Birdie's Visit to Geneva

10/04 - As seems traditional in these visits, Birdie and I had a wander round the old town with some coffee and croissants, frequented some chocolate shops, climbed the cathedral (which was hard, yesterday's margaritas took their toll) and headed down to the Bois de la Bâtie and walked along the Viaduc de la Jonction, from where one can see where the Rhône and the Arve meet. We went back to Parc des Bastions where we hung out with a sandwich and a beer, watching the various punk kids messing around. There were a lot of beers and a surprising amount of hookah pipes, and loads of grubby looking students doing near sports like poi as they wandered about the grass. Next on our packed itinerary was a nap, which was intended to last half an hour but ended up being more like an hour and a half.

Rhône (left) meeting L'Arve (right)

We rushed off to Café de Paris for dinner, which was exactly as delicious as last time, and then went to a little bar near the Manor supermarket, whose name I do not know. I do know it is pretty much a gay bar, which became more obvious later on as the waiters removed their shirts. Not wanting to confine ourselves to one bar, Dan took us towards La Galerie in Grottes, but as this was closed we ended up in the bar next door, a bizarre place which only had three beers for sale. Not three types of beer, but three beers (two Heinekens and a Super Bock) which we shared between us while the chap at the next table rolled a massive joint and swigged from a bottle of wine. We started our walk home but were distracted by Les Brasseurs, where we purchased a three litre giraffe of bière blonde and watched some rugby.

The stroll home went pretty quickly, and I invited Dan and James in for a nightcap, which ended up being a litre of questionable Côtes du Rhône (under CHF 5 from Denner) and lasting until 5 am. A lot of chat about the upcoming election was had, we looked at They Work For You to find out where our MPs stood and what they had voted for, and discussed why not voting is a bad idea. Some of the arguments put forward are a little hazy now, but I remain convinced.

11/04 - For some reason Ed and I were up at 10 am, only 5 short hours after we went to bed. After some milling around we went to Mike Wong's for a spicy wake up breakfast, and then we decide to head up La Salève as it was a very clear day. We had a bit of a slog on our hands, as we decided to walk up to the radio tower at the top - we went up there on the advice of Matt Fraser (who also told us about the bridge over the meeting of the rivers). We were very grateful indeed for the presence of the bar at the top, where I drank an Orangina that was almost immediately absorbed by my tongue, as we had brought no water with us. After a bit of a sit down and a vain attempt to get a better view which involved scaling a shed, we started the walk down - we passed the hanggliding (or paragliding - I'm not sure) school, which is basically an area of green matting laid down on top of the grass running up to the edge of the cliff, and a wooden walkway (or runway, I suppose) which leads straight off the edge, with a yellow line painted on it which I can only assume marks the point of no return.

Path off the edge of the mountain

Ed observes Geneva

We had a nap when we got home, which of course overran (god knows why we got up after 5 hours last night), meaning that we only just got to Bains Des Paquis in time for fondue before they closed. Ed enjoyed it, it was pretty good (as always), and afterwards we went back to the flats and ended up watching Terry Gilliam's Brazil with the Dans (Short and Hayden). It was an absolutely bonkers film, but really good - It had some crazy sets, a very 1984-style storyline (Gilliam has admitted that he was heavily influenced by Orwell) and Robert De Niro is a plumber. It also had that weird unattractive love interest thing that happened in a few films in the early eighties. A couple of glasses of wine and a cup of tea later we went to bed.

12/04 - Todays plan was to go to all the international organisations. First up we headed to CERN for lunch and a tour - calimari steak and roughly the same tour I gave Kelly. I took Ed to the ATLAS control room and we listened in to a tour that a guy from CMS was giving. (Apparently the CMS guys have a different shift system to us, in that they do a normal day shift then switch management of their systems to Fermilab for the next 8 hours, then to somewhere in Beijing, then back to CERN. This avoids the need for night shifts, which is what I am doing right now as I write this on Wednesday night at 2am). We then proceeded to Microcosm where I tried to explain cosmic rays and neutrinos a bit. Not sure how much I succeeded.

We got the tram to the UN, saw the landmine chair (a 12 metre monument dedicated to landmine victims, advocating a worldwide ban) and wandered through the park to the entrance. We got in and nearly had a sleep on the sofas, but we were called for our tour. This was interesting, and had a few good facts thrown in, but was essentially a tour of an enormous grand conference centre.

The, umm, big room at the UN

The landmine chair

We headed back and went to the Lady Godiva pub quiz, where we were in first place at the half way point, but then we dropped down to fifth at the end. We still beat the other CERN team, so we had a small victory. Back at the flat we watched some Black Books, Ed packed and we went to bed. I've enjoyed having Ed here, makes a real difference having someone I've known as long as him, a very different atmosphere to hanging out with people I've only known for the last year or two.