{"id":2288,"date":"2025-07-06T20:46:44","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T03:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2288"},"modified":"2025-07-23T21:07:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T04:07:27","slug":"switzerland-july-6-geneva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2288","title":{"rendered":"Switzerland, July 6: Geneva"},"content":{"rendered":"

My one day in Paris accomplished, it was time to leave for Geneva.\u00a0 As a reminder, we had planned two weeks in Switzerland\u00a0long<\/em> before the Belgium \/ Turkey portion of this trip was requested by my job, so I would actually be meeting Leigh there.\u00a0 She’d have a conference for the first few days, but I’d still get to SEE her for the first time in three weeks.<\/p>\n

But first, I had to get out of Paris.\u00a0 I had deliberately picked a hotel close to the train station, and as an added bonus, it had a piano, so I could actually PLAY a bit for the first time in a while.\u00a0 After waiting out a teenager playing the legally required “The Piano” noodle-fest, I played a bit of Debussy, and then went to wait for my TGV to Switzerland.<\/p>\n

It was crowded, but the architecture sure was nice.<\/p>\n

\"Paris<\/a><\/p>\n

The TGV is fast and reliable, and I was soon in Geneva, where I checked into our hotel and waited for Leigh to arrive.\u00a0 Once she did, I managed to walk halfway back to the train station and then board the tram she was on, since I didn’t want to wait the extra 5 minutes to see her again.<\/p>\n

It was now early afternoon, so we decided to bonk around the city and see what we could see while Leigh attempted to remain awake to catch up with her jet lag.<\/p>\n

First, we walked through a big open air market with a million food stalls of different types.\u00a0 Geneva is the home of the UN, after all.\u00a0 I had some cow hearts on a stick. (Less glibly, “Antichucos,” a classic Peruvian food item.)<\/p>\n

Next, we found a SERIOUSLY imposing monument to the Swiss founders of the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 (Not the German ones, don’t be silly.\u00a0 Martin who?)
\n\"Reformers<\/a><\/p>\n

Do not even THINK of buying an indulgence.\u00a0 These gentlemen will know.<\/p>\n

But the absolute BEST thing to happen today was when we turned around from Calvinballists and realized that just across the street was a museum that not only had an exhibit of sculptures by Jean Tinguely, but was even free admission!<\/p>\n

\"Tinguely<\/a><\/p>\n

And before you ask – does this fountain also move and light up?\u00a0 Of COURSE it does.<\/p>\n

Seriously, it’s awesome.\u00a0 As is this.<\/p>\n

\"Tinguely<\/a><\/p>\n

The museum has all the kinetic pieces set to only operate for a relatively small duty cycle, in order to preserve them, but oh man – when this thing gets going it is AMAZING. Here’s a video.<\/a><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we got there somewhat late in the day, so they did make us leave before too long.\u00a0 Despite the threatening skies, we did some more walking around the older part of Geneva.\u00a0 There’s a famous flower clock:<\/p>\n

\"Flower<\/a>
\nIt’s fine. The womens’ Euro Cup was going on while we were in Switzerland and it was pretty much omnipresent in every town we went to.<\/p>\n

We saw the main cathedral, which we would return to later in the week, but it had this cheery fellow in the courtyard.<\/p>\n

\"Jeremiah\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine.<\/p>\n

Finally we went and had dinner and encountered the first of many sticker shocks associated with eating in Switzerland.\u00a0 It is SERIOUSLY expensive – you pretty much just have to accept that you will be blowing a tremendous amount of money just to put calories in your system when you come here.<\/p>\n

And that was day 1 in Switzerland!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My one day in Paris accomplished, it was time to leave for Geneva.\u00a0 As a reminder, we had planned two weeks in Switzerland\u00a0long before the Belgium \/ Turkey portion of this trip was requested by my job, so I would … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-switzerland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2295,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions\/2295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}