Geneva

Last weekend, Adam and I used up our Eurail pass to visit Geneva, Switzerland. It's about a four-hour train ride from Aix, so we left after class on Friday afternoon and made it to Geneva around dinner time. We didn't actually stay in a hostel, because they were all booked. We found a rental apartment that was a little pricier than a hostel, but since it had a kitchen we were able to bring groceries and cook all our own meals, which definitely made up for the price difference. Early Saturday morning, we headed to the International Red Cross Museum.

It was definitely the most interesting museum we've been to in Europe! There's lots of exhibits about how the Red Cross has helped in wars, epidemics, and natural disasters. They have a time-line showing every crisis they've helped in since the Red Cross was founded in 1865. There's never been a year without any tragedies that require their help. Here we are posing with Henry Durant, the founder of the Red Cross and the winner of the first Nobel Peace prize. {Yes, Adam chose to give him bunny ears.}

 

After we left the museum, we walked over to the United Nations. We couldn't actually go inside {they're closed on the weekend} but it was still really cool to see the European headquarters! Outside the building, there are rows of flags from every member country. If you look closely, you can see that the Canadian flag is in the first row!

 

There was a giant statue of a chair with a broken leg in the UN plaza. We're not really sure what that's supposed to represent. After a quick lunch of sandwiches, we took a cruise on Lake Geneva - the largest body of freshwater in Central Europe. It was nice to get out of the city a little bit and see some of Switzerland's beautiful landscape. 

 

The cruise took up most of the afternoon, but we spent the rest of the day walking around Geneva's old town. We saw lots of horlogies, stores selling Switzerland's famous watches and cuckoo clocks. In the middle of old town, there was a clock made out of flowers! 

 

With so many international organizations headquartered in Geneva, we were able to find an English-speaking parish for Mass on Sunday morning. It was so amazing to be able to understand the readings and sermon again! After church, we had a little extra time before our train was supposed to leave, so we walked back to the lake to see the Jet d'Eau, or the world's largest fountain. It was turned off on Saturday because the winds were more than 12km/hour {if the fountain was on, it would have blown water all over the city!}.

 

Due to a fire on the tracks somewhere between France and Switzerland, our train was actually delayed for three hours. We finally made it back to Aix around 10:30 on Sunday night. Needless to say, we're happy to be done with trains and using budget airlines for our Spring Break trip!