Geneva Living

Greetings from Geneva!  One week down, we thought it would be fun to share our first impressions of living in a new city.  

The weather is still amazing, bordering on unbearably hot at times.  It's around 28-30 C each day (mid to high 80's) and surprisingly a bit muggy.  Our decision to bypass the public transportation for now and walk everywhere we go also compounds on the heat, usually leaving our skin with a nice glow (sweat) by the end of each day.

We are settling in at work.  We each share an office with 3 other people-- Ang is blessed with a window but a smaller and warmer office (left), while Dave has no window but the office has been nicknamed "the refrigerator".  There are always tradeoffs.  It's taking a little getting used to the fact that around 5:00pm Geneva time, people are just starting their work days in Bellevue.  The jury is still out on whether we prefer this timezone vs. Bellevue, but for now it's working just fine.

We visited four potential homes last week.  If you get out your Geneva maps (we'll wait...), two of the units were in the Carouge area (about 25-30 min walk from the office), while two were closer to the office in the Plainpalais area (about 15-20 min walk from the office).  We applied for two of the four units (waiting to hear back still), but unfortunately lack pictures of either to show.  Expedia is now sending us on group housing visits with others from the office that don't have homes yet.  For now, it's still fun for us to see new potential homes every other day and it's also turned into a bit of a social event with 10 of our co-workers.  As you can see (right), there is still competition from the general public as well, waiting to see one of the units.

As for daily life, we are enjoying ourselves very much and love to discover and experience new things each day.  We average one baguette every other day.  We have a running cheese and beer list where we purchase new kinds and give ratings in order to discover what our favorites are (surprisingly the beer is not very good thus far, although the cheese is fantastic).  We discovered a 50-foot long olive bar outside of our office building that will be there every Wednesday-- soon the vendor will know us by name, I'm sure.  We tried fresh Iranian pistachios and almonds in a farmers market.  We have a great Panini truck (exactly like a taco truck, only with paninis) outside the office but we are still trying to translate the whole menu (left).  It's delicious so that's all we care about for now.  We tried sushi for the first time (in Geneva) on our 3rd year wedding anniversary(!) :) on Wednesday.  It wasn't the best sushi we've ever had but we didn't hesitate to consume 42 little pieces between the two of us.  

In general, it's very laid back here.  Yesterday afternoon Dave joined a couple friends at the local English pub, "Mr. Pickwick," to watch Holland take on Brazil.  It's a great atmosphere in which to watch the World Cup games because the large international community comes and roots for their teams in full force.  Fortunately the Dutch were victorious and it was a great match to watch.  Later in the evening we joined some Expedia friends for an outdoor gathering (right) put on by "Glocals", which is a social organization in Geneva.  It was sooo European-- the flier included sayings like: "Dinner with chill out vibes" and a "Chill out party" later in the evening.  You just have to smile at the languages differences.

We'll leave you with a picture of the Jet d'Eau that we took last night because Dave is a little obsessed with it right now.  It's surprising that it hasn't lost it's charm yet (and it's fun to say: "zhe de ooo")-- but I guess ask us in a couple years and we'll see...