View of lake from the top of the cathedral

View of Geneva from the top of the cathedral

This one shows the Jet d’Eau, which is Geneva’s most famous landmark. The guidebook told me it started as a way to reduce surplus water in the lake, but after we saw how massive the lake was, we were a bit unsure how it was going to help.

Jet d'eau on a cloudy day

It was raining and the cloud was incredibly low when we got to Annecy in France, but the lake there was really beautiful, as you can hopefully see from this picture.

The lake at Annecy

This was the amazing view we had as we were walking out of Annecy

Outskirts of Annecy

I can’t actually remember where this photo was taken, but because it came after the Annecy ones in my phone memory, I thought maybe it might be Berne.

Berne

This is Babel on the walk down from Mont Saleve…

Babel on the walk down from Mont Saleve

And this is a closer one, where he looks slightly more like a person and slightly less like a stripy blur I’m not sure, but I think it was taken as we were approaching a tiny little village where we stopped for refreshments.

Babel trying to look cool

The following are some views from the top of the Mont Saleve cable car.

Another view from Mont Saleve

As ever, they haven’t come out brilliantly, but you should be able to make out the snow capped mountains in the background

Another view from the mountain

And here is a view of Mont Saleve itself, which from that angle most certainly does not look like something Babel could walk down

We walked down that!

Here’s a better view of the Jet d’Eau, taken on the day we were leaving when it was actually sunny!

Jet d'eau on a sunny day

And last but not least, one of Babel by a rubbish bin. Quite what I was trying to achieve with it, I’m not sure

Babel by the lake

I have now also added photos to this post

April is pretty much the worst time you could choose to go to Switzerland, by virtue of everything exciting being closed. With the exception of very high altitude resorts such as Zermatt, the skiing season is essentially over and the hiking season can not begin in earnest until June when the majority of the slush will have melted. April is just about the most dangerous time you could go up a mountain; the melting snow is ripe for avalanches and there is still enough of it left in terms of volume to cause some nasty damage. Avalanches are quite cool to watch from a distance but I have no desire to be in the close vicinity of one, and so it was that the region’s more exciting day trips (an excursion to Mont Blanc, for example) had to be ruled out

It seemed criminal, however, to come to Switzerland and *not* go up a mountain, and some extensive googling on my part revealed that there was in fact a low level cable car just outside Geneva which at just over 1000m was well below the April snowline, and thus able to operate all year round. My boyfriend is not very prone to hiking and I was anxious not to kill him, besides which I myself am terribly out of shape having taken no exercise for months, but the website assured me that it was an area full of easy hikes for families, so I felt confident enough to suggest that we take the cable car up and walk down

When I actually saw the mountain on Thursday morning, I began to regret this somewhat. It towered above the little French village in the valley with almost vertical rocky sides and the man at the cable car station warned us that we would need good shoes for the descent. Good shoes were something that neither of us had on account of the fact that I knew I couldn’t sneak my walking boots out of the house without my mother noticing, and so I was glad that the fare down was only going to cost six euros if our mission should fail.

Actually we weren’t terribly prepared at all. For some reason I had omitted to print off a map, so the only instructions we had for finding the cable car in the first place were to catch bus number eight to somewhere called Veryier and “walk across the border”. By good fortune we noticed bus number eight departing from outside the main train station in Geneva, and our tourist travel tickets entitled us to get on it for free We got off at the terminus, which was in Switzerland, and could see the cables ascending the mountain behind us (in France) but it was a not inconsiderable distance and we had no idea how to cover it. We tried walking in a straight line but kept encountering obstacles in the form of dead ends, train lines, and at one point a rather frightening fence which my boyfriend decided to try to squeeze through. It was rather a narrow gap and halfway there was a nasty moment where it appeared he was permanently impaled on a metal spike, but he made it across in the end. The problem then was that I had no choice but to follow him because I knew there was no way he was going to come back again, so I made a (by my standards) very brave attempt to climb the fence also, and succeeded in getting far enough across for my boyfriend to catch me at the other end

The cable car journey up the mountain, once we finally reached the station, was fairly short but quite cool by virtue of the cable car being almost empty and there were some amazing views towards Lake Geneva and beyond. As we got progressively higher we were able to see snowcapped peaks rising up in the distance, which had been hidden by cloud on previous days. There was an extensive barbecue area at the top where we were able to find a nice picnic bench to eat lunch, and after my boyfriend had demonstrated that long distance grape throwing is yet another area of life where his ability surpasses mine, we were ready to start on our descent.

