The only part of Switzerland that I didn’t enjoy was Geneva Airport. It was hot, humid and busy, and there were too few seats at the packed restaurant.
The boy on the restaurant checkout has a good scam going, which I was too slow to pick up on until it was too late. There’s a crush at the till, and you’re struggling with your cabin bag, your jacket, and your tray of food. He serves the person before you, and gives them a receipt. When it comes to you, he says, “Swiss pizza?” Well, he knows darn fine that what is on your tray is a Swiss pizza, but when you answer “Yes” he knows that you’re not Swiss.
So, he just says “Swiss pizza, cafe, citron…twenty-nine.” You hand over a SF50 note and he gives you some change, but he hasn’t rung anything up and he doesn’t give you a receipt. So, you reckon he’s either on the fiddle or is overcharging you, and you ask for a receipt. He rings everything up and gives you a receipt, which you look at, and it says SF29 and you struggle away with your tray, thinking that he hasn’t overcharged you and that the restaurant owners should be happy that you’ve stopped him pocketing the money.
You’ve been so distracted by the receipt business, and the fact that the place is mobbed and there’s nowhere to sit, that you don’t realise he’s slightly short-changed you. Not by much, but if he does that many times a day, he’ll make a bob or two.
Apart from at Geneva Airport, everything in Switzerland works well, and is on time like clockwork. This is because they don’t dig their roads up every month, so you can guarantee that it will take you half an hour to cross Geneva by car, and not over an hour like it takes in Edinburgh. The Swiss have managed to put roads through whole mountains and keep to a budget. Unlike Edinburgh, where 7.5kms of trams are going to cost the taxpayer roughly £100,000 per metre. We should have employed the Swiss to run the whole tram development.
Early morning
The village centre
Storage huts
The corners of the storage huts are on ‘stilts’ consisting of wood, then a round stone, then wood. This stops mice from climbing into them.
The glacier
It does look awful nice that place. Shame the weather is so terrible there. I think you should start a political party. Complaining Old Codgers has an unfortunate sounding acronym, but I would certainly join it. Hotboy p.s. The next time you get to a till jockey like that, you should say: No receipt. Down with capitalism and the exploitation of the workers! 50-50, comrade! pps Unfortunately, someone will have spat on your food before realising you were a brother in arms.
By: hotboy on February 20, 2012
at 8:29 pm
Well spotted. Did you email the manager?
By getting a Germanic firm to do the trams, the Edinburgher councillors were probably on the right track (ahem) but the Swiss could have put the whole thing under castle rock, on schedule and cheaper.
By: rob on February 22, 2012
at 11:29 pm