Geneva. Or Geneve if you're a Local.

The Fedewa's and our yummy apps.

As discussed many times, we have friends who moved to Geneva around the same time that we were making the move to Melbourne.  It has been great to have friends that we could talk with about the process of being expats, but it was also hard because they sometimes feel so far away.  While the US is currently a 16-hour time difference, Geneva is 9-hours, which makes keeping up and skyping with them happen at odd hours.

But, since I have business in Geneva this week, I came in on Saturday morning, and got to spend two days with them - and they were gracious enough to house me during my stay!  What a great visit and a great city.  We walked around the city, drank wonderful Swiss wines, ate crepes, made fondue and raclette, and walked through wineries.  While we had a great time doing all of that, these are the types of good friends that you can just sit and talk and still have a great time!  The only bad part about the entire trip (short of the crappy BA 747) was that Jeffie couldn't make the trip with me.

Schwingen in Switzerland does a great job of talking about all things Swiss, so I'll leave that to her and share some pics of our weekend together.  The weather was a cool 0 - 4 degrees Centigrade, but it was such a nice change from the sweltering weather that we were having in Melbourne.

Lac Leman.

   

Jeff's favorite number is 17, so I got this one for him. 
Technically it's 717, but close :)



Roman Ruins.  In a car park.

Nice church steeple.

We hiked the vineyards all the way down to Lac Leman. 
You can see it on the right hand side of the picture.

And, we had to walk all the way back up.  This beach living girl

is not built for hills anymore.

Riding a grape picker.  To my right, there was nothing except

for a drop-off, straight down the mountain.  Lucky my balance

resembles that of a mountain goat.

Roller skating fool.  Sporting a blue velour track suit and

skate dancing.  We were convinced that he had a cassette player.

We miss you guys and can't wait for you to come and visit us in Melbourne!

A Winged Whinge.

Whinge – to complain or fuss about something; a very Aussie/British expression.

I am on an around-the-world trip…I started in Melbourne on Friday evening, flew to Singapore, then onto London, then onto my first actual stop – Geneva, Switzerland…in addition to having a week-long meeting in Geneva, I got to spend some time with our great friends from Schwingen in Switzerland.  But, that’s not what this post is about – that will be tomorrow’s post.

Today, I am whinging about my flights.  As you may have gathered from looking at a map, Australia is pretty far from everything, so the airline that you choose to fly will make or break your trip.  My around-the-world ticket is with the Aussie airline, Qantas, who happen to be partners with American Airlines and British Airways, to name a few.  (Side note:  Qantas is known in Australia to be a great airline with good flight attendants, good service, and new planes, and they were widely regarded as one of the best airlines – until recently when they decided to ground their entire fleet for a couple of days during a union dispute with the pilots).  While I recognize that I am very fortunate to fly business class, the privilege has sometimes made me somewhat snotty about flights.  Just ask Jeff.

Flight Segment #1 – MelbourneàSingapore

I was fortunate to fly on a brand new A380 from Melbourne to Singapore (on a Qantas leg), and it was a glorious flight (not including the children who were running around business class like it was their job – who also happened to be the children of a pretty famous female tennis player – she could be the world #1…), but it was a glorious flight – comfy seat, neighbor that ignored me, great service, clean bathrooms, everything you could want in a flight.

Flight Segment #2 – SingaporeàLondon

First time in Singapore and it was nothing special, but not bad.  My connecting flight was a BA flight that was on time and boarding was quick.  The plane, however, was a piece of crap; an old 747 that had seen better days.  The business class section was a disaster – the seats were set in a yin and yang type configuration that has me (on the aisle) facing my seat mate (on the window) and his head was less than an arm’s length from mine.  The off-set nature of the seats makes this unbelievably awkward, if you don’t know your seat mate.  There is a divider that can be put up, but not until you are in the air for 10 minutes, so the entire settle-in time, taxi and take-off, you’re left staring at some stranger’s mug.  On top of it, my seat recline buttons only worked part of the time, and my headphones didn’t work, so I couldn’t watch movies.  I am a big fan of sleeping on long flights and take prescription sleeping pills to ensure that I land in my destination rested and ready to go.  All of that works well on a normal flight, but with the seating configuration of the crappy plane, anytime that seat-mate of mine moved, the entire pod shook…not good.  I slept for a good portion of the trip, just not peacefully – normally I knock-out and wake up when they are serving breakfast about an hour before we land.

