First Day and Missin' Home Already

The First day in Switzerland made me miss home so much. The Swiss lack the warm friendliness that I seemed to have taken for granted in Australians. Granted the weather here is also mind numbingly cool and midday day is so gloom, you’d think it was already 5 or 6 in the arvo. That’s of course just the first impression. It’s my second morning here and the weather outside looks fantastic; blue skies, cool breeze, picturesque. My parrain Tobias picked me up from the airport at 7 and we lugged my suitcase with the broken wheels onto a train from Geneva to Lausanne. The suitcase was 26ks but after no sleep for 30 hours and then trying to carry it on and off trains and across a big city was excruciating (damn those wheels!). We spent the morning doing errands. First we found my dorm and dumped the bag off as soon as we can (we ended up taking a taxi which cost about 15bucks for 3 minutes). My other housemates weren’t home yet so didn’t get to meet them later that night. We headed into uni to see Olivier – the exchange program coordinator. We ended up meeting two other exchange students outside his office; Tracy, another Aussie girl and her housemate Magnus who drove down from Germany. Since our mutual common language is English; all our French being a bit rusty, we ended up just talking in English. So guess these 2 were the first friends I made in Switzerland; of course and my parrain Tobias who was a great help and got most of the things I had to do done. We drank a hot chocolate with the two new kids and then parted ways. Tobias and I went back to the town centre and got me a Swiss Sim Card. Good deal, very cheap to call international for me and good texting too. We went and got an adaptor for all my electronic good from a place called Fnac. Bad idea. They only sold one that matched an Australian plug and it cost 35 Francs (it was a world adaptor so it had like everything). No choice... things needed to be charged so I bought it. Got home and it freakin’ doesn’t have the 3 hole. For those of you who know Australia plugs, we have the 2 metal pieces that are slanted at the top with 1 metal piece that is straight at the bottom (that wasn’t a very good description.) But the adaptor only had 2 holes for the 2 slanted metal pieces. This means my phone can get charged, my camera... but not my laptop which unfortunately has 3 pieces of metal!!! Feel like I just tossed 35 Francs out the window and now my laptop is about to die.
Tobias took me to a grocery store as well and the prices almost killed me. I hadn’t eaten anything all day but I decided for day one, I wouldn’t cook yet so I wanted some instant noodles. Instant noodles do not exist in Switzerland. I ended up buying cereal and milk and that was my dinner on my first day in Switzerland and today’s breakfast! Somewhat depressing and definitely missing Sunnybank.
Me and Tobias parted ways after he showed me around town and I caught the metro back to my dorm. Met one of my Swiss housemates; Jonas who’s a pretty cool guy. Coincidently he’s lived in Brisbane for a bit in Fairfield, just down the road from Kim. He showed me some shops on a map and introduced me to our apartment. The guy’s easy to talk to and a good laugh but the saddest thing I ever heard him say was, everyone cook for themselves. My dreams of meeting a housemate who’d cook for me got thrown out the window. I went back to Uni afterwards and opened a bank account and emailed home. On my way back to the dorm, a freak storm (which apparently is not so freaky and quite common here) hit and the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees. I was a frozen man walking by myself; there was no one else on the street. Made me think maybe the Swiss knew about freak storms that hit around 5 and all get indoors. That walk home made me feel so lonely. I got to admit, I miss everyone back home so much; I had so many great friends and so many people around me, why the hell did I leave all that to come here with no friends. Temporary home sickness setting in. When I got home, I unpacked then went next door to see Kelly, the other Australian girl from UQ who’d arrived a couple weeks earlier. We caught up whilst I ate my cereal dinner and she told that the first week will be so lonely until you make some friends, how true. The first night in Switzerland was actually really good, met my other housemates Robert – who apparently doesn’t talk much and has a habit of disappearing quite a lot and Jean (John) who’s this cool Swiss pride guy. He bought over his girlfriend (who happens to be Australian!) and her friends; so we all ended up having a good laugh in the living room. I actually managed to stay awake until 10pm! After the other Aussies left, I grabbed a shower and hit the sack. Kept on waking up all night and I don’t know if that’s to do with the Jet lag or what but not having slept for 48 hours prior, the sleep was absolutely beautiful to me.