Geneva

I try my best to extract the good from any unfortunate situations I end up in. In this case, the sole upshot I could think of from sharing a small, unventilated room with a garlic-breathing pensioner with a penchant for sleep-pissing into sinks was that at least no vampires had visited us during the night.

Mario’s presence had helped me come to the decision to move on from Paris. Despite feeling comfortably at home, and having barely scratched the surface of what the city had to offer, I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing a room with him for another night, and so early that morning I quietly packed up my stuff, remembering not to use the sink, and took off.

I biked southwards from the hostel to the Gare du Lyon along the route that had become rather familiar to me and grabbed a ticket out of France, and was soon on a TGV that was shabbier than expected, but which didn’t half shift. Within only a few hours Ron and I were winding through the lovely backdrop of the French Alps and approaching the Swiss border en route to Geneva.

It was fair to say I wasn’t sad to see the back of France. I had spoken only French and still the reception I had received was chillier than a polar bear’s knackers. I might as well have gone around in a pair of Union Jack shorts shouting “DO YOU SPEAKY THE ENGLISH?” slowly and deliberately at people for all the difference my olive branch efforts to improve Anglo-French relations had made. Naturally, a lot of this had to do with the locations I travelled to and the demographic of locals I met, being primarily coffin dodgers running budget hotels in small-town Normandy. Perhaps I was wrong to expect such people working in the hospitality industry to be, er, hospitable.

Thank Zeus for Paris then - what a charming surprise that was, and everything a capital city should be. Despite France not being too high up on my list of countries to revisit (to be specific, it’s second from bottom, just above the United States) I don’t doubt that I will wind up in Paris again some time in the future.

Emerging from Geneva train station, I set out for the hostel I’d earmarked. At first glance Geneva seemed much like France, but without the dogshit. Still, I imagine if you somehow managed to stumble upon a dog turd on the street that a road sweeper had overlooked, it would be as polished, gleaming and cookie-cutter perfect as the rest of the city.

The further I walked, the more differences I noticed: yellow lines on the roads, multi-language signs and snatches of French, German and English conversation amongst others gave the city an international feel, and helped prevent the city from feeling like just another part of France with different money.

The hostel was spotless and clinically efficient. I had a whole dorm to myself again, and so made myself at home before chipping out for a stroll towards  Lake Geneva (Lac Leman to those of the French persuasion), and over to the  old part of town, which was so quaintly perfect and clean it felt artificial. It was the only place on Earth I had seen half-timbered houses whose leaning angles looked as if they had been pre-calculated for optimum visual impact. The cobbled streets paved with Nazi gold  lined with invitingly warm-looking houses made for a lovely wander at dusk, and the shopping street with trams trundling past was enjoyably bustling, but there seemed to be a certain hollowness about the city that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. I hoped this was going to be the exception rather than the norm in Switzerland.

It felt bloody good to be out of France though.

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