BA 747-400 layout from http://www.seatguru.com/

Flight Segment #3 – LondonàGeneva

Nothing good or bad…just an average flight – which after the last flight is better than nothing J

BA, please reconfigure your business class section.  And, please retire you rickety-a$$ old, tired 747’s.  Otherwise the other airlines that choose to invest in modern equipment are going to eat your lunch.

Celebrating Aussie Convict-ions

This past Thursday, January 26th was celebrated nationwide as Australia Day.  Though Captain James Cook claimed the eastern half of the continent under the Union Jack on August 22nd, 1770 despite 40,000+ years of occupation by the Aboriginal people, Australians celebrate another date as their founding.  On January 26th, 1788, Captain Arthur Philip arrived in Sydney with his fleet of eleven convict ships, including the appointed Governor of New South Wales, raising the Union Jack to signal the beginning of a new British colony.

For reasons my limited research has been unable to dig up, this was not a celebrated holiday until 1994.  Intuition says the whole convict thing, but I've found nothing to substantiate that sentiment.  It is now a holiday intended to celebrate all things Aussie and is celebrated much like July 4th in the US, barbecues with family, friends, and fireworks.  This Australia Day, Laura had some work she needed to finish (very very very un-Australian!!!!) and had to pack for her round the world trip ... so I ditched her for a barbecue/poker tournament at a co-workers house.  Knowing I'd only be hanging out for a few hours, I figure I came out ahead in that I met some new people, had a few nibbles off a very impressive meat spread, had some laughs, and played just poorly enough to last until the break pushing a pathetic stack of chips in on the final hand for my final donation to the table.  That, and watching the Federer vs Nadal in the Aussie Open semi-finals (not in-person unfortunately) was pretty much the excitement for our Australia Day, but you probably heard about another bit of excitement.

Australia Secret Service just added themselves to the international Do Not Call List ... that is if you're someone in need of an evacuation.  The Aboriginal people are in the news of late as the government is working to put through an amendment to their Constitution recognizing the existence of the Aboriginal people prior to the British colonization of the country.  Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, made a statement that may or may not have come out as intended in regards to the removal of the Aboriginal Embassy.  It was not well received by the Aboriginal people and a protest ensued outside wherever this dude was having a meal with Julia Gillard, the Australia Prime Minister.   Apparently the authorities felt the situation escalated to a point where the pair needed to be evacuated.  If you've seen the video, you have seen the new training video on how not to execute an evacuation.  If you haven't, these geniuses essentially dragged the Prime Minster and whoever this guy is through the crowd of protesters into vehicles already surrounded by the crowd of protesters.

Secret Service Guy #1:  What's the plan to get out of here?
Secret Service Guy #2:  Walk out the front door.
Secret Service Guy #1:  But there's a crowd of protestors out there.  What's Plan B?
Secret Service Guy #2:  Walk out the front door quickly.
Secret Service Guy #1:  Sounds risky.  Plan C?
Secret Service Guy #2:  Don't have one, but Pythagoras says I can calculate it taking the square root of Plan A squared plus Plan B squared.

Off topic, if you're interested in details around the politics here, these three things are the extent of my knowledge:
     1) It's essentially a two-party system.  I don't know what they are called or stand for.  I'm inclined to believe one is called the Opposition Party based on Mr. Abbott's title, but that just seems stupid.  They either have the world's worst political Marketing team, or it means he is the leader of the party in opposition to that in power.
     2)  The country can have a Prime Minister not elected by the people as they currently do in Julia Gillard.  Whatever party she belongs to had put forth a guy named Kevin Rudd as their nominee and he was elected.  After a period of time, his party decided he wasn't cutting it and removed him from power appointing Julia to replace him.  No election.  Seems dangerous to me.  Throw Ian Thorpe on the ballot, because what Aussie is going to vote against the Thorpedo, and play switcheroo post election.
     3)  Rupert Murdoch is in effect.  He's Aussie, and they hate him too.  Another of his "credible news" organizations put forth a whopper of a tale pre-Australia Day.  A soon to be convict without convictions.

