Let the Travelling Begin!

Greetings from the beautiful Lake Geneva in Switzerland! :)

Nobody saw it coming, but it did happen. Under the spell of "inshallah", I was able to get my UAE residence visa (and therefore my Canadian passport back) last Thursday, which allowed me to travel again. Since my cousin Fang from China is on a business trip in Switzerland, I decided to meet up with her - with Q's wonderful support of course. So the next thing I know, I was on a plane to Geneva.

I love the fact that I get to meet some really interesting people when travelling. The guy sitting next to me on the plane was a Lebanese who grew up in Saudi and UAE, studied in Switzerland, and now work in Boston. My couchsurf host last night is a Mexican, studied in Montreal and now study Ph.D. in Switzerland. There were so much stories shared - it's truly amazing.

So yes, I managed to couchsurf again - yipee! My CS host Rosario was totally cool, and I was apparently very lucky to find her because she is not busy with work at this point and between travelling herself. We had an amazing time biked down along the lake and bought freshly-made baguette, prosciutto, cheese, tomatos and spinach from grocery store, borrowed cutlery from some restaurant, and asked for some salad dressing from another picnic party - bueno, a nice picnic on the beach! C'est la vie. :)

In five days, I will be flying from Geneva to Amsterdam, reuniting with Q for the weekend to attend a friend's wedding and also some motorcycling and sailing! After that, Q will go back to Abu Dhabi, and I'll take my travelling on to Prague. My current return ticket from Geneva to Abu Dhabi is booked for early September due to over-sold flights, but I hope to return earlier and will try to do standby in late August. The rest will be inshallah. :)

p.s. Did zou know the Swiss kezboard has letter 'y' and 'z' switched? Now zou know. ö