South of France

This is the view from sitting on the edge of the pool. More pictures here: http://goo.gl/dVF5D

My PricewaterhouseCoopers Tattoo

Found this today in one of the "new brand" memos. I sincerely hope that someone put this in as a joke. 

Happy Fourth of July

This is my second missed Fourth of July, and it gets no easier. For those of you in America enjoy the idiot on Coney Island who ate 62 hot dogs in 10 minuets because you don't really get that here.....

Montreaux Jazz Festival

Yesterday I took a day trip Montreaux, Switzerland to see the Montreaux Jazz Festival. Every year "on the first fortnight of July" musicians young and old, known and unknown descend on the northern banks of Lake Geneva. This year some of the featured artists were Paul Simon, BB King, Sting and James Blunt and is currently a festival for Jazz, Pop and Rock.

Along the waterfront there are rows of stalls with people selling stuff.

There were many live performers that were free, while the big acts were at night and cost around 80 CHF

The mountains fall right into the water, it's really quite unbelievable.

Vernier Village

Here are some photos from around the area of the village heart of Vernier.

Zürich, Schweiz

Last weekend I took three hour train ride into the German part of Switzerland to check out Switzerland's biggest city, Zurich. After a rather cramped train ride with what seemed like every enlisted soldier below 21 in the Suisse Army, I arrived at 10:30 am in Zurich Main Station. A quick tour around the downtown with a friend ended up with us perched high above the river looking toward the some of the old churches.

Later that evening, we made our way to Hinteregg, Switzerland which is about a 30 min tram ride from Zurich.

After a nice dinner at home with another friend we mad our way to a night club. This was my first experience in a european nightclub and it was definitely a bizarre experience, nothing like anything in the states. After arriving home at nearly the crack of dawn we slept in sunday, finally getting up and making our way to the lake around 10am. The lake was BEAUTIFUL, looking south the far off mountains towered over the lake. These mountains were absolutely enormous (still not over them yet...) And are snow capped rising well above the tree line. We rented a peddle boat for an hour and preceded to enjoy the afternoon on the lake.

I was then guided back to the train station for my 330pm train back to Genève. I was expecting the train to be packed beyond belief but I was able to get my own seat and get absorbed in a book for the 3 hour (beautifully scenic) ride.

Today, I'm off to Montreaux to check out the Montreaux Jazz Festival and a town situated directly between the lake and the impending mountains.

New Pictures

There are new pictures up from my weekend in Zurich as well as yesterdays trip to Montreaux for the Montreaux Jazz Festival. Find the pictures here.

Bought A Bunch of Books

......In english, the french isn't going THAT well. Finishing off the Dan Brown collection and then I have two Robert Ludlum Borne thrillers to start. To be honest I'd kind of forgotten about books. I've already read Digital Fortress, just started Deception Point and then two Borne books, let's see if they're as good as the movies. Post on Zurich to come later.

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Fail.....Europe style

Way to go boys, you almost have it.........
Braden Clarke

More bad translations!

This is from the office bathroom. Someone really needs to help them out with these. Make sure you keep those clean toilets behind you when you're walking down the street!!

Beautiful Night

Its a beautiful night here in Geneva! Double rainbow!

Fête de la Musique

This weekend Geneva is having the popular Fête de Genève, otherwise known was the Music Festival. Don't really know what to expect but you can check out the history on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fête_de_la_Musique

Should be an interesting day!

Also see if you can spot the differences in the keyboards. Quite annoying actually.

Location:Via de Coisson,Vernier,Switzerland

Rolex

Geneva, the world capital of watch making. Its no surprise that the world headquarters of Rolex is located in Geneva right across the street from my pool. I don't know why it took me so long to post/realize this but its a really cool building with even cooler landscaping.

Perfectly manicured grass flows to the edge of brilliant blue pools around the bottom of the building which is brilliant emerald green. There's an amazing deck on top of the building with huge umbrellas and tables and chairs. Cool building.

Sion: Château de Tourbillon and Basilique de Valère

Today I decided to take a trip into the mountains and explore the capital of Valais Canton (Canton are the "states" of Switzerland), Sion. It is a small city with a population of just under 30,000 people. Because it isn't a preferred tourist site it is a town that really is the "real" Switzerland. Sion itself is situated in the middle of a valley with huge mountains on either side in the south of Switzerland. It is decently close to Italy and almost all signs are in three languages, French, Italian, German and most times English.  Some of the furthest ones are actually still snow capped which is a really cool sight to see in person and pictures REALLY don't do it justice. These mountains tower over you.

The two main tourist attractions are the Château (castle) de Tourbillon and Basilique de Valère. They were both built on large rock outcroppings in the middle of the valley and it was a hike to get up to.  The Basilique of Valere was built in the 12th and 13th centuries and Is a wonderfully ornate church. It was given the rank of basilica when Pope John Paul II visited the church in 1984. The churches organ was believed to have been built in the 13th century and that makes it one of the oldest organs still working today. One of the highlights of this fortified basilica was a little church that was located on the twisting path to the top of the rock. The signs for this little church were only in French and German so I really couldn't tell what it was for or why it was there.

