My couch surfing host in Annecy pointed out to me that I was only 50 kilometres from Geneva, so I thought I might as well visit. Geneva is a funny city. It’s much smaller than I had imagined. I can’t say I thought it was an amazing city, but I’m certainly glad I visited. It’s surrounded by the Alps, and on a clear day you can see Mont Blanc.
The weather while I was there was amazing. On my first day I explored the old town and the foreshore around Lake Geneva. There’s a huge water jet in the lake, which apparently goes 140 high. It is very, very pretty! And the old town is a nice place to sit and have a beer. Plus drinking in Switzerland is good for me – I can only afford one drink!
The next day I visited the United Nations office in Geneva. This is the second most important UN office after New York. It’s also a really interesting building – it was originally the headquarters for the League of Nations, which disbanded for, you know, failing to prevent World War II and the deaths of millions of people. I learnt about this in school, and the tour of the building is quite interesting.
Of course they still use it for a lot of meetings. This room us apparently most often used by the UN Council for Human Rights. This was a meeting on the rights of the disabled, and in fact I happened to bump into an Australian delegate in the book shop after the tour! I didn’t know she was Australian until I saw a small Indigenous flag pin on her lapel.
I was kind of fascinated with this room. It was the meeting room of the security council of the League of Nations, but nowadays is used primarily for peace negotiations. It has hosted negotiations between Iran and Iraq, and more recently the failed negotiations between the UN Security Council regarding Syria.
And this is the old League of Nations Assembly room, now used for major UN conferences and the occasional concert.
So as I mentioned, I hadn’t really planned on going to Switzerland, but then I thought he weather is beautiful, hey, why don’t I try to find somewhere to go hiking?
I headed to Lausanne, which is kind of on the other side of Lake Geneva from Geneva. I stayed one night in a guest house and one night couch surfing. It’s a beautiful town, with an amazing old Cathedral. You can climb the tower for the bargain price of four Swiss Francs. It was a bit of a hazy day but the view over Lake Geneva and the Alps is stunning.
I'd been looking at the organ before I climbed the tower, and as I was walking back down I could hear it playing. This kid was getting an organ lesson, and it was amazing to sit and watch him - both legs going flat out on the bass line, both hand on different keyboards - incredible.
At the bottom of the hill is an old little village called Ouchy, which is now a suburb of Lausanne. It’s right on the lake, and I sat here for a while and read, looking up to gawk at the view every now and then.
I couch surfed with three people sharing a house, and one guy took me to this Belgium pub with his mates. We drank all sorts of interesting beer, including vinegar beer, which I really like!
After Lausanne I headed to Gryon, which is a ski area. Alas it’s too late in the season to ski, but I had heard you can also hike a lot in the area. Unfortunately the weather turned crap as I arrived – in fact it started snowing! This is still very much a novelty for me. That afternoon I went for a walk in the snow to a neighbouring village. Vienna hot chocolatea have never been so good! This is the view from my room that I woke up to.
I was staying in the awesome little backpackers run by an English/Kiwi couple, Merlin and Gemma. There were other long-term guests, but I was their only short-term guest! They had friends visiting from the UK, so I kind of ended up hanging out with the four of them. They took me to these nice hot springs in Bex, which is the major town in the valley. It’s kind of weird to be swimming in wonderfully hot water while looking up at snowy mountains.
The next day I decided to try to go for a hike by myself, so getting some directions from Merlin I headed off to a place called Solalex. Merlin offered me snowshoes, but then thought I maybe wouldn’t need them. From this I have learnt the important lesson that if someone offers me snowshoes, to always accept! The visibility became worse and worse as I climbed higher, and the snow became deeper and deeper! In the end I didn’t make it to Solalex. I was pretty close, but there was a fork in the road and I wasn’t sure which way to go, and I really didn’t want to get lost and have to backtrack! Plus, I couldn’t really see anything and snow kept getting in the top of my boots. But still, it was kind of fun!
So after that I caught a train back to Geneva Airport and I’ve now flown to Nice. I had wanted to fly as little as possible, but it’s only a little bit more expensive than catching the train, and eight times faster!
So I’m back in France; I couldn’t really afford to stay in Switzerland for too long. Very glad I visited though, and I’m definitely keen to explore other parts of that country when I can. I've had a few days in Nice, which I'll write about later, and am about to head off for a spot of WWOOFing (Willing Worker On Organic Farms) - I'm going to herd goats in the Southern Alps!
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