This is no longer 3 ft sea level...

I really enjoy hiking and the outdoors, but coming from Miami, at elevation 3ft and no inclination whatsoever, hiking isn't really something that I get to do when home. However, not that I'm in Switzerland and surrounded by mountains in every direction, I no longer have this problem. On Sunday I went with five other Yalies to hike Le Reculet, the second highest summit in the Jura Mountains. However, when we took the bus to the town we had to get to, we didn't realize it was still over an hour long walk to actually reach the mountain. Thankfully, the trek was interrupted by yet another open air market. This one may have even been better than the one in Nyon! ...I may have to start coming here on Sundays just for the awesome fresh vegetables, jams and dried fruits. hmm.

mountains, mountains everywhere!

We began our journey up the mountain only to reach a road after about 15 minutes. After a bit of confusion and struggling to ask for directions in French, we realized that we were not actually on the mountain trail, but simply a nature walk; we quickly made our way to the trail to get to the trail on the mountain. Yes, there was another 45 minute path on the road up the mountain before the actual nature hike began. Once we finally reached the trail, we had already climbed a decent way up the mountain, enough that we had reached an outlook the displayed Geneva in all it's glory. This alone was worth the hike. But, we did come all this way to hike a mountain, not a road up a mountain, so we continued up. As you may expect, interestingly enough this hike was much more picturesque than that on the street. Still, we quickly found out that it was another 3 hours until reaching the summit; none of us had anticipated a full 10 hour day hike, so ended up turning around after a bit. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful hike and view of the city and I will undoubtedly be back to finish it off (and go to the market again!) possibly even this coming Sunday.

Where's Greg?

Greg, Luke, me, Field, and Kerkeira at the first outlook.

View of Geneva

A Real-Life Yoshi!

This past Saturday Becky, Kenan and I caught an 8am bus/train to Nyon, an adorable town on Lac Leman (aka Lake Geneva). We got off the train and, like always, began to wonder. We came across this cute patisserie and decided it was time for some cappuccinos. While we were sitting there we noticed these 7 middle aged men at the other side of the cafe...6 of them were dressed like mushrooms and the last was in a green cartoon dinosaur costume. We thought it was a little strange, but the perfect cappuccinos (and I mean perfect--they were sprinkled with cocoa on top and each person had a unique mug, like at Koffee!) took priority.

Seriously. These cappuccinos were incredible.

We then made our way to the center of town, where we ran into a giant market! It had specialty food, cheese, veggies, baguettes, baked goods...everything you (or at least I) could want and more! Needless to say, I was ecstatic. There was a few stands with at least 10 different varieties of wild mushrooms...I got myself some orange funky looking ones. Fingers crossed they taste good, too. Well, while we were perusing the market, we ran into none other than Dino and his friends!! They started talking to us and it ends up dino was actually dressed as Yoshi from Super Mario and his friends were the mushrooms. Yoshi is engaged to be married this coming weekend, so as such, apparently it is tradition here for friends to make you dress up and do random tasks. When we saw him at the market he was giving out candy and his friends were filming all of his (ever so slightly) awkward interactions with everyone. We enjoyed it.

Becky and Yoshi!

Kenan, me, and Becky in front of Lake Geneva

Local charcuterrie at the market

We made our way towards the lake and found ourselves on this gorgeous elevated park overlooking the lake. The view also overlooked the entire city of Nyon--a city characterized by castles, gardens, and sailboats adorning the lake. After seeing the lake from afar, it was time to get closer; we went down to the lake and picnicked on the boulders surrounding it. Our friends David and Mark arrived at that point from St. Genis, so we wrapped up our scenic picnic and made our way to go meet up with them. However, before we could reach them, we ran into none other than our new-found friend and his mushroom companions. Apparently, Yoshi's next task was to buy someone coffee, so he did. Lucky us.

Picnic on the lake!

Becky and Kenan in front of Lake Geneva

The view overlooking the lake, gardens, and sailboats.

 We met up with David and Mark and decided it was time to check out the town's museums. We saw the museum inside the castle of Nyon, which had some interesting portraits, films, tupperware, and a prison from the 1700s. We then saw the Roman museum, which consisted of artifacts from when the Celtics--Nyon is the only known town in Switzerland to have been inhabited by the Celtics. After one more walk around the lake and a quick gelato stop, our tour of Nyon came to an end. I could not have been happier with this choice of a day trip. Thank you, Yoshi, for a wonderful introduction to this beautiful and quaint city on a lake.

