June 14 Bern to Geneva

Last updated on September 6th, 2023 at 03:34 pm

Photos from Geneva
Video Summary of the Day

Joyce woke up a little before 6 and the room spun as she opened her eyes. Laying still helped. She got up for a few minutes, got a drink of water, etc. Alan woke up, and she went back to bed. More than an hour later, she woke up again, very surprised she had slept that long! She was less dizzy, but nauseous. Thinking she needed to eat, Alan brought her a banana. It stayed  down so she began to prepare for the day. We got a later start than we had planned, but Alan found a train that we could make that arrived in Geneva by 11:30 a.m.

We got our luggage packed, ate some cheese and nectarines and were on our way. Just outside the train station we were handed a bread roll, to encourage us to vote for someone, we think. We found the platform for our train, had a seat and shared the bread while waiting.

The train arrived and the 1st and 2nd class cars were not arranged in typical order, i.e., several 1st class then several 2nd class. We found a 2nd class car, but the luggage area had a bike in it. We went to the next car, found room for our luggage, then realized it was a 1st class car. Time was running short, so we boarded the next 2nd class car we saw. There was also a bike in this luggage Alan scouted for a place for the luggage, but train ready to leave.  We stood with our luggage for about 20 minutes until Fribourg, the 1st stop. Alan took bigger bags three cars back. Joyce went to upper floor walking through the cars and met Alan. There were seats near a carrier for our backpacks that had us sitting sideways for next part.  At Lausanne quite a few people got off, so we moved closer to our luggage facing forward for the last part.  Variety!  During all this, Joyce continued to feel quite nauseous, so she put sea bands on her arms and kept her eyes closed as much as possible.

Train Station in Geneva was pretty easy.  Except that we had to take our luggage down stairs…well we didn’t see there was a ramp on the other side until we were down.  We walked straight from the train to the hotel.  There was a room ready for us on the 6th floor! We rested for just a little bit before we went out for a bite for lunch.  Joyce still wasn’t feeling the greatest, but not sure why or what.  She left the sea bands on her arms and took non-drowsy (supposedly) Dramamine. Maybe some residual altitude sickness from yesterday?

We haven’t been eating much at all, so decided to be more intentional today.  We saw a Subway on the way to the hotel, and a sandwich sounded good.  However the equivalent 6 inch sub (15 cm) was about 15 Swiss Francs ($1.12 to 1 franc). There was a local place just next door that had some interesting sandwiches for less money as we walked by, and some tasty looking pastries as well!  You know who won!

Joyce was up for trying to walk over to the Saint Peter’s Cathedral and the Old City area.  As usual, it was up hill to the cathedral, and was a bit taxing.  The first place we came to was the hall where the early Reformers met to study the teachings of the Reformation leaders in the 16th Century.  It is now known as the Auditorium of Calvin.  

Next we came to the Museum of the Reformation, which was on Alan’s list to visit.  It is located in one of the buildings near the Cathedral where the early leaders met as well.  We started with an amusing 7-minute cartoon giving the history of the Reformation movement.  [Couldn’t find that particular one, but here are a couple of other videos in the same vein you might enjoy: Luther and the Protestant Reformation and A Fun, Animated History of the Reformation …) Joyce suddenly felt pretty weak and extremely tired and decided to sit in the lobby while Alan went on to explore the exhibits.  

There were early Bibles, letters between the Reformers, paintings, and artifacts associated with people like John Calvin, Zwingli, Martin Luther, and many others.  It was arranged largely in chronological order with some thematic components as well, as the Catholic Church, the Reformers, and the politicians warred over the concepts and the power. It was fascinating to see this era of church history, and to see the artifacts that have been preserved from that time. We can be pretty certain that many of our Swiss ancestors and others from Germany and France were directly influenced by this new and radical way of thinking. It would have been nice to have even more time to digest it all (Not thinking about the Diet of Worms here…a Reformation joke).

Joyce decided to try to come in a bit later, and found some chairs in the various exhibit rooms.  The final room (that we visited) had an 8-minute set of church music from around the world as a result of the Reformation.  It was accompanied by a unique light show with colored lights that were bounced off moving rectangles of glass that simulated changing stained-glass windows.

The Cathedral of Saint-Pierre was vey near the Museum of the Reformation and Joyce really wanted to see it. Alan was graciously offered to walk her back to the hotel, but Joyce thought she could see the cathedral and then see how she was feeling. 

