More random notes - German vs. French Switzerland, tourists in Lucerne, tops at the grocery store

Some more random notes:

- We just spent the weekend in Lucerne, in the German speaking part of Switzerland.  It's a really noticeable, the difference between German speaking and French speaking Switzerland.  I specifically noticed this in the area of women's shoes, which I was looking at because I wanted to buy some. In the German speaking part of Switzerland, women wear much more comfortable shoes when out and about.  Another thing - the setup for bike lanes and pedestrians is much more advanced in the German speaking part of Switzerland (though any part of Switzerland is far better than the US in this regard).

- Lucerne is packed with tourists.  The two biggest easily identifiable groups are the Indians and the Chinese. However, the Indians seem to always travel with their family, while the Chinese travel with tour groups.  I assume much of that has to do with the fact that the Indians speak English very well, whereas the Chinese don't.

- A Chinese couple in Lucerne wanted for whatever reason to get photo of them with my kids.  I didn't understand at first - I thought they were offering to take a picture of me with the kids.  But no, they wanted a picture of themselves with the kids!  Strange.  I took a picture too.  Also strange was the fact that they were grinning like mad when talking to me, but when it came time to take the picture, they got all serious.

- Peter was talking to me, and forgot another English word - this time a pretty darned important one, "boy".

    Peter: "What's that word, for what I am?"
    Me: "You mean, a boy?"
    Peter: "Yes, that's it, I forgot!"

- The grocery store Migros has new marketing campaign.  For each 20 CHF worth of goods that you buy, you get a top similar to this, which elementary age kids are absolutely wild about collecting.

For the day-to-day things that we need, we go to the other big grocery store chain, the Coop, so we don't get the tops.  But when we were in Lucerne, there was a Migros grocery store at the train station, which was open American style hours (i.e. not closed on Sundays and holidays).  We arranged our sightseeing around visiting this grocery store.  A couple times a day, the kids would go in, buy two small cartons of chocolate milk, and the generous cashier would give them 2 tops each.  We did that a few times, and came home with quite an accumulation.  I asked for one today at the Migros, but without the kids, and my cashier refused, saying it had to be above 20 CHF.  But the cashier next to her just handed me one!

Kids and Travel

We have 2 boys, ages 5 and 9.  Do they like to travel?  Well...hmm. Not nearly as much as I do. And I have occasionally heard the complaint, "I want to stay here this weekend!".  I don't know when kids develop a desire to see "sights", but it certainly isn't yet.  No, travel with kids this age involves a lot of compromises, and a lot of slowing down.  Here's some of the things that make it work better for us:

• Screen time.  Normally, at home, screen time is pretty limited.  But on trips, when we're in the car, or flying, it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet of games and movies.  The old iPad is pressed into service, as well as the Nexus that was supposed to be mine, and occasionally, my phone.  
• Breaks!   Lots of them, and frequent.  Take a little break, open the snack bag, sit down for a while.  Basically, do things at the kid's pace.  
• Candy.  What more can I say?  I have a little container that I fill with Skittles, which I call "walking pills".  When Peter gets tired of walking, a walking pill will pep him up considerably.  Then negotiating when he gets the next walking pill can consume the time until the next real break.  
• There's things my boys can spend hours doing. For instance, throwing rocks into a lake.  Go ahead, spend an hour or two doing just that.  The museums can wait.
• Bring toys.  Whenever we go on a longer trip, I have the boys both bring a small mesh bag with little toys, like little Lego characters, etc.  They can spend a remarkable amount of time playing with them.  
• Books.  I bring Kenny's Kindle along, and also load some children's books onto my Kindle, to read aloud to Peter.
• Games that can be played while walking.  For instance, "I'm going on a camping trip and I'm going to bring a ... ".  Each person then adds one item, and has to remember the previous person's item.  It gets tricky!  Form teams as appropriate for the younger kids.  Another favorite was going through the alphabet, trying to think of an animal name that starts with each letter.  And the perennial favorite, 20 questions, made a easier for little kids by choosing a category (like fruits, or animals).

Things that are important to me, are not important to them, and vice versa.  For instance, Peter saw an old bent earring on the sidewalk.  At first I told him not to pick up that old dirty thing, but then I reconsidered, and he happily played with it, washed it at the next fountain we saw, etc.


It's interesting to note the kind of things that kids remember.  For instance, there was a particular cafe we went to in Lyon, at the Basilica of Notre-Dame.  When we went there the second time, he remembered that the first time we were there, he had his favorite "Twisty" popsicle for the very first time.

Starting job at the UN

In the spirit of, "when one door closes, another door opens", last week was my first week of work at the UN, working for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).  The UN has such an aura about it - perhaps a bit tarnished sometimes, but still - that I'm excited to be working there, at the "Palais des Nations".  There's so much history here, so many dreams and plans for peace, so many delegates and diplomats in the hallways. Geneva is a very multi-cultural, international place, but the Palace of Nations in Geneva is the very epitome of international.

