Sept 4th - The Flight

Well - I've finally touched down in Geneva and I'm writing this from my hostel downtown in the wee hours of the morning.

I must say that the trip over was a surprisingly long voyage that in retrospect went surprisingly quickly. Probably due to the fact that I was either hallucinagenically tired (about 3 hours of sleep in the last 28) or hopped up on caffeine to stay awake so I didn't miss my flight.

I started off in a middle aisle seat on one of British Airways major jetliners coming out of Sea-Tac. As the plane was boarding I noticed a large amount of young children getting on the plane. Thinking nothing of it, I walked on and took my seat.

Of course, you already know where this is going. Let me describe my seating arrangement.

To my left was situated a young Arab mother, pink hijab and all, and in her arms was cradled what must have been, at the oldest, a three month old baby girl. Immediately to my right, across the narrow aisle was a family with a 2 year old son. Directly behind me was a family blessed with a set of twin girls, aged 3. Directly in front of me was another family with a 4 month old boy.

I'm not making this up. This actually happened to me. Of all the Jewish luck...

Let's just say the flight was a long one with little sleep as I had a young Arabian testing out her vocal chords directly into my ear for nine straight hours, among other vocalisations courtesy of the youth on board.

The situation was made slightly better when I realized that not only was I allowed to have alcohol on the flight, but that it was also free - so that numbed the pain a little bit, although my ear drums are still ringing.

I landed in Heathrow on time, got my bags, ran through customs and shipped my luggage off to Oxford. Hope it gets there. Then I boarded a quick bus over to Gatwick, where I arrived at about 1:30 in the afternoon their time (about 4 in the morning, ours). My flight was pushed back until 10:00PM so I had a solid 8+ hours to kill at the airport, which I did by reading, walking around, and looking at shops that were far and away beyond my price range.

Finally I got on my red-eye to Geneva and made it into the train station at roughly Midnight Geneva time (9 hours ahead of PST). I've swung by the bank to get a little cash, checked into my hostel and now am updating this and off to bed.

Tommorow - Geneva.


Cheers,

-Mark

The Map

So I'm playing around with the customization features on Google Maps for the first time and I must say they are pretty phenomenal.

I'm going to keep that map up at the top and you will see updates (lines, locations, etc) of where it is that I'm going. As you can see - the initial flight plans are already there.


Hope I can actually update it - let me know if you can't see it/something is screwy.


ETA: 9 hours till lift off. Back to packing!

-Mark

Welcome!

Hello everyone and welcome to my attempt at a "travel blog".

I will be updating this when I can, both during my preliminary travels before school and during my time in school. I do this in order to save you the trouble of wondering what is happening to me and, more importantly, myself the trouble of having to contact each and every one of you individually by sending you a postcard with a postage of $72.34 (adjusted for exchange rate).


Therefore, I will do my best to update this blog when I can and to the best of my ability. I will include pictures if possible and every once in a while, if you're lucky, one of the stories might actually be worth the time you spend reading it.


Since this blog will be made public to my family, friends, and adult contemporaries and peers I will try and keep it as civil and professional as possible. If you want to hear what I might have left out, well, you'll have to follow up on that personally.


So, I welcome you and I hope this blog is bearable, readable, and reasonably to your liking. Feel free to comment and I ask you keep it as civil as possible.

Today is Wednesday. I fly out to London and then Geneva on Monday. Before then, I hope I will be able to post a coherent itinerary and a map so you can follow along as I get hopelessly lost in the European countryside.


All the best and thanks for visiting,

Mark Kogan