabs reminiscent of the Jewish cemetery in Prague. After returning to the hostel we went to visit (on our own) some of the museums in Berlin since they were... FREE-just how I like it, and since they were free we only had to see the cool things and we could ignore all the other intellectual stuff since we weren't paying-we choose to see the bust of Nephrodite and the gates of Babylon both were pretty damn cool-I don't know if I'd ever seen anything so old. After the museums we went to get Indian food for dinner (I mean we'd already done German food and none of us have eaten anything "ethnic" other than Kebab in forever)-the food was good despite some fairly heated debate on diversity at Colgate-quite the hot button issue.

The next morning we had a bike tour scheduled. We biked all over Berlin and saw Check point Charlie, The TV tower, The only surviving Nazi building (which is now where the tax collectors work so I'm sure you all understand what a beloved building it is) The tour concluded with our tour guide explaining how the artifacts in one of the museums make him horny-yes we were all as surprised by that as you must be. After the bike tour we went to the DDR museum and danced the night away-just kidding it was about life during the Soviet Regime and it was a hands on museum with everything from a full scale apartment model to pictures taken at an FKK beach (nude). We had some time before our next visit so we all and I mean all sat down together with a ten liter mini tap to kill some time. Our final appointment of the day was a tour of the Jewish Museum, the most interesting and longest part of this tour was the "interactive art" three pieces designed so the viewer actually goes into them and feels disoriented, cold, hopeless all depending on the piece but they were very interesting-my Dad would have hated them. After the museum we got thai food-the Indian had really hit the spot and left us wanting more and then hit the sack.

We returned the next morning to the bike place this time renting bikes in an attempt to go to Potsdam for the day. Getting 18 bikes on a train at the same time is quite the experience, especially when there's some sort of wine festival that everybody is trying to get to. But despite handlebars and foot pedals jabbing into all kinds of places not suitable to mention here, we all made it on and off the train in the right locations. We biked through a park in Potsdam that took us by several Schlosses and gardens that were all beautiful then we got some sausage and beer for lunch followed by a visit to the location of the Potsdam conference. We then rode through a part of the town that looked like Amsterdam and back to the train station. When we got back to Berlin we had some time so we went to climb the Reichstag and we got to the top as the sun was setting-it was beautiful. Then a couple of us went to a restaurant in what Barry described as a "posh" section and we had some amazing food and wine before heading back to the hostel to celebrate Ben's birthday! We all got turned away from the gay club we were trying to go to so we had to settle for a regular old straight club but the night was fun despite the usual hiccups of combative personalities.

We woke up the next morning and got on a train for Prague. When we got off the train it was quite warm and we walked to our hotel which turned out once again to not really be a hotel but this time it was because it was a BOTEL-and yes this is exactly what it sounds like a boat floating on the river that also served-well only served-as a floating hotel, kind of like a cruise but without the moving and planned fun. After we checked into the Botel we had a walking tour, this was 3+ hours of learning which buildings in Prague were Art Neauveau versus Art Deco, for such a small city the tour was about 2 hours too long. After the tour that never ends ended, we crossed the Charles Bridge and found a cute place for dinner where I had goulash in a bread bowl and a plethera of meat (so eastern european)-then we headed back to the Botel to be rocked gently into our dreams.


The next morning we had a 7 hour meeting at Radio Free Europe, and despite the length it was actually a really cool place-we even got to sit in on the editors meeting. After the meeting we had some free time before our night train so we went up and walked around the castle for a little bit. Then we grabbed a quick dinner and picked up our stuff from the Botel and headed to the train station to catch our second night train to Krakow. We arrived in Krakow around 7 and got to our hotel with barely enough time to "freshen up" and eat breakfast before e getting on our van/bus to Aushwitz. After a 2 hour drive we arrived and did a 4 hour tour of Aushwitz and Berkenau. It was not at all what I was expecting. So much of it looked so normal but I think that was the scariest thing of all that so many normal elements added up to one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century. After we returned to Krakow we were all feeling perky so we went to dinner and hung out in the hotel for a while and went to bed.

Learning about RFE 

We had the morning to see a little bit of Poland, we visited the castle and saw some of the State rooms and a cave that ended by a giant statue of a fire breathing dragon. On the way back to the hotel to pick our stuff up we did a little shopping. We got on our train to Vienna which ended up being diverted through Slovakia and 4 hours late into Vienna which meant getting to Vienna after all sources of food were closed. Fortunately the hotel had one of the best hotel breakfasts ever. That day we visited three institutions-I don't even know if I could tell you what they were. OSCE followed by OPEC followed by something about nuclear weapons. That night Prof Shain set us up with somebody our age to take us out to a wine bar. It was a lot of fun and while I didn't get to talk to her very much-and I couldn't tell you anything about her I did have great Sloshy Talk with Ben. After the wine bar we went to this club that was not that great so most of us grabbed a cab back to the hotel.

