A Trip Down the Garden Path

Hi Everyone, long time no talk. I have a little down time, so I thought I'd fill you in on what we've been up to recently. We had a lovely time with Glen's ma, it was a whirlwind of Brighton adventures, Paris, Bath, Nottingham and London. I know she had a great time too and took home some great little pressies and memories.

We also packed up the flat nearly two weeks ago. We sold everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, even down to the cups and plates and cooking utensils. It was pleasing to get some money for all our stuff, so we had very little to donate to the charity shop. After a morning of cleaning the inspector came around and we were pleased to be told that the flat looked amazing, cleaner than when we got it, had we got a cleaner in? He asked. No we did it ourselves, thankyou...thankyou very much. Chuffed.

So that brings me to the here and now. We've spent a lovely four days in Geneva, Switzerland. It's not as big as I thought it would be, nor is it super modern and super clean, as I also thought. But it certainly is as expensive as I knew it would be, just the general costs of living (accommodation and food). It's the most expensive place we've been in Europe. Take this for instance, a kebab from the dodgy little store on the street is about 9CHF, which is about 9.50AUD. We priced a cheese foundu at an averge looking cafe, 23CHF and a frozen pizza at the supermarket is 8CHF. So it's been variations of ham, cheese, tomato, capsicum and carrot toasted sandwiches for us over the last few days, all cooked up in the hostel kitchen. And of course, lots of Swiss chocolate. There are a gazillion different flavours over here, pistachio, mazipan and coffee are interesting to note. And it's soooo delicious. I read somewhere that the average Swiss person eats 11kgs a year, and I worked that out to be 110 blocks (they're smaller blocks over here than what we're used to). Wowee, and I thought I was a chocoholic. Certainly a lifestyle I could tolerate, oh if I had to.

Here are a few of the things we've done in Switzerland...

Just love how nature looks here, that's all

And here

The UN headquarters. Deals primarily with humanitarian matters, NYC headquarters does other things

One of the conference rooms

This ceiling was a donation from Spain. It represents the sea in all its diversity and reflects the diversity of the nations that meet in the room, awww.....

No smoking of any of the above in the UN rooms, do people still smoke pipes?

An installation to acknowledge those who die from landmines, pretty powerful I reckon.

Cooking in the hostel kitchen. The one night we didn't have toasted sandwiches, but pasta instead

Can you see the price of this watch????

Making the practical imparactical

Swiss chocolate

And more of the stuff, mmmm......

The Jet d'eau, in Lake Leman, around which Geneva is situated. Pretty

Roasted chestnuts

A funny sign on the sidewalk near our hostel, far too much info me thinks...

We took the cable car up Mont Saleve and did some hiking around for the day. This view is looking down upon Geneva

The countryside

We came across this maze outside a Buddhist Monastery on the Mountain (go figure), it was lots of fun. A lot like a giant version of the game Mouse Trap

Watching paragliders (is this the right word?) take off

At CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research . Here we are exploring the make up of our world

The internet was invented on this computer, cool

I believe this is a display peice of the Large Hadron Collider. This massive tube circles Geneva 100m down and 27km around. In it, scientists speed up the rotation of particles, faster than the speed of light, to recreate the conditions of the big bang and to ultimately find out how our world came into being...wow

Building holding the second exhibition

Inside, an audiovisual presentation that outlines the creation of the earth

Rosti for dinner again, I think not, we're not very good rosti makers. Cheese, yes please.