December 30 2024: Geneva

Greetings –

We managed to squeeze in a short visit with Emma who came to the hotel and it was nice to catch up.

Although Mike still is not completely better, we decided that some time outside the ‘rehab center’ (La Reserve Resort and Spa) might be invigorating. I had already decided that I was going to take the train into town, but at the last minute, Mike decided to join—thinking some exercise (walking) could be beneficial. So, following brunch, we ventured out into what the meteorologists said was a sunny day although cold… but that sun is quite elusive and in reality, it was yet again a typical Geneva grey day. It was also in the 30s. But we walked to the train (about 5 minutes) and went three stops to the Central Geneva Station where numerous trains going to and coming from diverse distant places converge. We had decided to head to a photo exhibit called “The Deadly Beauty of Cinema.” The exhibit, hanging on the walls of a former movie theater in downtown Geneva which is now undergoing a big transformation into a mixed use building that will include a cinema, included about 50 large-scale color photos depicting abandoned, reused/rededicated, and other movie theater buildings from about 10 countries, including the US (California and Texas), Cuba, France, Italy, Switzerland, and more. It was a good exhibit, well put together with minimum text but enough to understand the demise of the traditional movie theater.

From there we walked to the national bank. Turned out that I had brought with me about 200 Swiss francs that I had accumulated on previous visits but had never used because using a card is soooo much easier. But when I tried to use the francs the other day (thinking I might as well get rid of them as I am less and less likely to use them in the coming years), I was told that these were “old” francs, and no one can take them except the bank. Apparently, Switzerland periodically creates “new” (and better) currency (without changing value) and the old bills need to be exchanged for the new ones. My bills were from 2021. The new ones are smaller, don’t have pictures of any people, and are sort of plasticized. We walked over two bridges across narrow stretches of the Rhone to get to the bank and in a few minutes, I had fresh new Swiss franc bills.

We then strolled a bit, intending to see what might have been an interesting exhibit about urban spaces, but it was closed… did some window shopping, saw a parade, and finally walked back to the train to go three stops and walk four minutes to be back at the hotel. Saw the shoes in the picture and figured they’d be great for me (NOT!)

One piece of serendipity I forgot to mention yesterday. We had taken a taxi to visit with Elizabeth and we gave the address to the driver. As we approached the house, the driver whose English was awkward suddenly said “house of Julia, house of Julia”… and we realized somehow, he knew that Julia had grown up in that house. We tried to explain with our limited French and his limited English that Julia no longer lived there, but her mother was still there. We then determined that somehow, he knew Julia or he had a friend who knew Julia. We got his name and mentioned this to Julia, who thought the whole episode was pretty funny. She hadn’t seen him in more than 20 years; she crossed with him when she was in high school and had a retail job over Xmas and he, too, was working in the same shop! Switzerland is small, Geneva is very small, and Carouge is tiny…. So I’m sure these kinds of things happen often. But it was truly serendipitous for us to wind up in a taxi whose driver knew Mike’s niece!

Tonight we ate at the hotel’s other restaurant—Chinese (which is odd in Geneva since there is not much of a Chinese population). So, we were suspect, but we kept hearing over and again that this restaurant holds a Michelin star and that it is very special. Well, I’d give it a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. We have three favorite Chinese restaurants in Oakland/Berkeley which I’d give a 10 when compared to this and prices would easily be half. Mike chose very mild dishes, including your basic wonton soup and a noodles dish. He says the soup was lukewarm and was just your basic wonton soup that you could get anywhere. I had something called red rice roll with shrimp as a starter. It was good, but certainly not “great;” I had a Szechuan beef dish with the “special rice” and again it was good, but nothing to write home about. There was a little starter that the restaurant provided to everyone—a little shrimp wonton which was definitely overcooked and again not hot enough. But it was good that Mike at least ate something…

I spent about four hours on the phone before dinner dealing with our various hotel cancellations and the cancelation of our pre-paid new years eve dinner in Bulgaria. The plane flights were easy to cancel and get “credits” so we had done that on Friday. We had also started to cancel hotels on Friday and then hit all sorts of snags. After stating to the Munich hotel that since they would not cancel the reservation (with a refund), I told them that we were going to have other people stay in our room—and that we were contacting a homeless shelter to provide three good nights of sleep to two clients, the reservation manager (who stated “we accept everyone into our hotel”) somehow seemed to figure out how to cancel the reservation without charging anything to our credit card. We still need to show medical documents to the Sofia hotel, but that seems to be able to work. And for the New Years Eve Dinner which had to be prepaid and where the manager was absolutely unwilling to move at all on the pre-payment—we have contacted two NGOs and offered the dinner to two staff members. We have not yet heard from them, and I fear they are off for the holiday, so we don’t know what will happen there. These were all very uncomfortable and angry calls on all sides.

Hoping Mike perks up tomorrow.
All the best-
Fern