Blogs from Geneva, South-West, Switzerland, Europe - page 13

After a quick detour in Evian (see video), we have made it Geneva, Switzerland. We have noticed that Geneva is very commercialized, as compared to Lyon but has beautiful lakefront. The city is small and intimate and very friendly. We have noticed people from Italy, France, Germany, and England. We will be home tomorrow, but had a great trip! See everyone soon.... read more

No longer do I have to, "wait until the cows come home," I got to see them do it! Parading through the street of the alpine village of Saint-Cergue I watched the cows come down from their summer grazing to their warmer winter abodes. When we first arrived I feared we had missed them because no cows were in sight. The only the sight...and stench was of the brown "muck" that they had trailed behind them down the full length of the road. But no, soon enough another group of them clamored down the hill. Now, this was no ordinary cow herding event. At first I thought someone had stolen Chiquita Banana's headdress...then realized oh no, wait, those are flowers not fruit. We're talking 21/2-3 foot tall floral headdresses crowning the heads of already massive cows. ... read more

Bonjour! Greetings from Switzerland, finally! It has been a week now, though it feels like a month! I have already seen beaucoup (many) sites, met so many amazing people from around the world, and had quite a thorough orientation. Thankfully, our daily 10-12 hour sessions were broken up by three meals, two chapel services, and two coffee breaks. That sounds like a lot of stopping and going, but as fascinating as the orientation sessions were, the breaks never seemed long enough. Thankfully, I found ways to get my own personal “breather” time in during the week. From Bossey I went toward the nearby village of Founex on exploratory walks and adventurous bike rides through rolling vineyards, past luscious apple orchards and almost “as-high-as-an-elephant’s-eye” corn fields. Simply spectacular. Another exciting event occurred on Thursday—I celebrated my 25th ... read more

On the way to the Alps we stopped in at Geneva for an hour to visit the Jet D’Eau which was amazing. We walked out on the jetty to get some pics and had a nice refreshing spray of lake water! The town and lake were quite posh and this was reinforced by the price of a Red Bull at 5E! ... read more

On our way out of Geneva, we had two separate visits to the WTO headquarters and the U.N. Both campuses are with 5 minutes of each other and the visits proved to be interesting. As an econ major, the WTO meeting proved to be especially interesting to me. Once getting through security, we met with a Lawyer for the WTO from Ghana in one of the negotiation rooms of which the headquarters is mostly comprised of. It is in these rooms that countries negotiate their different terms of trade and try to work out disputes. He spent a little over an hour with us discussing the purpose and goals of the WTO and the specifics of what went on the headquarters. We also spend a considerable amount of time learning about their strategies toward development and ... read more