June 29

As the weekend came rolling in, I decided to take a little break from my research tour and wander around casually around the city. To be honest, it felt good not to carry around a 30 pound bag on my shoulder and liberating to roam anywhere in the city. So as a priority of any tourist, I went on a quest to find a restaurant to fill up my stomach. So I got off at Rive station where most stores and restaurants are packed together and started to soak in the city atmosphere. It was around noon, so people from work bustled about in the streets, looking for a place to sit down and eat. However, I was warned that lunches in Geneva last around two hours, which meant that people were not going to easily give up their seats for incoming customers. As a spontaneous person, I did not quite plan ahead and thought that I would randomly go into a restaurant to eat, but sure enough, spontaneity was not the best solution. Most of the restaurants were filled with suited people, casually conversing and laughing with a cup of espresso in their hands. My stomach growled, as I grew annoyed with the fact that these people had two hours of free lunch time. I mean, why would you need to take two hours to grab lunch and start working again? Workers in America or Korea would never even dream of getting such a long break time. Furthermore, even students get at most an hour of lunch time, but according to my friend who goes to the International School of Geneva, he has around two hours to eat and relax before school resumes. Sure, break from work is important and all, but personally I do not think that it is either efficient or better for one to have such a long break. But from a worker standpoint, I feel that it would be nice to have an extra hour to just sit and relax than most any other workers around the world. Since most restaurants were filled, it left me no choice but to resort to fast food places. The one I chose was McDonalds where most people go in to take a quick little bite. As I stepped into McDonalds, my prejudice against fast food restaurants shattered as I saw a whole pack of people sitting down enjoying their burgers. Normally, one would not see that many people at McDonalds, but there was A LOT of people (picture below) One thing I noticed that was different from McDonalds in other countries was that this McDonalds had a special express-order machine that one can order from just by clicking the screen. I thought it was pretty neat and redefined a true “fast food” restaurant. Then I looked at the prices and I was shocked at the exorbitant price of a lunch meal. A whole meal including the drink was over 12 dollars, which was double the price than that in America and quadruple the price than that in Korea. McDonalds actually felt like a high quality restaurant rather than the cheap, fast food restaurant as it is known for.

After the very expensive McDonalds meal that I enjoyed, I started to walk around the city, going into stores and searching for things that I could buy as souvenirs. Every time, however, I walked out of the store with a cringe because things were so expensive. Goods were so overpriced that even a pack of gum cost over three dollars. But I thought it made sense because since Switzerland is known for its health care system and public services. (?) In fact, my friend said that the inflated prices are all due to the high tax rates in Switzerland. Although, tourists such as I would be at every disadvantage when buying things in Switzerland, I thought that local residents would enjoy many services provided by the government in exchange for high priced goods. With high salaries, good public services, and short working hours, I thought people would be really happy to live here.

Although at the end of the day I did not buy anything, I felt satisfied to learn a bit more about a country and learn what it is like to live there. For one thing, I considered that living in Geneva for a while would be a really nice experience.