Mark, me, Kenan, Becky and David on the lake!

Switzerland's version of barbies.

Good gelato makes everyone a little crazy: Kenan, Mark and David.

The castle of Nyon

We made our way back to Geneva via train and caught night 2 of Fete de la Musique. In case you are curious, we did not get lost this time.

Note: Coconut Grove (in Miami) also had a Fete de la Musique this past weekend.

We Conquered Geneva!

Coming into the summer I told everyone that I would be staying in Geneva for 10 weeks, because that's the impression I was under. However, that's not quite the whole truth. Instead, I am living in a small town on the border of France called St. Genis-Pouilly and am researching at CERN, which is situated on the Franco-Swiss border right outside of the Swiss town Meyrin. Note: neither of these places is Geneva. Thus, in order for me to actually experience life in Geneva, I have to make an effort to go into the city (this is only about a 25 minute tram ride, but still). This weekend the city held it's annual  “Fête de la Musique,”
a music festival featuring hundreds of musicians of different genres and attracting over 250,000 people-- this seemed like the perfect excuse to explore the city.

On Friday after work, Becky and I went into Geneva, a first for both of us. Our phrase of the night would soon become "We did it! We conquered Geneva!" We left the train station and arbitrarily chose a direction to walk in. Thankfully, we quickly ended up at the park, where stages, tents, and food carts were set up for the festival. We did it--we found the festival! The park was beautiful and the festival seemed like it would be blast. However, it was almost 7:30 at this point and we had each had a light lunch, so were ready to search for some dinner. There was food at the festival (Indian platters, empanadas, hot dogs, etc), but we decided if we were to go to a small restaurant and split a pizza, it would be the same price and a much better meal and environment. So we left the park and started walking to the street. That was problem one: we were walking in the direction of a residential area, and of course, all of the restaurants are in downtown Geneva. We walked back towards the train station to get back to downtown. As we were walking around we noticed that the area wasn't exactly the nicest, was covered with graffiti, and the people weren't the friendliest--we quickly decided to keep walking and not stop there to eat. But we soon made it back to the train station, so surely were close to all of the restaurants--we did it! Arbitrarily making decisions again, we crossed the station and turned right. It seemed like the only restaurants we could find were Indian and Thai, and while we both like Indian and Thai, we did not leave New Haven and come to Geneva for that. There was one pizza factory we ran into, but I vetoed that, I mean, how good can mass produced mini pizzas really be? So we kept walking. It seemed we were soon encountering the same problem as before: this was not the area to be in, let alone the area to stop and eat. Becky was starting to get annoyed and both of us were losing hope little by little. Finally, after passing on a Vietnamese restaurant we glimpsed to a side road and coincidentally found this adorable bistro "La Grotta," that served wood oven pizzas, had a classical guitarist playing, and had an ivy covered trellis. It was perfect. Becky and I split a pizza that was topped with a fried egg and we both agreed it was one of the most incredible things we had eaten in a while. We did it. We conquered (dinner in) Geneva. 

We later found out that if we had made any other turn during our journey for dinner, we would have been in a beautiful area, full of restaurants. It just so happened that we chose the exact right turns to end up on the only two sketchy streets in this otherwise safe city. Oops?

After dinner we returned to the park to see this exciting festival that everyone has been making a huge deal about since I arrived. The festival which is advertised on fliers on every wall in both Switzerland and St. Genis. We got to the festival and walked through the different stages of music and performers. It was extremely fun to walk around; yet, it didn't seem quite as large as we were expecting...or as the program said it was. After asking someone, we realized that the reason it seemed so calm and small was that the festival is actually separated in two sections, and we were in the smaller of the two that was directed more towards children. So we made our way to the other side of town, walking/wandering through the city and simultaneously getting to experience it. We passed all of the touristy areas, that incredible number of restaurants (that we had managed to avoid before), the river and lake, the stores, the bakeries, and finally, the other parks. After some more wandering and following our ears for music, we ended up in the main area. There were street performers everywhere, music ranging from Rock to Electronic to Jazz to Latin. It was incredible.

Needless to say, we were quite tired by the end of the night and knew that we would be back the next night for more of festival, so didn't stay long after finding the main festival sections. Still, despite all of our struggles, we navigated this city and came out on top. We proved ourselves to be (eventually) capable and optimistic individuals. And with that, we officially conquered Geneva.