It's Gold Class, Jerry

We have only been to the movies twice since we've been here, and the first time was on a whim and we were a little surprised when we bought our tickets.  First, they are expensive - there is not a difference between matinee and night-time movie prices.  Second, they ask you where you want to sit and assign you seats (yes, like on a plane).  Third, you are allowed to bring your own food.  There are ads and previews that go on for at least 45 minutes from the allocated time of the movie to the actual start.  There was a Corona ad that went on for at least 5 minutes.

We both read "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series and loved them, so we knew that we wanted to see it once it finally opened down here.  The ticket lady has asked us in the past if we wanted, "Gold Class," but we didn't know what it was and in an effort to make it sound like we're WAY cooler than we actually are, we always just say that we'll sit in normal seats.

A little investigation on the interweb, and we discover that "Gold Class" is really FIRST CLASS in the movie theater.  There is a lounge and bar, special seating, and waiters throughout the whole movie.

The movie was awesome, a little graphic, but a great flick.

The other people in the theater loved that I was taking pictures.

While Jeff thoroughly enjoyed Gold Class, it will have to be a special occasion for us to spring for first class movie tickets :).

Boo Berds.

On Sunday, we spent the afternoon at the Australian Open Tennis, again.  We got to see three matches (and we left with one still to go, after seven hours).  Good thing we had the 'good-sense' to pick the "shade" tickets at the HiSense arena.  It started out as a lovely 70ish degree morning, but turned into a real Aussie scorcher - with the sun beating down on the court - it was well over 100 degrees in the sun on the court.

Easily over 100 degrees with no breeze or shade in sight.

This is later in the afternoon, but that side of the arena
was in the sun the whole day.  

The first match was Men's Doubles, where we watched the Bryan brothers of the good ol' USA beat some dudes from Great Britain (this is what Jeff says, but I'm not positive on this...).  It was a fast match, with rackets and balls flying everywhere - literally, one of the Bryan brothers threw his racket up in the air twice in an attempt to hit a ball.  It did not work.  But, in the end, they won, even though they dropped the second set 0-6.  This will hopefully be their 5th Australian Open Men's Doubles Title...sometime next week, after a couple more matches.

USA's Bryan brothers on the left; Great Britain on the right. 

The second match was a snoozer...so much that I can't even remember who it was...so, we won't dwell on that.  But during the second match, an interesting audience member sat down in front of us - she was a hot mess...she came in and immediately broke out a huge container of fruit and scarfed it down (without taking a breath), then continued to huff and puff about the heat, then proceeded to make herself a gourmet lunch - all that was prepared in her seat.  In addition to that, she felt the need to apply sunscreen even though we were fully under cover (not a ray of sunshine hit us at anytime in our seats) - she nearly undressed to ensure that she covered every inch of skin exposed to oxygen.

That bowl of fruit was scarfed down in about 3 seconds...and
it was full when she started.

Then the third match began...it was a doozy.  It was a 4-hour match with four sets, and had every possibility of going to a fifth set, right to the end.  Berdych vs. Almagro.  It pretty much went back and forth the entire match, with their scoring points being nearly even.  Almagro couldn't win a tie-break to save his life and lost 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 6-7.  Almagro is a spunky Spaniard and Berdych turned out to be a jerky-Czech.  Almagro hit him with the ball causing Berdych to go down like he had been shot in the face with a 12-gauge...upon inspecting the replay, Almagro hit him in the arm.  The ARM, people.  Almagro went to the net to apologize and Berdych didn't even acknowledge him...AND, at the end of the match, Berdych refused to shake his hand after going toe-to-toe for four sets.  The crowd went wild,  yelling and screaming and booing him.  You couldn't even hear his post-win interview because everyone was yelling at him.  What a jerk.

Almagro serving.

Tune into Berdych's next match...the Aussies won't likely forget his unsportsman-like behavior and will likely take it out on him...

We feel so lucky to be able to experience all of these great
events...Melbourne is a sport lovers paradise!

No Country for Fat Jockeys.

On Saturday, we went to the Woolomai Picnic Races, where the company was hosting a day at the country horse races...and country it was.

As we drove out to the races, I'm sure we passed more cows,
sheep, goats, and reindeer than people.

We had quite an education on how to read a race book, so we could bet on the ponies (that could have come in handy prior to the Melbourne Cup, but I digress).  Got a good look at the horses and their jockeys and began our betting.  It was a fruitful day, I think we won $16 on a total of $26 worth of bets.  Clearly, we failed our exam on reading the race book.

