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Published: December 9th 2008
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Sadly, my traveling adventures are over (for now). I’m already plotting my next trip to Europe. But my last adventure was to Geneva, Switzerland and I absolutely loved it. It was the perfect last trip.
I left Thursday with my friend Andrew. Getting to the airport took almost the same amount of time that flying to Geneva did. That is one crazy thing about Europe. You can fly almost anywhere in about 2 hours. It takes double that just to drive to St. Louis! We decided to share one suitcase instead of taking two small backpacks and I was able to over pack for the first time this semester! It felt great.
We spent Thursday afternoon getting acquainted with the city. Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh. In Geneva, everyone spoke French. Luckily Andrew had taken a few years of French but we still barely got by. For such a touristy, ski resort town I expected more people to know English but there were very few.
We had an interesting Thursday night. We went out into the town to find dinner around 5:15. After walking around quite a bit, we discovered that businesses in
Geneva take some sort of a siesta and restaurants weren’t opening until 6. We bummed around starving for 45 minutes and then we ran into the nearest restaurant. It was a Mexican restaurant with French waitresses and menus in French and Spanish. I recognized one of the appetizers from my trip to Barcelona so we ordered two. Andrew was struggling with his French so I was working really hard to remember the Spanish food vocabulary I learned multiple times in grade school and high school. I knew that jamón meant ham, so I ordered a dish only knowing that one ingredient. Andrew ordered a dish that said omelet, so we considered that safe. The food turned out to be good so it was a successful meal.
We had a very busy Friday. We first walked through Old Town to the Cathedral of Saint Pierre. I didn’t find anything extraordinary about it until we climbed the bell tower. The tower is a 157 step spiral staircase and is so narrow that there are green and red lights that tell you when it is clear to continue climbing. But the climb took us up to the most incredible view of Geneva.
I really can’t even explain. It was postcard perfect. You could see Lake Geneva and the Jet d'Eau fountain, the top of the Alps and all of the central city. Andrew and I were exploring the bell tower when the bell actually started ringing, without warning. The only thing separating us from the bell was a wooden door with a glass window and I have never been so caught-off-guard! It was really neat to watch the bell swing back and forth, but the sound was unbelievably loud.
We left the cathedral, grabbed paninis to go and hopped on a bus to the United Nations Headquarters. Our tour first took us to the main meeting room. There was a meeting on migration in the room that day so we were not able to go down to the actual floor, but sat in the suites above. There are 192 member states currently in the union but the United States didn’t make an appearance at this meeting…
Although he didn’t speak English very well, our tour guide was able to explain some things. We learned about the different leagues and commissions of the UN and their main platforms. I also learned
that the UN library is the most expensive library in the world, worth something like 300 trillion USD. It was cool to be in the building where some of the world’s most important decisions are made.
After our visit to the United Nations, Andrew and I went to the International Red Cross Museum. It traces the foundation and history of the organization with lots of interacting displays and movie clips. The museum has shelves full of medical records of soldiers from the First World War. There are seven million file cards on the shelves, two million of which are prisoners of war. They were divided up by country but the shelves were so full that I couldn’t find a Bruns or a Sosinski. Not sure I really wanted to though. The First Geneva Convention of the Red Cross was intended for the relief of soldiers. Because there was no convention to protect civilians, the organization could basically do nothing for the people sent to concentration camps during the Second World War. So at the end of the war, the Geneva Convention was rewritten to include the protection of civilians.
After dark, we walked out to Lake Geneva and
went out to the Les Pâquis lighthouse. At night, all the buildings downtown have huge neon advertisements on top: Rolex, Toshiba, HSBC Private Bank, Louis Vuitton… We were tired Friday night so we ordered take-away pizza, ate in our room and watched winter ski events in French.
But Saturday was amazing! We bought tickets for a train heading to St. Cergue, a village outside of Geneva. We had a 2 hour detour because we weren’t aware that we needed to transfer from the train to a small tram at one station, but we did eventually make it there. When a group of people got on the tram with skis and ski gear, Andrew and I knew that we were in a bit trouble. Within 30 minutes, the weather went from a small drizzle to an absolute blizzard. And I loved it!
When we got off the tram there was at least six inches of snow on the ground. I was a little prepared, with thick tennis shoes and my life-saving North Face coat, but Andrew was less prepared with his Keds and a thin jacket. All he had for protection was an umbrella he took from the hotel.
We didn’t have a plan when we got to St. Cergue, so we followed a sign for a restaurant that said it was 400 meters “down the road.” It was actually 800 meters up the mountain. To explain the difficulty of this hike, there were several times when we had to leap to the side of the road because a car going up or down the mountain was spinning out of control. It really was no joke. But the village scenery was beautiful and the Swiss cheese fondue we got at the restaurant was worth it!
Andrew and I spent most of Saturday walking around St. Cergue and stopping in to the shops and watching the locals. All 1,739 of them. It snowed the entire time. But it wasn’t a dirty and slushy Milwaukee snow. It was beautiful bright white snow flakes that stuck to the branches of the trees and weren’t wet, but light and flakey. It was a Winter Wonderland.
We slept in Sunday morning and begrudgingly headed to the airport. Luckily our terminal was floor-to-ceiling glass windows facing the Alps. Not bad. We also got to walk out on the tarmac to the plane and
up the flight of steps so I left Switzerland feeling like the First Lady.
I have my Historic London final tomorrow and studying for it is harder than I thought. This city has a LOT of history. So wish me luck in my attempt to memorize London from the founding of Londinium by the Romans in 60 AD to the financial market of today…
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Kristen
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Hooray for blogging about a library! I even had to look it up and read more about it--sounds pretty awesome! Good luck on your finals!