I log on to the network and I fire
up a browser and I get a screen asking me for my password. Well, I don't
have one, but after poking around, I find out that I can buy a card with
a temporary password on it. So I wait until some of the little smoke
shops open and start asking them if they sell Swisscom Internet Cards,
in my terrible, miserable French, and after chuckling at my accent, they
look at me and say, 'I have no clue what you're talking about,' shrug,
and go back to work.
"Then I get the idea to go and ask at the hotels. The first one, the guy
tells me that they only sell cards to guests, since they're in short
supply. The cards are in short supply! Three hotels later, they allow as
how they'll sell me a 30-minute card. Oh, that's fine. Thirty whole
minutes of connectivity. Whoopee. And how much will that be? Only about
a zillion Swiss pesos. Don't they sell cards of larger denominations? Oh
sure, two hours, 24 hours, seven days -- and each one costs about double
the last, so if you want, you can get a seven day card for about as much
as you'd spend on a day's worth of connectivity in 30-minute increments
-- about three hundred dollars Canadian for a week, just FYI.
"Well, paying 300 bucks for a week's Internet is ghastly, but very
Swiss, where they charge you if you have more than two bits of cheese at
breakfast, and hell, I could afford it.
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