For your reading & viewing pleasure, Liz's week in review:



Accomplishment of the week: Total mastery of french keyboards

Those tricky accents and missing quotation marks have been the bane of my exitence for the past few months, ever since I started having to write people in Geneva on a regular basis. But finally, my friends, I have the keyboard conquered. I am its master & it is my willing subject. I tell ya, if the learning ends here, my 6 months in Geneva will have been completely worthwhile.


Favourite discovery of the week: My new apartment!!!

I'm not homeless! What's more, I managed to find a place that's big, beautiful, furnished & in an amazing neighbourhood. It even comes complete with a friendly Canadian roomate, my friend Béatrice who's doing an internship with the World Conservation Union.

I'm extremely relieved to have found a place to live, especially since the rental market in Geneva is extremely tight. You should have seen some of the other places Béatrice and I looked at- it's extremely common here to pay over 1700 Swiss Francs (about $1500 Cdn) for a small, dirty one-bedroom apartment. Yikes!

Behold the glory and splendor of my new digs:

This is the living room, which we'll be turning into a second bedroom.


Here's the enormous kitchen, which will become our defacto living room.


And finally, here's the view from our window of the park & community garden right below.

We move in October 1, so you can look forward to some more gushing and gloating in a couple of weeks. I really will try to keep it to a minimum though, I promise.


Travel adventures of the week: visit to Freiburg, Germany

Last weekend I took the train up through Switzerland to Freiburg, a small university town in southwest Germany. Freiburg is known for its young, vibrant student population and for its many cobblestone streets with open canal-type storm drains running alongside. It also has its fair share of lush vineyard sitting atop small, steep hills.


Here you can see a house sitting at the top of this vineyard. Many of the town's hills have estates built right at the top, the better to keep an eye on your serfs while they toil away in the fields, I suppose.








And here's some nice beautiful grapes close up. Delicious.

Now might be a good time to mention that wine in this part of the world is by far the cheapest item on any menu. Even in Switerland, since they grow a lot of Swiss wine and only sell it locally. Swiss wine is pretty decent; however, since it's not really exported it's remained a well-kept secret. I mean, who knew that the Swiss made wine? I certainly did not.


I also got to bask in the company of special European guest star Mr. Jean-Oliver Dalphond.

On Sunday, we planned to take a cable car up a nearby mountain, but unfourtunately woke up to the pitter patter of rain on the cobblestones. Instead, we were forced us to spend the day inside, waiting out the downpour. Oh well, at least it was nice to have a relaxing weekend.


Favourite "green" discovery of the week: Micro-hydro dam in Freiburg!

In the spirit of recording my adventures in renewable energy wherever I go, here's a small-scale hydro generator that I came across in Germany. My lack of German prevented me from understanding the explanatory plaque that was posted nearby, but I did manage to make out something about 60,000 KWH. Not bad for such a small dam.



And that's it for me for the time being. I'm sending you all love from across the ocean, most especially to the fabulous Ashley Rose, who turned a whopping 24 years old on Saturday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASH!!

Much love,
Liz