life and other things worth losing

i cannot quite believe the things that have happened to me since i last blogged. Geneva already seems aeons ago and yet its only been 3 days. i spent the last day there wandering around and avoiding Ms Edgy. she seemed to inhabit a corner of Geneva that i nicknamed Boob Valley. there were lots of boobs and lots of cleavage. of course it was just round the corner from my hotel so i was always running into boobies of one kind or another. i went out on the Saturday night but didn't get very far. i sat in a bar listening to a woman sing a song which i was sure was meant to be about a 'room' but the way she say it was all about her 'womb'. consequently 'come into my womb/i want to hold you in my womb/my womb is yours and yours alone' all sounded a bit dodgy to me. so i returned to my hotel via Boob Valley only to be propositioned by a young black guy who then proceeded to follow me down the street. between the boobs and the rent it was all getting too much and i retired to bed relieved that i was leaving the city the next day. i got up early as my train was at 9.30am and got my ticket ok and then sat enjoying the view of the mountains going by. 3 hours later the train stopped at a place called Brig (we'd passed through Gland and were nearly at Lax- which i was as it turned out). there were questions in my mind at this point as we should have been at a different station and when i asked i realised that unbeknownst to me i should have changed trains twice to be where i actaully needed to be. this was conveyed to me by a french-speaking swiss guy as i struggled to communicate in bad spanish. don't ask me why but whenever i try to speak in another language these days i seem to default to spanish no matter what country i'm in. it wouldn't be so bad but its appalling spanish. i think i even said 'ole!' at one point. anyway, stuck in bloody Brig, miles from nowhere on a Sunday afternoon i had to wait for an hour for a train back to the connection point. another half hour for the next train. one and a half hours for the second connection and when i got there i'd missed the final connection to my destination: the Grand St Bernard Pass. by this time it was about 3pm and i didn't know what to do as i was stuck in an extremely small Swiss village with no accomodation and no taxis. i then had the bright idea of trying to hitchhike so clambered up a steep embankment to get to the road, which turned out to be a freeway. standing there with my sign, trying to look like an innocent traveller and not some knife-wheedling psycho, i stuck it out for 45minutes with no luck at all. the swiss family having a sunday gathering down in the valley below and laughing at me didn't do a lot for my dignity. at this point i was bloody fed up so i cast what little dignity i had left to the wind and clambered back down the embankment. did i mention it had thistles? no? well it was that kind of day. i got back to the train station just in time to pick up a bus which wasn't going to St Bernard but to the town before - about 10km away. the italian bus driver seemd quite nice until he dropped me off just after the bus came out of a tunnel and just pointed up the mountain road before driving off. it was about 6pm now and it was high up. the road was nearly empty, there was no vegetation and just lots and lots of rocks. cold mist was also building on the mountain slopes as i looked up the long, windy road and for one of the few times in my life i had a feeling of absolute terror. it lasted just for a moment but it scared me shitless. there i was right up in the very highest point of the Alps. there were no cars, night was drawing in and i had no idea where i was or how to get to my destination. the feeling i had inside turned into raw determination and i bloody marched straight up that road thinking that wherever it was i had to bloody well get to then i'd bloody well get there. i trekked up that road for nearly an hour before a car went by and someone stopped to pick me up . i cannot convey in words the sheer relief i felt. if he wasn't old ugly and german i would have kissed him. as it was he then drove up and round the windy roads with hairpin bends so sharp i had to close my eyes. we got to the hostel, i thanked him to the nth degree and then i stumbled into the shower, to food and to bed ready to start trekking the next day. if only i'd know what was to face me when i awoke the next morning ...

Geneva daze

well i got to Geneva with only one small problem: i got here a day early. after my saga going back to the UK for a weekend in late April only to find it should have been a wknd in late May i am beginning to wonder about myself. maybe i've been travelling for too long and take it all in my stride. in any case i wasn't too bothered and managed to find a cheapish hotel that seemed to merge the 1950's with the 1970's and celebrate the worst of both decades. got to admire that. i was tired, hungry and filthy so staggered into the shower, staggered down the road to a cafe and then staggered back to bed. Geneva seemed quite sedate to me upon first stagger but i decided more investigation might be needed. after a brief sleep (the humidity is quite bad here surprisingly) i wandered round the little streets and cafes and shops. hate to say but it was/is a very generic european capital. i means its all very nice and all but feels very safe, no edge to it. i was just saying that to myself when i went round a corner and bumped straight into some street sex workers in some very tight corsets and boobs that nearly poked me in the eye. maybe some areas were a bit on the edgy side. slipping past Ms Edgy, who clasped her boobs in tight and winked at me, i avoided the cloud of falling mascara and ran down a few streets to have a look at Lake Geneva which was a BIG LAKE. should i have been surprised? not really i guess - the description was all over the packet. i then spent a few hours walking around looking at expensively dressed people practising their best sneers whilst out shopping. in Geneva the buildings are sturdy stone monuments commemorating a time of wealth and privilege, built for the cold and cold they were. there was an air of repression, arrogance, complacency and secrets. And really bad coffee.