But the best part (as you can imagine with something called 'picnic races') was the people watching.  We had a tent set-up for our crowd, and we happened to be right next to a Buck's Night and Hen's Night - the Aussie equivalent of bachelor and bachelorette parties.  One of the grooms-to-be had an inflatable horse that he rode - all day (including a go around the horse track), and the other had on a suit.  Every time we saw the suit-groom, he was missing either a pant leg or jacket arm.  By the end of the day, he had on suit shorts with a suit coat with no sleeves.  The hen's night was just as classy, with champagne-swilling, cigarette smoking, nonsense.

These are our guys doing shots, not the Buck's Night  :)

The horses (which is really why we were there) were...interesting.  Some had a good race - others, not so much.  Some were FF (which does not stand for Fastest Finisher, as I had originally thought, but instead stands for FAILED to FINISH).  The jockeys, well, let's just say that they likely won't be running in the Triple Crown.

They still had one more lap to go, and I am certain that I
bet $2 on the last one...she did not win.

We had a great time and I'm sure we'll head to some Picnic Races again.

Quadruple Ham Overdose at the Aussie Open

Having procured Ground Passes for the Thursday evening session of the Australian Open, we entered the gates with the intent of weaseling our way into tickets in Rod Laver Arena upon learning the featured match for the evening was Andy Roddick vs. Lleyton Hewitt.  Just so happened we lucked our way into a meeting with a few ladies in possession of excess tickets willing to part with them at a discounted rate.

We were in, but needed to eat.  Oddly, food was hard to come by and we ended up consuming ham, if you apply the loosest boundaries to the definition of ham.  They were hot dogs, and I say that with the loosest interpretation of the definition of a hot dog.  Somehow bun, "meat", and tomato sauce (no "ketchup" here) were all entirely without flavor.  Though samples should have been preserved for laboratory analysis of this phenomenon, said dogs were housed in order to enter the arena and stave off starvation for the duration of the matches ("Ham" OD - 1).

Tbulls at the Aussie Open.  Wind off Antarctica on this night.

Having entered the arena, we were excited to see the Fanatics in attendance.  The Fanatics are a group of Aussies that travel the world in support of Australian sport.  They ham it up for the crowd in support of their fellow countrymen.  We were introduced to them at the President's Cup, and they were in attendance this evening as both matches for the evening featured an Aussie.  If you see a group of people in ridiculous yellow and green outfits chanting at an event involving Australians, that's them.  They provide great comic relief, their enthusiasm is contagious, and this crew had their moments.  During the Hewitt/Roddick warm-ups, they'd give a deep grunt when Hewitt hit the ball, then a girly squeal when Roddick hit the ball.  But a creative director was needed for this band of merry men when it came to match play.  They had about four chants they cycled through between nearly ever point of both matches.  Entertaining at first, but the act wore thin (Ham OD - 2).

The Fanatics

 The first match of the evening was Jelena Dokic (Aussie) vs. Marion Bartoli.  Never heard of Bartoli, but she destroyed Dokic.  What was entertaining was Bartoli had her own ham it up sessions between points behind the baseline.  She'd face the back wall and hop around, maybe take a few very dramatic forehand and backhand swings, a full on serve rep thrown in every now and then.  At first it was hilarious.  As the match wore on and she was clearly dominating her opponent, it grew ponderous (Ham OD - 3).  I can't say I blame her for holding her own mini imaginary match with herself to maintain focus throughout this drubbing.  Her imaginary opponent appeared formidable.

Dokic vs. Bartoli

Bartoli vs. The Great Gazoo?

Then it was on to the feature match.  It should be noted that Aussies have a love-hate relationship with Hewitt.  They support their own and he was brilliant early in his career, but his antics are considered un-stralian* by many.  Whether you like him or not, you have to admire the guts he plays with every time out on the court.  Particularly in this era when $100 million superstars mail it in even in the Finals (coughLebroncough).  But of course we were pulling for Roddick.  And he was disappointingly sluggish from the start.  Rumor has it he came into the match recovering from a tweaked hamstring and it showed.  He won the first set on his serve,  but he couldn't muster any winners and repeatedly got torched by Hewitt anticipating his run around forehand down the line following epic slice backhand cross-court rallies.  He tried to switch his game up by coming to the net, but never got beyond no man's land before Hewitt put it at his feet or blew it by him.  Then he took an awkward fall early in the second set, apparently re-injuring the hamstring, and the writing was on the wall.  Though my inner Nostradamus prophesied this match wasn't going the distance a game following the injury timeout, I say "apparently re-injuring" because his serve is reliant on an explosive leg maneuver and he maintained pace on his serve throughout.  He played injured the remainder of the 2nd and 3rd sets, losing both, and then called it quits.  Hamstrung (Ham OD - 4).

