Geneva, Annecy, and Bern

I would like to take this opportunity to make and announcement: I am officially DONE with grad school applications! FINALLY! If this doesn’t work out, I’ll go serve French fries somewhere… But yeah, they’re all in: Brown, UCSB, UChicago, BU, and Harvard. Now it’s out of my hands—scary!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Geneva. On Thursday I spent most of the day at the Ecumenical Center, where various international non-profits have their headquarters (World Council of Churches, various European groups, etc.). That was a really good visit, though not exactly what I had anticipated. When I finished there, I rushed over to the Bodmer Library, which turned out to be the single biggest disappointment of the trip: the library itself is fabulous, but the papyri I wanted to see weren’t on display! The ones I wanted to see are the ones I had researched for Prof. Kalish last summer, and I’d been excited to see them on this trip literally since July. Alas, a temporary exhibition about medicine and literature took over the place until Jan. 30th. Guess I’ll just have to come back to Geneva someday. Darn.

Friday morning I did my mosque site visit, then late that afternoon I took the tram up one of the hills looking over Geneva. The view of the city was beautiful, but I’d been promised a view of Mont Blanc that was unfortunately obscured by trees! You’d think they’d have a tower or something, but no….oh well. I’ll get a perfect view of the Alps at some point before I leave Switzerland.

On Saturday I didn’t have anything scheduled in Geneva, so I took a quick trip to Annecy, France, because it’s only an hour away and kind of gorgeous. Getting there and getting home was traumatic—do NOT take buses in France. Ever—but miraculously I made it and really enjoyed the town. It helps that it was sunny and warm! There’s a beautiful promenade around the lake (where everyone walks their dogs—so cute! I met a St. Bernard named Henri and fell in love), and the best part of town is wandering along all the cute little streets and admiring the canals. It’s apparently called “Venice of Savoy” because of all the canals—I would add that it’s MUCH cleaner than the real Venice! You can see the bottom of said canals perfectly. It’s amazing. The castle was kind of lame, but it’s pretty from the outside at least. And, of course, since it’s France, the food was delightful. That’s really why I went. There’s nothing quite like eating a Nutella crepe and drinking hot chocolate outside at a café and people-watching. I also stocked up on pain au chocolat to take with me when I returned to my German exile Saturday night when I went to Bern…

Bern is where I am now. I haven’t done much today—I really needed a break, so I slept in, took a leisurely walk around the city, did some window shopping (everything is closed on Sundays—everything!), finally found a supermarket at the train station selling coffee and sandwiches, then came back to the hotel to get some work done. Not a very exciting day, but my feet were quite grateful for the break! Cobblestones and my ankles are a bad combination.

Tomorrow I’m off to Lausanne for a meeting (darn…have to go to Lausanne too…should probably see the cathedral while I’m there!) and if there’s time, there’s a castle on the lake nearby that I really want to see. Then I’m taking a late train to Winterthur for the next adventure.

It’s hard to believe the trip is only half over. It feels like I’ve been here forever! And school is a very, very long way away…except for the part where classes start a week from tomorrow. I’m just going to pretend that’s not the case…

Don’t forget to check out the pictures! http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=315769&id=579896063&l=f96932a989

A bientot,

~L