Crossing the street here is not like crossing the street where I come from. Except at (green) traffic lights, the cars will stop for you. Only, they expect you to expect them to stop, which means you’re supposed to start walking well BEFORE they stop. Actually, “stop” is not the right word here at all. They wave you on long before they put their foot on the breaks. Sometimes you make it across the street before they would have hit you anyway, and if not, they do slow down a little. If you hesitate to cross, waiting for them to either pass or slow down for you (as we do in my country), they will stop and wait for you, but then, look at all of everyone’s time you’ve just wasted.
It’s actually a fairly efficient way to do things – pedestrians don’t have to wait at all and drivers only wait a few seconds – but like many cultural assumptions, it only works if everyone is on the same page. I still find it unnerving to step out into full-speed oncoming traffic, even as the driver is waving me on, even though I know he will slow down (at the last moment and if absolutely necessary), and I fear for the Swiss pedestrians who go elsewhere and except things to work like they do here.
Most girls (children) seem to wear only bikini bottoms for swimming.
Lac Léman is pretty. So, so pretty. More on that later.
We have a small refrigerator. It is small to begin with, but try dividing it by five. And not five people sharing, either. I think we have five 2-liter packages of milk in there right now, for example. Europeans go to the grocery store more often and get less stuff each time. While I knew that on one level, it’s still kind of difficult to get used to. On the one hand, you probably waste less, but at any given time you have fewer options and fewer ingredients to cook with. The rest of the apartment is much bigger and nicer than I expected, more on that later too.
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