We had the morning to spend in Vienna so we walked over to St. Stephansplatz and then took the metro out to Shonnbrunn palace to do the Labrynth. We grabbed our stuff from the hotel and then got on the train again to Budapest, we got to the hotel and since it had been Axel's birthday on Aushwitz day we wanted to go out to dinner to celebrate his 20th birthday so Melissa and I asked for a recommendation of cheap hungarian food that could accomodate 19 people-the restaurant was posh, moderately priced, and NOT Hungarian (not to mention Prof HATED it). Afterward we tried to find          
a ruin bar and what we found must have been similar but it was outside and had gravel on the ground and was really chill-for Colgate people it was sort of like Beta Beach with less drunk freshmen. We hung out for a while and then headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we had a bike tour in Budapest which was really cool and the weather was great. It happened to be May Day so there were all kinds of May Day festivals going on that were sponsored by the communist party and had hot dog stands with confederate flags on them-the perfect place for Americans! So we did some souvenir shopping through the festivities. Then we went to the cathedral and climbed to the top (with the help of a little elevator). Budapest looked very different than a lot of the panoramic views we'd gotten. Then we had our last night train back to Geneva and our Eastern experience was over.

Now our rail passes expire on Wednesday. It was the most depressing ride to the cite on bus 3 EVER. It's like when Christmas is over and you feel depressed because it's over-only this time it's not coming again (shout out to Melissa). This begins the 3rd and final section of our semester where we begin our full time internships, and we have about 75 pages of writing to do, plus we still have to go to two classes a week. This will be cake.

Sad Thing: Starting Full time Work

Sadder Thing: Having a million papers to write

Saddest Thing: Rail Pass is expired on Wednesday (RIP)

Excuse me as I stir this with my Slovenian Spoon!

Monday we had a meeting with Doctors without Borders or Medcens Sans Frontier (MSF) and of course class. Tuesday was mostly spent reading and a trip to the United Nations Library for some fun and enjoyment-the library has no wireless so you have to use desktop computers which of course have "easy to use" European keyboards. Wednesday was more reading and planning for papers-which was made especially easy by the fact that library resources despite being all online were not working remotely. Thursday morning Grace and I went to the train station to get our tickets for the weekend. Then we rushed back to the Cite to pack and book a hostel. We visited the ICRC (The Red Cross) which mostly involved a few select individuals arguing animatedly about whether or not terrorist are protected under the Geneva convention. Grace and I had to duck out early (although really it was on time and everyone else stayed late) to catch our 5:45 train to... LJUBLJANA (Loo-blee-ah-nah). We were on a quick train to Zurich and then transfered to a night train to Ljubljana, Slovenia. However, unlike previous night trains that had had at least reclining seats or something this was a regular train car with regular seats, luckily we had 4 seats to ourselves and I brought my sleep sack so I made myself at home in front of two very large eastern european men and dozed off. Going to Slovenia we were expecting something very baron, gray, run down and all together scary-but something new.

We arrived in Ljubljana at about 8:00 o'clock in the morning and checked into our hostel-which we were luckily able to get into right away. Our room was an 8 person dorm (though we were only sharing with 2 Fins who were there for job training?) and very spacious and clean. We left the hostel and made our way to the center of town where we found a place to sit down and have breakfast-toast (toasted ham and cheese sandwich) and a cappuccino. Our whole bill was 5.40 euro-that's together. Then we went to the tourist office to ask what the main attractions of Ljubljana were (since I very smartly forgot my guide book) We were given a nice little free booklet of the main attractions of Ljubljana as well as day trips etc. So we started visiting the famous sights. We started with a really cute outdoor market of mostly food and weird clothes. Then the castle-we rode a funicular up the hill-very cheap-and got to the castle, it was FREEEEEEEE! We only paid a small amount to get to the top of the watch tower. The castle was interesting, it had an art exhibit. Then we funiclared down to see the other famous Ljubljanan sights. There were lots of churches, the town hall (with an art piece of half circles and pyramids representing the breasts and uteri of women...), a library, and a dragon bridge. Everything was really cute and quaint. After we walked around everything we got some lunch. The woman told us the specials were pumpkin soup and pumpkin risotto-which we ordered and turned out to be zucchini. Again amazingly affordable. After lunch we took a break from the cultural stuff to do some shopping for Grace's birthday.

We stopped back at the hostel to shower and then went to dinner. We ended up going to a "Mexican Fusion" restaurant-which was actually just Mexican, I had a chicken burrito and Tequila disguised as a Margarita and a maple syrup crepe for dessert. After dinner we were strolling down the street by the river that had all the bars on it and it was very lively and everyone was outside drinking. Then, accidentally we walked by this bar Grace had found on the internet before we left that had buy one get two drinks and a "mystery bathroom" that was supposed to be difficult to find so we went in. The drinks were all inappropriately and sexually named so we of course proceeded to order the most offensive ones we could find. The bar was decorated with skeletons and was very crowded-it had a very cool vibe to it. Being tired from our night train we just went home afterward and passed out.

