Broke girls take on Europe: Geneva Edition

“Twas the night after pay day (two hours after to be exact) and two broke girls decided to fulfill their dream of going to Geneva.

And it so happened that a few days ago, on a stressful and introspective Sunday night, a friend, Renee, and I planned an impromptu journey to Geneva, Switzerland. Planning any outing with my friends in Jamaica, an island I can traverse by car in less than 4 hours, usually takes 5 weeks of rigorous planning, at least 2 ruined friendships and a few empty bank accounts. Switzerland would be better, I told myself. It would.

We left for Switzerland a few days ago and on avais hâte. We booked rooms at a hostel which offers a free transportation card for not only the buses, the trams and the trains, mais écoutez bien, the boats as well.

-Cue angels. -

So our itinerary was as follows: Paris to Dijon, Dijon to Geneva. It was supposed to be a gruesome 7 hour ride by bus to the Swiss capital. However, being as broke as we were, taking the plane or the train was a dream that not even Martin Luther King himself could have conjured up after seeing our bank accounts.

A little fun fact about Geneva:

As it relates to cost of living, Geneva is one of the most expensive European cities with its own currency (the Swiss franc).

We got to Geneva without event, save a few dozen aches and cramped muscles, and we were impressed with the snow and the mountains and the glistening bodies of water.
After tackling the Paris metro and train system, Geneva’s transport system was child’s play and we had little trouble making our way around the city.

The fun started when we ambitiously took on souvenir shopping and spent a handful (several handfuls) of francs on a few items and came to the realization that food haffi eat. These moments of epiphany usually present themselves much later than they should. Why Jah?

We made our way- starving, tired and broke- to what advertised itself to be an authentic Italian restaurant and had pizza so soggy, it could supply water to a small nation in drought. But, at least the water we were offered to drink was free and perfectly chilled to boot.

The plan for that first night was to go to a Bob Marley birthday celebration at a club in Geneva and try to weasel our way in with our Jamaican passports as admission fee. Alas, we’ll never know if that scheme would have worked because fatigue decided that the only turn up would be in bed.

The next day we were refreshed and ready to take on Geneva. When Jesus said yes, the weather said no because it rained and rained and rained. Not to be disheartened by something as mere rain, we suited up with our umbrellas and took on all the sites in true Broke girl spirit.

In summary, Geneva has about 15 (million) watch factories, several international headquarters, 45 thousand Audis, a couple Ferraris, a dearth of public restrooms and a bank every 50 centimeters. Most of our time touring the city was spent looking at watches we could not afford, and walking by banks we didn’t have the capital to even enter.

Lunch was overpriced McDonalds and dinner, we decided, was going to be perfect. It had to be.

Did I mention that McDonalds in Switzerland charges extra for ketchup? The disrespect! 0.40 Swiss francs! How do you serve fries without ketchup? The nerve of these people.

After walking around in circles with no GPS or trusty Google map, we finally found a restaurant we had researched online. Chez ma cousine had a small selection of items on the menu but we knew it would be good. It had to be. On the little walk from the entrance to our table, we saw the same chicken platter at every table. So we figured it had to be good since everybody and their cousin was having it.

The waitress came to our table and even though we had already decided what we wanted to order, we had our purses and calculators out in true broke girl style , trying to see if we could really afford this chicken.

The world was on our side and we had enough money to cover the price for the meal, one sauce (because we couldn’t afford two), and after a series of bank-account-draining calculations, we opted to splurge for the 1 franc carafe of water. Life in the fast lane: Switzerland edition.

Laughing ourselves to indigestion, we lowkey worried about having to wash dishes, but luckily our bill favoured us, and was less than we had anticipated, leaving us 1.50 francs richer than we expected.

Geneva, we concluded was a beautiful and calm city to be visited by business people and we were never returning. Jamais jamais.

The next morning was to be our departure and before having the nicest bonding sessions with the Brazilian lady and the Spanish twins we shared a room with, we planned our trip back to Paris to the letter.

We were clearly too broke to afford food for the bus ride home, so we decided to make use of the breakfast buffet at the hostel.

We figured 6 slices of bread per person would be enough to make sandwiches for the 7 hour ride. We planned this to a fault. I would take 5 slices of bread and 2 slices of cheese per sandwich while Renee would take 4 slices of bread and enough slices of meat to rid us of hunger for 7 hours. It’s a little bit confusing I know, but try to keep up with me here. We were to have the cereal and yogurt for breakfast and take a few packets of sugar. Just because. In a country where a 2 by 0.5 inch packet of ketchup isn’t free, free sugar is to be cherished.

In the midst of all of this meticulous planning and flawless conversations in French, we failed to properly interpret our booking information for our bus which was scheduled to leave the Central Bus Station at 7:15. We thought it was a 7:45 departure. At 7:09 I decided to double check our booking confirmation and after running, and sweating and tripping and trying to hitch several rides from unsuspecting drivers, we got to the station just in time to see our bus drive off. "What fresh new level of hell is this?” we asked ourselves.

Not to be defeated, we remained calm, cool and collected and somehow found a way out of what had become our personal hell and due to the favour of God, the universe and all the Greek Gods, we will be refunded for our missed bus.

We spent the remaining hours until the next bus out of Geneva with a grand total of 3 francs, a few bottles of water, and of course, our pilfered sandwiches.

The only activities we could afford to participate in.

Suffice to say, crossing the Swiss-French border was the most memorable moment of our day.

Moral of the story:

Don’t go to Geneva as a broke girl.

Photographer: Travel bae: Renee Anderson