My Travel Adventures

Perhaps two weeks into my stay across the border from Geneva, I made it my personal challenge to buy as many different types of cheese as I could. At first, I thought it would help me find the cheese with which I would stick for the rest of my stay, but I soon discovered that my local store sold more types of cheese than I could ever hope to taste. Indeed, Charles De Gaulle was off by over seven hundred when he famously lamented: “How can anyone govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese?” That said, I did my best, and I made the following notes on how I liked each cheese I tried:

My traineeship at the EU Mission to the WTO is rapidly hurtling towards its end, and I will be leaving Geneva soon. In preparation for this inevitable event, my dad visited me to help me move some of my things back to Prague – namely my guitar, some collared shirts, and an extra suit. Since he is a fast walker, we saw practically everything there is to see in central Geneva on his first day here, and I struggled to come up with a programme for Sunday.

The weather remained unwelcoming during the second day of Li’s visit, though the remaining snow brightened the otherwise dreary city. This was my first time showing someone around Geneva, and I felt relieved that I did not have to come up with a very long itinerary thanks to our late breakfast. We started in the centre, walking north along the lake and past the Brunswick Monument to Parc Mon Repos, which I only recently discovered has a small grove of beautiful redwood trees. I started feeling a little cold, but awaiting us were the greenhouses of the nearby botanical garden. The papayas and habaneros were completely ignorant of the snow outside, happily growing out their fruits by the bushel.

I had the chance to pay back my friend Li this weekend for hosting me in Bologna. She and her friend Hannah visited me in Switzerland, and for their first day here, I took them to Luzern. The train ride took a little over three hours. There were options that took about ten minutes shorter, but we figured a direct train would be more comfortable. As we rode, we realised that the weather forecast for the weekend was probably mistaken and it would not turn sunny as the day went on. Rather, the entire day would continue in a haze.

Having seen a decent amount of Palma yesterday, we went about our day at a leisurely pace. In the morning, we checked out of our hotel and rode the exhilarating car-lift to the ground floor, after which we drove to the hill of Nuestra Señora de la Paz. My dad had spotted the statue from a distance the other day, and seeing as we had nothing else to do before everything else opened, we thought we might as well make a visit. Had we not stopped by, I likely would never have learned how ugly the statue really looks from up close.

We woke up at seven o’clock with a single goal in our mind: to drive all the way up Formentor Cape and back by breakfast. The task was urgent, as we knew the road to be narrow, winding, and perched atop uncomfortably precipitous hillsides. We began our ascent on the outskirts of Port de Pollença. After a while, we reached a barrier at a crossroads and, seeing that it was raised, continued onwards. I had my fair share of scares during the ride, though at least the wild goats had the good sense not to jump into the road right behind bends.

Flying into Mallorca is a magical experience. As soon as the island draws into view, it dramatically unfurls its rows of craggy mountains into the sea. The peaks occasionally gleam with a patch of sunlight but mostly maintain a dark mien; forming a high range along the northeastern coast, they hold back a barrage of dark clouds from pouring over the southern flatlands. These, the visitor soon observes, are dotted with a host of old windmills: round and quadrilateral, painted and bare, they find themselves in various stages of disrepair.