Last Evening in Europe

Night has descended upon my last day in Europe. With proper funding I could happily have spent another week here, but then the same was true of Munich, Berlin, and Amsterdam, not to mention Scotland. But time moves forward relentlessly and with its hook, so well firmly buried in my cheek, I have no choice but to follow.

25 hours from now (taking into account time changes) I will be back on American soil. There, I will resume the life I’ve done well in avoiding for the last month – that of an unemployed college graduate in the field of psychology, very little idea of what he wants out of the world, let alone what he has hope of finding. I strongly suspect that ‘initiative’ and ‘self-motivation’ will be two key terms in creating a future I want. We’ll see if I can acquire them.

I had a better idea of what this last month was going to hold than I do of this coming month, and this is a frightening thing. But there’s nothing to be done about it; my future a bridge I’ll have to build when I reach the ocean. In the mean time, I have many loving family and great friends, too many I needed to catch up with even before I left. When I get back I’ll have to catch up with all of them, since this month has yielded more stories than I can ever hope to remember, let alone tell.

But enough about the future for now. I haven’t given mention to any of what has happened since lunch.

Truth to tell, there hasn’t been all that much to tell. As I had planned, I spent the day wandering through Geneva. I went across the lake to see the monstrous fountain up close. I had a great time scuttling under the spray-rain falling all around the fountain, as I tried in vain to capture its might at different angles with my camera.

I found and explored the tiny Rousseau Island. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wasn’t buried on this island, but they have a huge statue of him and they named the island after him. I find it funny that I was more easily able to stumble onto this man’s memorial island than I was able to get around to reading anything he’s written. I’ve been meaning to do so for some time.

Swans are just everywhere on Rousseau island. They’re as common as pigeons or ducks. I think that’s cool, except ducks aren’t dangerous. Swimming in Lac Leman again, I was afraid that while floating I’d bump into or otherwise manage to piss off a local swan. They’re brutal beasts when on land. When I’m immersed in water taller than I am, I have the feeling that a swan could beat the living hell out of me. That’s why when I watched a vindictive little kid try as hard as he could to kick a swan in the head, I tried to imagine what the headlines could read. “Kid and swan go neck-and-neck – fight immediately swan-dives into foul play”.

Seriously, I thought for a second that I was going to witness a child being slaughtered by a large bird. Didn’t he realize that the swan was twice his size?! I can’t imagine what the swan had done to make this kid try to kick something twice his size in the head, but fortunately for all of us, this child missed his target, who avoided his feet with a nonchalant swivel of the head.

My swimming trip was cut short as it began to rain. I had to walk a good hike back to my hostel in the downpour, but in my post-swim euphoria, I was barely aware that I ought to have felt uncomfortable because of it until I was almost back to the hostel.

Once back, I changed and set out again, much like the day before, in search of food. This time, however, I managed to find a restaurant about ¼ the price of the last, and roughly ¼ the quality as well. But it was a solidly mediocre meat and mushroom pasta dish. I returned with a full belly and shopped around for some memorabilia. In the end, I chose a Swiss army knife variant to bring home from Geneva, called the Swiss card. This felt like something of a copout given that I have seen them in America too, but it was cheaper here and I’d been considering purchasing one for a while.

Along with my tool, I bought two beers: a Heineken and a local beer, of a quality too low to be worth mentioning. Heineken was a good measure better than I expected – not good, but drinkable enough.

I have also been sampling the local Swiss chocolates. It’s all been good chocolate, but admittedly a bit of a disappointment. There hasn’t been anything close to running against some chocolates I’ve had in the past. Then again, I’ve been completely unable to track down dark chocolate here, and I consider dark chocolate the clearly superior chocolate.

And now, as I write this, I am discovering the pleasure of eating chocolate alongside good scotch. It’s an interesting experience

I’m definitely developing an appreciation for Scotch. A month ago, I all but hated it. Now I prefer it to most beer I can find. Admittedly, with the difficulty I have finding good beer, this isn’t saying much, but it’s a leaping start, I assure you.

But having put to pen the details of the day, I’m being tempted to delve off into ranting or self-reflection of the worst kind. I know what you, the reader, must be thinking: “So what is new here?” And while the question may make a good point, tonight at least I feel it would be best to stop writing here, perhaps to embark on David’s postcard. Which I left upstairs. Shit.