Finding a place to live

To find an apartment is really difficullt in Geneva. The first thing you should know is that 80% of all apartments is owned by big companies, e.g. insurance companies, banks etc. due to their heavy investment in real estate. And of course they have their agencies renting out the apartment for them. So you would go the these agencies (meglere på godt norsk, de samme som du vil gå til for å kjøpe hus) to apply for an appartment. Yes -- apply! With a proper application, and somethimes also including your CV.

A first filtering is performed by the agency, basically remowing most of those not having swiss nationality. They'll have a look at your police records, payment records, work stability, your family situation etc. Then the last selection is of course made by the owner or their representative.

As you can know understand, this is a troublesome process, which is why I was only hoping to find a subletted room, i.e. a room I could rent from someone who had already come through this needle eye. Well, even that's hard. I got plenty of responses located about 1 hour drive from CERN, and also some downtown Geneva living on (or is it with) a family... But this things REALLY depent on the family/the people already living there.

After looking at 5-6 different rooms, and a 150 e-mails later (half in French) I'm now so sick of looking for an apartment/room. This is the only thing I have been doing outside working hours, all week (except for talking with Tor Arne at skype). None of the appartments were tempting.

Exhausted...

Route planners

Here in Genève, we have a very practical website (www.tpg.ch) for finding the best means of public transport from A to B. You simply type in your stops or adresses, the time you want to arrive or departure, and like magic some various suggestions comes up.


When Tor Arne left Genève on sunday, he needed to be at the airport at 9h30. With this input to this genious website, it suggested (see pic.) to leave at 00h17, and spend a total of 5h 45min travel for a trip that actually takes less than 30 min. In other words, it suggested to spend the night at a busstop at the half way there...

Snow in Trondheim

A heavy snowfall in Trondheim during the holidays, approx. 40 cm. Too bad I'm not there to experience it! Pictures like these (taken by Tor Arne) makes me want to go out and play in the snow...

Genève vs. Geneva

Did you ever find it confusing when the name of cities and countries change with the language? Well, I do. And for Swiss cities this is even more pronounced, as Switzerland has 4 official languages (German, French, Italian and Romansh). Due to this, all official information, posters, food ingredients, etc. is stated in in all the 3 first of these 4 languages.

And the city of Geneva (Eng.) has of course a different name in each language; as copied from wikipedia "The name Geneva is probably of Celtic origin; the city was mentioned in Latin texts with the spelling Genava. The name takes various forms in modern languages. French: Genève, German: Genf, Italian: Ginevra, and Romansh: Genevra."

Well these might not be all that confusing, a worse example is the name of Germany in different european languages (ex: Tyskland, Allemagne, Deutschland, Германия, Njemačke, Německa, Duitsland, Saksasta, Germania, Германии, Alemania, Niemiec, Alemanha...) (http://www.howtosayin.com/Ich+komme+aus+Deutschland.html)

Catalonian christmas/new years eve

Me and Tor Arne togheter with 6 other people (3 spanish and 3 german) celebrated new years eve together, including various christmas and new year traditions. We had cheese fondue for dinner, and the dessert was brought to us by Tió (see below).
















From the left: Anna, Robert, Tor Arne and Utah.















From the left: Tor Arne, Utah, me, Jörg, Marina, Daniel and Anna.


We had Tió, the log (see picture), who had been fed since December 8. In order for him to provide us with presents, we sing him a song which goes like this (english translation in brackets)

Caga tió, (shit Tió)
caga turrones (shit turrons (a type of chocolate candy))
si no vols cagar (if you don't shit properly)
et donaré un cop de bastó (I'll hit you with the stick)


(http://melisand.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/tio-de-nadal/)

Then we hit the poor guy... And out from under his blanket came some chocolate.















Everybody grabbing the stick preparing to hit Tió...


Now, midnight is getting nearer, so we prepare the grapes... Everybody gets 12 grapes, and from the stroke of midnight, one grape must be eaten at each of the twelve rings from the bell. If you manage all twelve you're supposed have good fortune in the following year. (A bit of chewing was demanded before we could all yell "Happy new year!!")