Strange Week - Addendum

P: No luck looking for cars today. The French simply refuse to work one second past their allotted time, even if it means not making more money. (Our roommate tells us that the local grocery store will actually bar your way from entering up to 15-20 minutes before the store closes, and somebody goes around and chases all the customers still in the store to the front.) This means that even on a Saturday, car dealers close for two hours for lunch, and some don't even reopen in the afternoon. Get your shopping done in the morning!

We also finally found an office supply store: 10 euros (that's $14 these days) for a letter holder. The whole store was like that. We walked out.

However, Kathy will tell you that one of the big highlights for today was eating a hamburger at McDonald's for lunch! We all went. 13 euros (>$18) for two deluxe cheeseburgers, a medium and small fry, and one quite small strawberry shake. But we enjoyed it immensely, and so do, apparently, the French. This McDonald's was hopping! Must've been all the car dealer employees, there actually are a lot of dealerships along that stretch of road...

I posted more pictures today on the dropshots site that Kathy set up, particularly pictures of the apartment we toured today.

Pros: right in Ferney, which Kathy loves, 7th floor view, corner apt with south and east exposures, great light, natural wood floor, full size (as they get) refrigerator, less than 1000 euro/mo. before "charges".
Cons: 5 sq.m. smaller than advertised. (1 square meter is about 10 square feet, so we're talking 50 less sq. ft. than advertised). Total 65 sq. m. = 650 sq. ft., quite a bit smaller than we were looking for! No wonder it was cheaper than the other listings. This in itself was enough to kill the deal. But then also you have the elevator that was about the size of your coat closet, barely large enough to fit Kathy and I and Ben in the stroller. The only way to get large furniture into your apartment is to carry it up seven flights of stairs!!!

But finally the clouds broke today, the sun came out, the temps got into the 50s, and you could barely make out the Jura mountains in the haze. Somehow makes them look more mythic. I drove into Geneva and took a jog by the lakeshore late afternoon. Wish I'd brought my camera; you should've seen the sun setting behind the Jet d'Eau.

-PKBD