Where next??

From Avoriaz I had decided to head back to Germany. I was juggling between Italy to see Dörte or Germany to see Jo. I also needed to ditch my snow gear which was taking over my bag and I wouldn’t really be needing it again until Austria. And I was, in theory, heading north to England. My next agenda was Pierre’s birthday on the Isle of Mann and so I had 10 days to occupy in between.

So I caught a ride with Skiidy Gonzalez Transfers (Justin’s (Cosima’s boyfriend’s) company)) back to Geneva. From here I had found a couch to ‘surf’ on in Zurich and I would then head north back into the land of sausage and beer. Or that was the plan…

My first night I decided to spend in the airport. I was lacking a night’s accommodation in Geneva and I had yet to utilise this form of a hotel. A quick glance of google, showed there was a comfy green leather couch in the corridor leading up to “Police Frontier”; wherever that was? How hard could it be to find. Police after all should be obvious to all.

Quick goodbye to Chris and co who I had shared the transfer with and I set off, into the fading sun (or a pic of one in Thailand anyway) to find the fabled couch of G.I.A. Or again, that was the plan…

After a futile search of all four floors and heading into a state of mild heatstroke from the effort (I had kept my down jacket on throughout), I decided to go check my emails instead and rest my snow wearied legs. This was another futile search; mainly because I was being male and refusing to ask.

Eventually I found myself in the restaurant area and decided to ask a cashier guy which way I should head. I was told there was no internet at that time of night (wrong) but he nicely said I could use his computer. Only it didn’t have the internet so it turned out to be not so helpful after all. Thought that counts I guess.

So figuring the airport just wasn’t doing it for me I decided to head off to the train station to check on times for trains going to Zurich.

When I got there I found a neat little room track side which I could lock the door of and seats that verged on comfy in a not comfy at all kind of way. I now had my accommodation for the night, dinner (I had a box of raisins from Norway still and a croissant from France) and safety sorted so I settled down for sleep.

Curling up on the soft concrete bench, I began to fall into a deep dream like slumber, the sheep I had been counting grazing away happily on the green grass of the other side, only to find myself awoken by the sweet caress of a security guard barely two minutes in. Roughly snapped out of my beauty sleep, I struggled to understand what the heck this guy wanted. And what the hell was he saying? Sounded like messed up German or something?

Ah ha! Of course! This was a Swiss guy trying to speak German. They have no language of their own after all and are constantly trying, bless their little hearts, but also constantly failing, to steal the language of their neighbours.

So with my perfectly fluent French and a little English, I managed to discover we understood nothing of what each other was saying but the meaning on both sides was pretty clear - he wanted me to leave and I just wanted to sleep somewhere. Both smiling by the end of it, he escorted me to a galleria where he indicated I could pass the night away. But it wasn’t as secure feeling and so I sat on my pack and read until 4am when the station opened again and I could move back into my apartment.

Then a quick check of the emails found one from mum asking me to say hi to Dörte and one from Jo saying I should go see her as there wasn’t really much to do in Germany at the mo with him working at all. Bugger! Just when I thought I had it all figured out. Ah what the hell. I’d go to Italy.

Booked and caught a train at 11am and I was on my way.