Here To Geneva

If you’re reading this, the big move has been a success. You might find a celebratory high-five would be appropriate before reading on. I’ll wait while you find someone.

As you can see, very little has changed. The site is still white and red and there’s still the same trip notes and travel tips as before. It’s the stuff behind the scenes that have seen the most dramatic alteration.

While before, the site was marooned on an island of its own, Here To Geneva is now proudly nestled into the fabulous Tumblr community. This won’t mean a great deal to a majority of you, but for me, it’s big. Managing the site is now much easier and I hope the added active community will bring me a larger readership.

One of the biggest changes for you, the reader is the addition of the Disqus comments system. Whereas before, your comments were dealt with in-house, I now let Disqus deal with them. The main benefit for you is that you can keep track of all your comments and, if the conversation gets interesting, subscribe to them. I’ve allowed you different ways of logging in to Disqus, so if you’re on Facebook, you can comment on this site. Give it a whirl and add your comments to this article.

To kick my Tumblr residency off, how about a round of Q&A? Once you’re done reading this, click here to ask me a question. You can ask me anything and it can be done anonymously. While I’d rather answer travel-related questions, anything will do, so go nuts. The best questions will be posted in an article in the next few days.

For your convenience, you can find the link to Formspring in the footer of every single page.

Every weekday, having finished work, I catch the bus home. Two stops after I have boarded, an ear-ringed man gets on. He and I travel on the same bus home, every day. Nothing remarkable so far I suppose you’re saying. How about if I tell you we get off at the same stop? Does that make it more interesting? No? Wait, there’s more!

Today, I realised that he may have noticed that I’m always on the same bus as him. I’ve known for quite a while, and I have always let him press the “stop’ button on my behalf as we approach our stop. It’s become so routine for me that I know almost exactly when he’s going to press the button. Today though, he missed his cue. The point in the journey passed and he hadn’t moved. Almost immediately, I figured out that he had realised that I was on the bus and that I was going to be alighting at the next stop. I figured that he was thinking, “that cool-looking character at the back of the bus, where I wish I was cool enough to sit, is getting off at the next stop. I’ll wait for him to press the button.” Well, he could forget that! I’ve been going weeks having not pushed that button, and I’d be damned if I was going to start now. “Game on,” I thought.

So we both sat, me confidently, him wishing he hadn’t challenged me to this game of chicken. The bus approached the last corner before the stop. We were now only less than 20 metres away and no one had hit “stop”. As the bus began to break to turn, he bottled it and hit the button. I leapt from my seat to get in front of him. He’s a slow walker. The bus turned the corner and came to a halt. I’d won this round.

It’s Christmas Eve and this my second attempt at posting this article after yesterday’s run-in with Wordpress’ unreliability. I don’t expect this article will be anything like the one I wrote yesterday. It’s already pretty different as you might imagine. But you wouldn’t know would you, as you haven’t had a chance to read it… because Wordpress didn’t save it. Anyway, let’s get on shall we.

In the last two years, the few days before Christmas have always been rather busy. Mainly drinks with friends or drinks with people who think we’re friends but I secretly don’t like very much. Nothing too taxing. This year has been no exception.

Last Thursday, I went, with my mum, to London. In particular, we went to the inaugural Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, a rather unnecessarily over-the-top title for a small German Market and fun fair. The German Market was quite nice with stalls selling gifts and trinkets ranging from small wooden puppets on springs to reindeer hides. There were also stalls selling food and drink, which we were glad to take advantage of. Nothing like a portion of Dutch pancakes, washed down with mulled wine to keep the chilly air out. From the German market, we ventured into the centre of the capital, sampling London’s main tourist attractions. We’d both seen them all before, but we’d rarely seen them in darkness. Buckingham Palace looked as grand as ever, the London Eye and Westminster were both as magnificent as always and the massive Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square was, as usual, terrific. We were lucky to visit during a public carol singing event at the foot of the tree. The event was in aid of seafarers and had attracted a fair crowd, most of whom were joining in the festive jollity. It was great.

On Saturday, I went to London again. This time, I passed straight through the centre and carried on going into Surrey. My team, the Bedford Blues were playing Esher. It wasn’t a great game, with the Blues displaying an almost complete lack of ideas or passion. We were 20 points down by half time. At the end of the second half, we were still 17 points down. With only a few minutes to go, one of our boys found a gap in Esher’s rock solid defence and score a try. Well into stoppage time, Blues seemed to have finally switched on. A minute of two later, it happened again. Another try was scored in front of what was now a stunned crowd. The gap was now only 5 points. Sadly, that was how it ended. The final score was 35-30 in Esher’s favour. Had we had another minute or so, we may have won it. Two tries in about 4 minutes had given us 1 bonus point for scoring 4 tries and another bonus point for losing within 7 points. Crazy!