Without consulting either a map or a signpost, we headed off purposefully down a path which we hazarded must be the correct one because it was leading downhill. After ten minutes or so it degenerated into a slightly steep woodland trail which wasn’t entirely clear to follow. I came to a slope which my vertigo wasn’t going to let me walk down in shoes with such a poor grip as my canvas trainers, and so we decided to walk back up again, pausing halfway to die quietly on the grass for a bit.

Back at the top we caught sight of a sign pointing in the direction of the village for which we had been aiming. Following it, it turned out to be a tarmac road leading back into the valley which probably doesn’t sound very pleasant, but nevertheless was The shade of the trees protected us from the harshness of the mid afternoon sun, and tarmac was nice and soft to walk on in comparison to the gravel which so often characterises woodland roads in Switzerland.

We arrived at the tiny village in what seemed like no time at all, and proceeded to pause for some refreshments. I was impressed that my boyfriend managed to procure me a glass of lemonade from the one small pub the hamlet appeared to possess, particularly because last summer in France it proved impossible to be served with any lemonade at all. It was a wonderfully sleepy little place which I’m actually struggling to describe because it reminds me of a Ray Bradbury story (The Station Where No One Ever Got Off) about a man who sits outside the train station of his obscure American village waiting for a complete stranger to get off so he can murder him without consequences. This is a most unfortunate mental connection of mine, since there was nothing at all threatening about the village in question. All I probably mean is that it gave the impression of being very remote and cut off, a cheerful place where nothing ever happens

After that we left the road and continued our walk along a little forest path. It would have been quite steep and difficult had someone not helpfully erected handrails most of the way down, and even with the benefit of these there were still some moments where it was possible to lose your footing in the mud and slip. All too soon we were back in the village we had started from, slightly sunburned and ready for another drink, but otherwise not too tired at all We had considered walking all the way back to Geneva, but decided against when we suddenly spied a number 8 pulling into the bus stop in front of us

And that, in essence, was our holiday. For me at least it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I think my boyfriend enjoyed it more than he/I at one point thought he might It was nice to have a holiday which was so relaxing, especially after the difficult few weeks I had had at work, and Geneva really is an attractive city in an enviable location. The main thing which made the week though was getting to spend some time with my boyfriend. I have to be careful of how soppy I am because he seems to read a lot of my blog posts, but for me the most enjoyable moments were the little everyday things; waking up in the middle of the night and finding someone else in the bed to cuddle up to, eating breakfast together, failing miserably to physically assault him It makes me look forward very much to the time we will finally move in together, hopefully later this year. That’s a very fraught and painful decision for me – one which goes against everything I have ever wanted out of life and through which I stand to lose a not inconsiderable number of relatives – but spending time together this week served to reinforce to me that despite all the emotional complications, moving in with him *is* really what I want. If I compare how I felt this week, notwithstanding the fact that we were both cooped up in a pretty small space, I felt so much freer and less stressed than I have this weekend trying to live at home. When I’m with my boyfriend I’m released from the otherwise constant pressure to pretend to be something I’m not, and that’s pretty important to me. The holiday also served to remind me quite how attractive I find him of course, and I think I still have some work to do on the theme of not making it quite so obvious that I’m hoping for a shag. There’s something quite alluringly masculine about him though which is hard to resist, and despite the fact that he burps horrendously and has an annoying habit of kicking my bottom whilst continuing to walk in a perfectly normal manner, I love him very much

I do have a handful of photos of Geneva, but will have to upload them at a later date due to problems transferring them between phones

I was very excited indeed a few minutes later when I caught my first glimpse of the famous Jet d’eau, the world’s tallest fountain which rises up out of Lake Geneva and is supposed to be the city’s most famous landmark. Having read in the guidebooks that it wasn’t operational during the winter months, the distinct lack of an enormous plume of white water across the skyline on Monday night had caused me to fear that we might not get to see it at all. But happily everything was in order on Tuesday, and it really is a sight to behold. According to something I read somewhere, it started life as way to release excess pressure during the generation of hydroelectric power in the nineteenth century, but the sight soon became so popular that the local council decided to maintain it as a permanent tourist attraction. I attempted to take a couple of photos of it but it really was rather difficult to capture the full effect with the aid of a not very good mobile phone camera, and so we had to resort to buying a postcard for our own records.