Hewitt vs. Roddick

Roddick with Injured Hammie

*The "Au" in Australia and Australian is sort of silent to Australians.  Sort of because the "Au" is represented by a pause where it is said, but not vocalized.

Williamstown, Australia.

On Saturday, we decided to explore a bit more of the state of Victoria.  Jeff made an executive decision and decided that we were going to venture to Williamstown.

Williamstown is located about 15 - 20 minutes from our house on the western side of the Port Phillip Bay.  It's a quaint little town that was originally inhabited by Aboriginal people, specifically, the Yalukit-william clan.  Then, in 1835, Captain Robson Coltish brought 500 sheep and 50 Hereford cattle and began to colonize the area.  Shortly after he set foot on land, many others followed - there were more than 100 buildings by 1840.  Today, it boasts a population of under 6,000 people and focuses around its maritime history and bay-front location.  The view of Melbourne was so pretty - on a sunny day, it must be awesome!

City of Melbourne from Williamstown

Lots of little sailboats and a funny looking penguin-like bird.

Melbourne in the midst of many masts.

Ferguson Street Pier.

Gem Pier.

We saw quite a few historic sites, including the Point Gellibrand Timeball Tower.  The Timeball Tower was used to signal to ships in the bay the hour of 1pm, ever day - they would then check their maritime chronometer, which enables the sailors to determine their longitude at sea.

Timeball Tower.

Point Gellibrand Timeball Tower.

Mooring anchor found in the bay.

Williamstown is a cute little town with lots of little cafes, restaurants and shops.  As is standard in Australia (that we've seen), the shoreline is beautiful.

Beautiful shoreline, no people.

More beautiful shoreline, again, no people.

Entrance to the Botanical Gardens. 

Nelson Street.

Local cricket match.  We fell asleep.

Williamstown on a nice summer day.

Oh, and it was cold.  If you're thinking to yourself, "Self, it looks like Laura is wearing a turtleneck sweater, but that's weird, because I know it's summer in Melbourne...", you'd be right on both counts.  It IS summer in Melbourne, and I AM wearing a cashmere turtleneck sweater.  With a long sleeve shirt underneath.  This week was a crazy weather week - it was in the 80's earlier this week, then on Thursday, I woke up to this:

52 degrees fahrenheit on January 12th.

Today it was probably in the high 50's, but the wind was so cold and blowed all day.

A Sweet Potato.

I love a good sweet potato.  So I was thrilled when I found a pile of them at the grocery...the only difference was that it was a purpley-pink color.

Huge purpley-pink potato

 I worked from home one day this week, and was thrilled when I remembered that I had a sweet potato for lunch, so into the microwave it went.  Imagine my surprise when I cut into it and it was WHITE inside...not purpley-pink...so then I was confused...did I purchase a huge red-skin potato or was it really a sweet potato.  Do I put brown sugar on it, or sour cream?

Sweet potato or Red-skin potato?

As it turns out, it was sweet.  And delish.

Oh, and I killed the microwave.  Apparently having it on 100% power for 17 minutes (it was a huge potato) wasn't the best thing.

No lights is a bad thing, huh?

They are Neck and Neck.

Our friends over at Schwingen in Switzerland have gone full-Euro on us.  They should know that you never go full-Euro.

Sam had the awesome idea to solicit advice from their blog followers on how to properly wear a man-scarf.  You can see their post here.  This set off a flurry of ideas for us...until we realized that Jeff has the same struggles when it comes to wearing his AFL Geelong Cats scarf.

We present to you the options that Jeff has while supporting the Cats...feel free to comment below on the best look for Jeffie.  And, if you're so inclined, feel free to comment on your preferred look for Sammy, too!

"The Traditional"

"The Bridesmaid"

"The Ninja Warrior"

"The Toothache"

"The Red Baron"

"The Wrestling Champion"

"The Sammy"

Sam, you know we love you.  Up next, how to wear rolled-up jorts (jean shorts)...