Le temps fait bien noir sur Genève.

It's strange that there hasn't been any updates on this blog since I moved to Geneva at least, bearing in mind that I have had three entire weeks to waste.

Well, anyways here I am in the middle of Europe encircled by mountains in all directions. After a week at Line's place I found a house share just at the very edge of my poor student budget and moved in with a Russian guy who does a PhD at CERN and a German girl who does an internship with the UN Environmental Program. The flat is in a nice enough area, a bit like "La Cité" but I can walk home safely at night. I can see the airport from my window, and the Juramountains just behind. Also, I live on 7th floor so I have a good view-- over the primary school seven floors below. Every hour during the day I have 10 minutes of joyfull children playing, then the bell rings and I can enjoy another 50 min of snooze. Luckily the primary schools in Geneva don't have classes on Wednesday.

Today I completed the final stages, or what might seem like it, of my battle with Swiss bureaucracy. The Swiss are well-known for their army-knives, clocks and banks, trains that run on time and ehh, efficiency. Let's say that my most recent adventures with the cantonal administration have made me believe that this is just pure fraud. The immatriculation of the University of Geneva finally proved that. It was ridiculously slow and badly organized, and involved an awful amount of waiting for so to move the documents that you'd posted in your application, along with loads of other useless sheets of paper from one desk to another. I see why the Swiss do not let whoever enter their country, but you have to believe that people don't forge their diplomas from high school. But obviously not! So I am going to wait for a good while to get my final residence permit and so forth, but at least the formal procedures are done.

This weekend is the great weekend of meeting new people from my class and to make friends with our future colleagues. I am staying in tonight, just too tired from having slept very little before today's exhausting bureaucratic adventure. Also, I got pretty soaked walking home from the tram last night. I'd rather be in great form for my excursion tomorrow, my Belgian friend from CERN is bringing me to IKEA so I might get a desk and a decent chair. Then the master studies can just begun!

There is a bad weather forecast for Geneva this weekend, le temps fait bien noir sur Geneve.

Well, in summary Ingo is doing good in Geneva in spite of all these tiny obstacles on the way. Next week we'll be ready for the masters and what I am looking most forward to is Tuesday's lecture with Andrew Clapham!

-J'ai un peu vecu pour toi-