Articles
A tale of Swiss bureaucracy
Tuesday 30 October 2007
In case you didn’t know, I am spending this academic year as an ‘étudiant libre’ at the University of Geneva. Since I am studying Modern Languages (French, in particular!), I have to spend the third year of my four-year degree course in a country where the language is spoken. Geneva was recommended to my friend Isobel and me by our Latin tutor.
I am living in a flat in Geneva, going to classes in the university. However, I had to wade through an awful lot of red tape to get here. I’m not going to go into details of the process of applying to the university, which was further complicated by the fact that both Issy and I were initially rejected to come and study here for a year. 1 Nor will I bore you with the details of my seemingly interminable flat-hunt,
A trip into the Outback to take some photos
Wednesday 24 October 2007
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror—
The wide brown land for me!—from 'My Country' (1890/1911),
by Dorothea Mackellar (1885–1968)
When it comes to the Outback, Dorothea Mackellar had it right: it's a place of stark contrasts. The tourism phrase 'Red Centre', which has now entered common parlance, doesn't quite do the Central Australian terrain justice—I came expecting a land of endless red rock but instead found greens, greys, browns, and yellows to complement the reds. Then there are all the different shades of red—only to be expected, perhaps—such that some are far more accurately described as 'grey' or 'brown'
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