A Farewell Night with the Swedes and then to Geneva

I’m sitting at a Starbucks, looking out the window toward a shopping center in Geneva. I just purchased the most expensive cup of coffee that I ever hope to purchase. One cup of venti sized black coffee: 5.40 Swiss Franks. One Frank is a little less than an American Dollar. So my cup of coffee cost me about five American Dollars comparatively.

Well the point is, I decided to come into the Starbucks to get some writing done so I can update my blog soon, and also to get off these Geneva streets, which seem to be plated with gold and shops and things just as expensive.

I left Freiburg with my program yesterday morning at 8am. It was snowing pretty hard when we left. It is the only big snow that I’ve seen since I arrived in Germany. It came down pretty heavy, so it took longer than it should have to get to Geneva, but we did arrive on time for our first lecture at the U.N.

I had stayed out pretty late the night before we left for Geneva. Wednesday night was the last night my Swedish suitemate, Petra, was in town. Since the regular university students at the University of Freiburg are finishing up their semester, a lot of the students here are leaving. She’ll be back in late April for the beginning of the University’s next semester.

Well in the last few weeks I have become rather close to Petra and her fellow Swedish friends she came abroad with. Often her friends Madeline and David would come over for dinner or movie nights. I found the Swedish since of humor very similar to the humor that I’m used to in the States – cynical and often of poor taste – which often sums my sense of humor up pretty well. It also helped that the Swedes speak better English than they do German, so they actually had an easier time talking to me than Germans. This didn’t help my Germanic language development, but it did help me gain a few new friends.

We also watched all the Godfather movies together, while we drank wine and ate pizza. I’m sad that they’re leaving. It was nice to have met them.

So since I had stayed at the bar for most of the night with my Swedish friends, it was hard to wake up. I did manage to wake up, and do all the necessary morning exercises in order to make my way to the bus. But I slept most of the way to Geneva.

We immediately went into a lecture at the UN office soon as we arrived in Geneva. The lectures were some of the least favorite that I have heard since in Europe. They pretty much reaffirmed my belief that the UN is a useless organization. The UN is good in theory, but in practice it is about as useful as a beer to a Mormon. The UN can’t enforce any of its sanctions, and enforcement is the cornerstone of authority – well, actually enforcement is authority and the UN has neither.

That night my program paid for a fundo dinner. I never had fundo before, so it was a new, especially French Genevan experience. It went well with the Geneva white wine that came with our meal. I sat with some of the kids from my program known loosely as the Southerners. One kid, Mike, was from the Outer Banks area, about a half hour out of Elizabeth City. We talked about the area a little bit. He told me of some beaches I should visit in the summer. All the southerners loved Old Crow Medicine Show, especially their song “Wagon Wheel.” So it was nice to find some Americana blue grass music company in the middle of Switzerland.

That night I went to a microbrewery that was next door to the hotel. The beer wasn’t very good. I think I’m getting too used to German beer already. One of the people I was with commented that, “we’ve only been in Germany for a month and we’re already beer snobs.” And it’s true. The German beer is far superior to anything else.

I woke up this morning, ate continental breakfast at the hotel and then went to two more UN lectures. They were about the same. Perhaps the most pathetic UN institution is the human rights watch group. I won’t get into that too much, except to say that it is not much of a watch groups since each nation is in charge of drafting its own report on human rights, and, of course, China can veto any enforcement action since it sits on the Security Council.

After the lecture, we had a group picture taken in front of the Woodrow Wilson memorial. They love Woodrow Wilson here; they have a hotel and a UN building and a fountain named after him. He is the guy that conceived the idea of international collaboration in international politics.

Overall, I agree that its good to have such forums to discuss our international problems and interest, but to form such institutions that pretend to have some sort of authority seems weak and illegitimate. I think that having such institutions lessens the legitimacy of some of the missions that the UN addresses that are legitimate, such things as collaborative humanitarian aid and refuge relief efforts.

Soon I’ll be leaving back for Freiburg. Tomorrow I have a long day of homework, and then I’m going to meet up with Leah in Strasburg.

Cheers!