What do you mean, "Hello" ???
Despite all the information that is available online, they still manage to leave out a lot of crucial information that you really want to know, even if you're looking for it.
One of the things I was looking for before I left and couldn't find: How far is the Geneva train station from the airport? It's practically IN the airport. In fact, there's a shuttle-esque train that takes you TO the train station for free. And from there, you can buy tickets and take trains anywhere in Europe.
I wasn't sure how long it would take to get through Customs (about 10 minutes), get our luggage (instantaneous) and find out where the train station was (a nanosecond), so I didn't buy our tickets to Avignon ahead of time. I was thinking of the shakedowns and long Disney-like queues snaking slowwwwly through at Dulles (don't even think of turning on that cell phone, bub!). Less than an hour after we'd gotten off the plane, I was standing in front of the ticket counter in telling an incredulous woman we wanted to go to Avignon and having her ask me if I'd heard of the internet and that I could have bought the tickets ahead of time online. Uh, yeah, actually, I had heard of the internet. You don't really want to go to Avignon today, do you? She asked me. Yes, actually, we do. We ended up having to wait four hours and change trains in Lyon. If only I had heard of the internet.
We went first to a cafe for breakfast where we discovered that although Geneva was a capital city of a major European country, as well as the center of world commerce, nobody had ever encountered an English-speaking person before, and what's more, the concept of even restaurant-English was also unheard of. "Hello" was greeted with a blank look, as if we had landed from Mars, until I switched to French. (They've never heard "hello?" In a train station in a capital city? Seriously?) I ordered our extremely complicated breakfast (cafe and croissants -- because "coffee and croissants" would be such an affront in English and completely incomprehensible) in French, even though the only thing they even offered at that hour was -- wait for it -- coffee and croissants. You would think actual Martians could land and just point at the menu, but actually, no. Beep, beep, boop wouldn't have cut it either. German, Italian, or French, and that's it.
After that, we moved inside the train station to get out of the sun (four hours is no small thing), bought some water in the next diner/shop so we could park ourselves for the duration and use their facilities (also no small thing -- the W/C in the train station was a hike and a half and not free once you found it -- also not clean if you're interested in that sort of thing, and who isn't, four hours or not?) -- and the train station shops go on and on and on if you are interested in shops. The spot where we situated ourselves was decent and well-placed, and had we been so inclined, we could have gone to the back of the store and swiped our VISA cards through a slot and surfed the internet on their PCs while we waited. As it was, we people-watched, and picked up fashion tips (more people were Don'ts than Do's -- just like everywhere, and we heard a lot of Italian and German and French and not one English voice and not once did a person say Hello to anyone else.
Meanwhile, I tried not to kick myself for not hearing about this "internet" thing ahead of time 8-/ so I could have reserved tickets to Avignon, even if we hadn't been able to use them. The worst case scenario would have been that we would have missed the direct train and been sitting here waiting for this not-so-great later train with a change in Lyon. Why didn't I think of that?
But eventually, we got on our train(s) and made our way to France :) Hello! Goodbye!