Yesterday, I completed an unintentional Zooey Deschanel film marathon. I’m not much of a film buff, except around Christmas where I find a taste for them and can’t stop watching them. On Saturday evening, after I had been dropped off by the Blues Followers coach, I watched Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It was pretty good, pretty funny and apparently, kept pretty true to the original Douglas Adams book. Yesterday evening, I watched Elf, a film with plenty of really funny moments but which ended bizarrely. It had nothing to do with the actors. I think it was just badly written, which was a shame. I had planned to watch these two films a few days in advance. Both films starred Zooey Deschanel, an actress whom I had never heard of before and whom I thought was rather lovely. A weird, yet rewarding coincidence.

And that is that. This article actually turned out better than the one I wrote yesterday. You know, that one that Wordpress didn’t want to save. Oh, that’s right, you never got to read it… because Wordpress didn’t save it.Whatever you’re doing this Christmas, I hope it’s everything you want it to be.

Peace and love and Merry Christmas to you all.

Related Content: As always, you can find photos related to this article in my Flickr Gallery.

Last Friday, I experienced one of the most unlucky and brainless evenings of my entire life. Never before have I not used my brain to such a magnitude and then experienced severe bad luck at the same time. I wouldn’t consider myself an unlucky person. Unfortunately, Karma got wind of this and paid me my dues big time. Here’s my story.

We have new recruits at work. Eighteen in total and all of them needed inducting into the business. So, three hours after having left work, I returned to do just that. It was 17h30. I was meant to be there fifteen minutes earlier, but the buses weren’t running to schedule and I had to wait in the rain for 20 minutes until one arrived. Before I could start training the new guys, there were a few admin errands that needed to be sorted. I work in a secure office which is always locked. I had forgotten to bring my keys, so I had to borrow some from the manager. I let myself in and started to do a bit of paperwork. Half way through, I realised there was something outside the office that I needed. Now, there’s a trick with the door to the office that allows you to keep it ajar temporarily. The door itself has expanded slightly (since it’s made of wood) so if you shut the door slowly, it rubs against the frame and stay open. I wasn’t wearing my work trousers, so I hadn’t clipped the office keys onto my belt as I would normally. I exercised the door trick so I could quickly pop out to retrieve what I needed, stupidly leaving the keys on my desk. For the first time ever, the door trick failed on me and the door slammed shut. I was locked out. The only set of keys on the property were locked in. Brilliant!

Feeling stupid, I told my manager and offered to kick the door in. He didn’t seem to like that idea and said he’d call the supervisor in, who also has a set of keys. I didn’t like that idea since the very reason I was back at work was so that the unwell supervisor could go home early. We pondered our options and examined the door for weaknesses, but it seemed we would definitely need another set of keys. Then, the manager had a brainwave. He had spotted a bike belonging to another staff member. He suggested I ride the bike back to my house to fetch my set of keys. After a few moments thought, I put my coat on, and set off into the driving rain. It was only 4 miles or so there and back and it’d only take me half an hour. Problem solved!

The rain wasn’t heavy, but there was a fresh head-on wind blowing, so it wasn’t very pleasant. Still, I felt good about toiling away at the pedals. I felt the physical effort was a way of redeeming myself. Upon reaching the theatre, I was half way. Suddenly, there was a crunch from beneath me. The crunching continued and turned into a metallic grinding. For a moment, I thought the bike was disintegrating underneath me. It didn’t. I stayed upright. What actually happened was that peddling suddenly became very easy. I looked down and spotted the bike’s gear system dragging along the floor. I came to a stop (the brakes were still excellent) and inspected the damage. The chain was gone. I looked down the road but couldn’t see it. The entire gear system had completely sheered off of the bike’s frame. I was stranded, equidistance between work and home in pouring rain. Awesome! It was another moment to weigh up my options. It didn’t take long. I didn’t have any. My first instinct was to call someone to help me out, but obviously, I didn’t have my mobile with me. Obviously, I had left that at work so I could cycle a little more freely. I started to trudge home.

Fifteen minutes later, I arrived home, dripping wet and with a great story to tell. I dumped the bike and convinced my sister to give me a lift back to work. She kindly agreed and we laughed all the way back. She dropped me off as close as she could get and I ran the rest of the way. Upon arriving, the main doors to the building were locked and there was no one there to let me in. The ten minutes I had to wait until someone came up weren’t that much of a problem, certainly not in comparison to the horror that I experienced next.

