My Dutch weekend

As you have probably noticed by reading my blog, I am - again - really enjoying being abroad. But sometimes I miss it to have a familiar face around, to be myself without my skirt and high heels and to talk about something else than sailing boats and golf. So that's why I was really looking forwards to last Thursday. Because that day was the day that my first visitor would arrive; Marit!

And what do you do when your friend from Holland visits you? Exactly, you discover Geneva and its surroundings the Dutch way: by bike! On Friday I was able to leave WHO a bit early, so we went around on our fancy bikes (8 gears!) that you can rent for free. As true Dutch girls we drank a beer in stead of a wine (seriously, people here are surprised when they see a girl with a pint in her hand) and we enjoyed the Friday afternoon sun on a plank bridge at the lake.

At night we went out with Giuillaume (a French guy who's also renting a room in Francine's apartment) to discover Carouge at night. And that was quite shocking… Sixteen year olds were drinking, screaming and puking everywhere, but apparently this was completely normal since this was happening every weekend.

The next morning we woke up late, watched a movie and around 1 'o clock it finally stopped raining. After some shopping and walking around on the market we decided to rent bikes again and to visit a second country; France! The rest of the afternoon was great. The weather was nice and the views amazing, and the towns very cute and French.


In the late afternoon we found a nice picnic spot and we spent there an hour drinking pastis, eating pasta salad with our hands (spoons were still at home…My fault!), enjoying the sun on the small path and eating the 'dropjes' that Marit had brought from Holland. Weird, I don't eat them that often, but when I'm abroad I always miss them…


And then… we had another, typical Swiss, experience. From one second to the other, the weather suddenly changed from very sunny and hot to a LOT of rain and thunder. Oh oh! So we jumped on our bikes as fast as we could and started cycling. We had no idea where we were and what was the fastest way back to Geneva, but that actually didn't matter anymore after 5 minutes. We were completely soaked and laughed at by all the persons inside their dry cars. But since it was still warm outside it wasn't that bad actually, and we didn't care anymore after 10 minutes so we just started waving back at all the beeping cars :)











One hour later we finally got home, took a shower and… discovered a terrible thing: Marit's phone was not in her bag anymore! Probably, during our fast and chaotic run-away-from-the-rain at our picnic place in the middle of nowhere it had fallen out of her bag. So we decided to cancel our trip to Lyon on Sunday, and to rent the bikes again and go for another cycling trip the next day. That night we were completely dead so we didn't go out but instead watched another movie, drank Swiss wine and ate a lot of Swiss chocolate!

After we woke up the next morning we first went 'google mapping'. We remembered seeing a big water tower yesterday while sitting at our picnic place, and by using the satellite view we traced back a location that could have been the one where we had been. So we created kind of a map to orientate ourselves a bit, went to the bike renting place for the third time that weekend, and one hour later we were on our way again.


Nice road, nice views, but when we arrived at the path of which we thought was the one where we were the day before, we did not really recognize it... But we cycled and cycled and suddenly we saw the big stone next to the seat we had sat on! We had managed to find back our picnic place!!! And even better: when I parked my bike and looked down I saw her phone! And it had survived all the rain and thunder because it was still working! Amazing…










After a small celebration dance we continued our third cycling day by going to the other side of the lake. And the exact moment we arrived at a small beach the sun started shining, and after all the excitement of finding back the phone we felt asleep in the sun for an hour. We both got a nice tint!


At seven we went back, returned the bike, made dinner, and at 12 we were in a party mood. On our Sunday night. Crazy as we are we decided to put on our dresses and to go into Geneva trying to find a place to dance and go out. Well, the night ended a bit different because we ended up sitting on a bench in the park because everything was closed (ok, ok, not that surprising on a Sunday night), but it was a nice night and a great and fun ending of a great and fun weekend!


The next day she flew back to Holland again so I am now back at my WHO life. But with some exciting upcoming plans: This coming Thursday I will go to a training of the Dutch national Football team (they are training in Lausanne, close by Geneva, and since I am now on this Dutch-friends-of-the-ambassador emailing list, I am invited as well!). And Friday night I will have my first visitor from Belgium coming over - Celso will finally arrive! And we will watch the first European game, Portugal - Turkey, played in Carouge really close by my place, here in Switzerland!

xY

PS I'm online! Here's a picture of me behind the stand at the World Health Assembly.