Le dernier jour

I woke up for this day feeling sentimental. It is our last day in Geneva, in Switzerland, in Europe, as ex-pats. The end of an era, of a grand adventure that's been our lives for the past 18-ish months.

Zach and I spent the previous days frantic and crazed trying to get things ready, worried that we'd be up till 3am on this last night with so many to-do's to deal with. All that frenzy seems to have paid off-- that, and having Mom and Philip here and staying one more night in this house after we leave and thus will be the ones to deal with many of the loose ends we'd otherwise need to do. They have been an absolute GODSEND this week. We still had plenty of things to do today, but the day was much more calm, thus enjoyable, than we had feared it might be.

Zach and Philip ran a few errands this morning while Mom and I stayed back and played with Donovan. At noon we went into town, with a few missions-- I needed to pay my Orange phone bill, Zach and the parents had some things to get from Coop City (and use up our superpoints), and I'd hoped to drop in on the cafe meet-up at Starbucks. Unfortunately the Orange deal took longer than expected-- after an hour's wait my number was finally called, at which time I was able to pay our remaining balance. Then I asked the guy about getting our deposit back.

See, when we signed up for our phones we got me a plan as opposed to a pre-paid option, as it made more sense. That meant paying a 1000chf deposit for my account, thanks to our type of residency permit. When signing up the guy assured us it would be very simple to get the money back. Two weeks ago I stopped by the Orange store to ask about cancelling our account, and the guy working was very helpful and would have set up for the deposit to be wired back to our account directly right then and there except there was 1 number I didn't have that was needed. He assured me we could just set that up when we came back to pay the bill, no problem.

Then today when I asked about the deposit, the guy this time told us we'd have to give them a US address to which they'd send some forms that we would then have to fill out and sign before sending back and then we'd get the money sent to us. Um, what? How long is THAT gonna take? And why all the hassle when we had been told before specifically that they just needed our account info and would send it right over? Zach was kinda furious. Me? I figured, "what's a last day in Europe without a classic experience of euro-style customer service?" We may try to call the company tonight to find out more about this, but I'm not sure honestly if we'll have the time, energy, or really care anymore. We'll get the money eventually, I trust the Swiss that much, and may just deal with the pain in the ass method of getting it.

By the time that was over we had to head back out and thus I didn't get to stop in at the meetup. Zach had a going-away thing planned at work so we went to that, then rushed home to meet with a woman who was buying a last few of our things. So, yes, still a busy day, glad we got most everything else taken care of earlier. ; )

Celine and Arthus were able to stop by for one last playdate, which was great. I'm gonna miss them. She wound up taking a lot of leftover stuff of ours, both baby-related and non, and seems like she'll be able to use it (or find someone else who will)-- a HUGE help to us. I feel better knowing at least some of those things will get used rather than just thrown in the trash.

Now we have a few odds and ends left, but I think we'll be ok, and then.... we'll be leaving on a plane early in the mornin'. I hope D has a good night of sleep tonight, as I feel exhausted and that's not the best way to start a long day of travel with a cat and a baby. But at its worst it will be one long, bad day, and at the end of it we'll be in California and Jenny will come down to see us that night, and even if we're all tired and grumpy I know it will be pretty great.