The Infamous Geneva Goodbye

Geneva is a bit like a massive airport – people coming, people going, people coming, people going, people coming, people going, people coming, people going, until you start to get dizzy and decide to don one of those funny looking little airplane eye covers. The city is notorious for its goodbye parties. As an intern they happen every 8 days on average. As a non-intern, timings are spaced out to about once every two weeks to a month, if you have successfully reduced the short-timers from your friend circles. At first you don’t think much of it, because, heck, everybody’s been to a goodbye party before. But after a couple months it hits you that Geneva feeds off goodbyes to an exceptional degree, spewing out its transient residents like no other place you’ve ever lived.

During your first months, you may feel jolted by the frequency of friend turnover and the recurrent need to face the fact that you will likely never see someone again. But the thing is, goodbyes happen so damn often here that there is really no way to maintain remotely registering levels of sadness at each occurrence. Instead we must become increasingly independent. People come people go but I am here and I have me. It is a very modern conception of the self and society, and it’s weird in a way. In Geneva you must be a drifting being, social lives shuffling about with every ‘see you later’ that is really not a ‘see you later’ and everyone knows it.

While Geneva has a special way of spitting people out, it also has a way of sucking them in, its prey hardy noticing as they are dragged month by month deeper into the back recesses of the den. Mostly they turn a blind eye because it’s a pretty nice den with a lake and mountains and efficient transport and a preponderance of chocolate. In the case of UN/NGO/IO people it’s largely because they repeatedly get contracts that last for 3 months and if you keep staying for 3 months eventually it becomes 6 then 9 then 12 etc.. For instance, my original 3 months in Geneva somehow morphed into 2 years without any real conscious choice and without really registering in time (although, unfortunately I guess I’ve continued to age – time, that obnoxious force that despite all our scientific advances remains completely uncontrollable (except through doing boring things and then it magically slows right down to a near halt)).

Friends shift along with the running stream of entries and exists. Of the good friends I regularly spend time with only about 4 are people I met during my first months here, the others intermittently having wafted off to join the massive Ghosts of Geneva collection. New ones trickle in until you think they were always there.

Like most things in life, Geneva’s high turnover rate has its up sides and down sides. Being an optimist, we’ll start with the ups, in no particular order:

1. People leave. Yes, exactly that – if there is someone you don’t really want to put up with, you don’t have to: either he, she or you will be leaving within the next 1 to 6 months, 90% of the time. This goes hand in hand with another truism of Geneva: no one ever remains anonymous and no action ever remains unaccounted for – you will 100% run into everyone you’ve ever met in the city within maximum one month. Only newbies don’t know this and they should.
2. People have a funny way of cropping up again, like rhizomes of a raspberry plant, but better because they can travel under oceans. For instance, all my friends in the Toronto area are people I knew in Geneva, so when I go back to visit my family, there’s a little Geneva in Canada.
3. If you are afraid of commitment of any sort, Geneva can be the place for you. Personally, I’ve never had to sign more than a 4 month work contract; subletting with no contract is rampant; excuses for break-ups abound. The greatest commitment I’ve made since being here is buying a 500 franc sofa. The height of freedom.
4. More than you ever thought you needed involuntary courses in making new friends.

Bonus: Need furniture cheap? Couches, shelves, lamps and other sometimes unidentifiable things line sidewalks each weekend as people scramble to leave. Note, this stuff invariably is disgusting and unusable and might be left out for the garbage truck. Other people have sales though and by sales I mean they are practically begging you to buy, or take, their stuff. Our apartment is furnished by 60% free things. (In contrast, others leaving the city try to sell things like tea kettles for 5 francs on online classifieds – totally ridiculous and penny pinching).

The downsides:

1. People leave. One’s “ex-good-friend list” grows exponentially after coming to Geneva. It’s a sad, but predictable pattern watching a friendship fade. At first you stay in touch – skyping, chatting, promising to visit – but gradually your current lives drift farther and farther apart until you have few people, activities or places in common and you both turn to new friends who are closer to your daily experience. You can cling for a long time, but trust me, I have far too much experience in this and the rule is almost never an exception.
2. If you crave stability, if you long for commitment: run, Geneva is not for you.I guess I am an optimist because there are more upsides than downs…..but the thing is, the downs can be pretty big and pretty annoying at times and all in all, despite the fabulous people watching opportunities they afford, we all get tired of airports at some point.