The next morning we woke up as late as we could to still get our free breakfast-cereal, bread, nutella, and milk that wasn't refrigerated. As they only had instant coffee we decided to wait and spring the one euro for the cappuccino later. After breakfast we spent some time on the computer looking up day trips and settled on one to a cave. We had some time before our train left so we got our cappuccinos and then revisited the outdoor market which had many more exciting booths as it was now a weekend. We got ourselves some lovely souvenirs (how many times are you in Slovenia??) including a free wooden spoon that was being handed out to promote a Slovenian cooking company and the cinema-why both with a wooden spoon? Your guess is as good as mine. Then we walked back to the main square. We heard some music so we walked over to see what was going on and it was men in wet suits jumping off one of the bridges into the river, on the same bridge were some people in old fashioned clothing dancing. The men made quite a splash (ahahhahahahhaha) and it was a very fun lively environment. We only left because we had to catch our train to the cave. When we got to the train station we went to tourist information to try and figure out how to get from the train station to the caves. We asked the man working there and he joked with us that it was too far to walk (though we didn't pick up on his sarcasm). We got on the train and I put my feet up. Then, one of the conductors passed by and goes you can't put your shoes on the seat, that's one hundred euro. I just looked at him with a blank face. And he asked, "do you do that in your country?" I responded truthfully-yes. Then he goes that's one hundred euros-now I have to call the police. And then he walked away. My heart was beating fairly quickly at this point but the police never showed up.

We got to the town-Postojna, where the caves were and walked toward where the signs were pointing-we only got slightly confused but found them fairly easily. We bought our tickets to our tour and since we had some time, we enjoyed a pre spelunking beer. Once you enter the cave you get on a little train that goes much faster than one would expect and enter deep into the middle of the cave (that's what she said). A tour guide takes you through pointing out the various kinds of Stalagmites, and Stalactites which are EVERYWHERE it was SO cool-the cave was over 10,000 years old and everything was so amazing. After the tour we took the little train back to the exit and were both very pleased with our day trip decision. We returned to Ljubljana and had Kebab for dinner, and went back to the hostel to shower and then to go explore as much of the nightlife as two girls in Slovenia can. When we got to the city center we heard loud music and we went to check it out. It turned out to be a giant free concert. We walked over and went to listen for a little bit. As we were leaving to go find some dessert a man called out to us, "Did you get to Postojna?" we were confused and I'm sure our looks showed it-so he repeated, "Did you get to Postojna?" still confused he tried again-"the caves?" It was the man from tourist information earlier! We told him we did and went on our way with a new understanding of how few tourists must frequent Ljubljana. We bought some nutella crepes off the street and went back to the skeleton bar for some more inappropriately titled fun. Afterward we went back to the concert where a man was playing some kind of turtle shell looking instrument and another a flute. We watched for a while intrigued by the foreignness of the instruments (and the significantly smaller crowd) and then headed back to our hostel.

We woke up early the next morning to begin our twelve hour journey back to Geneva. We got from Ljubljana to Austria fine (I had a morning Kebab for breakfast) and then due to construction-and maybe the giant Icelandic ash cloud we were about 20 minutes late getting into Salzburg-we arrived about 3 minutes after our train was supposed to have left so we ran to the departures board and luckily it was running late as well and thus we didn't miss it! A long train from Salzburg to Zurich-still late, and then our sprint home from Zurich to Geneva, a quick ride on bus 3 and we were back in the cite 13 hours later in time to do laundry and have a very late dinner while ringing in Grace's 21st birthday.

Monday morning Grace had a meeting with our internship coordinator so Melissa and I surprised her with her Starbucks drink of choice. Then we threw Grace a small champagne brunch with mimosas and fruit and little cakes while presenting her with an array of "Hello Kitty" gifts. A fairly strung out visit to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and class and then we had our class party at Professor Shain's apartment. We had raclette, chicken and an amazing birthday cake for Grace. We played never have I ever and stayed for a couple hours-how one poor professor and his wife managed to host 17 college students in one small apartment I'll never know but it was very, very nice of them. Tuesday more class and a long nap and now we are all preparing for our upcoming Eastern Trip-which means Mom and Dad-I will not be able to post pictures for about 2 weeks so hear me now that is why-I'm not bringing my computer!

Highlight: Visiting somewhere completely new and learning that it wasn't a scary place but actually really cool and cute and safe and one of my favorite cities.

Lowlight: Not have Melissa along as she was off in Paris being cultural and sophisticated-kind of like missing my right arm and left leg.

Thanks Dad!!

