Last week, I made myself a to-do list. It was a truly magnificent to-do list, which encompassed all of the things which I need to accomplish in all of the different parts of my life. I often make myself to-do lists, but they tend to focus on one specific area only. This one included work and holidays and my private life… literally, everything! I was terribly proud of it, confident that I had achieved an utterly completed list, which when totally ticked off would bring me 100% up to date with everything, and I had a nice relaxing weekend, happily secure in the knowledge that there was no need to worry, everything I needed to do the following week was safely laid down in black and white.

I got to work on Monday morning, opened by bag to extract my list… and, after a prolonged period of frenzied searching, discovered that I had accidentally put it in the shredding bin

I have spent the rest of the week desperately trying to recreate it, but despite my best efforts I can’t get rid of the nagging feeling that something terribly important is slipping my mind

Most of my organisational efforts at the moment are directed towards trying arrange various holidays. There is much debate ongoing in my household at the moment as to the location of our annual family holiday. We have ruled out Germany, on the grounds that after a year spent living there, my sister would prefer to go somewhere different. I am trying very strongly to also rule out Austria.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to go on holiday to Austria. The problem, however, with Austria is that there are no direct flights to any airport in the country from Birmingham International. For reasons which are to me unfathomable, my family refuse to fly from any other UK airport, and thus the only way they are prepared to get to Austria involves flying to Munich, then travelling onwards by train. We have done this two years running and it was perfectly fine but, to my total horror, flights to Munich during the first week of September are currently selling at £244 PER PERSON!!! :SHOCKED: There are limits to what I am prepared to pay, and that grossly exceeds them.

I have therefore, I hope, succeeded in steering the family towards choosing a holiday in Switzerland. Flights to Zurich are expensive, but considerably cheaper in comparison and I guess it’s all relative At the moment I am engaged in singing the praises of the Bernese Oberland in the hope that we might even be able to fly to Geneva. I wouldn’t ordinarily want to visit the Bernese Oberland during high summer, due to the excessive numbers of English tourists who frequent villages such as Wengen, but I reckon that by September things will have calmed down and it might be more bearable. The transfer time from Geneva is 4 hours (cf Zurich 3 hours) so personally I would take an Easyjet flight to Geneva and bring a book to read on the train. However, I fear that my chances of convincing my family that this is a Good Idea are probably regrettably slim. They’ve only ever flown with Easyjet once, and they seem permanently scarred by the experience

If that doesn’t work, I am contemplating a level to which I never thought I would have to stoop: suggesting we book through a Lakes and Mountains brochure I haven’t been on a holiday out of a brochure in the last ten years and never again expected to have such an experience. But for me, the main point about holidays this year is that they need to be cheap, and if we could find a deal in a brochure totalling less than buying the flights and accommodation independently, then it would appear to make sense…

In fact, I have a personal holiday of my own to Switzerland planned for next month, and I seem to have a surprising amount of things to organise in respect of that. I’m going to Geneva, hopefully with my boyfriend, for no very good reason at all except that I wanted a holiday and the Geneva flights were cheap. Well, my boyfriend isn’t really very interested in holidays, preferring to go to Esperanto meet ups with large groups of friends instead, and so I’ve agreed to go along to one of those this summer to be accommodating. I’m sure it will be very interesting, but it isn’t my definition of a proper holiday; quite apart from anything else, for me a holiday is a private time, not one where I have to be surrounded with lots of other people who I may not desperately like, and so I wanted us to do something different together as a couple as well.

It’s only four nights, so I’m hopeful that my boyfriend will be able to survive it When I originally had the idea, I wanted to take him to Munich on the grounds that that is probably my favourite city of all time, and one where I know lots of nice places to eat and drink, as well as hotels for €30 a night. However, based on the flight prices discussed above, that was not to be and so I decided to go for a destination which neither of us had ever tried before. I spent several happy days playing with the Ryanair and Easyjet websites, compiling a shortlist of all the cheap flights at appropriate times, before I whittled it down to two realistic possibilities; Geneva and Linz. I was quite interested in Linz, but my boyfriend pointed out that that involved flying from Stansted, whereas there are flights to Geneva from Birmingham/East Midlands, and so it was that I booked return flights to Geneva without knowing anything about the city at all.

