Observations on Me/France/Geneva, part 2

Observations about Geneva:
-GVA is a really small city but very clean and quite pretty with the lake and the mountains; it has all the amenities but just fewer of them
-Lac Leman is huge; you can waterski, jetski, boat on it
-The Jet d'eau is quite a moving monument
-I've seen more swans in Geneva than any other place
-I've met tons of people with Swiss bank accounts so it doesn't seem so special/exotic to me anymore
-The Swiss are really obnoxious/bad drivers; almost as bad as the French; they make Boston drivers look like kittens (in my honest opinion)
-GVA is ridiculously expensive compared to France (and the US). Food is expensive. Dining out is expensive. Going to the movies is expensive
-Grown men and women in business suits regularly use their scooters, or trottinettes, as a form of transportation. Even senior citizens use them here!
-Traffic is GVA is horrible. It's a medieval city with modern day traffic problems. During the first French session, R and I drove into GVA and were stuck in traffic for an hour and a half. If you want to cross from one side of GVA to the other side, you are forced to cross the Pont du Mont Blanc and therein lies the problem!
-Thankfully GVA has a great public transport system, the TPG, which is appropriately priced. It costs 3CHF to travel anywhere within the canton of Geneva for 2 hours. For 3CHF, you can take the bus, trolleybus, tram or the mouette, a ferry. Also the TPG is based on an honor system. You buy your tickets from a machine and get on the bus/tram/trolleybus. When you get on, they do not collect your tickets and you do not show them. But sometimes there are TPG agents on board who ask to see your ticket
-Despite Geneva's small size and population, it is quite international. There are more Middle Eastern people and Africans here than I noticed in Boston. Also, in Switzerland 4% of the population are Muslim. Despite the fact that many are highly educated and are working for the UN or other international organizations, head scarfs and minarets are often topics of controversy (both in Switzerland and France)
-Many Swiss rent rather than own their homes. Why? Real estate is exorbitantly expensive. If you opt to own, you can get a mortgage for 100 years!! Rent controlled or nice reasonably priced apartments are available but not openly advertised on the free market. Instead they are passed from generation to generation or from friend to friend. R knows people who work for the UN who keep their apartment in Geneva instead of releasing it even though they may have an assignment elsewhere. If you have a nice apt, you hang on it and sublet it out to a friend


Observations about France (my town in particular):
-I like having the Juras in my backyard and seeing the Alps and the Mont Blanc on a clear day. It's also nice to have several huge lakes nearby. On our evening walks or motorcycle rides, we have spotted deer, foxes, rabbits/hares, and tons of snails and limas (snails without their houses)
-Besides Paris, Lyon, and a handful of other cities, France is mostly rural and made up of small towns and villages
-It is so much quieter here; I can the crickets, bees, wasps, the winds, the cow bells
-People here really take care of their property; everyone has a nice vegetable garden and a beautifully rustic house. In my area, it seems everyone has fruit trees (both domestic and wild apples, pears, prunes, berries, figs, apricots, cherries). Also I can identify these trees now :)
-While it CAN be expensive to dine out in France, food such as bread, milk, cheese, pate is regulated and quite cheap (even compared to the US)
-There are quite a few big supermarkets in town such as Carrefour, Intermarche, Leader Price, Ed, Lidl (a German brand), Ecomarche, and more
-At the same time, you can also still find stores that specialize in one thing. For a small town, we have quite a few boulangeries, poissoneries, charcuteries, boucheries
-We have 1 MacDonalds with free and unlimited WIFI. But you're not going to find a Dunkin Donuts or CVS; but in Geneva you can find 4 Starbucks. Actually there are no real places that only sell coffee, but there are a few salon de thes where you can sit and drink tea/coffee with chocolate, small sandwiches, pastries
-I was surprised to find so many pizzarias/kebab places in France, mostly owned by Turks or other people from the Middle East. In all the markets you can find Halal meats and Middle Eastern food products
-For the French, "Oriental" is the Middle East, not the Far East
-There is an abbatoir where they butcher meat. I don't know if you can bring something you hunted for them to butcher
-Our town has a dechetterie where you can bring your paper, glass, plastics to be recycled. Other things you can recycle/trash there: anything that can be burned, tires, tv, lawn clippings, tree branches, microwaves, computers, concrete/trash from home improvement. Only thing I noticed you can't return there is motor oil, cleaners, batteries
-Our small town of 10,000 people have at least 5 pharmacies within a 10 minute walk of one another. You can easily spot the pharmacies by their flashing green cross. It's possible to get birth control without an RX because it's considered an OTC drug. If you pick mushrooms, you can bring them with their roots attached to the pharmacy. Pharmacists are trained to identify mushrooms and know which ones you can/cannot eat
-We have a few small clinics in our town but the nearest hospital is 30 mins away by car. My Japanese friend's 1 year old recently had a bladder infection with a high fever and had to be hospitalized. He's feeling much better now!
-The gens du voyage (also known as Roms, Gitans) have a huge presence in France/Switzerland. Without a permanent residence, many are unemployed and living on the fringe of society, moving from village to village in their white caravans. We have driven by these gens almost everyday - sometimes we see only a few white caravans; othertimes we have seen hundreds of them taking over an empty plot of land. Nicholas Sarkozy and his government are cracking down on the gens because they suspect them of shady activities and robberies/burglaries
-French children (at least those raised and living in the country) are very polite. Whenever we meet them on our walks, etc, they always say bonjour or whatever the appropriate greeting is

Anyways, that's it for now. I'm sure there'll be a part 2 soon.