Thursday, March 31, 2011
Swiss Miss
So what did I learn in Geneva? Well, French keyboards are seriously weird, for one thing. They have a "q" where the "a" should be, the "m" in the wrong row entirely, and a whole row of additional vowel sounds where the numbers usually are. Try typing in your passwords with that business. I got locked out of Facebook about six times.
It was also quite weird for me to be without US pop culture for a week. I mean, I missed out on Rebecca Black's big debut, for heaven's sake! I only had like two English language channels at the hotel and one of them was CNN, which doesn't really count. I actually sat down and tried to watch the BBC my last night, which was fantastic so long as you like people with cockney accents shouting jokes about sperm count at each other. They do still show videos on MTV in Europe, though, so I got my fill of Ke$ha. Who knew white trash would translate?
All the Swiss people I met were super nice, too. They all spoke English pretty much flawlessly, which made it all the more embarrassing that my French was limited to "bonjour" and "merci." They actually looked pained to hear me talk. Although I think sometimes they were just pretending not to understand me, like when I asked where I could find the nearest McDonald's. Sorry, I can only eat so much fondue.
So what did I learn in Geneva? Well, French keyboards are seriously weird, for one thing. They have a "q" where the "a" should be, the "m" in the wrong row entirely, and a whole row of additional vowel sounds where the numbers usually are. Try typing in your passwords with that business. I got locked out of Facebook about six times.
It was also quite weird for me to be without US pop culture for a week. I mean, I missed out on Rebecca Black's big debut, for heaven's sake! I only had like two English language channels at the hotel and one of them was CNN, which doesn't really count. I actually sat down and tried to watch the BBC my last night, which was fantastic so long as you like people with cockney accents shouting jokes about sperm count at each other. They do still show videos on MTV in Europe, though, so I got my fill of Ke$ha. Who knew white trash would translate?
All the Swiss people I met were super nice, too. They all spoke English pretty much flawlessly, which made it all the more embarrassing that my French was limited to "bonjour" and "merci." They actually looked pained to hear me talk. Although I think sometimes they were just pretending not to understand me, like when I asked where I could find the nearest McDonald's. Sorry, I can only eat so much fondue.