A few first impressions:

The offices are enormous!  I'm in the E building (the "new" building, though it was built in the 1970's).    Here it is.

I share an office with one officemate, and it's literally about 30 feet long.  Other offices in our group are also extremely spacious.  You can't even really chat with someone while leaning on the doorway, because their desk is usually so far away from the door.  At Expedia, we just had rows of desks, facing one another.  I would conservatively estimate that Expedia packed at least 5 or 10 times as many people to the square foot.  That's more efficient and much cheaper, of course, but it is kind of cool to have massive offices like these.

My office

On the ground floor of the E Building is a large cafe/lunch area.  It looks like it could be from a 1970's James Bond film - it has scores of low-slung leather chairs, looking out over the lake.  Very pleasant place to hang out.

My desk is a massive sturdy old thing that looks like it's from the 1970s, same as the building.  Very solidly built.

There's a curious lack of any kind of common or public space in the office building.  I walked around the other day for a bit of a break, and in my walk along the entire lake side of the building, there were nothing but offices with closed doors.  You have to go down to the first floor cafe (pictured above) for a common area.  I'm used to smaller offices (desks, really) but pleasant and plentiful common areas.

The view is great - the building is set in a big grassy park, with views of the lake and mountains.  My boss has a great view of Mt Blanc.

The grounds are beautiful, especially on a sunny day.  The whole area has a wonderful view of Lac Leman, the huge old trees - it's just gorgeous.

The Palais des Nations is a very impressive old building, with extremely high ceilings.

There are 2 massively long corridors going from my building to the Palais des Nations.  One is on the 3rd floor, and one is on the ground floor, which on that side of the building is underground.

Third floor corridor

The UN cafeteria is a great deal, with great food at prices that, for Geneva, are reasonable.  That's probably why it can get very crowded - also with the constant conferences and meetings, things get very busy.  They have great fancy desserts as well.

There's peacocks everywhere!  Apparently the original owner of the property that gave it to the League of Nations made as a condition of the bequest that the peacocks were to be there perpetually.  The first day that I biked in, I saw two, a male and female, just on the loading dock area where I lock my bike.

The people are such an incredible mix.  I don't think I've met 2 people from the same country yet in my office.  Let's see...Greece, Italy, Serbia, Hungary, India, Great Britain...nope, so far everyone I've met has been from a different country.

Looking up towards the Palais des Nations

My ID

Rainy Barcelona...

Unfortunately the weather on our trip to Barcelona was really poor - 1 day of clouds, and 2 days of almost solid heavy rain, which is apparently really unusual for that area.

I booked an apartment, which was huge and very clean, but didn't have anyone on-site, so nobody to ask questions of, nobody to store our luggage with.   The first morning I bought cereal and milk for breakfast at a little grocery just a few steps away.  The owner had the shop open at 8 AM, then I saw the same guy at around 8:30 that same evening.  That's gotta be rough.

Overall, I really liked Barcelona, even though the weather was crap.  I could see spending much more time there than just a long weekend.  It's very lively and energetic, people seem very cosmopolitan (especially compared to Madrid), and there are lots of interesting shops.  We spend most of Friday strolling around the old town (the Gothic Quarter), luckily that was the one day there was no rain.  The pedestrian area is huge, you could get pleasantly lost there.  Our first stop was on Las Ramblas, a big pedestrian walkway in the old town.  I had read so many warnings of pickpockets that we were very alert and had our money stashed carefully, but we had no problems.  I did see one teenage girl who looked like a gypsy, who was doing some kind of scam, but nobody targeted us. The best part of Las Ramblas was the market, where they had all kinds of great fruits.

We had a disappointing  experience at El Corte Ingles, trying to buy new sneakers for Kenny since his old ones (bought in Madrid) were falling apart. We went to three separate El Corte Ingles department stores, just a few hundred meters from each other, and in each one they pointed to another one, and didn't seem to know what was sold where.  At first it was a problem because I asked for shoes (zapatos), but the term for sneakers is different (deportivos), and they're sold in different stores.  Finally at the last one they did have sneakers, but instead of having all the sneakers together, they had each brand in a different location, i.e. Adidas on one floor, Puma on another.  It was a real hassle.

Walking around the old town

Getting around on the Metro was very convenient and fast, really cheap at 1 euro, and easy to figure out. Plus, the metro stop was only just a few steps outside our apartment.

We asked around Friday to find a "typical" restaurant.  Aa guy at the tourist office recommended the 4 Gatos, which we sat down in, looked at the menu, and after debating for a while, awkwardly took our leave - it was very expensive and there was little choice.  We ended up eating just a few doors down for much cheaper.  The best part of my meal was the beans - white beans with olive oil and a parsley sauce, very tasty.  The artichoke was fine too, though I think grilling is not a good choice for artichoke.  Other than that, we ate mostly in McDonalds or kebab places, and one Turkish place).  

