Blogs from Geneva, South-West, Switzerland, Europe - page 23

So, I made it back to Europe. It's a lot sooner than I thought I would be, but I am excited, nonetheless. Time to cheerish old memories and make a whole lot more. The fiaso of my journey to Geneva started early Monday morning when our family (Mom, Dad, Andy, and I) went down to East Lansing from Grand Rapids to drop Any off for his two week romp in the woods with his Forestry class. Did I mention he had to be there at 6:30AM? Then the three of us remaining went down to Dundee in time for the daily opening of Cabela's, sportsmen's Mecca. We then headed towards the airport and made a final pitstop at Meijer's for some food and a travel clock. I wound up getting timbits and an iced frap ... read more

As a project review by the European Commission is quite an important milestone, we held a Dress Rehearsal to iron out any remaining kinks.... read more

It has been a challenge to even blow our noses and cross the road, but, thankfully, we have managed to achieve a number of notable things: 1) Checked in to our hostel, then checked out the next day to move into one of only 15 CERN-managed apartments, skipping a waiting list of thousands thanks to terrific timing (we popped our head into Housing Services only hours after the previous guy broke his contract) 2) Unlocked door of said apartment after the tenth try. Can now open at our leisure. 3) Discovered only lift for said apartment is designed for midgets. Discovered lights in only lift are unreliable, able to plunge user into claustrophobic darkness at any time. Then discovered unidentified chunk of fresh vomit/diarrhea in corner of only lift. 4) Discovered stair case is extremely ... read more

Tarquin and myself were invited to Cliara's birthday party yesterday . He had an absolute ball, took a while to get into it as there were quite a few people and so much going on. We had 2 huge marquis out on the lawn with everything from electric jeeps for the kids to drive around in, jumping castles, ball pitts, slippery slides, disco dance floor complete with full light set up, face painting, balloon maker, spanish dancers the lot!. The food was great (of course) with massive kids buffet holding all the kids favourites. Tarquins favourite part I think of the whole party was the chocolate fountain!! So you can imagine him walking around with his fruit on a stick and chocolate literally all over his face. The photog got some great shots so am ... read more

If you're just checking my blog, be sure the you caught my last entry which I just published. I split this up into two because the last one was getting excessively long. So, when we last spoke, Derek and I had just arrived at Vicky's house in Erps-Kwerps, Belgium. OH! I forgot a pivital moment of our first night there. We went and got some famous Belgian frites (fries) to take back to Vicky's house. Mmmmm so gooooood! That's where the real "French" fries are from, for sure. We ate an absolutley disgusting amount of fries, and Derek has the pictures to prove it. It's a really big thing in Belgium and Holland to eat these tasty fries smothered in goopy sauce, which is usually mayonaise (although there is generally a huge array of sauces for ... read more