After I explored the Church and descended the mini mountain, it was time for the trek to the significantly taller Tourbillon perch. This was quite the hike, a solid 20-25 min up the winding, path. The path was composed of mostly lose gravel and jagged bedrock that composed the mountain and the surrounding peaks. Climbing up to this castle would have been downright dangerous (as if it wasn't already) in flip flops. There were no real barriers or safety precautions anywhere and quite honestly one slip or dumb move would send you 300+ feet to your death. At times it was really very, very scary. From what I read online (this time there were no signs at the castle at all) it was home to the Bishops of Sion for many centuries. One advantage of this location that is was damn near impossible to scale. And would be downright hard to get up to the fortification with any sort of weapons in an attempt to take the castle. The downside of this is that it was a building that could easily be sieged. While it would be difficult to
actually attack the castle, with its one realistic entrance it would be quite easy to block all supplies going to the top. Currently the castle is in a state of ruin permanently destroyed by a fire in 1788. Since then only the Chapel has been restored and placed as a protected site within Switzerland. The castle had a tumultuous history and was attacked multiple times as the Bishops were the ruling men of the Middle Ages and power was constantly changing hands. In 1417 it was burned to the ground during the Wars of Raron and rebuilt sometime later by Bishop William Raron. Needless to say, the castle provided excellent views of the surrounding area.

Tonight, my host Marco is having a BBQ with a few friends. Pictures to
follow soon on Picasa! (Of Sion, not the bbq)

Trains

Still no idea what SBB CFF or FFS stands for. And I'm not sure anyone does.

Tomorrow: Into The Mountains

Tomorrow I'm looking for a day trip into the mountains to check out the small town of Sion, Switzerland. It only has a few attractions but you can check them out here:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Château_de_Tourbillon
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilique_de_Valère

And finally the town of Sion:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sion,_Switzerland

Goodnight from Switzerland!

The Duomo

The Duomo in Milan was easily the 2nd biggest cathedral I've ever been to and the 3rd biggest in the world. The church was started in the 12th century but the facade was finally completed at the urging of Napoleon in the mid 19th century. The 500 year build puts never ending highway projects into perspective. Better post coming tomorrow after work. Off to bed, exhausted.

Traveling through the Alps from Geneva to Milan was beautiful.

Today: the ONU, Jarden Botanique, Vieille Ville

Across Europe today it was a day off for the Ascension Holiday. Seizing an opportunity in my busy schedule I was able to get to the Botanical Gardens of Geneva, the Geneva office of the UN and walk around the "Old City" of Geneva. A little old fashion touring.

The gardens were quite impressive and quite extensive. I liked both the desert and rainforest parts of the exhibition because those (obviously) contained the most exotic plants. The gardens seem like a very popular place to run and to eat lunch with friends. The UN seems like a great place if you're: (1) wealthy in your country (2) like to argue for long periods of time (3) don't like to get much done.









I'm always a fan of very poor translations.















The desert green house contained a lot of the pretty classic cacti, these in particular were from the southern United States and Mexico.

This was some crazy desert flower. Looks like something out of Avatar.

 
They had a whole row of carnivorous plants under a large cage, seemed quite unnecessary none of them tried to get me. I didn't see any Venus Flytraps but these were the tube carnivores that I recognized.

 One of the entrances to the United Nations.

 

Sri Lanka was protesting something during the day. The big chair sculpture outside the main (mostly symbolic) entrance has only three legs, the fourth is very clearly blown off raising awareness for land mines.

The main symbolic entrance (with all the flags), I don't really think this is entrance is used much, if at all. Maybe for when a important head of state arrives but I really don't know.

The gift shop had a good selection of over priced souvineres, these books were one of them and its clear who is more favored this side of the Atlantic (8-1). I do confess I did get a T Shirt hopefully some of the purchase price goes toward "peace."

The Conference room where the International Labor Organization was meeting for their conference this week.

Main conference room. The United States of American is seated in the second row, dead center with the Russian Federation, France and Spain. The two "official" languages of the UN are French and English and here in Geneva the seats are alphabetically by their french spelling. The celing is explained in an earlier post.

Gifts line the hallways of the compound all donated by the different coutries. This paticual tapestry donated by China is awesome because no matter how you look at it the path and front steps face you. Crazy. May elements of the design were gifts from coutries as well; marble, granite, light fixtures doors, for example are elements that were "gifts" from other nations that aided in the construction of both buildings.

AMAZING front entrance to the Palace of Nations. This "front" entrance is almost never used (I think) but is the beautiful front facade of the League of Nations building, completed in 1938 and then abandoned in 1940-41. When the United Nations was formed in the mid 40's the Organizaion reoccupied the building and then soon expanded.

Seat at the UN

Dead center in the row with France, Russia and Spain (alphabetically in french). Hall of human rights council. Ceiling called ocean of harmony by a spanish artist. Alliance of Nations didn't have a US representative until Obama.

The third picture is of the main conference room in the old palace which was originally the building for the League of Nations back before the 2nd World War. Today its 450 seats is considered small but regularly holds the Conference of Disarmernment and therefore can rarely be shown. Many main conflicts signed in this room. This picture is of Lincoln freeing the slaves. Many of the artwork and features of the buildings are gifts from member countries.

Breakfast of Champions

The eggs and bacon are the same here, thank god.

Really not sure about this...

The new bedspread is questionable....