Travel Diary

Geneva

Ah, Geneva. I wanted to like you. I really did. I wish I had better things to say about the city, but there are few. I arrived in Geneva around midnight. I had no reservation, and no clear idea where to go. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I planned that part of the trip. I also was unaware that it was an extremely expensive city, and probably not a good place to need a last-minute reservation.

From the train station, I headed north. I had noticed a sign about a youth hostel, so I figured that was where I needed to be. It took me a while, but I finally found some other travelers and they pointed me in the right direction. I was in luck. They had openings. There was a 10-person room, which currently had only two other people in it. In fact, they were two other Americans. It worked out rather well. Plus, the cost was only about $20. Considering some of the other hotels were said to be anywhere from $200-$400, this was not a bad deal at all.

The room was nothing but bunk beds, but that was all I needed. I spoke with the other travelers for a while. They were seeing about 21 countries in three months.  Pretty amazing. I charged up my batteries and went to bed.

I missed out on the hostel breakfast, electing to get a little more rest. Afterwards, I checked out, and headed to explore Geneva. The bus brought me into the old part of the city--well, it doesn't really seem to have an old part, but I did explore the heart of Geneva. The first thing I found out was that yes, it really is expensive. Everything is just excessively expensive. I ate light. There just didn't seem like a lot to see. I did find a church to explore with a cool tower, but that was about it. Granted, I didn't give it a lot of time and hadn’t researched the city very well, but other cities worked rather well and I had approached them the same way. They had me at "hello"; Geneva didn’t even have me at good-bye.

I must strongly note that the people were all very nice. I didn't dislike the people; I just hated the high prices and the lack of anything photographic. But again, like almost all of Europe, I found the people to be very friendly and helpful (when asked). If someone tends to find Europeans rude everywhere he goes, I often surmise that the problem might not be with the Europeans...

Being rather bored with things, I headed to the train station early and took the train to Fribourg.

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