Ciao Nomads!
Now I’ve gone through most of my tips and tricks for how to tackle study abroad pre-departure, during, and post-trip, but we’ve reached the point that I’ve been hinting at since the beginning: my adventurous stories from abroad. Although I’ve given some context to our crazy experiences in places like Berlin and Paris, be prepared to hear some more interesting times of my venture abroad.
Surprisingly, I don’t have many crazy stories from my stay in London. You’d think since that was where I spent most of my time, I’d have tons of wild experiences, but mostly, I spent my time roaming the streets visiting as many stores on Oxford Street, Carnaby, Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, and Camden. I’m more of a shopper, as I’ve probably projected through most of these posts, so I spent a lot of my time in those areas! Also, interestingly, I spent several months in London yet I never visited the British Museum. What’s even worse about this was that my school was right around the corner from the British Museum, literally (I had class over on Russell Square for anyone familiar with London!!). There’s a part of me that is kicking myself for not going to see the Rosetta Stone and other artifacts in the Museum, but I’ve also got that mindset of me going back in the future, so maybe I’ll visit the British Museum eventually. I did go to the Tate Britain and Tate Modern which were fun! Highly recommend the Tate Modern! But you’re probably still waiting for more crazy stories, right?
I’ll start off with one of the more insane instances: Geneva, Switzerland. Two of my flatmates and I had planned a weekend trip to Geneva, Switzerland; we booked our flights and now we were just looking into Airbnbs. Not to play the name game, but one of my flatmates was in charge of finding and booking the Airbnb because she was most familiar with the app. She said she had found a highly rated Airbnb in Geneva within our price-point, so we obviously agreed with it. The pictures looked nice and the host seemed friendly, therefore we figured it’d be fine to book. So…we’ve got our flight. We’ve got our Airbnb. All that was left was flying over. I’ll skim over the airport details since nothing was unusual. But we land in Geneva and we find check out the address of our Airbnb only to realize it’s in Geneve…FRANCE. Yes, we booked our Airbnb in a whole different country. Yes, we were stupid Americans at the time. Since the place we were staying at was not in the same country, we struggled to find an Uber driver willing to take us over the border. (sounds scandalous, right?) Finally, we reach the point where this nice Swiss Uber driver agrees to take us to our Airbnb in France. Thankfully the drive was only about 30 minutes, but he dropped us off where we thought the address was. So now we have three confused Americans lost in France, frantically trying to contact our host to find our apartment for the weekend. It’s about 9 pm and there’s hardly anyone around. Picture a residential neighborhood. We had no clue where we were so we snuck into the gated area where we thought the Airbnb was and proceeded to call our host. Onto another funny instance: my roommate claimed she spoke French (which she does), so we decided to have her talk to the host since she only spoke French. As soon as the host picks up the phone, my roommate proceeds to say “Bon-jore.” And yes, I know I spelled it wrong…this is to emphasize the fact that my roommate definitely did not convince us that she spoke French at this time. Rather, my other friend and I proceeded to assume this was our end and that we’d be sleeping on the streets of residential France when we were supposed to be in Switzerland. Thankfully, my roommate managed to converse with our host and we found our Airbnb. Although it was a nice Airbnb, we were a great distance from the city of Geneva, Switzerland, so each morning we had to get up early and trek through across the border just to visit Geneva. Since no Uber driver was willing to drive us across the border into Switzerland, we had to walk through miles of construction and back to explore the city. Needless to say, we got our steps in for the entire trip that weekend.
Geneva was beautiful! We had such a great time exploring the city, although our feet hurt terribly afterwards. So you would think that our experience in Geneva couldn’t get any worse than booking an Airbnb in a completely different country and having to walk across the border everyday, right? Well…let’s just say we had a rocky start to the trip and a rocky end. We talked with our host about taxis to hail to take us to the airport since Uber drivers were terrible about agreeing to take us from one country to another (not sure why 😂). So we contacted a taxi company the day before our flight in hopes of booking a reliable cab to take us to the airport early in the morning. My flatmates and I got up and ready for our ride to the Genevan Airport at about 4 am. The time, I like to think, plays a big factor in what is about to come next. So our cab driver finally shows up and we start driving across the border into Switzerland. Honestly, there wasn’t anything too special or significant about the ride. He played some music for us and made some conversation. Truthfully, the main thing I remember was that the three of us were sitting in the backseat dying from the smell of him gassing up the car (if you know what I mean…). But other than that, we made it safely to the airport. As we were unloading our backpacks from the trunk we were trying to divvy up how much each of us had to contribute to pay the cab driver. Now I take responsibility for this mishap because I was an Accounting major at the time (you’ll see why I changed my major to English in a second). I determined that we each had to put forth a decent amount of Euros, so a gathered all our cash and handed it to the driver with a “thank you” and proceeded to head into the airport. As we were walking inside, my one flatmate was discussing how the math suddenly wasn’t adding up. This is when we all began to feel incredibly stupid…especially myself. Here we ended up giving our cab driver a hefty 40 Euro tip for our drive to the airport. We tipped him forty Euros for a cab ride that consisted of minimal small talk and constant farting. We were all dying a little on the inside at the thought of wasting that much money on a cab ride. Needless to say we agreed to never speak of this moment again, that is, until today as I share the stupidity that my flatmates and I projected throughout our time in Geneva. If you think this is bad, just wait! I’ve got plenty of other crazy stories to share from my experience. And…don’t worry, I’ve got some fun stories as well!
Navigating Nomad 