The last day of 2002 will always be a memorable for us! Unfortunately, Mark had to get up early to go to work. He'd volunteered to cover the holiday shift, but because he's done a full days work on December 30th ... he was caught up and able to leave by noon. I got up fairly early in order to move a few boxes remaining boxes over into our new apartment. We still don't have a car,... So, the whole process of moving entailed walking all of our personal effects across town from our old apartment to our new apartment. (No seriously, this is really what we did!! Backpacks, Boxes, Clothes -- the whole thing was walked across town!) We'd moved quite a bit of stuff in the preceding days, but we still had plenty to do on our last day in our corporate apartment. I decided that I would clean as I went... so, in addition to moving boxes, I was scrubbing bathrooms, changing sheets and doing laundry. It's amazing, but somehow we had it all done and were ready to hand in the keys to the rental agency by 2pm.
After we handed over the keys, we caught a quick lunch at KFC, locked up the pad and headed to the train station for the 1.5 hour trip to Amsterdam Schipol airport. We checked in for our flight to Geneva around 5pm... and by 9:30 we were in downtown Geneva, Switzerland. (Have we mentioned that all of this took place on New Years Eve??)
We were surprised to discover that there wasn't much happening in pristine Geneva on New Years Eve. Up by the station there were a few very drunk teenagers... or so it appeared by the puke on the sidewalk. Pubs that didn't require tickets and black tie for entry, however, were few and far between... After a good long walk around the city, we found a pub that was open and would let us in without a ticket. We decided that, given the limited options, it was where we would see in the New Year. Honestly, we were tired and wanted nothing more than to have a drink and do the count down before heading back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.
When we arrived, the pub was empty -- with the exception of a few tables of youngsters who clearly looked under age -- even by European standards! At around 11:15, the DJ showed up...and all of a sudden people were streaming into the pub... perhaps this wasn't going to be so bad? Folks around us, especially the clearly underage kids, were starting to feel the effects of sitting in the pub all night. Around 11:50, the proprietor, a squat French looking guy with a dodgy belt and mustache, started handing out party favors, lighting "indoor fireworks" and tossing streamers. Mark and I checked our watches and around 11:55 the proprietor rang the bell behind the bar twice... and that was it. No countdown. No fireworks atop the space needle. No auld lang syne. The dodgy French looking guy with the over tightened belt had declared that it was new year... and so it was! People hugged and kissed. The last of the streamers were thrown and most of the pub had cleared out before it was 12:05.
