Big Brother is watching you

Ok this is scary.... a lady just knocked on my door and told me that I cannot keep my bike in my room. The thing is, how could she know? The reception was already closed when I came back with my bike, and I'm rather sure that noone else saw me in the elevator or elsewhere.
Then I remembered that it says "video surveillance" in the foyer.
In other words: They really seem to videotape all the time and actually look at those tapes closely. But then again, how do they know who I am? Face-scanners? Hidden cameras on every floor?
Switzerland is watching you...

Student life...

... does not necessarily mean sleeping until 11 and going out every evening.
My courses and the prepartation for the Moot Court have started.
I'm slowly getting into my routine, which consists of sleeping, eating, studying, eating, studying, doing sports, eating, studying, skyping/emailing/facebooking and sleeping again.

I've already spent quite som time with the people from my Mootie Team. They are a really nice bunch and I'm sure we will have a great time.

This weekend I will first have dinner with Aleksandra, a girl from Latvia that I met during the immatriculation at the University. On Saturday I will visit Marta, a fellow Mootie, who was so kind to invite the other Mooties and me to her place in Lausanne - really looking forward to all of that! :)

Oh yes, and I have a bike now! It doesn't have lights - but lights are overrated anyway. It doesn't have gears, but gears are... ;)

Thanks for reading
Yours
Jonas / Joni / Jonchen / Johnny

Executive Summary

• I couldn't participate in the first Erasmus party because it was Erasmus only - ironical given the fact that I always participated in those parties at home.
• I could participate in the second and third party - no further explanation needed.
  
• Courses have started, including a french law terminology teacher that resembles Ms. Rogall from high school and a girl that carries a chinchilla in her bag.
• I saw Stephen Hawking doing a presentation on the universe, funny guy.
• I will meet my Mooties this evening for dinner
• I will add photos

Cheeers!

Boat trip, Coffee, Irish Pub

I still feel a bit tipsy as I'm writing this. But this is only because I made the best investment ever yesterday in the supermarket: 24 cans of 0,5 Liter drinkable beer for 12 CHF, which equals ca. 30€cents per beer... A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!!!!!!
But if I remember correctly, it was thursday when Vicky, Maggie, Aleksandra and me decided to discover Lac Leman by boat. They had motorboats and pedal-boats and real sailing boats. Since we were only 2 law students, the sailing boat was out of the question because the other two didn't have sailing shoes with them. But pedaling was also fine! There were actually some waves, and at one point a big ship gave us a signal, we looked back, and captain Jonas found out that it was driving towards them with full speed just about 50m behind them. But the crew managed to make a sharp left turn, and so we didn't have to die.

After this adventure, it was time to lay back on the "quai d'ile", a small island with a café on it. I met Katharina there, who is almost done with her year in Geneva. We teamed up with Patrick, Hannes, Lukas and Lisa (good exercise to remember the names!), who will all be studying with me this year. Everybody had lots of questions for poor Katharina, but she passed the "interview" bravely.

In the evening I met some more people, like Stephan and Rose, a polish-british couple that of course reminded me of my favourite couple: Konradku and Tiff. We had a great time in an irish pub; the barkeeper really smelled that we were new Erasmus students who can mean a lot of profit, and so he served us a free round of baileys to buy the round of foreign future alcoholics... ^^

I will write something about how Vicky and me discovered the two class society of exchange students yesterday shortly.
Au revoir!

La Chaux-de-Fonds

I spent Saturday and Sunday in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a city north of Neuchatel, about 2 hours with the train from Geneva. When I met Leticia at the trainstation, she was very surprised that I was only wearing a shirt. She then told me that this festival is a "Volksfest" which takes place outside, and that La Chaux, being on a level of about 1000m, is just a little colder than Geneva - about 22 degrees colder!!
Fortunately, I had some more clothes with me, and we bought some bottles of wine and champagne and went out into the winterly night.
The festival reminded me a lot of german street festivals, only that people are dancing on the street and going a little crazier than us germans. I decided to go crazy as well, and promptly had my "Hangover-moment" the next day: I woke up, went into the bathroom, and noticed that my white shirt wasn't entirely white anymore. It was rather red. I took it of to find that I had some small wounds on my back, but I had and still have no idea what happened. I probably fell ;)

The next day we walked through the streets which were turned into one huge market. That's also why the festival is called "Braderie": it means something like "feilschen" in german.

Overall it was a great experience, I got to know a lot of people, and I'm sure I will visit La Chaux again sometime during my stay. And thanks so much Leti for letting me stay - I will actually make real use of it the next time ;) Bisous!!

First night in the City

Dear all,

after playing some vicious ping-pong matches with Alex (on the right), his girlfriend Lisa from Germany (left), in the amateur professional-leauge of CUG, a mazedonian guy named "V"(in the orange shirt) took me out to the town. We met some friends of his in a very alternative place called "Moloko".. it reminded me of my good old heavy metal days.
I probably inhaled half a joint passively, everybody smokes them in public there.
After some beers we went to the club "Palladium" which was a standard house club with a big dancefloor, emotion-free house music and artsy video walls everywhere.
We left at 4 and I found out that its just 30 minutes to walk home from the city, which is quite ok.

Today I will go by train to "La Chaux-de-Fonds", also known as the city with the coat of arms that has bees on it, north of Neuchatel. I'm really happy to meet Leticia, who was my tandem in Heidelberg. I think theres some kind of party going on, we will see what happens.

Some pictures will follow once my internet is going.

Did I already mention how f****** expensive everything is????? ;)

Bye!

First night in Geneva

Dear people,

I arrived in Geneva yesterday at about 3 p.m. When I opened the curtains in my 13th floor room, I had a great view on the mountainside. Apart from that, the room is very old, but it will do the job. Same goes for kitchen and "bathroom", I will post some pics soon.
Not really surprisingly, I already talked to people from Namibia, France, Sweden, America, Bolivia, Mazedonia, Romania - and Germany.
It was a kind of farewell party in a party room on the 11th floor, with free booze and food. I slowly start to see why the room prices are that high - they seem to have included an all inclusive party programme :)
Tonight Im going out with some people I met yesterday, e.g. I swedish guy that I talked for 2 hours about the political and competitional aspects of snus in the EU ;)

My internet will be dying in one minute
A bientot