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....

Day Off

(click the links to learn more)

Tomorrow is the Ascension Holiday across the world for Christians and in Switzerland it means a Federal Holiday. Since I've been pretty busy since arriving here in Gèneva three weeks ago I really haven't had a chance to explore the city. Tomorrow I should be able to get out to a few significant landmarks that characterize Gèneva. My plan is to head over to the ONU (in French Organization of Nations Unies), the Botanical Gardens (Jardin Botanique), Perle du Lac, where I should be able to catch a glimpse of the Jet D'Eau, the area around Gare Cornavin and finally the Vieille Ville (Old City). Gèneva is not the ancient city that Rome, Paris or London are (and certainly much smaller), but sill contains a good amount of history and activity, even for a city of less that 200,000 residents. Gèneva also is not considered/known for its nightlife. To put the size of Switzerland in perspective compare the 2010 estimate population: 7,866,000 to the 2010 census population of New York City: 8,175,133.

Pictures will hopefully follow tomorrow, for now enjoy this (rather bad) picture of the TPG (Transports Publics Genevois) bus.
















This is the entrance to the main train station in Geneva. It is located in the "heart" of Gèneva and is surrounded by the some of the big banks (Credit Suisse and UBS) and multiple hotels. Around the area are also numerous restaurants as well as shops.

Better Picture