Weekend #3

Almost a month has gone by… Friday was another not-so-exciting research day. Classes in the morning, with lectures from the European Genetic medicines Association, which was actually pretty interesting. Also heard from one of the host fathers who is a doctor here in Switzerland, and he shared his view on genetics in Swiss medicine. For the afternoon got some delicious Lebanese food with Bez, Natasha, and Orlando; I definitely have a favorite kebab place here. Then we went to the UN Library to get some logistics figured out, including changing out Paris hostel booking, looking for more seminars for my research, and buying tickets to Barcelona!!! Somehow spent almost the entire afternoon doing that, then went to another library to get some actual work done. That night people mostly stayed in, which was sad because I wanted to go out and had no one to go with, so I went to Sara’s and spent the night there.

Saturday morning we arranged with Natasha’s host family to go grape picking in the vineyards!! Weirdly enough Natasha wasn’t there because her real family lives in Geneva, and she went home for Yom Kippur, but I grape picked with Sara, Orlando, and Jordan, and the rest of Natasha’s host family. They own about 1 hectare of land, and each harvest it’s the family themselves that go out and harvest the grapes. It was hard work, we cut grapes for about 2 hours (there was a considerable number of spiderwebs, which I didn’t so much like), but we got to eat grapes and take cool pictures and stuff. Then they loaded the grapes onto their little tractor-truck and drove down to the main “town,” where the caves are located. All the “winemakers” (except you can’t really call them that, since they don’t actually make the wine) take their grapes to this central facility and sell their grapes based on the quality of the grapes. Then, all the grapes of the same kind are mixed together in the giant vats and ferment and whatnot; we even got a tour of the facilities (which wasn’t quite as romantic as going wine-tasting in Napa, but still pretty cool). Natasha’s dad showed us the presser that squeezes the grape juice out, but there were also these big storage rooms that I guess holds the juice while it ferments, and they hire like little people to crawl through the small hole going into the room and step on the grapes (or maybe mix the juice… I’m not really sure but it sounded pretty crazy). Afterwards the tradition is to whip out a couple bottles of wine and drink them out of one shotglass for the whole group, and I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty good wine. If you’re ever out and see a bottle of wine from Morges there’s a minute possibility that I picked some of the grapes in that bottle! LOL. Then we went back to their 400+ year old house, which used to be the castle in the town, for lunch. Natasha’s host mom made this delicious cheese quiche and salad and bread and it was quite nice, of course afterwards she sent us home with some grapes as well.

That night I didn’t really feel like going out and spending money, since we’re going to Paris this week, so I stayed in and watched A Little Princess (one of my favorite movies ever). Today, I just went into Geneva. I went to a park in Old Town called Parc du Bastions, which is very pretty and also has free wi-fi access. Mostly just emailed, facebooked, and loaded pictures for the morning, then got a crepe lunch at a little kiosk stand in the park while getting some reading done (unfortunately it wasn’t as delicious as I’d hoped it would be, but I did notice that they made fresh orange juice, which I’m definitely going back for). I wandered around Old Town looking for a café (since hardly anything is open on Sundays), then got some thé (tea) – Earl Grey Green Tea? Didn’t know there was such a thing, but it was good, and I had brought the little pear tart my host mom made last night, so it was a delicious thing to do while actually getting a little bit of real work done. When the wifi I was picking up there copped out on me I walked back towards the park and sat at the supposed longest bench in the world talking to people online, with the wonderful sun shining on my back J Then my computer died, so I walked back to the train station just in time to miss my only train for the hour. I ended up getting on the next train to Nyon (which is a bigger village with more frequent trains, and comes before Rolle), deciding I’d rather wait for my train in Nyon than at the Geneva train station. I sat on a bench in the sun for a couple minutes then happened to see Sara riding her bike to the McDonalds to pick up some wifi, so she waited with me until my next train came. Came home for dinner, and now here I am again! More excitement to come… I hope you’re all doing well!