Switzerland is the Bermuda Triangle of Europe.
It's impossible to get out of.
Boy and I had booked a ride with Blablacar weeks before, but the driver sent me an apologetic message, informing me that life had happened and his plans had changed.
I mean... life does happen and plans do change. But gosh, it's annoying when life happens to people I'm relying on.
"Well, what do we do?" I asked Boy as we sat together on the bed of Tian's upstairs room. "The only other Blablacar doesn't leave until the eighth."
"And Yann and Estelle got off work so they could spend time with us on the 7th and the 8th..."
"So it wouldn't be fair to them to arrive at... umm... 23:00 on the 8th," I said, despairing just a little bit. "That's when this driver says he'll arrive in Grenoble."
"What does FlixBus have?"
"Flixbus goes from Zurich to Lyon... but it takes fifteen hours and costs sixty euros and we'd have a layover in freaking Milan. MILAN."
"What about trains?"
"Trains are way too expensive."
"Are there buses to Geneva? Maybe we could get a bus from Geneva to Lyon."
"Nope. No buses from Zurich to Geneva that I can see..." I scrolled through GoEuro.com
"What about Bern?"
"Nope."
"Maybe we can find a Blablacar to Bern and then get the bus from Bern to Lyon and then ask Yann and Estelle to pick us up from Lyon?"
"Maybe. Let's go down to the bus station first and just ask a human being if they have any better idea for us."
So we walked to Zurich's main bus station. One would think that in a city of Zurich's grandiosity, there might actually be... you know... a proper bus station. But Zurich's bus station is a pathetic parking lot with two little ticket booths.
Bus stations in Mexico were better than this....
Boy and I approached the woman working at the ticket booth closest to us.
"Excuse me," I apologized, "do you speak English?"
The woman was on her cellphone. She stared at us in annoyance and nodded reluctantly.
"We're trying to get from Zurich to Grenoble. Grenoble or Geneva or Lyon. Can you tell us what our cheapest option is?"
"No, over there," the woman curtly motioned to the ticket booth to our right.
"There's nothing you can do for us?" I asked, determined to get a better answer out of the unfriendly lady.
"Nothing."
Boy and I approached the man in the ticket booth to the right.
"Excuse me, we're trying to get to --" I started.
"ONLINE!" the man grunted.
"Yes, I looked online. I was wondering --"
"Buy tickets online!" he said again.
"I wanted your help," I persisted. "Can you tell us a cheap way to get from here to Lyon or Geneva?"
"Zurich, Lyon, 60 francs. Today, 14:00," the man growled at us.
"Is there a student bus? Student agency?" I'd read online that the Student Agency offered transportation from Zurich to Lyon, but information on how to purchase the tickets was not available.
"Go online," the man turned away.
"Yes, I did, but --"
"ZURICH, LYON, 60 FRANCS!" the man barked. "Today, 14:00."
"Student Agency?" I put on my, "I don't give a fuck" boots and ignored his flaming assholery.
"Over there," the man motioned to the ticket booth we'd just come from.With the woman who was still on her cell phone.
"Okay, thanks," I said rather coldly and walked away with Boy.
"He said to come here," I told the lady on her phone. "Is there a bus?"
"Yes, buy online," she said and got back to her call.
I fumed the entire way back to Tian's flat.
We were able to book a blablacar ride to Bern. We met Peter, our driver, at 9:15 on Tuesday morning. He was a vintner from France in Switzerland on business. I let Boy sit in the front seat and freak out about wine while I napped in the back. As has become my habit when Boy freaks out about wine.
I don't know why I'm becoming like this... I adore wine. And I adore Boy. But I feel like Boy is speaking a language I don't understand anymore. Maybe I'm just tired and need a bit of a break.
Peter dropped us off at Bern's bus station and we napped in a gorgeous park for three hours until our Flixbus left for Lyon.
Bern's bus station is also a parking lot. Not even a paved parking lot. Just a plot of flat dirt with one abandoned ticket booth.
Why do they even have ticket booths if a) nobody's there or b) they scare you away?
The bus was supposed to depart from Bern at 15:00 on the dot. As Bern is in Switzerland, I expected this dot to be strictly adhered to.
15:15. No bus.
15:30. No bus.
15:35. Our Flixbus pulled up. We gratefully approached it, and the driver disembarked and shouted, "Passports!" at us.
"One sec," I rummaged through my day bag as Boy showed the driver the tickets.
"PASSPORTS!" he yelled again.
"Here," I handed them to Boy who handed them to our cranky driver.
After we boarded, the driver spent ten minutes talking to a friend, then finally rolled out of the field of dirt at 15:45.
Forty-five minutes late. Gosh.
"Better message Yann and Estelle to tell them we're late," I told Boy.
"The internet isn't working."
"Of course it isn't."
"Should I spent 50 cents to send them a text?"
"Yeah, we don't want them to have to wait longer than necessary for us."
Boy got up to use the toilet a little later. And returned far too soon and far too disgruntled.
"The WCs broken."
"Maybe that explains why this whole bus smells like piss."