I awoke early Friday morning to start my spring break. My first stop was alone (eek!), I was spending Friday and Saturday by myself because dear ol' papa wasn't going to arrive until late Saturday night. So I was off to explore my individuality in Fussen-the home to the real inspiration for Disney's Cinderella's castle! But I digress-I awoke early Friday morning got dressed grabbed my already packed bags and prepared breakfast and lunch and went outside to catch the bus-I checked the time table (alas the bus was unexpectedly on holiday hours) There was luckily a bus scheduled to come at 5:30 am and then 5:50 am-my train was at 6:15, I checked the time and it was 5:28 (this was on my iPhone so it should have been very accurate) PERFECT TIMING! Or so it would have been if a 5:30 bus had shown up on time... or at all. No buses arrived until 5:50 am. This got me to the train station just in time to bolt from the bus run through the station onto the platform and watch my train pull away-without me on it. Fortunately I was able to take a train a mere 30 minutes later. Unfortunately this meant taking six trains instead of two including 3 of which were 20 minutes or less, and stations that were no more than two tracks and a cement platform. Eventually a made it to Fussen a mere 2 hours later than planned. I checked into my hostel which was run by a small asian woman and her son (who enjoyed crying a lot) and her husband. My room was really cute and I had my own shower-though I shared the WC which was in fact a C (c being closet-it was as wide as I was and not quite as tall). After dropping my stuff off I walked around Fussen a little bit, by the river and through the town. Most things were closed-probably for good friday, but there were lots of Easter decorations and the weather was beautiful. I walked around looking for something I could take back to my room to eat (I wasn't really into the eating alone in a restaurant) but all I could find was some really crappy pizza, so I took that back and called it a day at about 5:45-giving me adequate time to finish my paper that was due at the end of break-and it was especially entertaining as there was no internet.

The next morning I woke up early to see the castles in Fussen. I killed time until what I thought was the tourism office that sold the tickets opened, coffee, pretzels, meandering, when the office finally opened I learned the office I had actually wanted was about 5 km away and I could have been walking there the whole time. So I started walking to where the castles were, it was down this more or less quiet path and you could see the alps all around, the weather was beautiful and it was an enchanting walk especially when the castles came into view it was actually magical (cheesy enough?) I knew when I got to the right area because the tourists were actually everywhere-including many of the infamous Japanese tour buses. Unfortunately because I spent so much time waiting for the wrong tourist office to open I only had time to do one of the castles-so I picked the one that inspired Cinderella's castle. I had a while until my tour time (you could only get into the castle with a guided tour) which gave me time to walk up the hill and over to the bridge with a full view of the castle. Inside the castle was just as beautiful a fairy tale as the outside. We got to see the thrown room, a bedroom, even an artificial cafe that Kind Ludwig had built into the palace. After the tour was over I had enough time to head back down and walk the 5 km back to Fussen and wait for my train to Vienna.

The trip to Vienna went very smoothly, I took a quick metro ride into the city center and the hotel was only about a 3 minute walk (quite a nice change from our hostels in preschool basements train rides away from city centers) I checked into the hotel and waited for Dad to show up. Dad showed up shortly after 11 tired from his long plane ride (he's not used to our rigorous travel schedule) so he came we hugged and reunited and went to bed.

The next morning was Easter Sunday, so we woke up and had the hotel breakfast which was very good (amazing eggs). Then we went to mass at St. Stephan's Cathedral. We didn't get there until about 5 minutes before mass was scheduled to start which mean we got to stand. But, mass was said by the cardinal arch bishop of Vienna and there was an orchestra and choir who sang the hallelujah chorus for the recessional all the pomp and circumstance meant mass lasted 2 hours-but it was an amazing mass. After church we went over to the Hapsburg Apartments, and checked out the Spanish riding school-due to a cough there was no horse show (yes the horses had a severe cough) but we did tour the apartments which involved extensive cutlery exhibits (dad's favorite) and some cool royal apartments. Afterward I was hungry and the weather was beautiful so we sat outside and drank some beer and I had some cheese strudel. We sat enjoying the sun for a while and then walked around more of Vienna-we walked through the gardens and by the parliament and then we happened upon an Easter Market. It seemed like a really cool local thing with traditional music and lots of easter eggs (though way cooler than American Easter eggs) so we had some beer (which we got to keep the glasses) and listened to the music and enjoyed the ambiance. For dinner we checked out a restaurant I found online but there was a line to get in so we decided against it and found a restaurant a couple minutes away and had some amazing wiener schnitzel.

