6. 5/10/22. Geneva and Environs

Greetings from Geneva. Hope all is well.

Started the day a bit late—- finished dinner late last night and we were probably on London time… and exhausted from our new ritual of walking at least 7 miles each day. Anyway, headed to lunch at a little place called White Rabbit, not too far from the hotel. I may have mentioned that we are staying at the Ritz Carlton (a little above our usual jaunts), but I had a lot of points and we decided to use them here. Everything is soooo expensive in Switzerland that you’d be paying a lot for a mediocre hotel so the points idea was a good one we thought. Anyway, breakfast here at the Ritz is about $60 per person. So we walked across the bridge to the other side of the lake and had a nice leisurely breakfast. And then we walked (mostly uphill) to the International Red Cross Museum which, despite having been to Geneva so many times, we had never visited before. 

We knew it would be about a 5-mile walk, but given our newly found walking ability we figured that would be fine and we could taxi back or take public transit. We were supposed to head to Elizabeth’s house at about 4:00. Had we realized when we set out that the walk to the museum would be mostly uphill, and that it would be an unseasonably hot day here, we might have opted for a taxi or transit for the outbound direction. Anyway, we survived the walk… barely, and the stairs to get up to the museum which is situated atop a hill. We learned later that the American Embassy is up above that museum. Glad we didn’t know that. We did walk past the Russian Embassy and saw all the barbed wire and multiple steel gates and the armed guard with a bullet proof vest. I’m sure the American Embassy (having been to other American embassies) is equally if not more guarded and has at least as many deterrents, Anyway, the guard didn’t look really happy.

We had no real information about the museum and sort of went on a lark. It turned out to be a really good decision. Dedicated to “promote understanding of the history, current affairs and challenges of humanitarian action in the world,” the very well-designed building (the result of an architectural competition) is divided into three primary areas, each of which has an exhibit that was created by a well-known architect and some well-known artists. Each explores different challenges faced by today’s societies:  Defending Human Dignity, Restoring Family Links, and Reducing Natural Risks. The exhibits are interactive, emotional, and extremely well presented. There’s also a chronology that tracks 150 years of humanitarian history. I was impressed.

We then ventured out to figure out our route to Elizabeth’s house in Carrouge (a sweet village adjacent to the city, but far less urban… although Geneva itself is—to my mind—a fairly calm, clean, safe, quiet city. We decided to take public transit and started out on a bus which took us to the train station where we got the tram; once on the tram it was a familiar route as we’d done that many many times before. However, as we left the museum we realized that we had neither a ticket for the bus or tram nor any small money to pay for the journey. I asked the woman at the reception desk at the museum if she could break a 50 CHF bill and she was happy to do it. I then asked how much the ticket would cost and if we needed exact change. She obviously is not a public transit user since she was unable to give us the information. She did, however, tell us that we needed to pay as close to the actual amount requested as possible since you don’t get any change back. She then went on to say how angry it makes her that the system takes all this extra money and decided to give me a 10 Franc bill and 40 Francs in coins!!! 

We got to the bus and there wasn’t any ticket machine so we went onto the bus and tried to explain to the driver, who just shooed us away and we took seats, without paying. When we got to the train station we tried to buy a ticket but somehow couldn’t get the machines to work. On prior trips the hotels always gave guests day passes for the entire stay so we never had to deal with this before. Anyway, at the station we had a bit of trouble finding the right tram, so I approached an African woman waiting for a tram and while she didn’t speak any English, my French was sufficient to ask where to get the number 18 tram. But she was frustrated that she couldn’t explain where we had to go, so she walked us around the corner to the right place! We thanked her profusely and boarded the tram (again without a ticket). Apparently it’s an honor system. 

We had stayed longer at the museum so we got to Elizabeth’s a bit late and to our surprise when we arrived Julia (Mike’s other niece) and her two children (Louis-4-1/2 and Ella – about 2-3/4 ) were there. Julia had just returned (a few hours earlier) from Maui—a grueling trip: Maui to Seattle; Seattle to London; London to Geneva—and the kids hadn’t seen their parents for about 10 days. We hadn’t expected to see them until tomorrow. So that was good fun. And despite the fact that everyone seemed tired, it was fun to see the kids. Ella is definitely in the two-year-old phase of saying “no” to most everything, especially going to bed. Louis has definitely matured since we saw him before Covid. It will be good to spend more time with them tomorrow.

Then Elizabeth, Mike, and I went to visit an old friend of Elizabeth’s whom we had met once before, some years ago. Her father had been the director of the Whitney Museum in NY and she has lived in Geneva since 1960. She’s quite interesting having lived in many places and been involved in the arts for decades. She also lives in a wonderful, modern house that she had built many years ago. We had champagne and smoked salmon and good conversation and then strolled back to Elizabeth’s for dinner. We chose to take a taxi back to the hotel as it was already past 11:00 and we probably would have collapsed enroute had we decided to walk back to the hotel.

Tomorrow is another day.

Stay well.

Fern