Geneva

Instead of going back to London for the weekend, I took myself off to Geneva. The train ride from Basel to Geneva is just under 3 hours and passes through a lot of Heidi countryside.
Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) is incredibly beautiful and Geneva, especially at night, looks spectacular, with the mountains in the background and the lake with its famous Jet d’Eau in the foreground. The original Flower Clock is not really that much better than the Melbourne version, though (a partisan view, perhaps).
Before visiting Geneva, I knew nothing much about Jean Calvin & John Knox, barely knowing of their existence. Geneva is full of references to them. St Peter’s Cathedral (with a most fabulous chapel that is very poorly advertised – one tiny little sign pointing the way was the only mention of it anywhere) was central to their teachings and the Reformation Wall (a huge monument commemorating the Protestant Reformation) is in the Parc de Bastions.
I visited the UN, which was also very poorly signposted. You walk past several of their gates, which all point the direction to the guided tours but when you get to the gate you are supposed to enter through, there are no signs and it looks like it is shut. The building and grounds are much grander than in New York (the old marble building dates back to the League of Nations) but for sheer wow-factor, NY leaves it for dead. Having a story about how one General Assembly was held there because Yasser Arafat was invited to address them but the US would not grant him a visa to attend in NY just isn’t as exciting as all the stories about the Security Council etc. Also, I did have a much higher ranking ‘guide’ for NY than the lowly run-of-the-mill guide I had in Geneva.
Taffy had suggested the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum as a good place to visit. The Lonely Planet had said that it was free. Well, it cost CHF10 and, it was, to use one of Taffy’s favourite phrases, ‘boring as batshit’. The one interesting snippet of information for me was that the Geneva Convention and I share a birthday, it just being >100 years older than I am. ; )
While at Cat, I spent 5 months working on a project with Sana via email and the phone as she lives in Geneva. The closest we got to meeting was her going to Singapore and then to Sydney just after I had left for London. Well, we have finally met! She took me to a steakhouse where she filled me in on the success of the program that we developed. In her words, ‘it went very well and if I say that others will tell you that it went perfectly.’ Awesome! She also kept telling me that she asked Rod several times why he had let me leave. : )