We woke up Monday to another lovely breakfast then visited the Albertina museum with both some fairly cool impressionist art and some weird modern art. Afterward we tried the famous Sacher Torte at the cafe/hotel that claims to have invented the dessert-it was AMAZING-I wasn't expecting it to be so good! Then we went to drop our bags off at the train station-while seemingly simple this turned out to be a fairly complicated task. There was a metro stop with the same name as the train station but it was not in fact the train station. When we finally got to the right train station we tried to buy our train tickets but the train was all sold out. Fortunately there was another train that left slightly later but of course from a different train station so it was back to the incredibly complicated metro. We finally got the train tickets and dropped our bags off and then headed off to Schunbrunn Palace which was far superior to the royal apartments-at least the inside... The outside was cool too but at this point the weather had taken a fairly violent turn for the worse. While Dad thought I was far more miserable than I was (mistake wearing the moccasins... again) coming from Colgate I have experience with worse weather conditions-although the coffee and apple strudel at the top of the giant hill we climbed in the wind and rain was warmly received (I assume by both). After making our way back through the pause in the downpour we stopped at the 3rd of the 3 Easter Markets in Vienna and Dad got a really cute hand made print. We metroed (successfully) back to the city center and after wandering around for quite a while settled on the "Loos American Bar" for some drinks. Afterward we grabbed some Vienna sausages from a street vender-I got some curry sausage and Dad got what appeared to be a hot dog. Then we metroed (again successfully) to the train station to catch our train to Rome.

We booked a night train and due to the difference in prices we decided to book seats instead of beds. It was us and one other guy in this compartment-the seats didn't recline and we seemed to be in for a rough night. Luckily the other guy volunteered to sleep on the unmade top bunk (that wasn't really set up to be a bed) which gave each of us more or less a bed to sleep on (though the favor rested highly in "less") We switched trains in Venice and arrived in Rome. We checked into our hotel which was located in an old Roman tower dropped our stuff off and went to visit the colosseum and forum. We got audio tours in the forum as last time I had NO idea what anything was-this time with the help of the audio tour I had NO IDEA WHAT ANYTHING WAS!!! Nothing was marked at all-but we spent most of our time up on Palentine Hill which I hadn't visited the first time so that was new and exciting. We went back to the hotel to rest a little bit and then headed to dinner. Before dinner we walked by the Trevie and threw our coins in (ensuring a speedy return to Rome-hey it worked last time!) then got dinner near the Trevie (later learning that's the worst place to eat-though I though it was actually pretty good!) Then we went to San Crispino's and I got some tizasty gilattoness.

We woke up pretty early the next morning and had the hotel breakfast-lots of cheese and meat and fresh squeezed juice and then headed over to the Vatican. By the time we got there (an hour after in opened) the line was already beyond the corner of the walls aka really really long. So we decided to give in to one of the tour offers that skipped the lines. We ended up in a tour group with 2 texans, 2 french women, and 3 old people (maybe belgian and greek?) and our tour guide a Berkeley educated Roman woman named Velaria (rhymes with Mahleria) who was an archeologist and gave us a really great tour of the museum which was great since last time we were jogging through. We then visited the basilica and tried to find a priest to bless some stuff for us-a surprisingly difficult task in the headquarters of the Catholic church. By this time I was pretty hungry so we stopped to grab some pizza and then walked slowly toward the Pantheon through a street market and looking for old Roman coins (non existent in Rome believe it or not) After the Pantheon we had to go take a picture of the apartment Mom and Madeleine are going to be staying in when they visit Rome in June-it was right off a really nice little square where we sat and people watched (with some beer and) free hors d'oeuvres. We took a break at the hotel briefly and then went over to Trastevere for dinner-delicious pasta and tiramisu.

We woke up the next morning and had breakfast and then walked to the train station to head to Naples and Pompeii. We caught our train to Naples no problem. We got to Naples and dropped our bags off at the "left luggage" center and then tried to get to Pompeii. This was not as easy as one would think. With no signs and incomplete directions in broken english it took us a while to figure out how to change train companies and find the right train-once we did buy the tickets and find the right train we got on-we stood for about 10 minutes before I realized it was the wrong train-at which point it thankfully hadn't left the station yet though we did have to wait about a half an hour for the next train (my train skills were very clear to my Dad at that point). We did eventually get to Pompeii though and went on a guided tour of the ruins seeing the forum, different houses and one of the brothels-complete with graphic frescoes. After the tour we got back on the train to Naples to pick up our luggage and then got hustled for a cab (which given my Dad's experience with my public transportation skills he decided we should take) We got down to the harbor and got onto the boat right before it left (which I fell asleep on). After about and hour we arrived on the isle of Capri. We took a funicular up to the town center and walked about 10 minutes to our hotel. Then we went for a fairly casual dinner at Verginello-it was the best caprese salad and ravioli I've ever had.

I slept in (all the way until nine o'clock!) and then we had breakfast-including fresh mozzarella. Then we walked around the island a little bit it was kind of warm and overcast. Then, we ended up in the town square and had some coffee while we watched people go by. Afterward we walked back down to the harbor to do a little bit of souvenir shopping and funiculared back up for some mediocre lunch. Then I decided I wanted to try and take one of the walks the man at our hotel recommended but it was a little bit of a bust-though it did lead us to an amazing viewpoint. We walked back to the hotel to rest a little bit and skype home. Then we went to dinner on the recommendation of one of Dad's coworkers- it was also really really good.

