Good Morning; Welcome to Geneva!

5/9/08

“ “ everybody! That’s how you say good morning in French? (you may note the empty quotation) THERE IS NO WAY TO SAY GOOD MORNING IN FRENCH! There is hello, and good evening, but this is simply another thing to had to my list of major flaws in the French system. Another random note, I haven’t seen a flying insect since I got to Europe.

5/13/08

I’m sorry Mom. I couldn’t call you on Mother’s Day because technology got together said, “Let’s get Dan Kuhn today.” My computer crashed, and my iPod resetting (deleting all my music…this isn’t a big deal if my computer hadn’t crashed). Also my SIM card is faulty, but I already got my money back for that. My internet now happens only at work, and no skype or anything like that for a few days.
At this point I am blogging about what happened about 5 days before. I WILL NOT talk about my spectacular time in Interlochen and Bern in central Switzerland because those require those pictures…or you just won’t believe me. So I will sit here, my Babar mug at my side, and write about my first travel adventure day in Geneva.
I adventured with a friend, Marina I met through my good friend Jes Weiner (remember her Judaeans?), who I will see more of when she finishes her paper. Marina is from Moldova, who, she says, is famous for being the first country to return to communism after the Soviet Union fell.
We walked in the bustling Old Geneva, and stopped to listen to a really snazzy Jazz band covering Bob Marley hits. I will post a video in a future blog if you’d like.
After walking around Old Geneva for a while we went to the famous fountain, the tallest one in the world with massive jets underwater powering it. With the Euro Soccer Championships coming up in Geneva, which locals have complained will be one big party (as if this is a bad thing?), it adorns a giant soccer ball the size of the extra-terrestrial object Pluto.

Next we walked to one of its million parks. Fans of K’far Hayarok may remember a giant chess set at it center. This park does not has one – it has 12, and two checkers sets. The most universal sight in the whole world is old men playing chess in the park. But in this one, these old men carry giant pieces around though. Also, when real phenoms play they get a huge crowd with little kids who look on with amazement, and old men who critique each move. I beat Marina in three moves (a trick my grandfather taught me) and has never worked once in my entire life…until now.

I got a tip from someone at work that I need to take a bus outside the city to the mountains near France and take the gondola up. (a geography note, if you drive north or south out of Geneva, you will end up in France…its like a nightmare.) IT. WAS. GORGEOUS. You pass streams and massive fields of yellow lowers, and you see snow-capped mountain tops in the distance. We got off early to take some pictures, and decided we’d walk. In trying to trace the gondola to its landing zone, we couldn’t really find a direct road, so we found ourselves taking a scenic route and jumping more than one barbed wire fence. We got there and took the gondola to the top for the most breathtaking view I’ve seen in quite some time.

We sat near the edge and watched paragliders fly off into the distance over Lake Geneva.

In asking for directions back to the bus station, we asked a nice old man to point us in the right direction. He said, “oh! Back to Suisse?” (meaning Switzerland). This is how we found out that we spent much of the day in France. Welcome to France.