Stove-Top Cookies

My roommate, Becky, and I quickly realized that we have a lot in common; a significant common interest is that we both love to bake. One small problem: our apartment's kitchenette is lacking an oven. But why should that stop us? Yesterday afternoon we had nothing to do and both really wanted to bake, so we looked up how to bake with a stove and made the best of what we had. However, by the time we decided to bake, our small town supermarket had closed (as it was past noon on a Sunday...) and we had no baking supplies in our apartment. We found a convenience store just up the street and searched for what we could find--flour, sugar cubes, eggs, butter, and a chocolate bar. The goal was to make simple chocolate chip cookies...or something that could at least pass for them. We had no baking powder/soda, no measuring cups, no whisk/beater, no vanilla, sugar cubes instead of granulated sugar and definitely no oven. But what is life without some challenges?

Thankfully, Becky and I have both made cookies a number of times before; we added the ingredients together, tasting the dough along the way and working it until it was a reasonable consistency. We used some water to make a simple syrup to melt the rock solid sugar cubes, and guessed as best as we could at most of the measurements. We used a fork/spoon instead of a whisk and a pot as a bowl--I'd say we are pretty resourceful. To actually bake the cookies, we placed spoonfuls of dough on a medium-heated pan and covered them to cook for 5 minutes, at which point we flipped them (with our spatula-inspired fork) and let them cook for about 5 more minutes. I admit, they were a bit like sweet mini-pancakes. Still, people ate them and actually commented on how good they were! (We are not totally convinced, but we'll take it).

After a mostly successful first attempt, we are looking forward to many more creative stove-top cookies over the coming weeks! Who knows, maybe we'll try some brownies while we are at it, too...

What a Lovely Day For a Picnic

I've always been a fan of cheese, but ever since coming to France/Switzerland, I cannot go into a grocery store without buying a block. For anyone who knows me, I'm a huge foodie and, when able, make my way into a grocery store nearly daily. But the cheese is just so good here! And affordable. I've had blue cheese, goat cheeses, creamy bries, unidentifiable cheeses--and I have been obsessed with each cheese. And of course, let's not forget about the lovely baguettes and jams that must accompany any cheese tasting. Freshly baked baguettes are less than a euro. France caps the price of the bread, so it's always kept extremely reasonable. The jams come in every variety imaginable, and each are made locally. What could be better?

This past Saturday a few of us went to Lausanne (a Swiss town on Lake Geneva) for a day trip. We hit up a market beforehand to be picnic-ready. We found ourselves a nice park, and the weather was so sunny, it was like it was urging us to picnic there. So we did. Fresh baguettes, 3 varieties of cheeses, prosciutto, salami, and all. 

Aaron and David picnicing!

Luke, David, Aaron and I at Lausanne.

 After our picnic we walked around an outdoor market that was being held in Lausanne. There was singing, dancing, cooking, kites--all in all, so much energy! There were dozens of stands all selling something different. And many of the food stands had samples. I was happy.

 After the park we made our way to the cathedral in Lausanne. This is probably one of my favorite things about Europe: everywhere you go is rich in history and architecture. You just don't get that in the States--especially in art deco Miami. We finished our day at Lake Geneva, where we went for a dip in the freezing cold water, and came out tougher and able to conquer anything. Hopefully.

Entrance to Cathedral D'Laussane

Lake Geneva

 And of course, no picnic would be complete without some homemade gelato to finish it off. I can definitely foresee regular picnics, and a fridge devoted to cheese and jam. I am already starting to pick out my favorite patisseries, gelaterias, and fromageries. This is shaping up to be a very good (and delicious!) summer. 

Gelato anyone?

The Grass is Always Greener

I left Miami Monday night on a plane to Madrid. The few days leading up, I felt  tugged by a mix of emotions--I was extremely excited to for my trip, but also sad that I'd be leaving people and the comfort of home. In the end, excitement seems to have won.

My red eye to Madrid was perfectly fine and I seemed to have plenty of time for my layover; however, when it was time to board for Geneva, well, we didn't start boarding. Eventually, the flight attendants told us that France was on strike, and hence they needed to get clearance in order to fly through. My flight ended up being 2 hours delayed, but I made it safely to Geneva and then (after a few struggles and missed buses) found my way to my apartment. I am staying in a small French town, St. Genis Pouilly, on the Franco-Swiss boarder--it is a mere 10 min bike ride away from CERN and an absolutely beautiful town. It is exactly what you would picture a small French town to be: abundant flowers in fields, pastisseries, fromageries and charcuteries on every corner, cows roaming on fields, mountains in the background.

