Top reasons why you leave over 3 hours ahead of flight time when flying out of the Geneva International Airport
1. You need to check out of your hotel
2. You need to return your rental car
3. You may forget what country you are in because it may be 4 in the morning and you have been in 5 over the last two in a half weeks. When you try to pay in Euros while in Switzerland, you will be told you need Swiss Franc coins to pay for parking on your way out of the parking lot at the hotel, which may require extra minutes for digging through luggage to find coins resting at the bottom
4. You might get to the parking gate and realize that you cannot get out because you were probably supposed to pre pay somewhere else
5. In a fluster, you then might back into a parking spot to figure out how to prepay for parking, and not see the pole there because you arent used to driving a Mercedes hatchback, which was a free upgrade that you now regret taking because the collision damage probably costs more. You may not see the pole, but you will definitely hear the crunch.
6. After fighting back a panic attack, you will probably figure out to pay for parking, but the next challenge will probably be how to fill up your gas tank.
7. You might find a gas station, choose the one that you think probably means unleaded in French, but realize that you somehow need to prepay and there is no one working because it is 430 a.m. You may manage to find the credit card machine, but accidentally bypass the English language selection because you slipped your credit card in early and then the machine assumes you speak french fluently. After attempting to translate and click what you think are the right buttons, you think you have successfully prepaid because there is now a green flashing light.
8. You might now lift the gas pump that is probably unleaded, but realize you dont know how to open the tank. You frantically might search for the gas tank opener button (yes, this is the technical term). Then, desperately, you might open the user manual and pray that someone else might need gas and miraculously speak english and coincidentally own a mercedes. For approximately ten minutes, you might search through the user manual three times because, clearly, it is all in German and you probably dont speak a lick of it. After failing to find how to open the tank, you might again try what you had tried three times before -- pushing the tank door on the side of the car in various positions. Great success. After refuelling, you will search for a receipt of some sort to no avail, then proceed to the next challenge: finding the airport and rental car return, which probably wont direct you in english.
9. You will probably find the place to return your rental quite easily, with some minor five minute setbacks and U-turns due to wrong translations of signs.
10. You will probably find this whole process quite easy, but may have some extra depressor moments added due to re-reading what you signed up to pay when you confidently signed the rental agreement a day earlier.
11. You will most likely now have to wait 10 minutes for the airport shuttle bus which adds another five minutes in transit to the airport.
12. You then may have to pick up your luggage which you left in the railway station 7 days ago because you didnt want to carry huge bags to 4 different countries in 1.5 weeks.
13. You will first need to figure out where exactly the railway station is, which takes 3 to 4 minutes. Once you see the sign, you will probably now begin to run in your heels through a bare and lonely railway station where nothing is open because it is only 5 in the morning.
14. Your pace might quicken as you have a minor attack of fear when you realize that all the restaurants with Ferme (Closed) signs might actually be predictors of what you will probably see at the Baggage storage.
15. Indeed, that is probably what you will see at the Baggage storage.
16. You will probably then work to fight back another anxious fit and seek any soul that looks like they hold any power or keys to unlock your bag.
17. Five minutes later, you might see some souls and lights on at the Baggage storage. You jump up and down happily because this is the most hope you have had all day and you want to get their attention.
18. With no English, it will probably be communicated to you that you need to give them your ticket and after freaking out because you dont know where it is, they add icing to the already well iced cake...No ticket, No baggage: this well rehearsed line, to your fortune, is the only thing the baggage keeper knows in english.
19. You will probably spend approximately 15 to 20 minutes pulling apart your bags for the treasure ticket that you dont even remember what it looks like. After going through around 100 receipts you have kept in various locations throughout your luggage for your expense reports, you finally find the cute, lovely little plain white ticket that looks nearly identical to all of the other 100 receipts you have. Even though the baggage keeper has repeated many times that they were closed and locked the door on you, you manage to grab his attention because of your waving arms and tears falling down your face.
20. Clearly, you need to dig through your bags again because they need exact change for 70 swiss francs because he communicates with hand motions and facial expressions (picture hands up in the air surrender stance) that he cannot open the money drawer, since they are closed. After realizing the baggage keeper has a very tiny heart and is trying to get an extra 30 francs for his hard extra work, you stubbornly stare at him and wait for him to open the drawer to get you your change for 100 franc.
