13/03 - Eugh. I was warned yesterday that Cardinal lager was notorious for giving you a hangover before you have finished drinking it, and the wine we drank yesterday had a cap like a beer bottle, which is never a good sign. Thank god for the metal blinds in my room, keeping the painful sunlight at bay. Rich and I managed to sleep until 11 or so - apparently if I happened to be awake when he woke up in the night, I would greet him with a sleepy "bonjour" and roll over and go back to sleep. We got up and dashed to CERN to try and get Rich's bag back, aiming to get to the locks and keys office before 1230. We arrived at precisely 1229, found the office to be closed, rang the number on the door and were informed that it would be shut until Monday morning. We decided the best thing to do was to go to the locker and see if we could find a way in - we brought tools with us.
When we got to the lockers, we found them all to be open and empty - the one in which Rich had left his stuff now contained just an empty travelex envelope. Rich panicked and looked terrified - all his money and his passport were in the locker. I rang the CERN fire brigade (they are in charge of all emergency services stuff here), who didn't know that the lockers existed, and told us to come over and file a police report with them. We shuffled out of the door, going past the lockers one last time, which is when I noticed a sign on the wall, in four languages, informing us that the lockers were emptied every night and anything left in there could be claimed by phoning security. This sign was right next to the lockers, and in fact they had made use of it yesterday night to find the French word for locker, but had not thought to read the rest of the sign. I rang security and said "Bonjour, parlez-vous Anglais?"
"Non" came the reply. Rich readopted his look of fear, but I ploughed ahead and managed to have a conversation in French, explaining the situation, describing the bag, finding out where it might be, and informing them that we'd be right over. I realised that it was the first time that speaking French was actually important since my AS level oral exam in 2001. We went to the office at Entrance B, and found the bag (all money still present) on a table, I signed for it and we got the hell out of CERN.
We headed back via Mike Wong's, where we had a well-deserved and delicious hangover meal. We went home and had much-needed showers, eventually starting our day in Geneva at 4pm with a walk through the old town down to Eaux-vives, walking out to the Jet D'Eau and getting the boat over to Pâquis. On our way, I stopped to take a picture of a swan and forgot that I had my phone in my hand, and dropped it off a ledge into the lake. A kind gentleman scooped it out immediately, treading in a huge pile of swan crap for his trouble. It worked for a little while, but after about 10 minutes it just showed a white screen. Bugger. As we were feeling fancy,we headed up to the bar atop the Grand Hotel Kempinski, which ended up costing CHF 12 apiece for a coffee and a corona, which hurt a bit. We had a while before dinner, so we took a little walk through the red light district (sleazy but polite would be a good synopsis of that area of Geneva) on our way to Bains des Pâquis for fondue with Dan and his friend Will, which was delicious, and featured a much nicer Chasselas than last night. We headed back home for a sleep before tomorrow's skiing, with a quick stop at Café des Arts for another glass of wine along the way.
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