I no longer live in Switzerland!

02/08 - Right, that's it. Six months and two days after moving out, my LTA at CERN is over. Leaving was reasonably stress free - I got up with Kelly at 0515, and intended to do some final cleaning before being checked out at 0930. What I actually did was to eat leftover chilli from last night, pack some stuff and then fall asleep for two hours on the sofa in the sun. I was awoken by a ring on the doorbell, which I assumed to be Aimee coming to get my plants - this was not the case. I think I was fortunate in having Celine conducting my checkout, rather than the feared Mary-Elizabeth. Even so, I had to get back in the bath and give it a hearty scrub before she was convinced that it was not grubby through lack of effort (also a large bathtowel seems to have been misplaced). The broken glasses will be taken out of my deposit, but GenProp (the managers of the building) waived the CHF 8 for a new plate so that I didn't have to go to the cashpoint specially. I think I won't have much of a dent in my CHF 300 deposit, which I am rather glad of, especially after Kelly and I spent so long cleaning the place - probably more time than I have taken in the past to clean much bigger flats.

I was out of my flat by 11, at which point the heavens opened. I dragged my 45+ kg of stuff (as I found out at the airport) to Globus to attempt to get a refund for my Prince ticket, with partial success - the lady has taken my details and will hopefully contact me when they can get a refund, then keep the money for me in the safe until my return in September. I then dragged myself up to the station, where I managed to print out my boarding pass after some cafuffle with the manager of the cafe when I walked in and tried to print directly from my memory stick, for free, as I had last time (when the printer was playing up, I wasn't just being tight). I was at the airport and checked in with an hour to spare, and spent the time pottering about the shops, looking for any last minute duty free bargains (there were none). On the plane, I was disappointed that they did not have the ingredients for a Bloody Mary, but pleased to be heading home - we arrived a little early, I got my luggage incredibly quickly (in fact I had to run across baggage claim to avoid it going back out through the door) and got various forms of public transport back to home, which is now 50 Jedburgh Street. As I remember, I arrived slightly before Kelly. I am very glad to be back here - I came to really enjoy Geneva by the end, and I am fully aware that RHUL will seem pretty awful in comparison, but I think that being back in London with my friends and family around me will more than make up for that.

Last week in Geneva - surprise Kelly, Fêtes and Fireworks

26/07 - So today was my uncle Peter's funeral, back in England. My day started badly, as the removal company rang me while I was waiting to get the bus to the airport, to inform me that they were coming tomorrow, i.e. when I am still in England. Consequently I had to rush back to the flat, ram some stuff into boxes and finish packing, ring James who very kindly agreed to be there when they came to collect it all, drop off the key and run back to the bus stop. All this was done at top speed, and took about 15 minutes. Other than that, my journey was fine - everything was a little delayed, but I had enough time to meet Kelly and Clare at Victoria station before we went down. I read one of Peter's poems at the service, and there were drinks and food at the rugby club behind his house afterwards - it was a really nice day/evening. I stayed up until 1ish with my cousins, and then ended up sleeping on the floor as we had the wrong pump for our airbed. This was not ideal.

27/07 - Kelly left early in the morning, very kindly given a lift by Mandie. On our way back from the station we stopped off to buy bacon, and I took responsibility for furnishing the remaining Roses/Joneses/Archbold Joneses with bacon butties. I got the train at about 1, and flew back to Geneva, with the intention of going in, but in the end I didn't arrive until about 4 o'clock so there seemed little point.

28/07 - I decided this morning that today was to be my last day at CERN (for the time being at least) - I cleared my desk, did some work and went for lunch with Matilde and Elisa. I had an enormous paella, after which I was incredibly tired, and struggled to keep myself awake. I worked until about half 6, and then went for my leaving meal; due to various people being away this ended up being just myself, James and Sarah going to L'Aviation. It was OK, I thought the steaks were a bit inferior to the other two places which James compared it to (Café De Paris and L'Entrecôte), and the sauce was pretty heavy on the garlic, but it was still pretty good. Enormous, as well.

29/07 - I have a surprise Kelly, on our one and a halfth anniversary! Well, sort of a surprise - I had no idea she was coming out until the other day, when she offered to give me her flights so I could come home for the funeral. I was under strict instructions not to leave the flat, and she arrived at about half 11. We spent ages cleaning the flat, and at one point a pigeon flew into the window, I assume he didn't see it because it was so spotless. In the evening we had a few glasses of wine and went out to Takumi, a place I mentioned a while ago - we went and couldn't justifiably afford the tasting menu. I decided to treat us to that very same menu, as this was probably the last time we'd be in Geneva for a long while. It was delicious, amazing sashimi and nigiri, really light tempura, seafood soup in a teapot, and a few other delicious things which don't spring to mind immediately. Afterwards we toyed with the idea of going to seek out some fun as the Fêtes de Geneve started properly today, but we were so stuffed full of food and wine that we thought we would leave it for another day.

30/07 - So we started off with some cleaning, then headed to Bains des Pâquis for some drinks and a swim. It was significantly cooler than last time I came, but refreshing all the same. It took some persuading to get Kelly into the water, but I think she was glad she conceded in the end. We then sought out some festival stuff - the whole of the bank of the lake has been turned into an enormous fairground, full of crap stalls with crapper prizes, and dodgy looking rides. We found some dinner (mexican wrap things) which we washed down with some of the official fête rosé. We explored for quite a while, and ended up at about midnight watching a band in the scene des clubs. This band had a singer who did a passable Stevie Wonder impression, and one who sang in a style entirely devoid of soul. We watched them belt out covers for a while, then went back home - I was absolutely exhausted.