They were very cheap flights; £100 in total for return flights for both of us

That sorted, I felt highly optimistic regarding my chances of organising the world’s cheapest budget holiday. My hopes were cruelly dashed when I eventually got round to looking at accommodation websites for Geneva two weeks later. OMG Having temporarily forgotten that I was going on holiday to the most expensive country in the world, I had banked on being able to get a room for €30/night as in Germany and Austria. I looked everywhere. I researched the red light district and googled one star hotels in the sleaziest areas I could locate, but the best I turned up was £60 a night for a double room with no bathroom and no breakfast

Close to despair, I took the trouble to look at a map and realised that Geneva was actually on the French border. A bit of sophisticated googling found me a hotel for £40 a night in the nearby French town of Annemasse. I was tempted to go for it, but had reservations which I spent several days agonising over. Annemasse is linked to Geneva by train but the trains do not go into the main station, but rather an obscure suburban station called Geneve Eaux Vives. Looking at a map of Geneva in a book shop, this turns out to be a considerable way outside the city centre, necessitating a tram ride with two changes to get anywhere interesting. Hmmm

It was at this point that I first became aware of a place called the City Hostel. As a rule I had been excluding youth hostels from my search, firstly because there seemed little point taking my boyfriend on holiday if we would then have to sleep in a well-behaved manner in separate bunk beds, and secondly because you generally have to be a member of some sort of youth hostelling organisation, which I am not. The City Hostel, however, is an independent concern and has affordable, twin bedded rooms. Admittedly, the accommodation looks rather basic. Actually, mega-basic! From the photo on the website, the rooms look like a narrow strip just wide enough to contain a bed. The bathrooms are shared on a corridor someone, and you get two singles rather than a double, so it’s hardly a luxury option. It is, however, remarkably cheap by Geneva standards, and it works out around £20 per person per night, assuming there are no dramatic shifts in exchange rates

I did some more extensive research on the internet, reading every single review I could glean from Tripadvisor and elsewhere, and no one seemed to have a bad word to say about it. Well, a few people have complained that the curtains on the windows are too thin, so there could be some problems sleeping. The major thing that impressed me though was that pretty much every review I saw described is as “clean” and certainly none described it as otherwise. I waivered backwards and forwards between the hostel and the more comfortable hotel in Annemasse… and in the end I took the plunge and went for the hostel. What swung it for me was that I read on the website that all guests get a travel card which gives them free travel on the Geneva public transport network. If we’d stayed in Annemasse I think we’d have had to catch vast quantities of trams and pay for them all, so this seemed like the best bet

Now there are two major things I need to sort out; the money, and what we’re actually going to do. Money is something I have an unfortunate tendency to agonise over. I want to pay the hostel bill in cash so I need a certain amount of francs to cover that, and then I obviously also need money for three meals a day, plus additional drinks, any trains we might decide to cash or entrance fees we might have to pay, maybe a bit left over to buy some books. I don’t want to end up in Geneva without enough money and have to take more out with my card because Lloyds TSB are now officially the worst bank for screwing you over with foreign charges. But on the other hand I don’t want to end up with too much currency that I have to change back because you inevitably lose a fortune on it. Added to which, I want to get a few Euros too, because some of the things I’m contemplating doing involve crossing the border, but then if I spend a day eating in France, that means I need less Swiss francs… hmmm, it’s doing my head in a bit at the moment! I have, however, discovered that my bank and the post office are using the same exchange rate but only the post office are charging additional commission on top of that.

In terms of where to go, I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to get to grips with Geneva. I really desperately want to purchase either the Lonely Planet or the Rough Guide to Switzerland but have so far managed to prevent myself doing anything quite so extravagent because at 15 quid they nearly cost the same as one of my flights! Ideally I need to go to the library and photocopy some stuff, but I haven’t managed to work that into my schedule yet. Initially I had absolutely no idea how on earth I was going to pass three whole days in Geneva, but the more I investigate the area the more I feel I could actually stay there three weeks and so I’m going to have to be quite strict with my choices.

The major attraction of Geneva is obviously the massive lake, which at some point we will definitely have to go on a little boat on because I get dead excited with water Then there’s the UN and Red Cross headquarters; the Red Cross has a museum which everything I read tells me is the best museum in Switzerland but I still feel a bit sceptical about whether I want to add it to my itinerary. There is a massive park in Geneva if the weather is nice, as well as some botanical gardens and things. It is also possible to get a bus into France and go on a cable car up the mountain which is next to Geneva, but I haven’t as yet been able to ascertain whether that will be open and safe at avalanche time. It isn’t terribly high, less than 1400m, so perhaps You can also get a bus to Annecy which I’ve read described as the most beautiful city in France, but I’m not sure… There are so many things you could do in Switzerland, get a train to Bern for example, which has the added attraction of bears and German book shops

In any case, I am getting rather excited And it was all totally under control until I lost my list I did think about asking for the key to the shredding bin and seeing if it was still in there, but the bin is actually as big as me so it didn’t feel worth the humiliation

Actually I’ve just thought of a point I’ve missed off the holiday part of that list. Learn French

Tags: Geneva, holidays, to do

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Holidays and outings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.