When we finally saw a sign that said we were 114 km from Lyon, we texted Yann and Estelle, letting them know our progress. At 21:15 and only 15 km out, I started feeling hopeful that we'd be less that an hour late and our friends wouldn't have to wait for so long.
And then the bus driver got lost. Boy and I were near the front of the bus and among the first to notice.
"Didn't he take this roundabout before? I recognize these signs," I said, thinking the smell of urine must be messing with my brain.
"No, this is the same roundabout," Boy confirmed. "We're going in circles."
After about half an hour of taking the same exits and roundabouts and highways over and over again, the back of the bus slowly realized what was going on. A college aged kid rushed to the front and confronted the driver in French. But the driver only spoke Russian and German, and yelled at the poor kid in one of those languages, stopped the bus in the middle of the highway, opened the door and demanded the kid (I assume, anyway) to get off the bus.
Is this actually happening?
The kid slunk back to his seat, and a few minutes later, another youth approached the driver. A bit more respectfully. With a GPS.
Imagine that.
An Indian guy sat behind us, smiling and laughing.
"I'm so happy that this is happening," he chuckled. "Now I can tell my family that bus drivers don't only get lost in India, but also in Europe!"
Three people armed with GPS directed the driver to the station. At one point, there was an intersection wherein one road had a sign with our station written quite clearly on it, and the other road led to Paris. The bus driver started turning right to Paris.
"NON," all the passengers (including myself) stood up and shouted, "TOUT DROIT! TOUT DROIT!"
We finally arrived at the bus station at nearly 23:00. Yann and Estelle greeted us with flabbergasted expressions.
"What happened, man?" Yann asked.
And we told the story.
"I need to get a look at this person," Yann said after he heard the saga.
We apologized profusely for being late and making them wait, but Yann and Estelle may very well be the most relaxed human beings in the universe. So even though they'd missed a family member's birthday party whilst they waited for us at the station, they were still so cheerful and welcoming.
"My parents are in the south of France," Yann told us as we drove to Grenoble, "so we're house sitting for them."
Yann's parents have a very nice house. A house with beautiful wood floors, a glorious kitchen, a spare room for Boy and me, a tiny pond with koi, a pool and a ping pong table.
This is where we get to spend a week? Wow. I did not expect this kind of luxury. My goodness.
Yann had to work the next day, so Estelle showed us around Grenoble. Our first stop was the gondola that carried us to the top of a mountain from which we could see the city.
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| This is the Cours Jean Jaures, the longest straight avenue in Europe. It is 7.8 kilometers long. |
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| Estelle and Boy |
We strolled around the downtown, drank a very fruity wine and then went shopping for dinner.
Yann's work colleague came over to smoke hookah, play ping pong and join us for dinner.
It felt like a party.
This... this feels like vacation. Most of the rest of our trip has felt like adventure.
But this doesn't feel like adventure. This is far too relaxed and melty for adventure. I mean, there are hammocks and fish and a pool, for goodness sake.
I'm on vacation. What a gorgeous way to end the Boy+Girl portion of this trip.
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| Yann cooks sausages and kebabs |
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| Pond with koi and fake blue heron. Apparently herons are very territorial, so the best way to keep real herons from gobbling up your fish is to put up a fake one. The fish don't seem bothered by it. |
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| This is where Yann studies in the winter to become a ski instructor. |
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| Chamonix is an adventure tourist town. People come here to climb, paraglide, ski and ride the gondola that costs 60 euros. |
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| You almost see more paragliders than birds in the mountains around Chamonix |
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| This picture is enough to sum up the reasons Boy and Girl want to move to France. |
We shared a picnic, drank a coffee and headed back to Grenoble.
"Why don't we live in France yesterday?" I moaned to Boy.
"You guys are really serious about moving to France?" Yann asked.
"Yeah, we'd like to move here next year. I can apply for a working holiday visa with my Canadian citizenship. Boy needs help, though. American passports don't get you much in the way of visas."
"I can help," Yann offered. "I can make phone calls, I can meet people. Just let me know. You should move to Grenoble."
I could live in Grenoble... If Grenoble has nature like this close by and people like Yann and Estelle in it... I could live in Grenoble.
The evening was like the evening before. Hookah, swimming, full-blown ping pong warfare, hammocks, and a beautiful dinner with beautiful people.
Estelle worked again the next day, so Yann drove us to a nearby mountain for a picnic. On the way up the steep road, we were stopped by an ambulance and several people helping a fallen biker. Yann turned off the engine and we got out of the car.
"It was a head injury," Yann told us when the ambulance finally drove off to the hospital. "The woman fell off her bike and hit her head. She doesn't remember anything that happened to her."
I wonder how much her life will change because of this? I hope the effects don't last long... I hope she gets back on the mountain next week with no fear. Just more awareness. Which is what I'd want for myself with skiing, but don't know if I'll manage for a good long while.
We parked the car and hiked up to a nearby restaurant. A restaurant where Yann bought us a cold drink and we used the menu to practice French.
Then Boy and Yann scouted out a picnic location --
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| Boy's manbun is looking fabulous these days. |
Yes. I could live in Grenoble.
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