Just as I was let in, I remembered why I had gone home in the first place. It was to get my set of keys. My keys WERE STILL AT HOME! Unbelievably, I had forgotten to pick them up before coming back with my sister! I had pushed a disabled bike in the rain for a mile FOR NOTHING! If I felt stupid before, I felt braindead now. I was genuinely worried for my own sanity. What was going on? Why was this happening to me? How can anyone be this stupid?

I went back to the offices. The manager asked if everything went OK? The look on my face answered that question for him. He spotted I no longer had the bike with me. He asked where the bike was. I told him the bike had fallen apart and so had my mind. I just wanted to curl up and make it all go away.

After we had gone through all the paperwork with the new employees, we returned to the problem at hand. The boss finally agreed to allow me to kick the door in. I tried three times, but failed. Our only remaining option was for the manager to give me a lift back in his BMW to my house to get my keys and for us then to drive back again. It has to be said, he remained very supportive and light hearted about the whole experience. If he was angry and felt inconvenienced, he didn’t show it.

You probably think that I feel embarrassed about this little episode. I don’t really. I’m more bemused and intrigued. I don’t really understand why and how I could have been so dumb. At the time, I was seriously worried about my health. Now though, it’s happened and there’s not much I can do about it other than move and learn from it, so that nothing like it happens again.

Incidentally, having checked the bike, it would seem there was little, to no lubrication in the gear mechanism, so that was definitely not my fault. That was just bad luck.

Meet Lucca, our new 8 week old Netherland Dwarf Mini Lop Cross Rabbit. I don’t often use the word cute, but I really do think it applies here, don’t you? My sister has lovingly documented his every move on her Flickr stream, so drop on by. I’m sure more will follow.

Incidently, before there are any questions over the spelling of his name, he’s named after the Tuscan city of Lucca, so the spelling’s correct. So there!

There’s one thing I really look forward to during summertime, and that’s the start of autumn. That may sound like an odd thing to you, but I’m happy to say loudly and proudly that I HATE SUMMER! And here’s why;

• It’s too hot! Right now, I’m sitting in a room that’s just over 30C. Here in Britain, if it gets hot, it’s not a dry, pleasant heat. It’s a muggy, sultry heat that makes doing almost any task (walking up stairs for example) laborious. For me, I just feel uncomfortable, and this makes me lethargic and grumpy.
• Everyone’s too noisy! For some reason, whenever the sun comes out in the summer, neighbours seem to set up camp in their gardens, take a handful of anti-social pills and make a racket all day and into the night. There’s no quiet, mature enjoyment of the weather that you get on the continent. It has to be loud and alcohol-fueled.
• There’s bugs everywhere! And they bug me. Especially at night when the windows are open and they’re attracted to light. There’s nothing worse than finally getting comfortable on a muggy night, to then have a mozzie buzzing around your ear.
• I can’t sleep! A sunny day in Britain often results in cloud cover by night, which traps in the heat. This means the first hour after turning in is often spent just trying to get comfortable. If I eventually do fall asleep, it’s only because I’m exhausted by all the fidgeting.
• There’s nothing on TV! I don’t think TV companies even try to produce good TV during the summer. All the good stuff is held back for the autumn launches, causing the schedules in the summer months to be devoid of anything watchable.
• I can’t stop sneezing! I sleep in a south-east facing window. With the sun rising at around 04h30 in the summer, I’m slowly roasted in my bed for a good 3 to 4 hours before waking up, causing my nose to block up. Upon blowing my nose, it causes irritation and I sneeze for the following hour. And if it isn’t that, then the pollen will get me. My body objects to it for some reason and shows it by leaking various fluids from my nose and eyes.

I can’t be the only one. There must be others who feel the same way, surely!?

Today, while waiting for the bus to arrive, a lady excused herself and asked me a question;

Where is the Saturday market?

I replied;

Saturday Market? It’s Wednesday! Today’s market is the Wednesday market.

Yes, where is the Saturday Market?

The Saturday Market will be in the same place as the Wednesday Market but it’ll be on Saturday. Today’s Market is the Wednesday Market because it’s Wednesday.

OK, thanks very much.

Bizarre. This afternoon, I’ve been watching a bit of Aussie Rules Football for the first time ever. I subscribed to Setanta Sports (the first time I’ve ever subscribed to a premium sports channel) and found Aussie Rules to be on and thought I’d give it a go. And the verdict? I really, really enjoyed it. For those lucky enough to have seen this terrific sport before, you’ll know how fast paced and exciting it is to watch. It must be exhausting to play. It didn’t take very long to work out what the rules were (Wiki helped out with the technicalities) and it didn’t take long for me to be well and truly absorbed in the match. Aussie Rules. It really does you know!