21. Finally you can shove all your receipts in your bag and go to Check in for your flight, that you think are borderline late for because you have probably been through the headache of security and check in at Geneva to know.
22. When you check your flight number on your Blackberry to figure out which gate to check in at, you realize that your flight is an hour later than you thought.
And that is how it is done. Also, you will need extra time to document this in the airport lounge because the kezboard has switched the z and y kezs since it is French.
I Switzerland, I Morocco, I Amsterdam
I heard drums on my way to dinner at the Heineken Hoek and was immediately drawn to them. It felt like human natural instinct to move towards the beats. When I found the epicenter of the sound waves, I saw that many others had the same natural instinct. The beats spoke to all of us, arousing differing degrees of physical motion. But, as I gazed at the faces of most gathered around the drummer's circle, I saw that one thing was consistent amongst everyone, and it was definitely not race, culture, age, nationality, shape, size, gender, past experience, style. This one thing was a smile. If the mouth wasn't upturned in this position, the eyes glimmered with what was deeply felt by everyone's soul. And that was a mutually awakened, universal smile. I saw others notice this as well and it brought tears to my eyes. It is amazing what art, music, and the beauty in life can do to humankind-- cross all barriers and bring us together as one.
I felt this at the museum I went to today: the Van Gogh Museum. There was a long, dense line outside the modest exterior of the building, full of people speaking una ensalada de idiomas, but we all understood one common language, which brought us all to the same location. That common language is universal beauty. As I got pushed around and my bubble was "invaded", I forced myself to instead of take offense, stand back and love the fact that we were all so eager to experience what the art does to that inexplicable part of us-- that part that drives this mutual understanding of peace and appreciation for beauty.
It is my opinion that we will never fully understand what is beneath the mutual feeling, but that thought actually comforts me. I am okay with the limitations of human understanding. Although I love science, I also realize the limitations of it and I try as little as possible to apply much weight to human understanding/intelligence/knowledge.
I really feel that our race continuously views humans as "superior" to other species, even as we continuously work towards the demise of our own species. The human race has hardly even scratched the surface of evolutionary history. Consider the dragonfly, which just simply happens to be something I have researched because I find it to be one of the most beautiful and symbolic creatures-- they have been around since before the time of dinosaurs. Can we really, honestly claim, that we are superior to these beautiful beings? Not that I believe that we are inferior. No. I am simply saying, "why claim any stance on superiority?" Just because we can kill them doesn't mean we are "better" or "smarter" or "more advanced". If you look at the long term picture, although they can't defend themselves in the very moment that a human squashes them, they have defended their species for millenia. How do we know that the dragonfly's intelligence is so limited? Just because we cannot see it, feel it, or understand it, are we really qualified to take a stance or have an opinion on this issue?
------------Here is where I took a break to drink some Heineken and realized that I hadn't looked up from my Moleskine notebook for about 20 minutes, wrote a personal note and continued at the next stop: an Indonesian restaurant (there are many Indonesians in Holland due to the Dutch colony there)--------
Ok, after further review, I have decided that the things I continued to write in my Moleskine may be a little too intense for now. One key excerpt: "Nevertheless, this is a beautiful journey I am on. I appreciate every moment: hard/easy, happy/sad, lonely/social, work/play, sleeping/awake....
Someone asked me as I was writing in my Hemmingway Moleskine what I was writing about. After I explained to him my fascination with universal appreciation of beauty, we somehow managed to arrive at the topic of geneology. Coincidence? I am having a hard time figuring out why we got to that subject and its relation to mutual understanding. I think I will have to sleep on it.
I ate an incredible Indonesian meal tonight across from the Argentinian steakhouse where I ate last night.
Amsterdam is fabulous. From what I have experienced, Dutch people are the most friendly people in the world, next to maybe the Thai. They are super tall and I am convinced that everyone carries at least one sandwich in their pocket. I am also convinced that these two parameters are not independent of one another.
Tomorrow I fly to Geneva and rent a car to drive from Geneva to Grenoble, France. I am terrified to drive in Europe, but at least I will be on the same side of the road. Tuesday morning I fly to India. I will spend 1.5 months there. At least.