31/07 - So today was my leaving do, which fortunately coincided with the Fête de la Rade around the lakeshore. Kelly and I went and bought a load of picnic stuff (including, foolishly, a watermelon which we lugged around for the next few hours) and took it up to Parc de la Grange, where people arrived over the next few hours - in attendance by the end were Kelly and myself, James and Sarah, Alex Pinder and Alex Martyniuk, Dan Short, Zoe, Matilde, Aimee, Gemma and a mate of James' and a guy from UCL whose names I have entirely forgotten. At 5 o'clock we went down to the lalke and picked up the three boats I had booked for us - as we were 13 people, Gemma stayed ashore as she was on call, and thought it would be easier to get to CERN were she not on a boat in the middle of the lake. The boats were, as always, awesome - we were told to stay 100 metres from each other, which is a rule we obviously broke as soon as we were away from the shore. We had some races, tied the boats together and made a pontoon of sorts, and had about 5 really close calls when we nearly smashed into each other - on one occasion missing by literally millimetres. Most of us leapt in and had a swim, and after an hour of this we headed back to shore, then walked down to watch the waterskiing competition - this was not too exciting, as they were seeing who could jump furthest, so it all looked the same.

We went back up to the Jet and had a few drinks in the sun (those two mystery men I mentioned earlier were both rather fair skinned and got a bit hot and grumpy, I think) before walking back up to the Baby Plage for another swim. Aimee, Alex P, James and I stayed in the water until the sun set over the Jura. I was really content, and very glad to be watching my penultimate Geneva sunset from here. It was about 2145 by this point, so we headed back into town to find a spot for some dinner and from which to watch the fireworks. We found such a spot in front of a fancy Caipirinha stall (there were loads of these all along the shore), got some thai food and awaited the spectacle. The fireworks were really incredible, they were set to music (which we couldn't hear) and lasted a good half hour, with no crappy filler stuff - the whole thing was massive and incredibly loud, and it made me sad that I would not be out here next weekend, when the real fireworks display will occur. Soon after the fireworks had finished everyone kind of sloped off, leaving Kelly and I to explore.

We went down to Jardin Anglais to seek out some fun, and found that an enormous boat (which I had not previously noticed but claimed to have been there since at least May, and possibly forever) was hosting some kind of Balkan night. We dangled our feet in the water for a while, waiting for the queue to subside and also to finish our bottle of tinto, and then queued up - while we were doing this, a girl marched out of the queue, seemed to stumble as she passed us, and marched on. I noticed a slightly wet feeling on my ankle, and realised to Kelly's utter dismay and my massive amusement that, as she had stumbled, she had vomited on the floor, slightly splashing my feet and those of the guy behind me. I laughed at this for quite a while, and in fact I am chuckling about it now, as I write this up two weeks later on the train. Anyway, the boat was awesome. After I deflected the attention of two large black men who had started chatting Kelly up/offering her drugs while I was in the loo, we went upstairs and found that, although most of the boat was deserted, the upper deck was packed and playing some awesome music. We stayed up there for a couple of hours, had a few rounds of tintos, then went out onto the outside bit for a sit down. Soon after this we were told we had to leave, as it was 3 am and the boat was closing, so we strolled home through the old town, with our final tintos in plastic cups. It was an awesome day, I am really glad so many people came out to bid me farewell (even if they did bugger off a bit early).

01/08 - Kelly and I finished off the packing today, and I knocked up a leftover chilli from the remaining things in my freezer and cupboards before we went out. We went for a stroll down to the river, through Parc des Bastions which was hosting the celebrations for Swiss national day - we walked through the food tent and wetre presented with a bag of wholemeal pasta, as a cadeau for some reason. We walked slowly through town, enjoying the sunshine and hoping that the distant clouds didn't get any closer. We got down to our destination, the pont sous terres, just as the clouds gathered and rain threatened. We were not, however, too concerned about getting wet, as the reason we had come to this bridge was to jump off into the Rhône and float down with the current, hopping out at the end at a bar I have mentioned before.

After much debate, Kelly decided not to jump off the bridge, and hopped in at the side with the bin bag which contained our stuff (flip flops and clothes in airtight bags was all we had - the pasta was hidden under a nearby bush). The jump in was a little alarming, I certainly had more time in mid-air than I expected. Kelly swam over to me in the middle of the river, and we were conveyed very swiftly down the river for a kilometre or so, at which point we clambered out ( I nearly missed the steps, I underestimated the current) and went up to grab a drink at the bar on top of the pumping station. We secured a couple of deckchairs, and within a couple of minutes it started to piss down with rain, somewhat mocking our earlier efforts to keep our clothes dry. We sheltered under a parasol for a while, enjoying the warm rain splashing off the concrete around us, until there was a small abatement in the downpour and we were able to make our escape, walking back home to enjoy our chilli from earlier. We decided to stay in the flat rather than go out and watch the fireworks in the park, as it was raining and getting late, and Kelly has that dreaded 0710 flight in the morning. Once they started going off, however, I changed my mind and ran out to try and catch them, but only succeeded in jogging down to Palais Eynard and then getting confused about where they were coming from - I saw a couple, but I think they were being set off from people's balonies etc., and there wasn't really a big organised display. So that was a waste of a jog.