Saturday and Sunday it rained heavily.  Saturday we went to the Sagrada Familia (long line, Eric liked it but I could have skipped it).  Then in the afternoon we went to the CosmoCaixa Museum of Science - outstanding place to visit, and cheap!  Only 3 Euros for adults.

The displays were awesome, interesting, and most everything worked.  We met an American family in the cafe who had been living in Barcelona four years, and were headed to San Diego in a few months.

A robotic drawing arm at the science museum

The worst part of the trip was the taxi to get to the airport.  The guy took us in the OPPOSITE direction !  After it seemed like the drive was taking too long, Eric checked on the GPS on his phone, and showed it to me, and I asked the taxi driver why were were going this way.  He said, "There's a marathon today", and then got straight on the highway headed to the airport.  I didn't challenge him, but we checked later, and the marathon was in March!  What a scumbag.

Another lovely bike ride in Cologny

The weather was perfect today for a ride, so I took advantage of the sun for a short ride into Cologny.  Cologny is a very expensive, very exclusive area.  I biked around the outskirts, where there are lots of vineyards and horse farms.  The roads leading out of the city were a mess - supposedly solid bike paths disappearing and reappearing like a cheap magician's trick.  But once I got out into the country, it was a delightful little bike ride along quiet roads.

Some moving sculptures (literally, the arms went up and down) at a hospital complex.  The complex  was huge and park-like - felt like a university.

Peaceful little roads

Lunch overlooking the lake and the Jura mountains

The pier at Port de Bellerive

A campground nearby had these cute little cabin.  Inside was just a little  bed, no more.

At the nature center Pointe-à- la-Bise

The view from the bird watching tower - I saw a pair of Great Crested Grebe doing a mating dance!

I didn't actually take this video, but it looks exactly like what I saw from the bird watching tower.

First bike ride of the season - Genève-Satigny Route 102

This would be a pretty minor accomplishment to one of the legions of people in Geneva who bike long distances every day, frequently with kids on bike trailers or bike seats.  But anyway - I took a nice long (for me) bike ride on my own today.  The inspiration was Genève-Satigny Route 102 (http://www.veloland.ch/en/routes/route-0102.html) but I didn't follow it exactly, and also didn't finish.    Also spring is here - that was a big inspiration too!

Starting out around the train station was tough - there's some marked bike lanes, but they're hell to try to follow in the midst of nasty traffic downtown.  Once I got on a separate bike path, though, things were much more pleasant.  I went by:

• some kind of petroleum refinery
• a playground next to what looked like public/social housing, where loads of people that you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley were hanging out
• a pedestrian/bike bridge over the highway
• finally a playground with a nice view of the Saleve.  

Overall, a really enjoyable ride.

View of Saleve in background

I believe these signs indicated where the gas pipelines were

No one to take a picture, so I took one of my shadow!

More random notes - street cleaning, language acquisition, and crayons

A few more notes that aren't enough to make a full blog post:

- When walking around in Geneva in the earlier part of the morning, you'll usually see street sweepers.  They have these little street sweeping vehicles, driven by one man and will usually have two helpers who have these really old fashioned looking brooms - like broomsticks from a Harry Potter movie.  They sweep from the sidewalk, and between cars, into the path of the street sweeping vehicle.  The funny thing is, Geneva streets are very dirty compared to other places.  It's mostly dog poop, which is everywhere. AND people will actually sometimes put it in a bag, then drop the bag right on the street - assuming the street sweeper will take care of it.

Street sweepers, view from our kitchen.  Notice the tiny figures in
bright yellow on the sidewalk

- Peter forgot the word "sister" in English.  It came up in a book I was reading to him, and he asked me what it meant!  He's forgotten quite a few English words, but this one shocked me a bit.  I guess, for kids, "easy come, easy go" in terms of languages.  The husband of a friend of mine lived in Denmark for 2 years when he was age 7 to 9, and spoke Danish fluently.  After moving back to Germany with his family, he promptly forgot it, and now can't understand or speak it at all.

- I've thought quite a bit on how to help the kids retain their French language skills.  Other people I've talked to have thought about putting their kids in French immersion school, but that's too much work and expense for me.  And frankly, while it's great to speak another language, I don't want emphasize it to the point of sending them to a special school.  So, the plan is this - I'll buy a bunch of popular kids movies (Lion King, Finding Nemo, etc) that are dubbed into French.  When we're back in the US, that's what they can watch for movie time.  Easy peasy, I hope.

- Crayons, for 6.70 CHF a box - that's currently $7.21 USD.  I was looking for watercolor paints for Peter, and found these at the Migros on Rue de Eaux Vives.  It's really just regular wax crayons, and only 10 of them.  They're in a nice metal box, but still!  In the US, I've bought boxes of 24 crayons on sale for 25 cents a box.  Maximum, you could probably pay $1 for a box.  How the heck do they come up with these prices?)