Holidays in Europe...

Holidays in Europe sounds a lot more romantic than it actually was, but the month of December flew by, and I can't believe it is half way through January already. Leaving the Peace Corps and finishing up all the paper work and medical stuff was way more than I thought it would be. My last official Peace Corps day was the 21st, but my last teaching day was the week before. I had intended to teach up until Christmas, but at the last minute the PC changed their minds and told me Wednesday to stop teaching Thursday. The next week was spent going back and forth to Sofia for appointments, packing and moving my stuff to Sofia. My friend Maria offered to let me use her apartment that was currently unoccupied - she rents it, so I started consolidating everything there.
The marines, that guard the US Embassy, had an aparment that they very graciously offered to let me use that was slightly bigger, so I ended up staying there for my last days in Bulgaria. I also spent Christmas with them at diplomats' houses. It was all really nice and I even had American food, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, collard greens.... it was really nice. It was like going home for a few hours...
I ended up shipping most of my stuff cargo instead of paying excess baggage fees. When traveling within Europe you are limited to 20kg. I ended up having at least 70kg. So it was cheaper to ship through a cargo company that flew my bags on Austrian Airlines, and have them arrive before me. I couldn't get them until the 3rd of January, but I will get to why in a minute.
The night before I left I spent with Eva and Maria, two of my good Bulgarian friends. Eva's boyfriend actually lives in Lausanne, so they were giving me tips on the city, and letting me know what to expect. They did tell me everything is closed on Sunday's and holidays, so when I arrived, nothing would be open. This means no grocery stores or anything. There would be one store near the train station. This was good advice :).
I left Bulgaria on the 31st at 6:30am. The Bulgarian metal detector people are difficult. I arrived early to make sure everything went smoothly. In Sofia there is a new terminal, and the airlines are slowly moving over to that one so I wanted to make sure I would make the flight. The metal detector people did not open until 6. This is not because they weren't there however. The group of customs and metal detector people were smoking coffee for an hour. Finally they opened. I had forgotton my key chain swiss army knife in my purse on my keys. So they asked me to talk out my keys and told me I couldn't have it. This is not a problem. However they started talking in Bulgarian deciding how much they could sell it for, thinking I didn't understand them. This annoyed me, so they found out I understood them quickly. So they gave me back my knife, and I went back to the Alitalia counter. They couldn't put it in my bags, but I could leave it at the counter and someday, when I go back to Sofia I can get it, or someone can pick it up for me. So when I went back through I asked if I should take off my boots or anything -they said no - and told them I left the knife with Alitalia. This made them angry. So I went through again, my boots beeped again, and so they started yelling at me. Where is the knife, take off your boots, take out the computer, no, don't touch your bags, wanding me and whatever. Then they went through everything I had. It took me saying loud enough for everyone to hear that the knife was at Alitalia to make the guy stop. I think they are just bored there.
So with that behind me I borded the plane to Switzerland. What Eva told me proved true, and everything was closed. I took a cab from the train station, with my bags, to IMD to pick up my keys and then went on to the apartment. This cost (and it was not very far) 26 Swiss Francs (CHF). The swapped my apartment with another students, so I ended up in apartment 17 instead of 3, and the stuff I had bought from the previous tenant was not there. This didn't matter so much because I had no food anyway. That night I decided to go to the IMD gathering at the Movenpick hotel. We had a lot of fun, and it was good to meet some of my future classmates. Unfortunately I forgot my camera. I will try to start taking some pictures soon though. Dinner was great though, and the conversation was really interesting. It is really cool to sit at a table with people from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Argentina, Scotland, Japan, France...
I was really tired though, after not having slept much in the past 3 days, so shortly after midnight I went home to sleep.
The next day was also a holiday (the 1st, as was the 2nd) so everything was closed. On the second however the grocery stores did open for a few hours so I was finally able to buy some food. The 31st I found a small sandwich shop open and bought a few sandwiches and had some Cliff bars left over from the stock Sean (US Marine in Sofia) gave me.
On the 3rd we rented a car. It was me, Pablo (Argentina) and George (Zimbabwe) and their families. We went to IKEA and to the airport to pick up my bags. So that evening I finally felt like I was at home after getting my apartment properly set up. We also found out from Pablo that we could sit outside IMD and get wireless internet. So that night we all met up and sat outside in the cold, dark and rain - checking our email. Addiction maybe...? but it was nice to finally be able to read emails after being disconnected for so long.
Saturday we had a group party at a local bar and met even more people from our class. On Monday the administrative stuff for school began, and so my week started at 8am Monday.
It is getting late though now... so I will go for now. I will write more later about my first week of school and my new classmates.