Geneva, you can see the “Jet D’Eau” (jet of water)
Giant Chess and the Wall of Reformation (leaving Catholisism)
The U.N. Building, Geneva
The Red Cross/Crescent building and the General Assembly theatre in the U.N. Building
Me, Andrew and Alberto skiing off piste at Les Contamines
Friday, April 7, 2005
Hey,
I’ve been away this past week visiting family friends in Geneva, Switzerland. It was great to get out of Bristol for a week, see some close friends, get outside and eat some great home cooked food.
I flew from Bristol to Geneva last Wednesday in the early afternoon. It’s easy for me to get to Bristol airport and it was easy for Mrs.Turvey to pick me up there from their home in Geneva. It’s about 1-2km from the French border right near the base of some of the mountains! They took me to their home there and their son was already home from school. That night was basically just seeing everyone again. It was weird flying into Switzerland, because there were no formal questions/forms to fill out, nothing. All they do is look at your passport and allow you into the country, well, it also helps that I was flying in from a European Union country.
On Thursday, I went into Geneva, but as it was raining pretty heavily I decided to do some indoor sight-seeing. I went to the Red Cross/Red Crescent museum first. It was really neat; you could follow the Red Cross/Crescent (a Swiss organization) since their beginnings in the 1800s. It was started by a Doctor that had been passing by a war zone on his way to a meeting and he saw people laying on the battleground that had been left there for days and days wounded. He got ahold of a nearby church and along with other people helped move the men there and treat them. From then he got his idea to start the Red Cross/Crescent (in Geneva) and it has been going on ever since. One thing, in the museum there was a sign for every year since the Red Cross/Crescent began and on each sign there was listed the wars that year with the number of deaths, the number of natural disasters/deaths associated, and various treaties and aid organisations that were set up that year. (The Red Cross/Crescent is set up to aid people in wars and natural disasters regardless of race, nationality, etc.). It was sad to see that in every single year since the Red Cross/Crescent was founded, there have been more deaths due to war than due to natural disasters. There were other cool things there, like old records, info on the World Wars, etc. The Red Crescent is for Muslim countries.
After going to the Red Cross Museum I went to the United Nations building, which was practically across the street from the Red Cross Museum. I first felt a bit rude, because after being in England for so long, I forgot it was French in Geneva. I started speaking English to the guard who turned to me and said, “En français, s’il vous plait!” Geneva has the second biggest UN building in the World after the one in New York. You have to have your passport to enter, and you go through all the metal detectors like at an airport. You hand in your passport and have to go straight to a tourist centre (you are only allowed on the grounds supervised, you can’t wander around on your own, which is sad, because the grounds are stunning). I was led around on a tour, but after spending 2 hrs in the Red Cross museum, I wasn’t really in the mood for a tour, but I took it anyways. It was pretty interesting and cost about 8francs which is about $8.00CDN for a student. Then headed home for the evening.
Friday was a beautiful day, so I decided to go into Geneva. Mrs. Turvey was going in for a meeting, so we took the tram in together. I walked around Bristol on my own for the first hour. I saw some Geneva sights like the Cathedral de St. Pierre, the reformation wall, the Old Town and the University of Geneva. Near the university were giant chess boards, but I forgot to go back with someone and play a game! The old town was pretty neat as it was all build on a hill and had narrow, windy lanes throughout. At the end of that hour the Turvey’s eldest daughter Kristen took met up with me and we walked around the waterfront and the bank district (everyone knows about Swiss banks!). Kristen has long breaks in her last year that are study periods for International Baccalaureate Students. We then met Mrs.Turvey and their other children, Sarah and Andrew for lunch – They’re at school in downtown Geneva. I had an awesome ham and swiss cheese toasted sandwich, which by the way was not called swiss cheese, just cheese, as I was in Switzerland). The kids went back to school for the afternoon, and Mrs.Turvey and I walked around more of Geneva and stopped at a café before returning home. We also went out to a mall to rent my skis for the weekend.
The weekend was filled with 2 days of skiing in France. Mr. Turvey came home after travelling abroad on the Friday night. On the Saturday, I was taken to a place called Grand Massif where we went to a resort called Flaine. I swear there was a different kind of chair lift at every group of runs. There were only a couple of normal chairs, then one that looked like an egg, one that looked like an ice cube that you stood in and a normal gondola. There was me, Mr.Turvey, Kristen and Sarah and we me up with 4 other people. However, at the bottom of the mountain it started raining – I’ve never skied in the rain – so we had to go up to the very top 2200m where it was snowing. After about only 3 runs we were starving and the snow was becoming blizzard at the top, so we stopped for lunch. I had a plate of steak and frites. After lunch, the blizzard was worse. We tried skiing once more, but 1) we were absolutely white after taking the lift up, and 2) we were skiing in a white-out and could see nothing. So we gave up after 5 runs and headed home, soaking wet as it was still raining at the bottom of the mountain. Dinner that night was great, we had a cheese fondue and veggies.
Sunday I went skiing with Mr. Turvey, Andrew and one of Andrew’s friends. It was a beautiful day again with clear skies so you could see all of the Alps for miles. We were also in France at a place called Les Contamines. It was honestly like a huge basin that you skied in, and skiing in the Alps is so much higher, that there’s fewer trees, so you can go off the sides of the runs onto the un-groomed snow (Quebec has dense forests, so you can’t leave the runs as easily). We did about 18 runs throughout the day. We went off-piste skiing a couple of times, and the black runs in the alps are un-groomed, which also felt like off-piste skiing. We also had a great lunch of Kebabs, Salad, Frites and Häagen-Dazs ice-cream for dessert. That was a great day of skiing. That night we had chicken from the market, with chessecake for dessert – see I really love the home cooking!
The last 3 days were not too exciting as I mostly just studied for my exams that are to be at the end of the break on Apr 24th. So, that’s what I’ll be doing for the next to weeks, study, study, study! Except tomorrow night where we’ll be seeing some fireworks that are on in Bristol at the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Also, Happy Birthday to my brother John, who won’t be a teenager after tonight.
Hope everyone’s well,
-Pete
Alps, France
Geneva - the Bank District
Flaine, you can’t see the top of the mountain in this pic
Pics from skiing in France