Cheers.
Sitting in Casablanca with an Arkansas t-shirt on
Dear blog,
I have been cheating on you. You can't blame me though - you are much less easy to transport than my freebie Grant Thornton purple notebook that my dad got for free and gifted to me for Christmas, and definitely less pocketable than my Moleskine notebook, the one I feel fancy writing in because it is the notebook that Ernest Hemingway wrote in, even though it makes my hand hurt and my sentences shorter. So, I have to be completely honest....I have written about 6 entries since our last visit, and quite frankly, I'm not sure that I can share with you all of the drawn out details that I shared with my other notebooks. Maybe some day we can get to that point. I hope you can understand that it was very personal. I hope you also understand that writing in a journal as I eat dinner alone makes time fly by much quicker.
I sit here with a smaller amount of baggage than I carried yesterday, but it is still more than I want to be carrying. It is NOT sustainable. I think my next blog will be dedicated to this theme - baggage. It is such a fitting metaphor for this travel escapade that I cannot ignore it.
I spent most of the day traveling today, with my start point in Nyon, which is a small town between Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland that I was visiting because it happens that my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Ammon worked in this adorable Swiss town. I have come to really adore this woman and she has become a sort of inspiration for me over the last few days of travel. Long story short, I traveled all weekend, seeking out my roots - retracing the footsteps of Elizabeth Ammon in Switzerland, prior to her departure to the US to start the American lineage the descends from my Grandma Schoonenberg. Incredible experience.
It is truly amazing when you have sensations that drive where you walk and where you explore, and you don't know why. You just have to believe that your body is taking you to a place that is important. I read recently about migrating birds and how humans have tried to understand via different experiments and theories how migratory birds find their way home. They haven't quite figured it out yet, but they seem to think it has something to do with the sun. I have been wondering how the hell I found out four days ago that I was working, overlooking Lake Geneva, only ten minutes by train away from a place that my great-grandmother worked, overlooking Lake Geneva and the very same mountains. Not only did I find this out, but I was compelled to visit this place and when I was there, I felt an extreme sense of understanding, comfort and peace, almost like it was some sort of home. I found myself looking at old buildings and fields and trees that had no direct meaning, but I knew I should be taking the sensations in, like I had some sort of deeper understanding with certain things around me without any needed rationale.
Unbelievably, the place where Elizabeth Ammon worked has since been converted into a National Swiss Museum, full of ancient Swiss relics, in addition to artifacts from the school at the Chateau that she worked in as a maid. Coincidentally, I met the curator for the museum, who was fascinated by my story and I was so overcome with emotion that I cried when she told me that just a few steps away were the maid's quarters.
That was Nyon. I carried a lot of baggage with me there, up and down the winding streets, through chilling winds off of Lake Geneva. It was stupendous.
I traveled all day today with a colleague who happens to also be very interested in what I am - ecodesign and Life Cycle Assessment, so we chatted the whole plane ride from Geneva to Casablanca. Casablanca is fabulous. I have been to Morocco before on a weekend tour from Spain, but I do not remember spending any time here in the city. It is a very metropolitan place, with a population of around 4 million. Other than the fact that things are written in Arabic, traffic is mildly horrible and most people walking around in muslim garb, you would feel like you are in a European city.
We walked around through the rain, accompanied by my boss, to find a place to eat dinner and happened upon what we thought was a restaurant, but was actually a hookah bar, where people apparently did not come to eat food. So, we happily ate dinner like outsiders, followed by apple flavored hookah and watched the landscape of the "restaurant" evolve throughout the evening. It started with around 10 people besides us, very conservatively dressed. I felt so uncomfortable in taking off my trenchcoat, because I was showing my bare arms (considered sexual, I think), that I wore my coat the rest of the evening. But, interestingly, around 10 p.m. a lot more people showed up, including women. Not just women, but women scantily clad. It was very interesting. To put it frankly, I believe we were actually amidst some sort of "pleasure place", for lack of more appropriate words. We pretended not to notice and happily chatted (or I was more lectured) on how America is messed up and the politics are all wrong until it was time to go back to the hotel for a nice night's rest before our plant visit tomorrow.
Bon nuit!