interesting strangers

for vasta, people i’ve met

it usually take a few days to go from ‘normal’ to ‘travel’ mode, thankfully i managed to fast track my entry into traveler mode thanks to my roommates in the hostel, a couple interesting people who helped keep me awake and fighting off the jet-lag.

Marc, from Spain.

Marc came into the room right as i was wondering how exactly i would stay awake for the next hour or two (it was around 9pm) in order to put my sleep schedule back in order. within five minutes of his arrival he was sitting next to me, giving me a detailed account of his whirlwind tour of Switzerland, complete with hundreds of photos to accompany the story.

Marc’s a young guy, living just outside of Barcelona where he’s going to university. he’s catalan, and when he started to explain to me what it meant to be catalonian vs. spanish, i was able to simply say “ah, like Quebec, i understand”.

i was way too tired to remember the details of his trip, but i know he went to Zürich, luzern and interlaken (places that i now intend to visit, in part thanks to his enthusiastic descriptions), but the one detail i do remember was his particular talent at posed photographs. i don’t think i’m exaggerating when i say he took at least a hundred self portraits with his little camera and tripod – i call it the “Marc Style Photo”

my attempt at a "Marc Style" photo

Marc, having helped me stay awake for at least an hour, left the room to take some night shots of Geneva, while I gave up and prepared to go to sleep regardless of the consequences of sleeping too early.

Kristine, a Canadian living in Germany who missed her flight to the UK

thankfully, distraction arrived again, this time in the form of Kristine a fellow Canadian (from Oakville) who had missed her flight due to a delayed train. she’s in the UK by now, visiting her boyfriend, but she lives in Frieburg, Germany while she’s doing her masters degree in materials science (studying solar cells, how cool is that?).

she was super friendly and nice, despite the crappy circumstance of missing her flight, and within 5 minutes of learning that i had just arrived in Geneva from Toronto she was trying to convince me to go visit her in Frieburg, offering me a space on her couch (apparently Frieburg is a very beautiful medieval town, worth a stop if you’re in the area).

she told me about living in Europe, and the strange combination of homesickness and attachment to Europe that develops when living here. on the one hand you miss your friends and family, the unique Canadian’ness of Canada. on the other, the thought of all the huge, unnecessary cars, the lack of decent regional transit (seriously, why can’t we have trains like in Europe?) and the lack of town squares and decent little cafe’s everywhere counts against Canada in a big way.

unfortunately in a bout of stupid i accidently deleted the photos i had taken of Marc and Kristine, i’m FB friends with Marc now, so i’ll try to get him to send me the photo he took of us and update the post
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zurich

when i was home, thinking about how i’d like to spend the 10 or so days i had available to me, i used a combination of googlemaps and various flight booking sites to pick somewhere that was both interesting to me and not too expensive to get to. that’s how i ended up in Geneva, it seemed the most geographically close to a few areas of interest, France and Italy. Switzerland was really just a side bonus, i’d heard it was nice but never had a burning desire to visit, it certainly wasn’t in my top-ten to visit spots. imagine my surprise then as i purchased an eight day all Switzerland rail pass today.

it turns out that switzerland is absolutely gorgeous in the spring, or at least i have lucked out and hit a particularly beautiful patch of weather. 20C and sunny, warm enough to walk around in a short sleeved shirt, but cool enough that you’re never hot. so, in the interest of simplifying my life, and knowing in advance just how much i’ll be spending on transportation (it’s pretty damned expensive here), i’ve decided to stick to switzerland.

ok enough blather about my plans… going back to basics, i’ll leave you with a mini review of my dinner.

restaurant santa lucia – Zürich (all amounts in swiss francs)
1 bottle san pelligrino water – 5.20
pizza prosciutto alla spalla – 20.00

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fighting jetlag in geneva

well i made it to geneva in one piece, but next time i’m packing some sleeping pills. for some reason i always forget just how unpleasent inter-continential flights are for me in cattle class. being a 6 foot 1 man in a seat too small for a 5 foot 7 woman makes it a very uncomfortable experience. i alway imagine before taking a red-eye flight that i’ll get a solid 4 hours of sleep in, but never manage to make more than 2. live and learn i guess.

enough complaining, i’m in geneva! it’s 20C and beautiful. no real stories yet as i’m tired as fricken hell, but i’ll give you some photos, and maybe a movie or two.

check out the set

yyz to geneva

my approach to blogging is, at best, spotty. if i’ve posted on average once a month for since i started this blog i’ll be surprised. it’s not like i’m not doing other things, i’m super busy at work (where, believe it or not, i write the occasional blog post), and i do have a regular podcast with the most awesomest person in D.C., but in general i let darrenchartier.ca slide unless i’m particularly exercised about some issue or other (or have new photos of my tattoo to share).

but, there is one area of blogging which i do believe i have a pretty good track record. travel blogging. i like to travel, generally alone, and while travelling along nothing focuses the mind on what’s happening everyday like keeping a travel blog. in the past i’ve treated travel blogging as one off projects, first with something that wasn’t really a blog but more a thorough flickr adventure documenting my trip to italy, then with my gastronomic exploration of thailand (with a big of japan thrown in for good measure), and most lately with my first adventure into the crazy world of videoblogging (OMFG lots of work), also gastronomically inclined.

well, i’m taking another vacation (to offset the many many evenings and weekends i’ve been putting in lately, and will likely be putting in again soon) and have decided to just blog it on my main blog. also, i hope to depart a little from my normal travel food blogging (although i expect there will be lots of food related posts, don’t despair foodie friends!) and cover some non-food aspects of my trip.

so, here i am again, sitting in pearson airport, typing away on my eeepc (holy tiny keyboard batman), waiting for my gate to open. i hope to post at least once a day, let me know if you have any requests (i’m looking at you pipesdreams, i figure i owe you a custom travel blog post since you’ve been so good at the international scavenger hunt game with your awesome japan blogging) while i travel and ill do my best to cover them if they’re not too crazy 😉