12 - Week 2 3ieme: - Train of thought - Geneve

Wednesday, March 05

Another day, another Franc; am I right?  Just kidding, I cut it close again today with waking up but managed to gety french press coffee in before making the tram.  I think I've got the morning routine down, now I just need to focus on getting to sleep earlier 😆 I've been using the morning commute to get a good number of Duolingo lessons done, it's kinda nice having hands and eyes free.

On the subject of coffee, I hadn't realized until someone mentioned it yesterday that one of the coworkers I share the room with is fasting for Ramadan this month.  So I'll make an effort to be discreet with my coffee sipping and try not to make too many quenched "ahhh"s while he's at his desk 😅 

In a twist of fate (or is it quantum entanglement?), the CMS lab emailed me again today saying that there's 1 last spot left for this Saturday.  So I delivered the bad news to my colleagues but quickly sent an acceptance email back; I didn't get a confirmation email so who knows what happens from here on out 🤦‍♂️ I've passed the email address along to colleagues in case they wish to organize a trip further in the future; my gut feeling is that you can likely pick a day a few months out and get your guided tour if you state the number of people in your group.  But given my experience, emailing over a month out might not yield the days you want anyhow. 🤷‍♂️

I didn't make it to the labs today but had a lot of correspondence to manage.  There's a lot of good questions getting raised and I think I'm just a few questions away myself from having a clear frame of things on one of the projects.  I ended up staying late at work to deal with some calls from home office and to wrap up my thoughts.  On the train ride home, I ended up running into some familiar faces who've been to my home office; it was a short ride back but fun to chit chat.  

I made a quick stop at the Migro in the train station for some dinner stuff; not all of it fit in my backpack so I ended up carrying the couronne crostillante (the crispy crown) home with me leaning in the tram. 

While going outside to do a load of laundry, I encountered a fuzzy friend.  It must've been dinner time because they were quite insistent on gathering some attention.  

A quick & easy dinner at home; the bag of rocket/arugala was particularly spicy.

And to finish up with dessert: Swiss meringues.  I ate two of them with a cup of plain yogurt, it worked fairly well together.

The big planning item for tonight was deciding how I wish to travel for the coming weekends.  The Swiss system integrates buses, trams, trains, and even boats and there's many different offers available.  Based on what rough planning I have in place, I foresee myself making long haul Swiss train trips 6 - 7 days on weekends over the next month.  Here are the options I can see and was informed of by locals:

1. Buy tickets like a madman: pay full price based on the distance traveled and feel relief at how empty my pockets will be at the end of my stay.
2. Buy a day pass: for ~70CHF, I can buy a pass that grants unlimited Swiss travel for 1 day.  They need to be bought in advance and are only good for the date specified.
3. Buy a half-tariff card: for 120CHF, I can buy a card that grants me up to 50% reduction on all tickets purchased for one month.
4. Buy a Flex Swiss Pass: for a price ranging from 50-90CHF per day, I can buy a pass with a certain number of tokens.  Each token grants unlimited travel for one day, for 6 days I'd pay about 60 CHF per day.  This comes with free/reduced admission to almost all of Switzerland's museums.
5. Buy a monthly pass: Unlimited Swiss travel for a month.  
6. Buy a Carte Journalière: If I can obtain tickets from a municipal office, specific days can be booked for unlimited Swiss travel for ~50CHF. 

Crunching the numbers, I think options 3, 4, & 6 come out pretty close to each other with 5 being not too far; if I venture out of Geneva on weeknights then it will come out ahead.  Anyhow, we'll see tomorrow if I even qualify for 6 since I'm not a full-time resident.  

It doesn't say anything about needing to be a resident but this was also in a brochure for new residents, so I'm still unclear on if this is just a locals' secret.