I left the hostel around 10 AM and took the express train to the airport. I initially balked at the price of about $34 but then noticed that it was less than half that price for someone under 26, which I am by only the slimmest of margins. Stockholm's airport is quite far from the city, so the express train is really somewhat essential. Apparently there's a way to get there using local buses, but it takes hours. I was flying Easyjet (basically European Spirit, similarly cheap and equivalently terrible) and discovered that they don't open up luggage checking until about 45 minutes before boarding starts. Not a great system if you ask me, but it was particularly vexing in my case because I had shown up at the airport hours earlier than I needed to with the intention of dropping my bags, going through security, and then taking a job interview from the airside lounge. I ended up playing about an hour of Civ since there was nothing else to do until they finally opened baggage drop. Because the lady made me empty my backpack out and stuff my suitcase instead so that it would fit in the carry on template (it never does in America, but it seems that by some divine intervention European carry ons are slightly larger), I had no time to go through security before the interview. As a result I found myself doing a Teams interview surrounded by other random people in the crowded airport lobby. The interviewers seemed unfazed by this, though, perhaps due to some very skillful camerawork of mine to keep everyone else out of frame, and it's clear I'll be moving on in the process. I then dashed through security - they tossed my highly dangerous toothpaste and "olive" oil that was in reality mostly sunflower - aggressively stuffed bad lounge food into my mouth for ten minutes or so, and then jumped in line to board.

The flight was uncomfortable but under 3 hours, so it could've been worse. I had a window seat but wasn't able to see much of anything until right before our final descent, where I think I was able to see Mont Blanc in the distance. The mountains more immediately by Geneva aren't huge - we seem to be near a dip in the Alps - but they're still a nice backdrop. Geneva is on this southwestern point of Switzerland that juts way out into France, so I'll be busing through tomorrow. The airstrip we landed on was actually the border, so I was probably 50 feet from the border. Geneva has a really cool system where for the first day you're there you get free transit on their bus and tram network. This is especially convenient for me since I'm only going to be here for a day. I checked into the hostel, bought some very overpriced ramen at a nearby convenience store (I wanted to make something more substantial with chicken, but the cheapest I could find was 34 francs a kilo), and made some Australian friends in the kitchen. They generously donated their leftovers, a really terrible attempt at coconut curry that was obviously mostly improvised, but I ate it anyway because calories don't come cheap in Switzerland.

After dinner I set out to explore the city a little bit. I was immediately struck by how... not nice my neighborhood is. There are quite a few homeless people and the area doesn't feel like the sort of place I'd want to spend much time. Things change once you get right down to the lake, but it took a while. I had somewhat assumed that Switzerland was a poverty-free utopia like the Nordics seemed, and that evidently isn't the case. The downtown along the lakefront and its immediate outflow to the Rhône is extremely ritzy, with nearly every building being some huge bank or watch manufacturer. Quite a contrast to what it's like just a few blocks away from the waterfront, where it goes back to the grungier look that I found my hostel to be in. I walked out to the most iconic Geneva landmark, the massive fountain in the lake. It has to be at least 60 feet high and is quite impressive. It's at the end of a jetty that seems to be a hub for people to hang out in big crowds at night and blast rap from boom boxes. I didn't have much of an impression of Geneva, but it certainly wasn't this.

Anyway, I'll have a little more time to explore tomorrow, and then onto Italy. I'll have a few good hours to explore the city by daylight, and I suppose I'll have to find the UN buildings to see if there are any relatively inoffensive ways I can violate the Geneva Convention outside (probably involving incorrectly displaying the Red Cross logo). My bus to Turin leaves at 3:30, so hopefully I'll still have enough light to appreciate what I expect will be an extremely scenic drive, and then maybe give me a little time to appreciate the city before my full day there tomorrow.