Thursday was a day of great adventures and serious weirdness. The morning started early (pre-dawn), as we’re still not quite adjusted to the time difference, so we got up shortly after Lynn and Laura left for the airport (Laura left for Paris on a o-dark-hundred-hour flight this morning. What a trooper!) Rolf and I did some interweb surfin’ until Lynn got back about 7, at which point, we made some tea, gathered our dirty unmentionables (pretend like I didn’t mention that) and headed off for the self-serve Laundromat.While waiting for the laundry to wash, we headed off the grocery store to do some shopping. All was going according to plan until we discovered that the store doesn’t open until 8. D’oh! So, then we made a quick course correction and traipsed down the street to the boulangerie for some heavenly baked goods of the ‘petit dejuner’ (breakfast) variety. So far, so good.
After eating breakfast, we then headed back to the Laundromat to throw our now-mentionables in the dryer and sit around and chat for the 24 minutes that it took them to dry. Next stop: Lynn’s place to drop off our clothes and pick up our tourist gear for a morning tour of the UN and an afternoon visit the the CERN (think Large Hadron Collider) museum. So on to the bus we went for the short trip to the NGO/Diplomat district of Geneva.
Lynn has been on the UN tour many times, so she walked us to the gate of the UN and then set off to run some errands. Rolf and I entered the UN, got a visitor badge (yes, just one badge. The deal is that I give them MY passport info and then I’m responsible for whatever Rolf does inside the UN. The guard who issued the pass was laughing and making jokes about how Rolf was now my charge and I had to make sure he didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to. I was laughing on the outside, but, internally, I was imaging what the inside of the interrogation room would look like at the UN security department. If you’ve met Rolf, you know what I mean. [Love you, Sweetie :-)]). Lucky for me, though, Rolf behaved himself and we thoroughly enjoyed the UN tour.
After the tour, we had about an hour to kill before we met up with Lynn outside the UN, so we took the opportunity to take some pictures of notable sights around the UN grounds. There’s one location with all the flags of the UN member countries on a long plaza facing a beautiful old building. In front of that, there’s a beautiful chalk-style mural, depicting many different people and cultures of the world. And across the street from that is a sobering sculpture of a chair with one half-missing leg, meant to represent victims of landmines around the World. Being at the UN and seeing the important issues that they’re working on represented in such an emotional way is a definite must-do if you are ever in the great city of Geneva.
So, once Lynn picked us up, we headed out to the outskirts of Geneva, by the airport, to find the CERN museum. For those who don’t know, CERN is the organization that, among other interesting scientific contributions, has built the a very large particle collider (the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC) under Geneva and part of neighboring France to study what the universe looked like very shortly after the Big Bang. Contrary to popular belief, the intent of the collider really is for research, not to create a black hole that will transport us all to a far-away Klingon planet. The museum is awesome, with lots of interactive science exhibits, in addition to a thorough history of CERN and the LHC.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself, because a funny thing happened on the way to the CERN museum... You see, we were navigating our way to the CERN museum via a general map of Geneva and surrounding areas. And, this is where it gets interesting. The map shows CERN, not in Geneva, but just over the border in France. Being cartophiles (people who love maps, not wheelbarrows. Buy a dictionary, people), we never questioned that the map might be leading us astray.
So, with Rolf’s impeccable navigational skills and Lynn’s expert driving skills we successfully made our way to CERN. The problem? The CERN building that we found was clearly not meant to be found by your average Joe (though it was the only one on our street map - AND the dude at the Indian place down the street from us gave us directions to it, also, so it’s not exactly a well-kept state secret) . So, we arrived at a building marked Cern Bldg {some number that I can’t remember}, which indicated that it was only for authorized people. And while the three of us, together, are pretty awesome. We’re not “Authorized” Awesome. So, we did what any annoying tourist would do – we headed to the guard building for directions. And this is where it gets a little wonky.
Rolf and I pioneered Mission-Get-Directions while Lynn looked for parking. When we got there, I managed to put together enough French to ask for directions to the museum. At which point the guard invited us into his office, made some phone calls and started printing out a small novel of directions (or something) for us.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (err… parking lot), Lynn had found parking and headed over to the guard building to meet us. And, while the guard had been ok with two tourists in his office, having three in his apparently was the critical mass (Physics Joke Alert) for guard flip out. Because, as soon as Lynn walked in, he went into a seemingly infinite loop of asking who she was and what she was doing there. Eventually we managed to convince him that she wasn’t an international spy or general nutcase, at which point he told us he’d lead us to the museum; then he got in his car and we got in ours and off we went. Arriving safely at the museum 10 minutes later, we shook his hand, thanked him and headed inside to check it out. As previously mentioned, la musee was awesome.
Upon completing our tour of CERN, we got back in the car and headed off for Lynn’s place in Geneva. On the way, we passed through Swiss wine country and decided to stop in a little town to tour a couple wineries. At the first wine cellar that we entered, we found a cozy little tasting room/wine shop run by an American woman. She was really fun to talk to (as she rightly observed: ‘The entire country of Switzerland is a postcard’) and she sold us a few bottles of excellent wine, one of which we enjoyed with cheese and bread later that evening.
Bolstered by our success at the first winery, we headed up the road a piece to a second picture-perfect wine town and stopped into a second winery to see if they also had samples of their specialties available. Lynn waited outside with Loki while Rolf and I went in. Upon entering, we said hello in French, and then (because I don’t know the word for “wine tasting”), asked if they spoke English.
Nope. So, I proceeded to try to ask if they sold individual bottles of wind or if they had any glasses of wine available, in French. Unfortunately, my recollection of high school French failed me here (despite the fact that my 3rd year French teacher had actually gone to some lengths to teach us important phrases like “It’s necessary to always be drunk - ”Il faut etre toujours ivre”), and I asked, not for a bottle of wine, but a box (boite) of wine. And" then I asked, not for a glass of wine, but some wine ice cream (glace de vin), at which time, the woman running the place looked at me like a complete moron alien.
At this juncture, Rolf accurately correctly assessed that this very awkward situation could only become more awkward, no matter what we did, so he high-tailed it out of the shop, leaving me to blubber on in French, while I slowly backed out of the door until my display of complete lack of knowledge of the French language was concluded. E-Fail. Oh, well. C’est La Vie. (That one I’m sure of, people.)
Having had enough adventures for the day, we stopped by the grocery store on the way home for a few things without further incident and pack for the next leg of our journey.
Next stop: Strasbourg, France.
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