When buying a phone in Europe, one requires two pieces of technology. The first is a phone of the type that most US citizens are already familiar with; the second is a SIM card, or a small microchip-like object that comes attached to a plastic card roughly the size of a credit card. The SIM card must be placed inside the phone in a special receptacle near the battery, and I believe enables the phone to work across country borders. This ability is of course necessary around Geneva, with country borders a scant handful of kilometers away.
First, one's new phone will also come out of the box fluent in the native language of the country, regardless of what language the original box or contract or owner's manual is in. For Switzerland, that would be German. Looking up the words for "settings" and "language" in whatever that native language may be will ease that first meeting with one's new phone, until one and the device are on speaking terms.
One should also observe that the little plastic card the SIM card was attached to is marked with several cryptic numbers, and is the case with all such scraps with cryptic numbers, should be guarded zealously. Otherwise, when one returns to the US for Christmas and must shut down the phone for the flight, one will find that one's phone is demanding a PIN number that one doesn't have. Upon failing to accurately recall the PIN three times, the phone will then demand a PUK number to reset the PIN, giving one a total of eight tries for that before some more extreme measures will be taken. Thus, one will be rendered without a phone for three weeks after returning to one's current abode, while one methodically gathers up every scrap of paper that as squirreled itself away into every corner of one's tiny apartment in the process of looking for that little plastic card.
Image taken from www.technonix.com
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