Other sites of Geneva we managed to cram into sixty minutes included the jardin anglais which is a tiny little park by the lakeside. Well, perhaps I am unkind to call it tiny but when I see the name I can’t help but think of der Englische Garten in Munich which is big enough to get lost in for several days at a time, and in comparison to that it seemed tiny. The English part, I assume, consisted of the fact that there was a bandstand and after dark it was a prime location to buy drugs. It was a very pleasant place though, filled with busts of austere looking Swiss men who looked so terribly important that we felt guilty for not knowing who they were. Just outside the garden is the famous Geneva flower clock which somehow manages to tell the time by means of clock hands embedded in the ground and a clock face made entirely out of plants. It was totally fascinating and very beautiful, so we purchased a postcard of that also

Next halt on our whistlestop tour was the cathedral. Geneva has somewhat of a Calvinist past, occasionally being described as the Protestant Rome, and so I wasn’t expecting great things from the cathedral in terms of decoration. I have to confess that the constraints of time meant I didn’t give it more than a cursory glance before handing over a few francs and dashing off up the tower. I find climbing cathedral towers both exhilarating for the wonderful view which generally awaits you at the top, and terrifying on account of the fact that I am scared of heights and steps. Especially steep narrow steps which spiral round, and especially when there are other people coming in the opposite direction and you have to let them past. Luckily, the time of year meant that we had few other tourists to compete with and so were able to sprint up without encountering too many obstacles, pausing only for a few minutes at the top to gaze at a cloudy Geneva before heading back down again and off to the coach station.

The bus to Annecy was very pleasant, although I felt like a naughty child because we sat on the back seat surreptitiously eating bread and cheese. I blinked and completely missed the border crossing on the way there, which was a bit of a disappointment, but even through the abundance of low cloud, the scenery was spectacular enough to make up for it Tantalising glimpses of mountains were visible through the mist as we made our way deeper into France.

For the last fifteen minutes or so of the journey I actually became unaccountably tired, and so the first thing we did upon arriving in a rather drenched Annecy was to seek out a restaurant where we could buy a coffee. The coffee, when it came, turned out to be a shot of espresso which was slightly daunting because I had never tried one before, but proved incredibly effective at livening me up for the next few hours It was accompanied by a rather delicious piece of quiche. My boyfriend expressed surprise that someone as fussy as me actually deigned to eat quiche, but I was equally surprised that he enjoyed it, having been told by someone else that Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche

By the time we’d finished, Annecy appeared to be in the throes of a torrential downpour. I had carefully packed an umbrella in my suitcase in order to be prepared for such an eventuality, but had then proceeded to leave it back at the hostel, and so we decided to seek refuge in an indoor shopping mall. As a rule I am not a huge fan of indoor shopping malls, but this one was surprisingly fascinating.

First stop was a gigantic electricals and book store combined which we wandered around idly on the look out for Asterix books. My French being as appalling as it is, I wasn’t able to understand most of the titles that I saw, but what fascinated me was the layout of the bookshop. French language books were in one place, English language books in another, and books translated into French but originally written in another language were elsewhere. What was worthy of note was the volume of French language books on display. That may sound a silly thing to say, but if you compare it to a visit to Interdiscount which we made in German-speaking Bern the next day, it was really amazing. True to form, the Bernese bookshop displayed shelf after shelf of literature translated from English or American authors and I struggled to find anything written by a German, never mind anything Swiss. In the end I tracked down one copy of a book by Martin Suter (the best Swiss author ever – sorry Max Frisch!) but it was hardback and so cost more than i was prepared to pay. Had i been able to read French, however, I would have had no such problems in Annecy.

Next stop was a large supermarket where we took advantage of the incredibly low prices to stock up on some groceries. There was rather a weird system in operation where you had to weigh your own grapes before you purchased them, but the most exciting thing was a 1.5 litre bottle of mineral water which we bought for 19 cents It was a shame that we were an hour and a half away from Geneva by bus and so couldn’t buy any perishable food stuffs

