Genève!!!

On to Switzerland! I was super excited to go to Geneva because I'd never been to Switzerland before, and also because I love chocolate. And watches. And international diplomacy. And there was plenty of all of those things! We arrived around 10:30 and checked into our hostel, which was walking distance from the train station. The city of Geneva gives you a free public transportation pass for the duration of your stay if you're a tourist staying at a hotel or hostel, which was pretty awesome.

After leaving some of our stuff in a locker at the hostel, we hopped on the tram to visit the United Nations building! Geneva is the European headquarters of the United Nations, and the main building is the Palais des Nations (Palace of Nations) which used to be the headquarters for the League of Nations. There's also a lot of UN and other international orgnizations based in Geneva, like the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization. The Palais de Nations has a really cool walkway of different countries' flags in front of it. Usually, you can walk down it, but unfortunately it was closed that day because there were a lot of protests going on outside the gates. Oh well, c'est la vie... it still looked pretty cool!

Next, we used the rather crappy map the hostel gave us to go to the Parc des Bastions, where there were giant chess and checkers sets! I admit, when I saw it marked on the map as "giant," I kind of expected them to be even bigger, but they were still fun. Christophe and I played checkers. After a while, I nobly sacrificed myself¹ so we could finally go eat. My stomach was about to claw its way out to search for food on its own, so something had to be done.

Leaving the park, we walked by the Reformation Wall, which is a monument to the Protestant Reformation and has statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox (these guys are in the photo on the right), as well as other major Reformation figures. In case you don't remember you last European history class, Geneva was a major center of the Reformation movement, especially for Calvin (his ideas are the basis of Calvinism).³ 

Our search for food was when we realized just how expensive Geneva is. (It's the second most expensive city in the world, right after Tokyo!) The cheapest lunch we could find was in a bagel shop,⁴ where I got a bagel with cream cheese for like $6. Christophe bought a Coke for 4 Swiss francs, which is like $5. When I heard the price, I decided to stick with water. Better have been a good Coke!⁵ Really though, the prices were shocking.⁷ On the plus side, a Swiss franc (CHF) is not as expensive as a euro ($1.10 vs. $1.33), but that did not help much. Also, most places let you pay in euros, since Switzerland is surrounded by the Eurozone, but they usually give you your change back in francs without converting to the exchange rate. So we lost some money there, since we decided it wasn't worth paying ATM fees to withdraw francs when we were only there for one day.

After savoring those bagels we paid so dearly for, we decided to splurge on some fancy Swiss chocolates. SO GOOD OMG. I cannot express in words how delicious Swiss chocolate is. If you ever go to Europe, you have to try it!! We got three truffles each, and I chose dark chocolate, mocha, and champagne flavors.⁸ Délicieux!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mocha, Champagne, and Dark Chocolate :D

Next, we headed to the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Genève (where John Calvin used to hang out!). The cathedral was really beautiful and well-maintained. The wooden pews were really pretty, and there were a lot of cool engravings and statues. There was also some amazing stained glass (of course) and a really interesting-looking organ. Architecture-wise, I really liked the look of the spire on the north tower, which is made of copper that's now all green (understandable since it was built in 1405). We climbed up the tower and got a beautiful view of the city and Lake Geneva.

My new friend :]

View from the tower - Lake Geneva!

We then walked around the old town area and headed toward Lake Geneva. We passed a ton of watch stores and swiss army knife stores. Sadly, these were a little out of our price range! Luckily, walking around Lake Geneva is free. The lake is really blue and pretty, with a lot of boats. There's a concrete walkway where you can walk out pretty far and then look back at the shore. Usually, there is the jet d'eau, this huge jet of water 140 meters high (459 feet!). It started out as an occasional thing to relieve water pressure in the city's hydraulic system, but everyone loved it, so it became permanent. Unfortunately, it was off that day for some reason (maybe it was too cold?), so we didn't get to see it. It's too bad because it looks pretty impressive in pictures.

Afterwards, we walked around a little and tried to be frugal by splitting a pizza for dinner. I enjoyed overhearing these two chatty flight attendants who were at a nearby table make conversation with the waiter, who I'm pretty sure was only pretending to understand what they were saying. The next morning, it was off to Strasbourg!

À bientôt!

My extended ramblings:
1. Some would say I "came in second out of two."²
2. Okay, fine, some would say I lost.
3. Very long story made crudely short: It all started when Martin Luther and others found that the Catholic Church and its clergy were getting way to corrupt. Luther was particularly offended by the sale of indulgences (you could buy forgiveness of your sins, basically pumping ridiculous amounts of money (and therefore power) into the church), and he also felt that the clergy should have no special religious authority; Christians should have a more direct relationship with God. Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the local church 1517, protesting this moral degradation, and Reformers used the recently invented printing press to spread the word quickly and effectively. Around the same time, John Calvin was establishing his own ideas, which were also a rejection of certain aspects of the Catholic Church but which focused more on predestination and total depravity; basically, humans are essentially evil and have no free will; God determines everything. Calvin eventually became the religious leader of Geneva, which became Protestant. The pope was not pleased, people got excommunicated, politics got involved (rulers were tired of the Church having so much power), there was a lot of violence, and ultimately Protestants broke off for good from the Catholic Church. 
4. First time I'd had a bagel since leaving California! :O 
5. Christophe probably spent like $50 on Coke during our trip. Exchange rates, European sales taxes, and the many other reasons soda is so expensive here, were not friendly to him.⁶
6. Fun fact: France has a 19.6% value-added tax, reduced to 5.5% on food. (If you don't want to get too technical, a value-added tax is like a sales tax.)
7.  I went into a Starbucks, just to see how expensive it was, and the cheapest smallest Frappuccino was $9! What would Claire do! :P
8. Champagne-flavored Swiss chocolate in Switzerland?? How much more high-rolling can you get?!!