Final days at work

As my Swiss clock nearly reaches its alarm, I took the time and effort to have lunch with some people in my place of work. It's the time to dream and be a 'social climber' with your stiff upper lip and pretend to be rich and luxurious for a while while you rub elbows with suit-clad, bulova-sporting, charles jourdan-clothed future diplomats, politicians and civil servants. Table manners is a thing that needs to be watched as people in international organizations are supposed to be 'refined' and 'highly cultured.' Don't get me wrong, they're really nice.

No packed lunch this time for me as it would be very 'un-posh.' Instead, I opted for the vegetarian meal for CHF 8.50.

I actually hate basking in the sun. I do not need to tan as I am already naturally tanned.

We had a picture of the group after the meal.

Looking by the place where we had dinner, I took a shot of the portion of ILO's building which looked like a 1960s communist-style hotel.

It is a common tradition in the ILO to have coffee after lunch. There are no bandiclocks or timers set to guard people of their time. Actually, some people take 2-hr lunches, with most of the time spend sipping coffee and flaunting the latest fashion or telling stories about their wonderful weekend in the Swiss chalet or Monaco, or Cote d'Azur. Being part of the system already, why not have a two-hour lunch for myself as well??? It's just fair isn't it?


After that, it was time to work for my trilingual Russian boss who speaks fluent English, French and Spanish plus his native tongue, Russian. I started teaching him Tagalog as well.


Night-time, I was able to see Genevans.


This is Karim, my foyermate who has spent a year in Vancouver studying English. I helped him in his English interview and application with P&G and was really happy to have got a job with the company. As a result, we are going to fete him a dinner for his success. Prior to that, he worked as a model in a Swiss modelling firm (I'll be dead tomorrow for sure :)).


We went on top of a hill where you could see the entire city-scape. Alas, it was raining cats and dogs with thunder and lightning and was not able to have a good view. Nonetheless, we just took the opportunity to take some pictures on top.

Sion

Last weekend, I was pretty restless at the middle of the day as boredom struck on me again. I was inclined to visit Basel and Zurich but due to some logistical reasons, I decided to head off instead Sion in the neighbouring canton of Valais.

It was already half past two when I departed Geneva which I was really glad to do so as staying further in the city would somehow drive me nuts. As it was a Saturday, I actually envisioned to stay in the city overnight but since it was a public holiday the coming Monday, all the places in the hostel have been actually booked.

Anyhow, it was a pretty much scenic ride with the train passing through lakeside Swiss cities of Lausanne, Montreaux, Vevey and then suddenly shifted into sceneries of valleys. The route was actually the one going to Italy but since I am one of those citizens that require a permit to go there, I could just dream and imagine how it looks like if I would take the train until the destination.

During my entire trainride, I had to endure French-speaking teenagers yapping out loud (yes out loud) throwing their frisbies inside the train and acting as if they had the entire train carriage for them. Listening from their conversation, I reckon that they are vacationists from France. How I wish I had the guts to compose something in French and tell them to please quiet it down. But anyhow, me being the reserved and uncomfrontational persons did not bother to talk to them and instead just turned on my mp3 volume out loud.... what a looser! Along the route, I was able to see houses on the hill/mountainside.



After about nearly two hours in the train, I was able to reach my destination.

Sion is a small city which is sort of isolated with other towns. It is on a city set on a valley surrounded by countryside. But because of its picturesque setting, the town has been invaded by tourists mostly from France.

The streets in the city are intricately tree-lined with manicured side gardens in the traditional Swiss fashion.

Walking by the shopping alleys of Sion :

Who says guns aren't sold in Switzerland?

albeit toyguns :)

And just to have a sampler of the town's ambiance:

As nighfall starts to fall, I started to ascend into one of the most visited landmark of the city, a castle on top of the mountain overlooking the city. It was a mighty ascent with my heartbeat reaching 175 bpm by my estimate.

This was the start of the ascent

And that's what I needed to climb, the Chateau de Tourbillon

On the opposite side, we have a basilica:

the Basilique de Valere (sorry no accents, my keyboard is not French)

Ascending further into the top with my heartbeat getting faster, I was able to see some plantations by the hillside.


After about 400+ steps, I was finally able to reach the top (huff, puff)! I now know why the Swiss have a very high life expectancy, they get a lot of exercise! Good workout though.

I was rewarded of the following views:

Getting the attention of a bunch of a Spanish tourists as well as trying it out with my limited Spanish, I was able to have a picture of myself on top of the mountain:


You may wonder why most of the pictures I post here in my blog are of sceneries. Well, it is becase I am the only one travelling most of the time and every time I take a picture of myself, ackward results come out. Well, it will be possible to ask other tourists to take your pictures as well but that is actually coupled by the language barrier and sometimes the not-so-friendly attitude of people towards tourists sometimes who outrightly refuse your request to have them take your picture.

On top of the hill, I was able to see a colliseum. It's pretty awesome for a city the size of Sion to have its own sports arena. Its a true show of this country's financial werewithal.


Once I was back in the city centre, I was looking for some Chinese restaurant as it would possibly be the cheapest meal in town. Well, being a touristic town, you can expect that prices here are kinda inflated. I, instead went into an Italian restaurant where I had a good spaghetti bolognese meal plus a dessert for a meagre Fr 25 (~ CAD $23) (when I say 'meagre', 'meagre' by Swiss standards, don't misinterpret me). I didn't had any problems at all as the waiter did his business to me in English and with that I gave the guy an extra tip (n.b. tipping is not obligatory in Switzerland).

Bad English can kill

This is soo hilarious!

(Hot) Amsterdam

The next day I went to Amsterdam, the Netherland's biggest metropolis. But first, we needed to go to the airport to fetch my host family's Dad from a business trip abroad. I got an opportunity again to have a look at Amsterdam's huge airport.


Amsterdam's airport is one of the biggest airport that I have actually used. It's not as straightforwars in structure as Osaka's Kansai or Detroit's airport but seeing the number of people as well as the flights landing and taking off wil give you an impression that the airport is a major transiting point in Europe.



And finally, we were able to meet the person we were waiting for. We haven't actually seen each other since I was 4 yrs old.
Geez, guess I could still gain some height!

With that, I took the train and started my adventure towards Amsterdam.

Amsterdam is a city built around canals. The canals create such an idyllic atmosphere.




Walking by around, I was able to see a big town square whose name I do not know.


Walking further around town, I was able to notice the city's 'bizzareness' and well-known tolerant attitude.


And then we have the infamous windows. 'It' is actually legal in Amsterdam. When I ask my Dutch hosts about the red light district, they always tell me that I should look into the windows which I could not understand. Well, in my curiosity, I took a picture of an actual prostitution window itself.

When a window is closed, its either 'engaged' or close for the moment. When it's open, it actually looks like this:

Sorry I could not take a picture close range as I could end up in the canals of the city afterwards.

Since I do not actually have any business in the city's red-light district, I opted to go to an exhibit of world press photographers.


They have interesting exhibits such as these:


And here is the 1st placer of the exhibit:


I also realized that Chinatowns might be a common fixture of a Dutch city. Being a port city, traders from China must have settled here long time ago.


In the evening, we watch a popular Dutch-American restaurant-theatre show called Boom Chicago. It was like in North America again as all the servers are Anglophones. There was no hint that you are in the Netherlands.













A day later, I was back in the monotonous, snobbish, and segregationist world of International Geneva.