Happy Anniversary...

Well, it has been a year since I first started working here.

A lot of folks tell me 'Oh, you are sooo lucky to be working in Geneva..' etc. And indeed I am - it is a lovely city in a beautiful region of France/ Switzerland. But boy were the first few months fun and games!

I got a phone call confirming the job and giving me just four days to pack up my whole life in London and start a whole new one in Switzerland. I arrived off the plane with one suitcase and a laptop and that was it.

The arcane renting laws in France and Switzerland had this Kafka-esque quality to them - to rent an apartment you need to have your EU frontalier working permit, but to get your frontalier permit you need an address and hence an apartment. But you also need to prove that you are from a border region by showing that you have telephone/electricity bills etc., but how can you get those if you don't have an apartment. And round and round it went - for a longggg time.

Eventually after many migraines and lots of to-ing and fro-ing between the town-hall and the office and the rental people, I got my work permit complete with photo that showed my amusement at the situation (or rather the lack of it!)

The days were long as I had to catch a bus to the border, then take the tram to the city, then catch another bus to the office. At night repeat the whole process only backwards. Each (ten hour) day had another three hours of commuting added to it so I would start at 5:00am and collapse into my cot somewhere around 10:00pm for some sleep ready to start the next day. Needless to say I looked forward to weekends with great enthusiasm!

But as the weeks went by I slowly got organised and got the phone connected, gas switched on, bought furniture, a TV/DVD, a washing machine ( no more cold, late night rainy trips in winter shlepping to the Laundromat), and eventually a car. Each purchase was a tiny victory - especially since it was all done in a foreign language.

Each successive purchase made life soooo much easier - especially the car which gave me freedom, and I have never appreciated the little things as much as I do now. One of the major lessons in life that I learned from my time in Iraq was how little stuff you actually need. Nowadays the car trip is just ten minutes through the back roads instead of the hour and a half long dog-leg through the city on the public transport.

I have finally achieved a very long held dream of working in Europe and have even conducted an entire audit of one of the companies subsidiaries (including written correspondence) with the Paris auditor completely in French so my language skills must be doing alright…

Of course, my supervisors are nowhere near as good to work for as my boss in Iraq or London - that I really do miss - and there are times when I could cheerfully put a needle in my current bosses voodoo dolls. One of these days I’d love to have paid off my houses, be working for myself and have a sailboat to take friends on and go fishing and diving off. But for now I have ticked off one of those major personal goals, am making a good quid, and am set up comfortably enough to enjoy weekend drives through lush mountainous countryside on sunny days filled with singing birds and get to delve into the treasure trove that is Europe.

Happy anniversary…