Arrival in Geneva

Wednesday, June 23 2010 


We made it safe and sound. As always, the flight was long (15 hours) and jet lag can be quite the opponent, but it's great to finally get over here after all the anticipation of the last few months.

Since we are still homeless (permanent home that is), we were placed into corporate housing. It's better than we had expected (pictures below). Within a few hours of getting here, our temp apartment already had the "lived-in" look. :)

These are our views from the apartment windows. Lots of apartment buildings in the neighborhood we're currently in. As you can see, the weather is really nice-- skies are clear, sun is out and it's actually quite warm (highs of 29 C / 84 F).

We've spent the first few days running errands and pretending like we know French when speaking to the cashiers. FYI, it doesn't work at all-- but it will come with time, we hope. We bought our first 240v appliances (hair dryer, iron, etc.) so I guess that means we are official.

In addition to the relocation company searching for housing options for us, we've also been searching any website we can for additional options. We think we were somewhat spoiled when we came on our house hunting trip in May and looked at 9 units in just 2 days. Unfortunately, we didn't get the unit we applied for. And after hearing stories from some of our co-workers who arrived a month ago and are still searching for housing, we fear that we have our work cut out for us.

Apparently Geneva is going through a record-high housing shortage as demonstrated in the photo to the left. This was a group viewing that we went on in May (there were twice as many people waiting than you can see in that picture). It's not unusual to be up against 30-80 people applying for the same unit. How they chose which renters are selected, we're still not sure. But hope to have good news on this front in the near future...