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Published: July 24th 2006
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Goodness
A good way to start off in a new city. Geneva
The weather and temperature here is a God-send coming from Barcelona. The cool wind is so refreshing that alot of the time I just want to sit outside, do nothing, and just enjoy being outside for the sake of being outside.
I was so crushed coming from Barcelona, though; the first day in Geneva was horrible. My body ached. My brain felt as if it were being crushed. My neck and shoulders, sore. I couldn't feel my legs anymore. Taking a cold shower just startles me from my machine-like pace now.
Alcohol helps, but wears off too quickly. Time is running slower and slower. The Barcelona heat really got to my head.
Geneva has this wonderful lake (appropriately named
Lake Geneva) which has the cleanest water I habe ever seen in a city (except for Bern, which I'll get to later), which is really fascinating because its the second largest lake in central Europe. How they manage to keep it clean is beyond me. In Northern Virginia you can't even keep a backyard stream clean, let alone a bay like the Chesapeake. There's almost no pollution that I could see - when crossing a bridge over the lake and
Travelling 1
My backpack lonely on the train. looking at the water I could see striaght through to the bottom. The lake also had this fantastic water pump, the
Jet d'Eau, that shots water 140 meters into the air. Its not really supposed to be a fountain or anything, its actually just a safety valve for a hydro power generator that some genius decided to put in the middle of the lake and allow people to walk up to it. The fountain is really handy when navigating throughout the city since you can see it from almost anywhere.
At night Geneva becomes this beautiful scenic city. Just walking down the path parallel the lake with all the lights from the buildings reflecting off the water makes you feel like a million bucks. I only wished I had someone to walk with - that or a copy of
Casablanca, a mobie I have been dying to see since Geneva.
This city is such a high-class city - the people are so well-dressed, their cars so expensive. On one road I'd see three or four Porsches, a Lamborghini, a Hummer with a Kuwaiti license plate, several Bentlys - it was really ridiculous and made me feel a bit strange trekking
Travelling 2
On the train. To Geneva? To Bern? From Bern? I don't even know anymore. through the streets with my 65-liter backpack.
There are three things to buy in Geneva: expensive coo-coo clocks, expensive watches, and expensive fountain pens. Thats it. If you want anything else, forget about it. Well, there was this one guy trying to sell me hash on the shore of Lake Geneva, but besides that you'd be hard pressed to find anything else. So, being the classy guy that I am I decided on shoveling out a few bucks (actually,
Swiss Francs - the most intricate and sweetest looking currency known to man) for this snazzy Swiss-made Caran d'Ache fountain pen that writes like a charm. I also got this mini-tripod for my digital camera and have been taking some seriously sick photos with my camera now. I feel like such a dork with this tripod but the photos I get seem to outweigh the cost of humiliation.
For such a quiet and (what I thought) conservative city, i was suprised (no, really) to stumble in on their red-light district, which consists only of a handful of girls (and guys looking like girls...) on just a few streets. Every night I would go eat dinner at this one Lebanese restaurant
Parade 1
Red vs. White. that served some of the finest kebabs. Not exactly Swiss food, I know, but these were too tasty to resist. And every night there was this one girl, looking really shy, walking up and down the street, pale as a ghost and always wearing a black top and a black skirt. And every night, by the end of my meal I would see her climbing into some stranger's car. Must be a tough life. She sort of reminded me of
Audrey Tautau, the way she looked.
The Parade
IT all started when I heard loud music through the window in my hostel room. It was my first time at a
YHA hostel and I had been impressed thus far of its upkeep - but this loud music was ridiculous. My first thought was hoping for it to stop since I was feeling like complete shit from the last few days at Barcelona and the trip to Geneva. After an hour of crazy house music roaring two streets down, the music louder than before, and realizing there waws no God to answer my prayers of peace and quiet, I put on some clean clothes and checked what the hell was going
Lights
Nighttime in Geneva. on.
Lucky for me that I did. The parade was awesome. I'm not quite sure what the occassion was but it didn't really matter with so many hot women dancing and running around in really sexy, revealing clothing. What I think it was, though, was a parade advertising all the local radio stations and their DJs, but only because each bus had a different style of music (mainly some subgenere of electronica) and a radiostation's logo plastered all over their bus. Each bus had its own DJ.
The parade lasted all day long and went across most of the main city bordering the water. There were alot of gays, lesbians, and cross-dressers too. They mingled throughout the crowd and nobody seemed to care or take much notice, which was something I thought would never really happen back in the States. Everybody was dressed up, though. There were so many crazy, outlandish costumes - it was like Halloween, but in bright daylight, with loud music, and just for the hell of it. People crowded behind busses which played the music they liked and just danced and drank and generally seemed to have a good time having fun with their friends, making
Chung-Thong II
Wang-Chung? No, Chung-Thong. friends, and pointing and laughing at some of the crazy costumes people were wearing.
Bern
Bern was a dumb city. It looked really pretty, and seemed alot quieter (in terms of tourists and residents) but all the shops closed too early. At literally around 6pm the entire city just shuts down. Forget about doing anything into the night, hell, into the evening, here. No shops, no restaurants, no churches, nothing. Maybe it was just the area I was in (around the train station), but literally nothing was open.
I did manage to get into this one Church before it closed (I was the last visitor) and climbed up its towers to get some really nice shots of the ancient city.
All in all Bern just looked nice and quaint. But thats about it.
P.S. - Photos not completely uploaded; I'll try to get the rest up as soon as possible.
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