After eating some free cereal and questionable milk I found in the kitchen, I went to leave my bags in the hostel. Then they tried to charge me 15 francs for that service, so I refused to pay and instead dragged my bags all over the city for the rest of the day. My bus was at 3:30 and I got up reasonably early so I had to do this for quite a while in the persistent rain. Geneva looks very different by day - the most obvious difference is that you can really see the mountains in the distance, which very much add to the scenery. Everything looks a little safer, too, though I suppose that's to be expected. I spent a while wandering down by the lake's northwest shore up towards the UN stuff. The campus up there is very nice, if not especially interesting. There are lots of very nice parks and buildings throughout the whole area and it's clear that the diplomats stay in a nicer part of the city than I had been. Being so encumbered by all my bags, all this exploration was very slow and tiring, so after buying some more ridiculously overpriced groceries for lunch (and having wrest my cucumber away from some homeless guy trying to gum it with his few remaining teeth), I rode the tram back and forth across the city until my bus arrived.

The bus driver immediately annoyed me by objecting to the size of my backpack and forcing me to pay an extra 8 euros to store it underneath, despite there being more than enough space on board. It's slightly larger than their listed dimensions but nobody's ever said anything before and there were similar bags that other people got away with. I suspect he just pocketed the money without telling the bus company. He also somehow managed to have worse English than I have Italian, which is saying something since I don't speak Italian at all. But I was at least able to figure out what he meant by "Grande, grande!" and he seemed to understand absolutely nothing I was saying, so I chalk that up as a win.

The bus ride itself was around 4 hours and extremely nice. We went right through the heart of the French Alps and it was an amazing change of pace from the absurdly flat countries I'd just been coming from (even in the countries that do have real mountains, like Sweden or Germany, I was nowhere near them). Snowcapped peaks were everywhere and much of the terrain was highly rugged. As nice as it was to drive through, I felt a pang of regret that I wasn't able to spend any real time in this part of the country. It reminded me a lot of backpacking in New Zealand, but that sort of experience would pretty challenging to coordinate the way I'm travelling now. I arrived in Turin around 7:30.

Turin isn't in the mountains, but it's not far from them either. It's a very nice city from my initial impressions and looks very classically Italian. After finding my way to the hostel and making more ramen with a ton of instant mashed potatoes I found on the side, I went out to explore. The nightlife was very different from anything I've seen on this trip thus far. There were a ton of people out, but almost nobody was in a building. It seems that there's an expectation that you buy a drink in a disposable cup and then wander off with it to drink somewhere else - people would form these huge groups and just hang out in the middle of the street or plazas drinking. I know Europe is generally more lax about alcohol in public, but I haven't seen anything quite like this before. There were also a strange amount of kids there too. I don't know what makes someone want to take their ten year old out at 11 PM on Saturday night, but it seemed remarkably common. After a while I ran into this group of Italians that I'd met at the hostel earlier and they invited me to come with them. They were very nice and made for good conversation, but I could only understand them when they spoke to me directly since usually they would speak Italian to one another. They were very curious about my stance on American politics and the Celtics, which have been running themes among the Italians I've met. I got a crash course in the Italian political system and came to appreciate that for all the issues the American system might have, other countries have distinct but similar problems that don't get discussed or amplified as much. We stayed out later than I'd have liked to, but I was afraid my phone would die before I was able to navigate back to the hostel, so I had to wait for them to go back.

I booked a bus to Florence for Monday since it was $10. I've got to find a hostel down there, but it seems that hostels in Italy don't come cheap and I've been putting it off. Rome seems even more expensive, and that woman I met in Stockholm hasn't responded when I asked about her offer for me to stay with her. I kinda figured this would happen; it did seem a very bold thing to promise a random guy she met an hour prior. Anyway, everyone here tells me I have to see Rome, and Florence is only a few hours away, so I feel like it would be a waste to not get down there. I don't want to spend too much time in Italy since there are so many other countries (cheaper ones) I'd like to visit, but it is the first country I've been to where there are many cities in a row that I would like to spend time in. Sure, Germany has other cities that I'd like to see, but Munich or Cologne are nowhere near Berlin and it wouldn't have made any sense at all to try and visit them. In Italy, I will necessarily pass directly by Genoa, Bologna, Pisa, and Trieste (if my current planning holds), which is frustrating since I'd like to spend a night or two in all of those. Oh well. I suppose I'll have to come back some day.