Au revoir, Allemagne...

...et bonjour, Swisse! Our train down to Geneva went swimmingly and we've been here for two days now. It came down to the wire on finding a place to stay, and we were beginning to lose faith in couchsurfing after many non-replies and rejections (all with compelling excuses, however). But things worked out at the last minute and we're staying with an extremely nice French ex-pat named Florent. Florent is in his 40s, lives alone, and runs a small massage business out of his flat. Our stay has been great for a number of reasons, among them post-race massages and seafood risotto. We're also pleased to not be staying in the bomb-shelter provided by the race, if for no other reason than to save 10 francs a night.

The racing has been good, though more of the same in the leg and lung department. I feel like I've been chasing fitness since arriving... first getting behind the eight-ball from the flight, then from not being able to ride for a few days, and now from being sick. We're stuck in a rut of needing to ride into things over the first two days then try to compensate on the final day, but in a three day event you can't really afford to have an off-night. That said, things are going better here. We've had only individual events so far, but both of us have had some top-5s and we're sitting somewhere around there overall. The small track definitely takes some getting used to, and I've had to gear down quite a bit to keep from bogging in the turns. For the individual events an 87" gear has been feeling big, and I'll probably ride an 86" for the Madison tonight.

Geneva itself is pretty nice, and quite different than I expected. In general Switzerland has a very amusement-park, overly-manicured feel to it, and certainly there are parts of Geneva like that. But it's not all cookie-cutter, and there are some more interesting parts of the city that we've walked through with more ecclectic architecture and people. It's still quite expensive on the Doner index (like the Big Mac index, but for Europe), as the cheapest ones here run around $8 compared to about $3 in Germany. But it's still not as outrageously expensive as say, Copenhagen. We've also been pleasantly surprised at how nice everyone is. We have yet to find any jerks, which unfortunately can't be said of the other places we've been.

Florent has also been helping me with French, and has even told me a bit about Nice as he used to live there. In fact I've run into a number of people who've lived in Nice and all of them gave some useful insights. Geneva is warmer than Germany, but all this talk about Nice and the ten-day forecast makes me pretty excited for the move on Monday. Keirins and Madisons coming up tonight, then tomorrow morning we'll take a crack at Derny racing. Anyone have any recommendations? And don't say hold the wheel and turn left.