By now the rain had abated slightly, so we were able to go for a bit of a walk. Actually, it ended up being quite a long walk, probably by virtue of the fact that we didn’t have a map, but it was thoroughly enjoyable We headed down to the lake which although not as big as Lake Geneva was both extensive and beautiful. Gaps in the cloud allowed us to catch further glimpses of mountains, and one in particular was so alluring that we started walking towards it in order to get a better view. In the process I think we accidentally managed to walk out of Annecy itself and into a little village, but it was very pleasant and we even found somewhere else to stop for an espresso top up Annecy was a delightful place which is probably even more attractive on a sunny day when you can see the Alps properly, and indeed I would like to revisit it one day in the summer because they had cute little pedal boats on the lake which you could hire out. Overall, the place reminded me of Arosa, a small town in Graubünden Alps. There is perhaps little reason why it should, since Annecy is undoubtedly much bigger, but something about the way the mountains rose up behind the lake combined with the all the little boats moored on the shore gave it a distinctly Arosa-esque feel

I think I dozed for most of the way back, although I did spot the border crossing this time, and before long we were home in the hostel eating a rather delicious meal of pate and fresh bread which we had picked up on the way back. The next day the plan was to indulge a whim of mine and go to Bern

Hmmm. Well, it all started on Monday morning at the regrettably early hour of half five. I didn’t wish my parents to know I was going on holiday with my boyfriend, a fact of which they would deeply disapprove, and so I had led them to believe that I was working in London again. That had a few unfortunate implications, the first being that despite not needing to be at the airport until nearly ten, I still had to leave the house at the time at which I would have done were I actually going to London

So it was that I found myself in Birmingham New Street station at 7am with two whole hours to kill before the arrival of my boyfriend. If you have never tried to kill two hours in Birmingham at that time of the morning, I advise you never to put yourself in a position where it may become necessary. I managed to pass some time by getting changed out of my suit into some more holidayish clothes and then decided to have a coffee in the station cafe. The coffee was overpriced and not terribly good, but most annoying was the fact that I was trying to listen to my Michel Thomas teach yourself French and announcements that Cross Country were extremely sorry for the severe disruptions to their services kept drowning it out. In the end I retired to the silence of the early morning Bull Ring, where I sat on a marble block for over an hour and read my Switzerland guide book.

My boyfriend arrived on time, which greatly impressed me, and having remembered his passport and our flight confirmations, which impressed me further. Birmingham airport was peculiarly deserted at that hour of the morning and we had no trouble getting through security or finding a seat in a very pleasant cafe which served the best scrambled eggs I have had in a long time

The flight was uneventful, and if the orange decor inside the aircraft started to become ever so slightly annoying, I was able to remind myself that I was only paying twenty quid for the privilege of sitting on this plane, which is considerably less than what I paid to get a train to Peterborough several weeks ago. Sadly, upon landing in Geneva the accuracy of the weather forecasts I had been reading online were confirmed, and the town was covered with damp clouds. Bother it

According to the web, there is a machine in Geneva airport which prints you a free ticket for travel into the city centre, but I spectacularly managed to miss it, and would spectacularly have managed to miss my own baggage coming round on the carousel too had my boyfriend not been there to retrieve it for me. Happily the train ticket turned out to cost only a couple of francs, probably the only cheap purchase of the holiday, and we were soon speeding towards Geneva proper.

My main aim when booking this holiday had been to ensure it was cheap. I am, after all, saving money to the extent where I no longer permit myself to buy bottled water, and so a foreign holiday which my boyfriend didn’t actually want to go on was somewhat of an unnecessary extravagence. I had set myself a budget of £500 for the pair of us and was trying to stick to it as rigidly as possible. Geneva had been chosen as a destination for no better reason than it was the cheapest place I could get Easyjet flights to from the Midlands. It didn’t occur to me until it was far too late that Geneva is one of the most expensive cities in one of the world’s most expensive countries, and that getting a cheap flight there didn’t guarantee that the rest of the holiday was going to be equally low cost I’ve probably already documented the nightmare I had trying to track down budget accomodation on this blog, and it soon became clear that most restaurants and even some supermarket food was going to be well beyond our humble means.

Having had an inkling of this before we set out, I had already planned in advance that when we arrived we would head to Manor, one of the big Swiss department stores, which normally has a cheap self service restaurant on its top floor. When I say cheap I mean relatively cheap, as we soon discovered; it still cost more than I would expect the same amount of food to cost in the UK, but I’m quite a fan of department store restaurants because they generally have the most amazing selection of food to choose from so that even fussy eaters like me can find something they’re prepared to swallow Even if it is only cold pasta

