29 Oct.08--Another Old Blog--on Geneva

Hi, readers. I’m finally moving on to talk about Geneva, Switzerland. I spent 12 days there, probably more than one needs, but it was a more relaxed pace than Rome. I arrived there on Nov. 17, I think, in 60-degree weather. It stayed in the 60’s or upper 50’s until the last 3 days or so, and the last Sat. of the month, the temperature was over 70 and broke a record. This was NOVEMBER IN THE ALPS, Y’all. Global warming is definitely here. I couldn’t believe how little snow there was on the Alps as we flew over them. I had felt uneasy seeing how little snow there was on them in Sept. when I flew from Ireland to Italy; it was even freakier in mid-November.
Geneva sits in sort of a bowl, in between the Jura Mountains and the Alps. When I arrived, there was no snow at all on the Jura and none on the Alps that I could see. Mont Blanc is usually covered in mist, so it’s hard to tell if it has snow or not. I did manage to see it once or twice and, when I did, there was a little snow on its slopes but it was not totally covered. I got there on Friday and on Tuesday it snowed on the tops of the Jura, but, by Friday, the snow was completely gone.
One of the joys of having been there during the unseasonably warm weather was that the fall colors were beautiful--reds, oranges, and lots of yellows. The afternoon I arrived, I walked along the lakeside and saw a planting of rose bushes; the flowers were just overbloomed, except for a few. I took a picture of one, which you’ll see in the new uploads.
Geneva is on, surprise, Lake Geneva, also called Lake Leman by the local French-speaking population. Since Geneva is in the French-speaking sector of Switzerland, I got a bit of a chance to try to revive my French, which I studied for @ 9 years in the 60’s and 70’s. Thank God I started studying it as a child (9yrs.) or I would not have remembered anything. I fared better than I thought I would, but it’s hardly necessary because virtually everyone speaks English. In fact, the local folks were tickled if I tried my French; since my accent is better than my command of grammar and vocabulary, I usually ended up switching to English because their English is so much more complete than my French. It was the same in Italy. The impatient shopkeepers would just speak English while I was trying to conjure up my Italian verbs and vocab.
Although Geneva has just about 200,000 inhabitants, it doesn’t have as Frenchy of a feel as one might think, because 30% of the population is from all over the world because of the international headquarters of several organizations--the Red Cross/Red Crescent, the Human Rights Org. of the UN and, I think, one or two other UN divisions, and the World Labor Organization. Consequently, There are 18 or so languages spoken in Geneva, which is why everyone has to learn English, it being the lingua franca (Ha!). Some Swiss person said there are about 30,000 native speakers of English, many of whom live in Geneva for many years without even bothering to try to learn French. When I went to the tourist office, I was waited on by an Asian young woman, who had an Asian, not French accent. Of course, such a diverse population makes for great diversity in restaurants.
One French influence I noticed was GOOD FOOD. Even the salad I had at one of our American fast food chains was far superior to anything I could get at a chain back home. And I had a pizza at a restaurant that had the most delicious black olives I’ve ever had--they actually tasted like the fruit they really are, juicy and sweet. In the old, central part of town, I had a great lunch at a Chinese restaurant.
An aside on other European food. Food was expensive in Ireland, but pretty good if I got more fusion type of stuff, and I got pretty good Italian food there, especially in Dublin, where the Italian restaurants are run by Italians. I also tried Irish stew (with lamb) in Galway. Because I seldom eat beef any more, I didn’t know if I could handle lamb any more, but I enjoyed the stew. However, Ireland also has a lot of the heavy, greasy stuff that you find in England, so it pays to be choosy. I did eat too much of the greasy stuff and, by the time I got to Italy was having serious trouble digesting the fatty stuff. Consequently, I did not pig out in Italy as I would have liked. Having said that, their salads are wonderful, and their tomatoes are peerless. I don’t understand why the most powerful country in the world has tomatoes that are 4000 times worse and more tasteless than Italy’s. The tomato came from the Americas, but Italy has perfected its use. When I was young, I did not like raw tomatoes, but I miss the Italian ones now.

Geneva does not have gobs of stuff to see, but it has a pleasant, hilly old town center, with some medieval buildings, and lots of French-style architecture. It also has some watchtowers from the 1500’s, as I recall, that have an interesting, distinctly Swiss style of architecture. There is a major watch museum, not surprisingly. They have some neat musical timepieces with moving figures and things like that from the 18th and 19th centuries. What I was most fascinated by, though, was the watch movements, the backs, the guts, of the watches. Many of the cases show these backs, the movements, and I was amazed at how different they are, while having the same parts. It’s hard to explain, but I found the movements oddly beautiful.

There’s a quite small but wonderful museum of African objects in the town center. There are wooden and bronze sculptures which, I think, trump the ones in Houston’s Menil Museum. Another major thing to do in Geneva is to go to the Red Cross/Red Crescent Museum, which has an extensive, multi-media history of the Red Cross movement. The organization is split now, with part of it the international consortium, if you will, of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The societies are really independent and just get together in a loose federation to decide things. A newer spin-off of the movement is a separate international organization for humanitarian concerns, such as land-mine reclamation, humane treatment of prisoners, large migrations, genocides, etc. There was a grim, temporary exhibition of the Khmer Rouge genocide.
I found the history of the founding interesting, but could not help but think about what might have happened if the same energy and focus had been spent trying to make sure young men didn’t have to risk life and limb in the first place, instead of how to help them after they were wounded and half-dead. Or completely dead. Or captured and needing repatriation.

The lake sort of splits the city into the old part and the newer part. The old part has the steeper inclines and most of the old buildings, the fanciest shops, and the banks. The oldest part has narrow , traffic-free streets which wind in strange ways, as medieval streets tend to do. Another museum there, which I didn’t visit, is the Museum of the Reformation. Geneva was the home of John Calvin and the birthplace of his stern version of Protestantism. However, most Genevans are Catholic, but Calvin did succeed in getting the old cathedral for his church.
Another old town museum is the Art and Archaeology Museum. I don’t remember a heck of a lot about the art, but the basement had a nice section of Egyptian and Classical pieces, very nicely presented. Italy has so much art that they can’t afford to do all spruced-up presentation, so a lot of the archaeological stuff is stuck in old-fashioned glass cases, the kind poor university museums have to store their pieces in. And their paintings are often uncleaned, with centuries of grime. The stuff in the Accademia in Venice looked like it had suffered centuries of secret meetings of cigar-smoking men clouding the place with fumes every night since the paintings were hung there. Fortunately, the more esthetically-inclined French Swiss, with their gobs of watch and bank money, have a nice, clean art museum.
The other side of the lake is where I stayed, in a hotel not far from the train station. Farther up the hill on this side of town is the UN agency area, the Red Cross Headquarters, and whatever other international buildings there are. Around the train station are plenty more shops selling watches, and I found an international bookstore where I could replenish my supply of English mysteries. I noticed that the receipt from the shop had the address on “Rue de Chantepoulet,” “Street of the Singing Chicken,” literally. I forgot to ask a Genevois about Singing Chicken Street, so I don’t know why it is thus named, but I thought it was funny. If I return to Geneva, I’ll have to inquire. Maybe there was an inn there once called Chantepoulet, as here in England they have The Trumpeting Swan, or whatever. Yes, next time will be England. Cheerio.