My daily commute and pretty much isolated scary experience

Commuting in Geneva is a very pleasant experience itself. The public transit system is very much reliable and it's actually your fault if you get late at work. So, how's my daily commute if you may ask.

My commute starts off with a 10 minute walk to this bus stop called Chatelaine-Ecole (sorry, no accents as I'm using an american keyboard). In Geneva, you cannot pay at the bus as drives don't sell tickets and you need to buy tickets on the bus stop. A normal ticket costs CHF 3.00 (approx. 3 CAD) which allows you to take the train, bus, tram and Geneva ferry service. The transfer lasts for one hour but with Geneva's size, I think that one is more than enough.

Public transit in Geneva is very much developed. Here, you see a bus powered by overhead cables, its environmentally friendly and noise-free as well. I think Vancouver also has this kind of a bus albeit older.

Each bus is equipped with bus stop indicators. For every bus stop, you do not need to press the stop button (or pull the stop string as in the case of Winnipeg transit) and its even harder to miss your stop as there is a voice annoucement (which is of course in French) announcing your stop.


I need to take another bus and transfer on a stop called 'Nations'. This stop is near the European Headquarters of the United Nations.


Here, you'll be in the core of international Geneva. On my front is the headquarters of the Organization for the Protection of Intellectual Property.


and behind me is the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)

Lunchtime, I took a walk around the ILO building complex.

Here is the ILO headquarters. It is like a huge 1950s hotel building full of rooms. There are 11 floors in the building and walking from one end of the building to the other takes approximately 15 minutes.

Surprisingly, at the front of the ILO building is a farm!

Like Canada, the federal government does not have jurisdiction over licence plates in Switzerland. They do it in cantonal level (homologue: provincial). Here is a special Geneva plate reserved for diplomats and employees of international organizations (CD = corps diplomatique)

If in Canada we have two official languages, the ILO actually has three. However, English takes a backseat and almost always hear French most of the time.

This is where rich kids of diplomats go to school :)


Along the side of the ILO building is the International Office for Migration. It is definitely a newer one that is more aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

At this part of my stroll, something really scary happened. A Spanish-speaking tourist stopped me asking for the bus number to take to go to the airport. He is not functional in English nor in French and I tried helping him in my limited Spanish. We went to the bus stop to check the transit map and out of a sudden, two civilian-clothed guys approached us, showed their badge for 2 seconds and demanded that we show our identification cards. I showed my card to them and they demanded me to show all the stuff I got in my pocket. They took my wallet and inspected all its contents and looked at my money in a really weird way. The tourist as well showed his passport and all his money which was actually a thick bunch of US dollar bills. I demanded them in my broken French to show back their badges but they relented and said 'shut up.' I was shaken by this as this was the first time that I experienced an interogation this intense and I don't really know if they're real police or not. I got really scared as well as I have my cellphone in my pocket and I can't open it as I forgot my SIM code pin. All the what-if's crossed my mind as this point. What if they ask me to go with them and I don't even have the contact details of my boss? Not even my consulate or any other contact I could inform on my predicament? Take note, this was happening in broad day light near the ILO.

I immediately ran away and went back to the main building. I then reported the incident with my Canadian colleague and we decided to have it reported to the ILO security. It turned out that by my description, those are not real police and I have just been victimized by con-artists. Its a good learning experience for me to be more vigilant and prepared should another similar incident happen.

Other than that, everything here goes well.... I like my job a lot and my colleagues are really, really nice! It's not as pressurising as I expected and people take a lot of coffee breaks :) I get to practise my French and Spanish that sometimes some words get mixed in my English. And most of all, you rub elbows with future world leaders and really intelligent people.

I'll be a little bit busy the following days and might not be updating as often as I did in the past few days. Should anyone of you out there have an easy-to-prepare lunch or dinner recipe that is cheap (ingredients easy to find) and a healthy balance dish (vegetable and meat), feel free to drop me a line as I am running out of ideas to do in our kitchen.

As always, feel free to leave comments and violent reactions if there may be. Goodnight from Geneva!