Let's Book a Meeting

Our Lotus Notes system is shared with the entire network of offices. So, if you're not careful, you can book a meeting room in Baghdad. I'm told it happens all the time.

New in town

I like to celebrate the small domestic victories of day to day life in a my non native country and language.

Things like negotiating a money-saving bus pass that will get me from my temporary home in Ferney-Voltare to every corner of Geneva.

Or the fact that I've found a baker with whom I can negotiate for half a loaf of delicious, fresh bread, knowing full well that a full loaf would become a brick before week's end.

Or the discovery of possibly the only 7 day a week late-opening grocery store in the entire region at the airport train station. Clearly no secret to the dozens of internationals I found happily shopping there on Sunday, a day when the Swiss go into lock down. Sunday is like Christmas minus the presents around here.

There's nothing quite like moving abroad to remind you that the way we do it, and imagine that that is how it's done, is rarely, rarely how others do it. Every day brings a load of new discoveries.

While I know how stressful that changing jobs and countries and lives is for me, I can only imagine what it must be like for families with children.

Here at the apartment hotel, I'm sharing the experience of being a new arrival with plenty of others who've made their way to this international hub from every part of the Globe.

Even thought I've only been here a couple of weeks, I find myself watching them unravel of the secrets of buying a bus ticket (trust me, the ticket machine looks like the dashboard of the space shuttle), have their pictures taken in front of the United Nations and slowly discover the thousand ways that this new life is so very different from the one they left.

Break out the cone bra

Finding a Cuban restaurant in Bratislava that serves a great Mojito is one thing. Finding a Cuban restaurant in Bratislava that serves a great Mojito beside fashion icon Jean Paul Gaulthier is quite another. What a wonderful life this is.

The Great Apartment Hunt, Part Deux

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but in some things I'm a fast learner. And here is what I've learned. Finding an apartment on my own might just be a job that is bigger than me.

The effort required to locate, book an appointment to see, locate on a map and finally visit a given apartment pales in comparison to the actual jockeying that occurs once said lodging is finally viewed.

I visited a place on Friday night. The landlord told me that viewings were between 7:15 and 8:30. I arrived a bit early - closer to 7 - and saw an African woman waiting outside the door. I took a chance and asked her if she, too, was waiting for a viewing. Turned out she worked for the same organization I do, and had for the past 30 years.

She's on another floor and our paths hadn't and maybe wouldn't have crossed for some time. Yet, there we were in competition for the same place.

Frankly, if anyone was worthy of actually winning the popularity contest that constitutes apartment hunting in this city, it was her. Her last posting was Baghdad. The one before was Rwanda. I think she deserves a nice place to live.

But deserving doesn't seem to matter -- at least to the 30 or so people who filed in for a viewing while I was there. That's right. 30 people. And, it goes without saying, the apartment wasn't even that nice.

So I took myself out for dinner and made a plan.

I've bitten the bullet and engaged a relocation agent. His name is Philippe. He's blessedly eccentric and comes highly recommended from my colleagues

It's a pricey option but is, I'm told, a guarantee that I'll find something quicker and, presumably, nicer than I'd do on my own. It still might be a wild ride, but it's bound to be more fun with Philippe in tow.

Citizen of the world

I've been here a week and I'm pretty sure the only legitimate Swiss person I've met is a guy I used to work with in Toronto.

Maybe once you get out of the vicinity of the building with all the flags and into the countryside, you'll find more yodeling and lederhosen. But this place is a magnet for people from all over the world.

Today a guy from West Africa stopped me to take his picture in front of the Jet D'Eau. You could tell he was as pumped by the whole thing as I was.

Stuff gets done here. Important stuff. And it's pretty cool to be even a tiny part in it. I think we both felt it.

The Great Apartment Hunt

What do you get for $3,000 in downtown Geneva?

I saw my first apartment tonight and the answer is decidedly, not much.

Less than not much, actually.

My first viewing was a largeish, 5 room apartment wedged above a dry cleaning shop and a pub. It was remarkable for being wrapped entirely in scaffolding, since workers were busily adding two additional floors to the building.

Like that'll be quiet.

So the search will continue.

In other news, I saw my first Saint Bernard. Should have asked it to find me an apartment.

Swiss Miss in Francey Pants

For the next week or so I'll be living in France and working in Switzerland -- a situation made all the easier by the proximity of the thriving little community of Ferney-Voltaire to the relative metropolis of Geneva.

From what I can tell from yesterday's market day, Ferney's 8,500 inhabitants are engaged solely in the business of baking bread, making cheese and crafting different varieties of tapenade. In short, they are good people.

Plenty of folks working in Geneva-- most of them EU residents -- make living in France a full-time thing, primarily because the cost of living and the cost of goods are so much less expensive here.

How much less? Let's just say that it wouldn't be unusual to spend $30 CDN on a salad for lunch in downtown Geneva.

This is one of the reasons why I'm glad I rented a studio with a little kitchen. That and the fact that having a kitchen allows me to troll the markets and grocery store aisles for new products -- one of my favourite things to do. I already have a new favourite brand of yoghurt.

Yet when it comes time for me to secure my own place, I'll need to look around the cantons of Geneva -- even though the cost of a one bedroom apartment will easily set you back $3,000 CDN a month.

I've already been warned. Geneva's .02% vacancy rate and captive audience of bureaucrats makes for slim pickings in the rental market.

There are often multiple applicants for the same unit and each applicant need submit a dossier containing proof of salary, a note from their employer and letters of reference. I'm thinking of adding a picture of my cat and a bag of Twizzlers.

Send good apartment vibes. I think I'll need them.