We went down to the harbor to take a boat tour of the island but again due to long lines Dad decided to let us splurge on a private boat tour of the island. This was really cool-the weather was beautiful, we saw the pseudo blue grotto with the really cool orange coral, the rocks that are the sign of Capri, all kinds of "natural animals"-parts of the island that looked like various animals. It was a tough life sitting on the boat in the warm sun getting a little bit of a tan. (did I talk it up right Dad? Has it been sufficiently addressed?) We grabbed a couple more souvenirs and then headed up to the town center again. We happened upon the oldest shop in Capri while looking for tiles to use as our new house numbers-the shop owner was so funny-she was the third generation to own that store (her daughter was the fourth) and she was so funny and nice and friendly. We dropped stuff off at the hotel and then took an incredibly scary bus ride along very high cliffs to anicapri. We walked down a couple streets and then did the chair lift. This isn't like when you go skiing-(I know from all my skiing experience-alright I took a chair lift up once to go sledding...) but it was a single chair and it went really slowly so you got to see this beautiful view. Then you arrive at the top of this mountain and it looks over most of the island. On the way down there were a ton of people in the chairlift all of a sudden-it turned out to be a Japanese tour bus and they were all very friendly and waved! We headed back to our hotel on the bus ride of death and then had dinner at Virgenello again (caprese salad and gnocchi)

The next morning we woke up and got on the boat (the last two people on that boat) to Naples. This time we took a normal cab to the train station (it turned out to be 5 euro cheaper and a much nicer car). We ended up with two extra hours at the train station (since I'm such a nervous nelly about being on time) so we sat and had coffee. We got on our train to Milan-not too bad and then had an hour in Milan where we got crappy train station pizza. Our last train to Geneva was crowded and we were sharing our car with some very loud karate kids but we made it back eventually!

Best Part of Spring Break: Spending time with my Dad (and relaxing on the isle of Capri)

Worst Part of Spring Break: Saying goodbye to my Dad (and missing my train the first morning)

Turning Legal in the US via Europe

Monday we had a visit to the World Trade Organization-not one of our better visits (not surprising though it's econ) Then we had class and it went over by about 40 minutes. After class we ran to the grocery store for our weeks worth of groceries. All in all a very exciting day.

Tuesday was a day off from classes (I know it had already been a rigorous week) unfortunately it was spent catching up on work and starting new assignments, along with some other tasks such as picking classes for senior year and planning the upcoming vacation.

Wednesday was my 21st birthday! I woke up and had some delicious oatmeal while watching The Office, 30 Rock, basically did everything but the work I was planning on doing. I had some lunch and went to class-another riveting session with professor Kott. After class I booked a hostel for Friday night and played around on the computer a little bit more, then Melissa came to ask if I would go grab a bottle of wine with her and everybody was waiting downstairs to surprise me! I got some chocolate and a swiss mug that everybody signed, some Swiss playing cards, champagne and a chimay blue! Then we all headed out for our class dinner at the much talked about (by Shain) Bain de Paquis. I had had my lovely chimay on the way to dinner so I was feeling good. Dinner was salty but delicious and included some cake at the end-oh and wine. Then we went to try and go to this bar I'd heard about with free champagne on Wednesdays but we were too early. So we went to find another bar which we did but it was empty and expensive but we stayed to kill time. Unfortunately while there I checked my email and found out that my second major was going to be impossible to complete that put a bit of a damper on the evening and we ended up getting home at about 11:30 pm-big fat win for MB!

Thursday involved a lovely morning of a little bit of recovery and lots of paper writing. Then a monumentally boring visit to the International Labor Organization. Afterwards laundry and paper writing made for a wonderful afternoon. Dinner and course research consumed the evening and then lots of packing for upcoming spring break.

Looking Forward to: Dad coming on Saturday

Looking Forward to: Being legal in the States

A Few of my Favorite Things (finally...)

WELL... unfortunately I have been away from keeping up the blog posts due to the fact that when I returned from my Western European International Institutions Trip my computer crashed and I was unable to drop it off at the apple store until after the following weekend trip and then couldn't pick it up until right before this last weekend's trip-thus here I am sitting with my bad memory trying to recall what exactly I've been up to.

Since it was a while ago I'll try to recall the most important highlights-Thursday after the Western Trip we visited the US mission to the Geneva UN-We were able to receive a presentation from the US ambassador to the UN (I was sitting right next to her) That was pretty cool-the presentation about world economics on the other hand was a little less exciting. That presentation went longer than expected though so class was cancelled for the afternoon allowing us to get a move on toward our weekend plans.

