Eat your heart out

I've noticed something quite remarkable since I started working in Europe. People take their lunch breaks. In fact, people frequently take a full hour for lunch.

Perhaps this is why my co-workers looked at me strangely the first time I opened my lunch at my desk and started to eat while working. It would appear that this just isn't done. In fact, one of my co-workers was aghast that I would even consider eating alone.

"This is Europe," she said, "we eat together."

Our cafe is the heart of the building. When we're not eating lunch, it's a favourite for meetings.

The cafe is generously kitted out by corporate donor IKEA and serves the finest quality organic products. All that with a view of Lake Geneva from the terrace.

Every day offers two lunch specials - one meat, one veg - and a host of delicious sandwiches on crusty bread, a salad bar and at least 20 varieties of chocolate. The morning sees fresh croissants and pain au chocolat and there's always a dangerous selection of ice cream.

One of today's lunch choices was lake perch with basmati rice and mixed vegetables, topped with fresh herbs and chanterelle mushrooms. It was fantastic.

All the more fantastic because five of us from the department headed up to enjoy it together and lingered over it without rushing back to our desks.

Kiss Kiss

There's a lot of kissing that goes on in Europe. The French call it gros bisous.

Yesterday I saw two distinguished businessmen meet in front of the Palais des Nations, greet each other an "Allo, mon ami", and then go in for a big double snog.

Try that on Bay Street.

Next time you're renegotiating your mortgage, butter up your broker with a gros bisous on the way in.

It doesn't really work outside Quebec. Ours is not a demonstrative nation.

Around here, where you're from determines the number of kisses you're likely to plant, too. The French go for two and the Belgians go in for three.

I think someone does four. Probably the Spanish or Italians - just because they seem to really know how to live.

The whole kissing protocol is knew to me, so I never really know how many to kisses to give or for how long. It can be dangerous.

I've come perilously close to knocking myself and others out.

A few interesting facts about living in Geneva.

For apartments with communal laundry facilities, you're assigned a time for washing when you move in. That time could be 2 to 4 on Thursday afternoon. It's inflexible. People arrange with their managers to work at home on laundry day or dash madly out of the office to make it home for their window.

There are signs posted in apartment buildings requesting that men sit down to pee between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. to avoid disturbing their neighbours.

If you see, like and can afford a large apartment, there's no guarantee that the landlord will rent it to you. They sometimes refuse tenants because they think the apartment would be better for a family.

Most apartments have few or no closets. IKEA does a thriving business in storage units. Often the criteria for renting an apartment will be to assume the previous tenant's IKEA purchase.

Tenants take their light fixtures with them when they go.

Three months rent is standard for a security deposit. Rent for a one bedroom runs somewhere in the neighbourhood of $3,000 CDN.

A storage locker is called a cave in French.

When applying for an apartment, you need to prepare a dossier. This includes copies of your passport, your work permit or an Attestation from your office, proof of three month's rent, and a third party letter of reference. They've yet to request a DNA sample, but I'm guessing it's because they haven't thought of it yet.

Lots of people live in France and work in Geneva. There are borders to the north, south, east and west of the city. When you cross the border, the currency changes from Swiss Francs to Euros. Only once in three weeks has an immigration agent boarded the bus I was on to check for papers. You need to carry your passport with you all the time.

My office has a spectacular cafe on the top floor with a cappucino machine, wrap around deck and a view of Lake Geneva. Also, they serve Ovaltine.

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.