Suitably nourished, my boyfriend and I set off to find our accommodation. Having agonised between an Etap hotel in nearby Annemasse (France) and a youth hostel in Geneva which were both around the same price, I had ultimately decided to gamble on the hostel and I think I made the right decision. If anyone is ever looking for an inexpensive place to stay in Geneva, I thoroughly recommend the City Hostel. Well, unless you’re the sort of person who would miss such luxuries as a tv and a carpeted floor. The double room we had booked cost approximately twenty quid each per night, which is the cheapest accommodation I think anyone is likely to find anywhere, and whilst a little small, it was perfectly clean and comfortable. The sleeping arrangements consisted admittedly of two single beds rather than a double, but that allowed us to escape each other for a little bit every now and again to read, and we both ended up snuggling in the same bed to sleep anyway There wasn’t an en suite bathroom, but there were plenty of showers on the corridor, we were handily placed near to the toilet, and I didn’t see a single spider the whole time I was there We had useful shelves above the beds to keep stuff on, a table and chairs to eat our meals at, an ample wardrobe plus our own sink to wash in. Further down the corridor was a kitchen with enough pots and pans to cook a basic meal, and downstairs was a coffee machine and a room of internet terminals. It was impossible to think of something which was missing, and those people who have reviewed the place on Tripadvisor and complained that the curtains are too thin and let in so much light they couldn’t sleep were obviously too dumb to work out how to operate the window shutters

The said window shutters, however, gave rise to what was without doubt the most entertaining episode of the entire holiday, or possibly of any holiday ever since the time when my previous boyfriend got locked in a toilet in Salzburg station Babel decided he was going to demonstrate how much better than me he was able to close the shutters. In order to do so, he needed to stand on his bed and vigorously twist the pole. He jumped onto his bed, and all of a sudden there was the most almighty crack. His not inconsiderable weight appeared to have been too much for the poor divan to bear, and two of the slats had burst out of their groove and onto the floor We quickly pulled the mattress off and tried to slide them back in again, but to no avail. It was no use; my boyfriend had well and truly broken the bed It was totally gutting, most especially because if he was going to break a bed he could have at least have had the decency to do it by means of vigorous sex At any rate, I am never going to let him live this one down; it’s first in line on my list for when I need a cheap dig about his weight in an insulting emergency

Having settled into the hotel we headed out to have a walk around Geneva, which is really a beautiful city. As it was so cloudy we didn’t get much of a view but even in drizzle the lake was amazing by virtue of it’s extreme magnitude and the buildings which front onto it, be they hotels or banks, were very grand and imposing. Armed with a slightly inadequate map I had found somewhere on the internet, we wandered hither and thither for an hour or so in the hope of finding somewhere to eat. A cursory look at restaurant prices was enough to put us off however and we soon settled for a McDonalds, where my boyfriend did a sterling job of explaining in French to the server that I wanted a cheeseburger without any gunk in it (where gunk is defined as anything green or sauce-like). Rather impressively the staff managed to follow his instructions and I ended up with my desired burger, free of any traces of remotely healthy food substances. Moreover it was a pleasant surprise to be served in a McDonalds where I didn’t feel like gang warfare was in danger of breaking out between the staff or that I myself was about to fall victim to a violent crime, which are the principle reasons I don’t enter McDonalds in Birmingham.

The next challenge was to find our way back to the hostel. I have to come clean and confess that I didn’t do very much navigating at all on this holiday I’m not *bad* at mapreading and as I informed my somewhat incredulous boyfriend, I am renowned in my family for having an excellent sense of direction. It’s just that not getting lost isn’t something which comes naturally to me, and for that reason it seemed logical to let my boyfriend take charge of directions. He was also in charge of speaking, and paying for things, and working out which direction traffic was coming from when we needed to cross the road… And helping me overcome my shower phobia… Oh, and getting my coffee out of the machine when I couldn’t manage it (it was really difficult!)… And perhaps a few other things I was in overall sort of charge of everything else…. But yeah, we needed to get back to the hostel which was less than straightforward because the map I had printed off wasn’t detailed enough to show all the names of the little side roads we were wandering along. We started off by knowing where we were and I was placing great faith in my boyfriend’s navigating ability, but somehow we seemed to fall into a sort of Bermuda Triangle where all roads led to the city hospital. After what must have been the best part of an hour of failing to successfully orientate ourselves we came across the facade of a McDonalds, and I was halfway through commenting on the strange prevalence of fast food outlets in Geneva when we realised it was actually the one in which we had eaten some time ago. We appeared to have walked round in a massive circle

We got back in the end though, in the process seeing some parts of Geneva which we might otherwise have missed. Before we fell asleep, we made the resolution that tomorrow we were going to go to France~!

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