Our first stop for our last 4 day weekend was supposed to be Copenhagen. This meant a night train to Hamburg. Our "beds" were chairs that looked like they came off of some sort of space ship and thus we called them "pod seats," but they reclined and came with blankets so they were adequate, I slept far better than I anticipated aside from when the conductor came to check our tickets at 12:50 am (pain in my @$$). Then we woke up around the time our train was supposed to arrive in Hamburg but we were stopped due to some technical problem explained to us in our native German-meaning we have no idea why but we were delayed by about 30 minutes. So we arrived in Hamburg after our connecting train to Copenhagen had already departed. This meant we got a couple hours to unexpectedly explore the city of Hamburg (SURPRISE!). We got a quick breakfast (pretzel croissant and a coffee-but this was a REAL coffee, not those sissy espresso "coffees" from France and Italy-this was a giant and that's European giant-American normal sized cup of coffee). Then we walked through the city hall and on to this tower. This tower was actually formerly a church but it was completely bombed in 1943 (guess why) so we visited a little WWII museum and then went up the tower. Hamburg is NOT one of the prettiest cities in Europe, I assume mostly due to the fact that it was almost completely bombed during 1943. Then we slowly walked back toward the train station grabbing a quick cup of our beloved Starbucks and made our connection to Copenhagen. The train to Copenhagen was going fairly smoothly, we had lovely seats in the "children's car" which meant the floor was a carpet with roads on it to play with cars, and other kinds of toys and games. Then the train stopped something was said in German and all the lights turned off-we were moderately worried and asked the conductor and he told us that we needed to leave our stuff and get of the train as it wasn't safe. Turns out it wasn't safe because the train was now in fact on a boat. Our train was on a GIANT ferry complete with restaurants and duty free shopping. The ferry lasted about 20 minutes or so (during which I was singing "I'm on a Boat" the WHOLE time) and then we got back on the train for the last leg to Copenhagen.

When we got to Copenhagen, Melissa's friend Jo met us at the train station. And told us how to get to our hostel and then we exchanged information to meet up later. Our hostel was a little bit out of the way but very nice. After we showered and dropped our stuff off we went back into the city center for dinner. We ate at a Mediterranean Buffet and it was AMAZING, falafel, hummus, all kinds of salad and pita it was amazing. Then we went to meet Jo at a bar called the Laughing Pig-where they of course made us check our coats (I got out of it as I was wearing my sleeveless jacket aka vest) We hung out at the bar for a while but we were all pretty tired so we called it an early night and went back to the hostel.

The next day we woke up and went to get breakfast at some little cafe type place-yogurt and coffee. The weather was really rainy so we took the bus to the Danish Resistance Museum which was FO FREEEEEEE and really cool. Then we walked over to see the famous statue of "The Little Mermaid" and took the train back into the city center. We were hungry so we got some lunch-it might have been at Riz Raz again-still just as good if not better. Then we sauntered slowly back to the train station to catch our train to Stockholm.

We got to Stockholm and walked to our hostel, this was the first time we had to share a room but it was fine. The hostel was pretty clean. Then we went to walk around a little bit. We looked for a bar but there weren't very many good options-they were all to crowded or expensive so we got a Kebab and called it a night. The next morning we took the TBahna (since we heard it was an artistic attraction) to Old Town where we met up with another Colgate Student on the Stockholm program while we got "brunch"-coffee some sort of sandwich or salad and an AMAZING cinnamon bun. Then we went to what we call the "Ship" museum but it's really called the Vasa or something. This was really amazing, it was a ship from the 1600s that had sunk and then rediscovered sometime in the 60's brought back up and fully preserved so you can see the whole ship. After spending quite a bit of time there we walked back (in the snow) to some cafeteria place that was highly recommended, unfortunately it was closed. So we went to look at a highly recommended bakery-also closed. At that point we just found a cafe and got some lunch and sat for a while since the weather was so bad and it was free and then all the museums closed. We slowly walked (From lunch) to where we were getting dinner, by way of the palace. The place we got dinner (with the other Colgate student) was pretty cool, you got a card that looked like a hotel key and then went to these sort of counter booth thing where you swiped your card and ordered and then at the end gave your card to the cashier and paid. Then we headed back to the hostel because we had an early morning the next day.

We woke up about 3:00 am, to catch our bus to the airport which was an hour away, we had bought what we thought were our bus tickets the night before, but we got there and realized we had bought them for the wrong line-luckily the bus driver was really nice about it and let us use them anyway. After our hour bus ride to the airport we went to check the 1 bag we had been using for all 5 us. Unfortunately it was overweight so we had to figure out how to take a bunch of stuff out of it. Our final solution was that everybody really layered up on the clothes-I literally had on everything I had brought with me-jeans, sweats, tee shirt, 3 sweaters, vest, and raincoat, plus a shirt in my pocket and a hat. We eventually got our bag underweight and with our pockets full we went through security-but we made it with no extra charges. We landed in Brussels and had to take a bus to the train station and then an hour train to actually get into Brussels. We arrived in Brussels and had about half an hour before our train to Paris. We were a little bit late getting into Paris and had to change train stations so we went running through the train station to try and make the train we wanted. Unfortunately we didn't make it and to add salt to injury there weren't anymore eurail pass seats on the train so we had to buy full price TGV tickets to Geneva and wait about 2 hours for our train. Then we got on the train and somebody was sitting in my seat. I politely asked her to move (in french) because my friends were sitting close to that seat but she said no and the man across from her said when she was done eating-so I slid in away from my companions. When she got up to return to her seat (which was very close) the man that had been sitting across from her took her seat (the one next to me) and pulled out some food-I assumed now he wanted to eat and I would have to wait longer. Then when the man came to check tickets another passenger told the conductor I was trying to sit in MY seat next to my friends so then the Conductor and this man got into a fight-in which I tried to speak and neither party would let me say anything, but it was eventually decided (without any word from me) that I would sit in the seat that the man had been originally sitting in. It was all very odd. But we finally made it back to Geneva. Safe and sound.

