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Eau de Jet
Random water jet on Lake Geneva that goes around 30m high Well it was in Geneva where I had my first taste of crime in Europe. You hear of crime in places like Italy and Greece, but you don't hear about Switzerland being a centre for criminal activity!
It happened on a dark and stormy night.... (Sadly this part is true as I have encountered the Swiss weather curse) and I had joined a couple of guys in my hostel, Travis and Alan in heading to a free festival in Geneva, and at the time, we didn't know what kind of festival. We just saw 'free' and thought "Why not?". We managed to miss most of the rain as we hopped from bus to tram and to bus again, and arrived and found out it was a half family/half teenager free music event. It was quite difficult to tell who it was aimed at, as there were 10 year olds walking around with Malibu and Pineapple. Leah, you would have loved it. Anyway, there were a couple of stages with live music on with very varying tastes, albeit all in French, so we had no idea what they were singing about. At least until we met up with an English
UN Headquarters
The NZ flag is more to the front of the building and there was no wind so couldn't get an individual shot of that one. girl, who could translate some of the songs. After the concert, the 4 of us headed out to a pub and were sitting there having a quiet beer. We were chatting away, when a guy wearing a Barcelona shirt came past and stuck his hand in the English girls purse and pulled out her wallet. I saw him with the corner of my eye and with reflexes like a cat grabbed his arm over our booth. He tried to pull away from my iron grip, but he had no chance. Travis got up and roughed him up a bit and he threw the wallet back, and I let him go and he took off. He then came back 5 minutes later and tried to complain we broke his necklace! At this point, I started to get a bit pissed off so I stood up. One look at me and he ran. Apparently the haircut and moustache make me look like a bouncer, so i've been told.
Anyway, there won't be alot to the rest of the blog as my activities in Switzerland were limited by the weather I had. It rained from when I arrived in Geneva and I
Front Yard of UN Headquarters
Which has several monuments, but as part of the insane security, nobody is allowed to see them anymore. only got fine weather on my very last day, 5 days later. Thankfully just in time for me to jump out of a plane.
Other than the festival in Geneva, there wasn't a whole lot else to see. I checked out the lake, and went and visited the Red Cross museum, which was pretty interesting. Also visited the UN headquarters, where they were insane over security. Do I really look like a terrorist? OK, maybe I might do. But still, the main politicians are all over at the New York branch.
Then it was into Interlaken, where I stayed at the American party hostel called Balmers. Apparently the other one, Funny Farm, is the centre for the Aussies. The morning after I arrived I was supposed to be skydiving, but alas the weather intervened and it was postponed until the following day, when it was again postponed to Wednesday, the day I was leaving, so my last chance. The weather was so crap, it even was snowing at some points in town. I literally had snow falling off my umbrella. And at the end of May! At Ruapehu, I could understand it, but not Central Europe! When it
Gift to the UN
A vase with the world on it. Don't know about the accuracy of the distances but NZ sits proudly on there. rains in Interlaken, there is literally nothing to do indoors except watch DVD's, which is what a group of us did for 2 whole days until the bar opened at 6, where we turned our attention to the cheap beer. So they turned out to be relaxing days anyway. The night club on site deserves a mention though as it was packed everynight, and had live music. As mentioned, it was packed with Americans, the odd Canadian and a group of Irish so I had great fun meeting heaps of people.
So onto the day I was leaving, I woke up and I saw something in Switzerland for the first time. Blue sky! Next thing I know, i'm are in the bus heading to the airstrip to jump out of a perfectly good plane. We were all fairly nervous, but also quite morbid as we tried to think up the best songs for our DVD's. Top mentions include Drowning Pool - Bodies ("Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor.") and Queen - Another One Bites the Dust. As it was, I was in the very last load so had to watch everyone else go
up and jump before I finally got up there. The flight up was the most nerve-racking part, although overall it didn't bother me too much. Then the cameraman was out, and then we were falling out aswell.
For the first couple of seconds, I was thinking "Shit! I jumped out of a perfectly good plane!" But then I relaxed and admired the view, which was simply stunning. We could see for 100's of kms over the Swiss Alps into France and various lakes and forests which make the region famous. But far too soon we were on the ground, and I wanted to go straight back up and do it again! But I had a train to catch into Zurich, where I checked out the city for a couple of hours before catching the night train into Ljubljana in Slovenia.
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