buongiorno! (good morning!)
back as promised to try and catch up on this update!
since my post last night about Coppet and the Kenchan Lama was very opinionated and heavy I think I'll try to focus on pictures this update, since I have a lot of Geneva and the like!
Shall we?
EDIT: I actually wrote this post the day after the previous post, it's been sitting in my drafts folder for over a month...
Our first full day in Geneva consisted of a tour of the city. The city itself is very interesting and has a lot of history in it, such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Red Cross museum, etc.
Funny thing about tour guides is you never really know what you're getting yourself into until they start the tour.
This woman was incredibly well-informed of Geneva; I mean, she knew the city inside and out, don't get me wrong, but some of the information she was sharing with us was rather pointless.. as you'll see through some of these pictures!
Our first stop was this monument just outside a large park
This monument, the Reformation Wall, is technically located on the grounds of the University of Geneva, which was founded by John Calvin.
Geneva was a large center of Calvinism in Europe, which developed a history of Protestantism. Due to this large religious sector, as well as the University which was founded by Calvin himself, the memorial monument was created to celebrate Calvin's 400th birthday, and the 350th anniversary of the university.
The four prominent figures depicted in the wall (pictured above) are, from left, William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox, all of which were important figures in Calvinism.
We then toured through a park, learning more about Geneva's history during the 17th century --> the present. Here are some photos from the park and surrounding area we toured!
FACT (from our tour guide): The bench that starts in the lower left and runs upward diagonally is one of the longest benches of Switzerland (or Europe?)
Pierre on a toy horse in the playground.
A sign which, and I could be wrong, indicates no traffic except bicycles.
A mural that is part of a 3-part series.
I took this one because it depicts Le Moyen Age and I thought of mme!
We then visited a cathedral, which was very cool both inside and out.
The pipe organ of the cathedral, which was manufactured in Germany.
Beautiful stain glass is pretty much standard for many of the churches,
both Roman Catholic and Protestant.
The ceiling of a smaller chapel off of the main church.
The exterior of the entire cathedral.
This is one of my favorite photos I've taken on travel,
namely because of the editing with saturation and shadows.
It looks like a model, rather than the real thing, no?
After the tour, we had free time to see the city. We were required to go see one important or interesting landmark while we were in Geneva, so Kaitlin and I took this time to go and see the art museum across the street from where our tour ended. We lucked out because the museum was free that day!
The museum we went to.
We headed down to the exhibits on ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian artifacts because I've always loved Egyptian history, and Kaitlin wanted to see the Greek and Roman stuff because she was learning about it in her art history class. It really worked out well for both of us because it became a personal interest, rather than a requirement of "go see something and write about it in your journal."
After the exhibit we made our way to a history of music exhibit which was really a room smaller than my dorm at college, and had a few old guitars and pianos. Interesting none the less, but it wasn't what I was expecting. We skipped the gallery of portraits because we had seen enough of those on our tours throughout travel thus far.
After we finished with the museum, we started to make our way back to the hotel, on our own this time, and had fun exploring the old city of Geneva.
One interesting fact that our tour guide DID mention on our tour was the high population of Geneva. I had already known that Geneva would be a highly populated city, as it is one of the few major cities I heard of before coming to Switzerland, as well as all of the headquarters and important organizations located here... but I never imagined it was full to capacity!
Full it is, indeed. The city has so many residents that it is nearly impossible to find housing (and if you do, it isn't going to be cheap!) Besides having so many people wanting to live there, there is virtually no space to build. In order to compensate for the lack of space, the city is building on top of buildings to have more space. You can see in the photo above where the original buildings originally ended, but have since been added on to.
Well, that was pretty much it for Geneva! I bought a peacoat which, if you've seen me since I've been home, you've probably seen because I'm pretty sure I've work it every day..
After Geneva, we made our way towards Neuchâtel. Our first stop, was CERN!
If you've seen the movie Angels and Demons with Tom Hanks, the opening scene where the Antimatter is created takes place at CERN. I was really excited to go because of this.... but let me tell you.... CERN was not the place to be unless you were a sciencey person...
After CERN we travled to the World Health Organization to meet with Nahn Tran, a former student of SSB's from Pacific University in Oregon, who now worked at the WHO.
He talked a lot about his track record through college, and an interesting point he made was that he graduated with a major in French. It just goes to show that your intended, and eventually your declared major, does not destine you to any specific lifestyle. (Just to knock all those "You're a creative writing major? What do you plan on doing with your life?" comments :b)
Since my group from the scavenger hunt won in Lausanne, we got the opportunity to have dinner with Sara and Nhan, which made the entire experience so much more personal. I had this Vienna sausage with potato gratin and a baked apple that was to die for. (It was so good that I remember my meal from the middle of October now: on 16 February!!)
The last few days of our trip were in Neuchâtel. It was a great area, though much more laid back from Lausanne and Geneva. We stopped in La chaux-de-Fonds, which has an interesting history. The city itself functions in a socialist manner. It has a long history of watch-making due to lack of decent land for agriculture. Because of this life-style, the people are very communal, hence the socialistic/marxist tendencies.
One interesting aspect of La Chaux-de-Fonds is that it is the only city in Switzerland set up on a grid-like pattern. All of the other cities are these sprawling mass of roads that turn this way and that and are built up into mountains which make it difficult to organize. However, the city burned down long ago, and when it was rebuilt, they chose to do so in such a fashion. It is, as was noted on our travel, the city in Switzerland that is the closest in resemblance to New York.
(I thought that was amusing, because it looks nothing like New York
minus the fact that there are straight roads!)
Our final day was spent in the hotel (which was a ski lodge) reflecting on our travels and finalizing our journals. We had a salon, much in the style of one that Madame de Stäel would have held back at Coppet. Here we read excerpts from our journal and made selections for our travel blog that my friend Kaitlin and I put together. A link to the journal can be found here: (
click here) . It's interactive, so you click on the polaroid pictures to go from entry to entry. The writing styles differ and it's a nice way to see what different people took from different aspects of our trip. All of the photos were taken by Kaitlin and me throughout the trip, so that was a fun part of the blog as well.
The above image is a view from our hotel for the final days of travel, a few kilometers out of the city Neuchâtel, but still in the canton of the same name.
Our last day was bittersweet. We started in St-Luc, a mountain town well out of the city lights. We were surrounded by mountains and cloaked beneath the stars. It was so peaceful, and to end ten days later in Neuchâtel in the same setting, surrounded by the Jura Mountains and the Swiss Alps was simply breath-taking. Our last day looked like we were in paradise.
This has been my own little travel journal, both fro my two week Academic Travel, as well as my continual blog for what I'm doing around Franklin.
I'm sure it's going to get very interesting in March, as I have a lot of interesting trips planned! But you'll hear all about those in two entries!
I'm going to be editing my final travel journal for this trip, and if any of you would like a copy of it, just let me know and I've be more than happy to send you one!
Until next time!
-N