That night I had to prepare for a presentation the following day for which I needed a powerpoint (but my computer was still broken) fortunately Grace needed somebody to take her computer away so she could focus on her reading and I was able to get my presentation done. Wednesday our professor realized how much work and travel we actually all do and lessened our assignments so Matt got up and gave her a big hug and she went a spiel about how "overly friendly" Americans were compared to Europeans and how none of her students at University of Geneva would do anything like that. Thursday we had a quiz in Shain's class and then Grace, Melissa and I set out for our weekend in Salzburg (Sound of Music Land)

When we were looking at trains to Salzburg we wanted to take a night train, but because it's so "close" the night trains got in at 4:20 am we tried to find other options as the hours from 4-8 are generally pretty slow for tourism. We found a night train to Munich which we thought was PERFECT, and it got into Salzburg around 8 am. When we investigated further we realized the train actually went through Salzburg-but we figured what the hell. So we arrived in Salzburg-late almost missing our connection to Munich-but we made it and got some extra sleep, plus for a special bonus there's a Starbucks in the Munich train station , so really what we did was commute an hour and a half (each way) to Starbucks. We got back to Salzburg about 8:30 am or so and went to drop our stuff off at our hostel which was pretty nice basically a hotel with shared bathrooms and a lot of beds in very small rooms. Then we went out to make our pilgrimage to all the Sound of Music sights. We started in Mirabel Gardens where much of the doe a dear song was preformed-when they run through the tunnel and use the steps for notes and dance around the fountain. Then we got some lunch-mediocre but we passed through University Platz (where Gretl drops the tomato) and then we walked for a long, long, long time to see the 16 going on 17 gazebo where we sat and stared as 3 groups came and went, we were AMAZED. As we walked back toward the hostel we walked down Hellbrun Allee where Maria walks on her way to the house for the first time and we actually passed the front facade of the house in the movie. Then we got back to the hostel where we waited for everyone else to arrive. However our co-travelers arrived 2 less than we anticipated. It turned out 1 had overslept and one who had had an interview missed her train as she had gotten on put all of her stuff down and realized she needed a spoon-so leaving all of her stuff (including passport and railpass and wallet) to get a spoon and only returned after the train was pulling away. So we checked in and got ready for dinner. We ended up at this restaurant and had a relaxing dinner-pork cutlet and "bread dumplings" with the regional chocolate cake for dessert. Then we went back to the Hostel to watch the Sound of Music, but the TV was broken so we watched it on Zunaira's computer until people got too loud for us to hear. So we went to bed.

The next morning Grace, Melissa and I set out to see the back of the house where they drink "pink lemonade" and the children and Maria fall of the boat into the water. It was beautiful. Then we walked to see if we could see the amphitheater they preform in at the end of the movie-we could but it was a tour that didn't depart until 2. So we walked around, somebody gave us an amazing free chocolate bar, we saw the fountain from "I have Confidence" and got some lunch-I had some sort of dessert dumpling it was really funny looking. Then went on our tour. The tour was all of the Salzburg stages so we also got to go behind the set of Don Giovanni which was really really cool. As was of course, the Sound of Music stage. There's also a fortress in Salzburg that is in a lot of the background shots during the movie so we went to go tour that, inside were a couple museums (including a creepy marionette museum), then headed back to the hostel to meet up for dinner. We got a recommendation for what we were told was a beer hall but it was much closer to a restaurant that served beer-but it was good. I got dumplings that were very similar to pot stickers followed by this Salzburg dessert that was a GIANT GIANT thing-3 of us split it and couldn't even finish it but it was really good-kind of eggy. So dinner was pretty good except for the really drunk man that kept coming up to us-3 times he came up and we told him to go away every time. Eventually the waitress pulled him away. Then we went back to finish the second half of the movie and go to bed.

We woke up the next morning and visited Nonnberg Abbey where the children try to visit Maria and the Nazis pull up to at the end and then went to catch our train back. Our train back to Geneva was thankfully uneventful and we arrived safe and sound!

Well hopefully I remembered as much as I could...

Low Lights: not having a computer, wearing all of my clothes onto a flight, seat stealing french men

High Lights: Riz Raz, Accidentally seeing Hamburg, Pilgrimage to the Sound of Music