Pastry shop in St. Genis

Specialty local cheese shop in St. Genis

So far at work I've really just done preliminary things--I had to go through all the registration&security logistics the first day to get my ID, go through security clearance, etc., and have since been doing background research to be more acquainted with my research. Everyone I am working with is very sweet and helpful, and I know that this is going to be a great summer.

CERN's globe--it's identifying feature from above the ground.

Yesterday after work I went on a bike ride to a nearby mall in Val-Thoiry. Biking through the country towns was gorgeous and the mall itself was really fun to explore. I got some incredible buys there including a bikini top for a euro and a bottle of basil infused olive oil for 2. Still, there was something else that struck me about the mall--all of the t-shirts at various clothing stores were advertising distant places, none said France or Switzerland on them. A couple of the stores, in particular, seemed to be devoted to one city: Miami. Every rack I went to had a t-shirt with picture of Miami Beach, Ocean Drive, Biscayne, or Brickell on it. Walking through town this morning I saw a man wearing a Lebron James jersey (go Heat!). It was incredible, I left Miami 4 days ago extremely excited about Europe, yet I arrive here and signs for Miami are everywhere. It seems the grass really is always greener on the other side. (or Miami actually is the best place ever. That's still possible.)

But as for now, things are looking pretty green to me here.

A trail hugging a creak near my apartment in St. Genis.

An impending journey

In six days I will be leaving the States for almost seven months (194 days, to be exact). I have been home in Miami for the past 3.5 weeks now-which is the longest I have been home since I started college-and I can't believe it's already coming to an end. From the beach to boating to cooking with my parents, I really love home. My boyfriend, Glen, just left yesterday after visiting and it was so great to be able to introduce to him to my beloved city, family, and friends. But, my time at home is soon reaching it's end.

Crandon Park: my favorite beach back home

On Monday night I leave Miami for Geneva, where I will be researching particle physics at CERN for 10 weeks. I am extremely excited to live in Switzerland and be able to travel Europe during my stay. And, of course, I am looking forward to the research and in realizing where my interests in physics do or do not lay. After my researching, my parents are meeting me in Geneva and the three of us will spend the next two weeks touring Switzerland and Spain. We will end our trip in Madrid, where I will stay to continue my studies for the fall semester at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Today, my leaving finally started to feel real. Up until now I had been excited about this "once in a life-time" trip, but now it is actually coming together. I've started to get stressed about small logistics-I still must pack, call credit card companies, set up phones, etc. But much more, I'm very sad about leaving friends and family. Thankfully, we live in such a technologically savvy world that Skype, emails, phone calls, and facebook make everything much easier. Still, it's not quite the same. I am definitely looking forward to the travel experience and the immersion into new cultures (after all, that is why I decided to study abroad), but am aware that I will be leaving my comfort zone, which is a bit frightening. Ultimately, I know that while it may be a challenge, this trip will be a life changing experience for the better.

I woke up this morning to an email confirming that there will be a bike available for me when I get to CERN. I had sent an email to check the availability during my stay over a week ago and the email was never responded to; however, after a follow up email yesterday, I received a response today that one is indeed available. yay! An hour later I received a phone call from the Spanish Embassy in Miami telling me that my Visa had been approved and that I can pick it up tomorrow. While this may seem insignificant, I cannot even explain the amount of anxiety this visa has put me through. I was initially told by the Spanish consulate that I would have to mail my passport back to the US while I was in Geneva for them to complete the visa (a risky thing to do if caught). Then, I was informed that the system to issue visas was down in Madrid, so I could not schedule an appointment before I left the country. At this point, I was contemplating whether I would even study abroad next semester or not. I had mentally drafted a few emails to my Dean asking to re-enroll in Yale for fall semester. When this was resolved and I managed to get an appointment, the consulate explained that while I could now apply, the visas take at least 4-6 weeks to be approved in Madrid, and then I must pick it up in person or else they would not issue it-a slight problem, seeing as I'd be on another continent. However, today's phone call told me that some how by God's grace the 4-6 week waiting period had been overseen and my visa was ready. I do not have to fly back for a weekend to pick it up this summer; instead, I am able to leave for Geneva knowing that everything is in order. That is enough to calm some (or many) nerves and to remind me that life is not ultimately in my hands.

I am going to take today's events as a great and positive sign for this impending journey.