On
a hill above the obscure but charming lakeside town of Nyon are two and
a half Roman pillars, the sole remnants of a temple -- or something else,
as not a word of explanation or even guidance to the site was provided.
I used to live near here, in a tiny village called Borex-Soleil, and I
used to visit Nyon with my parents almost every weekend. It's been
over 10 years since my last visit, so my memories are hazy, but I can still
remember the playground there, feeding ducks over here, buying ice cream
over there... ahh, nostalgique!
It's a beautiful if somewhat hazy day at Lac Léman, and I have
nothing (as in "work") to do all day, except chug around by local trains
(for free!) and visit old, vaguely familiar places. I'm staying right
in the center of Geneva at the place of some friends of mine, all working
at CERN. Sometime during the weekend I'll set off over the Alps and
towards Italy and Malta... but what's the rush?
Oh, is it tough to be an Interrailer -- forced to eat steaks with fresh
mushroom sauce and wash them down with mugs of German beer. (Total
cost 16.20 CHF, so sue me. It's still less than my Danish grocery
bill.) Next stop: Lausanne!
When the merely pathologically bizarre just
isn't enough... |
| Dateline: |
Friday 18.6.1999 17:01 |
| Location: |
Chez les CERNistes, Geneva, Switzerland |
I
managed to keep doing nothing in Lausanne, wandering around aimlessly along
the shore and getting my feet wet in the ultra-spiffy wading pool.
I did manage to toast myself a bit in the process, but not at all badly,
and even a bit of a tan before Malta is a good idea...
Woo! I just found the best record store in the universe ("Frequence
Laser" [huh?], located on the Rhône itself above the tourist info
center, right in the center of town), which stocks an amazing range of
music and lets you listen to them all!! And I found Kodô's
brand-new techno album remix album Sai-Sô, which is absolutely
amazing! And there's a free "Love Island" street party tomorrow!
I love this town!!!
One
of those little inexplicable episodes: I was walking alongside the Rhône,
on my way to the apartment. A beautiful model-type woman was walking
in the opposite direction (not at all an unusual occurrence in Geneva,
as the wealth concentrated here also draws hordes of pretty young things
-- especially if you happen to run into a fashion shoot as happened to
Arto & me). At any rate, as I was walking, I looked at her; not
stared, just looked, the way you look at any passerby. She looked
back and, without breaking stride, flatly stated: "Cherche." I'm
positive that she said it and that it was addressed to me, but what on
earth was the French imperative command form "Look (for)", without an object,
supposed to mean? Unsolved mysteries...
...and yeah, I probably should have had more confidence in my pidgin
French and asked out that cute clerk in the record store who also liked
Kodô. Grumble.
Erhmm!
Anyway! I spent an interesting morning at CERN, getting my weekly
net fix for free and visiting the "Microcosm" museum, which shows how 1
billion CHF per year are spent on building 23-km-long tubes used for detecting
subatomic particles in the weird world of quantum physics. I knew
that CERN was "big", but I only started to realize the scale of "big" after
walking some 1.5 km across fields densely covered with laboratories and
almost getting halfway through one of CERN's two "campuses".
I've always had a bit of a dislike for French (both the language and
the people), largely due to being force-fed 9 years of it in school.
Somewhat to my own surprise, my stay here has done quite a bit to dispel
this. As it's been some 4 years since I last even studied French
and over 10 years since I last lived in (this) Francophone country, while
I have "basic" French implanted deep in my head, my vocabulary has atrophied
and my mannerisms have become overlaid by other languages. Particularly
annoying are my near-automatic substitutions of Spanish y for et
("and") and, worse yet, Japanese hai for oui ("yes").
But I did have plenty of practice today, thanks to Geneva's brand new and
amazingly stupid public transport system. To use transport, you must
buy your tickets beforehand from machines installed at each stop:
notes not accepted, no change returned and no possibility of prebuying
multiple tickets, as each ticket is valid for 60 minutes and timestamped
as you buy it! On the way back from CERN, I only had a 10 franc note,
so I ask the driver what to do: he looks in his own wallet, no luck;
asks some other passengers, no luck; and then tells me to hop on board
and ask people as they board! Which I do, as just about everybody
replies with a variation of "Sorry, no, but the same happened to me yesterday..."
Eventually, I did find a person with the required 7.80 CHF in change and
I bought my tickets, jumping out of the bus to do so (since the driver
doesn't sell tickets!). Brilliant, eh?
But
this monstrosity was inaugurated only a few weeks ago and I expect it'll
be fixed soon enough. In all, Geneva is astounding: notonly does
everything work and all places are clean, like in sterile Scandinavia,
but again there's that vibrance, a feeling of humanity! Little touches
here and there, like at any park: dozens of benches (which are not
made uncomfortable on purpose to prevent bums from sleeping there), drinking
water fountains, ornate flower installations and even the occasional wading
pool... comfort for body and soul. A cosmopolitan population
with social problems, gobs of cultural events, an active nightlife...
...no wonder everything costs so much and immigration is only an option
for millionaires.
Body movin' A body movin' body movin' we B
body movin'
-- Beasties Boys,
"Body Moving"
|
| Dateline: |
Saturday 19.6.1999 14:06 |
| Location: |
Ilê Rousseau, Geneva, Switzerland |
Turns
out there's a music festival this weekend, tens of venues scattered around
the city playing everything from Albanian folk music to progressive rock
-- and of course that includes a number of techno events! Two of
them are right in the middle of the city, with "Love Island" at Ilê
Rousseau and an anonymous one in front of the combined building of the
tourist office (!) and the local energy company's headquarters: "Les énergies
de Genève" indeed! They're playing damned good stuff too,
although at 2 PM the crowd is pretty thing and nobody is dancing...
yet. Still, I think it's time to forge on and take the 16:18 train
to Milano -- I'll be looping through here again on my way back and quite
possibly during Phase KYU as well. Not that there isn't plenty
left to do (for one thing, I just realized that almost all of Geneva's
many museums are entirely free!). And there's Lac Léman, the Alps,
the Jura mountains... I can't even recall the last time I was so
loathe to leave a place. (Oh yes I can -- Japan. Sniff.)
