{"id":2296,"date":"2025-07-07T15:51:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T22:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2296"},"modified":"2025-07-25T16:14:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T23:14:14","slug":"switzerland-july-7-geneva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2296","title":{"rendered":"Switzerland, July 7: Geneva"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Leigh&#8217;s conference started on Monday, so I went geocaching.\u00a0 As a reminder, geocaching is a silly hobby where people hide stuff and other people go and find it and then mark that they&#8217;ve done so on a website.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes it takes me to some interesting places, though.\u00a0 My goal for the day was a very difficult puzzle cache in a park area northwest of downtown.\u00a0 So I decided to go for a long walk from our hotel, pick up some caches on the way, and see what else I happened to see en route.<\/p>\n<p>And in a suburban park, what I spotted was a tall security fence with a gate in it marked\u00a0 &#8220;Zoo.&#8221;\u00a0 Now, this was just a random gate in a fence. It had to be an employee entrance, or an emergency gate or something, right?<\/p>\n<p>Nope.\u00a0 Unlocked, come-right-in, help yourself, self service zoo.\u00a0 No employees in sight, just come on in and wander around.<\/p>\n<p>To be fair, it&#8217;s not the San Diego zoo &#8211; there&#8217;s not a panda in sight.\u00a0 Rather, it focuses on largely native animals.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_094207-rotated.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-2297\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_094207-rotated.jpg\" alt=\"Ibix\" width=\"336\" height=\"446\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Also peacocks, for some reason.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_094424-rotated.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-2298\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_094424-rotated.jpg\" alt=\"Peacock\" width=\"307\" height=\"407\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nSo I just wandered around and looked at the animals.\u00a0 It was fun.\u00a0 There were goats.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_095138-rotated.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-2301\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_095138-rotated.jpg\" alt=\"Goat\" width=\"325\" height=\"431\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nLeaving the zoo behind, I continued my hike through the woods.\u00a0 Found some caches, didn&#8217;t find some caches, bought an espresso at the random caf\u00e9 near the zoo, and finally DID make the grab on the destination cache I had in mind.<\/p>\n<p>Returning to the city, I was getting hungry, but had not yet acclimated myself to the staggering food prices in Switzerland.\u00a0 As such, although I sat down in what looked like a tasty Afghan restaurant, the prices startled me so much I ordered something called a &#8220;Kabul Wrap.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I figured that might be a nice kebab kind of thing.<\/p>\n<p>No.\u00a0 It was easily the worst thing I ate on the entire trip &#8211; hot dogs and egg salad wrapped in a flatbread.\u00a0 I have no idea what was in any way Afghan about it.\u00a0 Yeesh.<\/p>\n<p>But at least it was calories.\u00a0 You don&#8217;t want to know what it cost.<\/p>\n<p>After lunch I went and saw some more Geneva sights, like this statue of Rousseau.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_133258-rotated.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-2309\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_133258-rotated.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"365\" height=\"484\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Or this clock, measuring to the tenth of the second the time until the sun is going to explode:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_150831.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-2315\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_150831.jpg\" alt=\"Doomsday clock\" width=\"417\" height=\"315\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nIf I ever need to explain to someone the difference between accuracy and precision, I&#8217;m showing them this.<\/p>\n<p>As an afternoon snack, I stopped into a nice indoor courtyard for a chocolate apricot patisserie.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_142237-rotated.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-2312\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_142237-rotated.jpg\" alt=\"Indoor courtyard\" width=\"296\" height=\"393\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_140807.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-2311\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_140807.jpg\" alt=\"Apricot tart\" width=\"398\" height=\"301\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And finally ran across Frankenstein&#8217;s monster.\u00a0 As you do.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_164755-rotated.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-2316\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/20250707_164755-rotated.jpg\" alt=\"Frankenstein monster\" width=\"325\" height=\"431\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Finally, Leigh was done with her conference and we had dinner at a nice Turkish place near the monster.\u00a0 All in all, a perfectly nice day of wandering around.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leigh&#8217;s conference started on Monday, so I went geocaching.\u00a0 As a reminder, geocaching is a silly hobby where people hide stuff and other people go and find it and then mark that they&#8217;ve done so on a website. Sometimes it &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2296\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2296","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\/2296","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=2296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2319,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296\/revisions\/2319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}