Built over a span of some 70 years from 1160 to 1230, with later additions, Geneva’s vast cathedral is a mish-mash of styles, from the Gothic to the Neo-Classical and a mix of Catholic and Protestant symbolism. The building was somewhat plain with stone walls and pillars, but the stained glass windows were beautiful with the afternoon sun shining through.

As we were walking out of  the cathedral to our left was the Chapel of the Maccabees. It was vey different from the cathedral , very ornate with a beautiful painted ceiling, and intricately carved wooden alter area. 

Alan wanted to check out the archeological site of the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre so Joyce found a bench in the shade under a tree and sat, enjoying the cool breeze and people watched. Archaeological evidence, unearthed in the 1970s, show that there has been a Christian church on this site since at least AD 360. A complex of 4th-century ecclesiastical buildings were erected here – and subsequently built over repeatedly until the 1100s, when the complex was razed and work began on the present Gothic-Romanesque cathedral.

The museum allowed us to walk through the ruins on slightly elevated walkways.  There was an audio guide that described what was being displayed along the way.  They used a colored square to indicate the dates of the different parts of the ruins, since there was always something more recent built on top of the older parts.  It would have been possible to spend quite a while there, but there were more things to do and see.

One of our goals for the day had been to see the wall of Reformers at the University of Geneva.  It was sort of on the way back to the hotel, so Joyce decided to give it a go The weariness had subsided some. It was downhill now, so that helped.  About 20 minutes later, we made it to the park and the wall.  It’s a pretty impressive monument in a very nice little park.  

From there, we decided to add on the other thing we planned to do, which was go to the sector where the United Nations offices of Europe are housed.  It was quite a ways away, and Alan was going to go on his own via the bus system, but Joyce had a second wind, and riding didn’t sound so bad.  So we identified the bus, and it was at the right place at the right time, just outside the park entrance….except that we didn’t understand that the bus number alone wasn’t enough to know which bus.  You also needed to know the direction the bus was heading.  Several stops on our nice bus ride, Alan realized that the stops were also listed in Google Maps…and they didn’t match the places we’d been.  So we were going in the opposite direction again!  We got off, got it sorted out in another bus or two (with a scare from a pleasant lady passing by who told us the women bus drivers were on strike, and that might have us waiting for a while).  We did find the right bus fairly quickly and were on our way across Geneva.  

The Botanical Garden was next to the UN site, and the bus we were on was going there, so we got off and walked, but got the park along the lake first.  It was a little longer walk through a pretty place, but added more time and steps on to the journey.  By the time we got to the actual place we intended, Joyce was pretty worn out, so found a bench to sit on while Alan took off through the flower garden to take many, many pictures.  She caught up pretty quickly, since the flowers had a draw on her as well.  A lot of young families were in the park playing as well.

We then took off on our trek to the UN and the site of the Broken Chair monument.  As has been the case, the walk was a bit longer than Joyce had hoped, but when she saw the chair in the distance, it gave her the drive to finish.  She is getting really good at finding bench where she can sit and enjoy the sights. Next to The Broken Chair is a fountain with the water spouting form the floor in various interval. Children and adults alike were enjoying the water on this warm and sunny day.

The Broken Chair Monument is a giant red chair with one leg that’s been broken off is a ‘symbol of both fragility and strength, precariousness and stability, brutality and dignity….Broken Chair is a reminder to the world’s nations to protect and aid our civilian victims.  It invites each one of us to denounce that which is unacceptable, to stand up for the rights of individuals and communities, and call for their rightful compensation.’

The bus stop we needed was next to the monument and UN site, so we tried a new form of transportation for this trip – a tram.  It was about a 20-minute ride back to the central bus/rail terminal, so we settled in.  Except that the tram was stopped one stop short of the terminal, so we all had to get out and walk the last part.  At least this helped get our steps for the day up a bit (16,000 for Alan and 14,000 for Joyce, the trooper)!

We got back to the hotel and rested/worked on pictures for a while and then walked a couple of minutes away to a nice Italian restaurant.  But the menu was all in Italian, so a young man from Marseilles who waited on us got a chance to practice his English to explain the menu.  He was very patient, and thanked us for helping him with his English.  We ordered a Caesar salad to split, and  Tagliatelle pasta (long, wide, flat noodles) with Boscaiola sauce (beef and mushrooms) for Joyce and Gnudi (pasta balls stuffed with spinach) with Saumon a la Nerano, courgettes, croquantes et menthe (essentially salmon and vegetable sauce) for Alan.  It was a lot of food!  We turned down desserts and coffee to the surprise of our waiter.

We walked back to the hotel, Joyce made her way to bed, and Alan worked on pictures and some blogging.  A full, full day!