This is a long one….
This last weekend, we flew on Easyjet to Geneva, Switzerland to visit Julie and Alex, the wife and son of one of Jared’s advisors and professors, Roquinaldo. Roque was on Jared’s comps panel and Jared has been a TA for one of his classes at UVa. Julie works for the UN and two years ago she was called from Charlottesville to Geneva for six weeks. During that time, I helped Roque with Alex, picking him up from school and staying with him in the evenings a few nights a week as well as spending the day with him on Saturdays.
We were expecting a weekend of visiting, but Julie took us on sightseeing trips all over France and Switzerland! Julie and Alex live in France in Ferney-Voltaire, which is where Voltaire lived. His house is just up a hill from the center of the city, but it is closed to visitors in the winter. We did, however drive up to it and look around it and the grounds. Anyway, this town is very close to the boarder with Switzerland – which is where Julie works, at the United Nations.
Julie picked us up at the airport and since she still had half a day of work and Alex was still at school, Jared and I spent the first afternoon on a tour of the UN’s buildings and at the ICRC Museum or the Red Cross Museum. First of all, I have to say that the Red Cross Museum was amazing! It started with a history of the Red Cross, its founder and how the idea of the organization was created and then the Museum went into detail about all the relief work the Red Cross has done ever since. It was completely overwhelming! (Just a disclaimer, we were not allowed to take any pictures inside the Museum so I cannot show you the things we saw.) There were millions of hand written cards about all of the 2 million prisoners of war from WWI stored in old card catalogues for you to see. There were also sections dedicated to specific relief work and places (like a room with 1000 pictures of children under 4 who were left alone after Rowanda’s genocide in 1994) as well as specific campaigns the RC has waged (like a room about land mines, the devastation they have created and the RC’s campaign to stop the use of them). The whole place was tragic, but uplifting – if that makes any sense at all.
The tour of the UN was pretty cool as well. We only got to see 3 of the conference rooms, but we did see the one where the WHO meets and the one where the Human Rights Committee meets. Our guide told us specifics about the way the UN is broken down, which group does what and who is responsible for everything. We learned how the UN got the land the buildings are on, and we got to see the original League of Nations building! All very cool!
After visiting the local weekend market, Julie, Alex, Jared, and I all went in the car the next day and drove all around Lake Geneva and into the mountains. We stared with a medieval village called Gruyeres, near Moleson and saw a castle – which I have to admit, was awesome! (It was so cold though, so I am sorry for us being all bundled up in all of our pictures!) After that, we drove to Monteux, which is this totally swanky place on the coast of Lake Geneva! I mean, SWANKY! Lord, Jared and I felt totally out of place! One cool thing about Monteux though, is that Freddy Mercury lived there and had a recording studio there! We went to the Chateau de Chillon, which is the castle of this area and took lots of pictures and bought some Swiss Chocolate (mmmm!). Montreux is the area that the rich and famous send their children to for finishing and boarding schools. The whole skyline in the mountains was dotted with tons of huge, beautiful, Swiss boarding schools! Crazy! Schools that European kings and queens have been sending their kids to for years! Anyway, Julie took us up into the mountains just to see some of the schools and because the views are “out of this world” beautiful! But while we were up there, we came across this little town called Les Avantes with tons of families sledding – so, of course, we jumped out and went sledding too! (Because, when you live in this area and have a 4 year old, you always have a sled in your truck because you never know when you’ll need it!) So the trail that everyone was using started way at the top of a peak that you had to take a train too, then the sled ride down was about 20 minutes in length! It was the coolest thing ever! Jared and Alex only went a little way up the trail and came down (the sled we had was rickety compared to the awesome sleds everyone else had and we doubted very much that it would have lasted on the big trip!) So now Jared can say that he went sledding in the Swiss mountains! While he was doing this, I took the opportunity to visit a café and try some Swiss Hot Chocolate – it was everything I knew it would be! After we all went sledding a few times, we drove back down to Montreux because there was a ski and snowboard competition going on. We all walked the boardwalk and watched some of the guys doing their thing, but we were FREEZING and decided to go home and eat some Raclette (a traditional cheese dish that is so yummy).
The next day, Michelle, Alex’s new nanny arrived and all 5 of us set out to see downtown/oldtown Geneva. We walked around, visited a Cathedral, saw the Reformer’s wall, played in the park with Alex, and took lots of pictures! Then, we drove to Annecy, France. It is the largest city in that area of the country, but it used to be a small medieval town on the coast of Lake Annecy. It was beautiful! I cannot tell you how awesome it is to walk on cobblestone roads among buildings and fountains that are nothing like what we have in the US! It was so awesome! I thought Annecy was wonderful! After we walked in the old part, we took a stroll on the boardwalk of the Lake and decided to feed some ducks. However, once we stared to throw out some bread crumbs, flocks of seagulls came over and were catching the food in mid air! It was crazy, totally crazy! I have never seen anything like it before! Anyway, after this, we played a park and eventually went back to Ferney-Voltaire because Jared and I were leaving very early the next day.
All in all, it was a crazy-fun-filled-beautiful-three-day trip that we were not expecting! Thank you Julie, Roque and Alex! It was such a great time!
Click here to see more photos of France, and click here to see photos of Switzerland.
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