I’m home. Finally, home. Where the prices are in dollars and the people speak in English. Well, most of the time, anyway. I landed in Newark, and the first thing I did (would have been eating, had it not been for the whole customs ordeal) was turn on my Blackberry. My real Blackberry. Then, I watched it spaz out as it tried to update 6 months worth of e-mails and the text messages sent before my phone service was shut off but after I’d left the country in January.
I had an entertaining conversation with the customs officer about my stay in Switzerland, my adventures in Morocco, and my cell phone ringing as I itemized the foreign goods I was transporting into the country.
Apparently, you’re supposed to keep your cell phone off until you get past customs.
Oops.
Okay, I may have ignored all of the signs.
Then, I found a cart to throw my luggage onto, repacked a little bit as my suitcases were magically overweight now (really, Continental?), and for some reason, completely soaked (thanks, cargo crew!). I managed to shove all of the Swiss chocolate into my carryon bag, hoping it wouldn’t get crushed or crush my souvenirs. When I’d finally rechecked all of my luggage, I found Burger King, had some onion rings and made my way over to the airport pizza place. After having NY style pizza that resembled nothing remotely similar to NY style pizza, I went online, checked e-mail, updated facebook, watched TV… and then moved on to round 3: Jamba Juice.
After all of this, my flight to Tampa was delayed several hours (which made me super sad because I’ve definitely had to stay overnight in the airport trying to get to Tampa, and the saddest thing ever at that point would have been ending up in the Newark airport hotel again), but I finally made it home, and of course Amma brought food to the airport 
After the longest day ever (I’d been up for 27 hours by the time I even left the airport), I got home, distributed souvenirs, and called it a day. or night. or day, if you’re thinking in Geneva time.
Though I couldn’t wait to get home, I’m glad to be in Florida, and I’m happy to be in the US again, I miss the Jet d’Eau, I miss Migros, and I miss the mountains. I said this before and the wishes came true, so here it goes again:
Until next time, Switzerland.
Totally unrelated to your post: if you use ‘Confoederatio Helvetica’ in a phrase or sentence without inserting ‘the’ before (in whatever language), it sounds like you’re describing the Spring using a really cool font.
By: Arjun Gupta on August 31, 2010
at 12:45 pm