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Things in Geneva, illustrated

The town

There is a lake, and mountains, and lots of buildings. Oh, and people too.

[a 180 degree panorama from the lake]

It's a nice place to be 35 with kids. I'm told it's more expensive than Tokyo, now. You live there for the school system, but do your grocery shopping in France where it's cheap. The town itself is really small, at least compared to its reputation. You see things that would probably get destroyed anywhere else, like the giant chess sets in public parks.


The accomodation

We stayed with some friends of Ian, in a lovely little house not too far from the city part. They had four cats, movies of Ian when he was just a little boy, and used funny words like nonante and septante and linge instead of serviette.

The tourist landmarks

Tourists seemed nice and polite and blended well into the background, completely unlike here or Paris. I guess the ones who come here are forcibly interested in things like a gigantic water jet and walls dedicated to the Reformation.

I had real Mövenpick ice cream from their head cafe thing. Yum.

Things to sell tourists

Namely chocolate and knives. The knife thing has gone a little bit far, I think, when you start seeing things like this:

And of course, one of the laws of the space-time continuum of Geneve is that it is physically impossible to return without chocolate. Ian took me to what he considers the canonical chocolaterie: du Rhône. I looked at the prices and walked out again. 100 CHF ($/euro 70) is not a number you're supposed to see posted on the wall of a chocolate shop.

I decided instead to buy a small amount of chocolate from three different chocolate shops we ran into in the downtown area, and du Rhône wins the taste test. The lady in the shop was also the nicest. She suggested I take the same chocolates without a box to save money, and was also the only of the three to actually speak to me in French.

fêtes de genève

It was going on the week we were there. They have a web site. They took over the whole waterfront with lots of amusement park rides and booths selling overpriced exotic souvenirs and food. The food included stuff you'd never see in the American equivalent: tartiflette, raclette, crepes, gaufres (er, waffles), döner kebaps (which really need to be imported to the US soon) along with the random junky Indian, Chinese, Mexican, and hot dog stands.

The waterfront at night:

Amusement park rides

I liked the fact that most of the rides were in German. I don't think Ian understood why I thought it was funny. They were horrendously overpriced: 4-5 CHF each, which is something like $/euro 2.50-3.50. Normally part of the thrill of these rides is that you know they're probably not all that safe, and yet you're still stupid enough to get on, strap in, and be thrown around in all directions at ridiculously high speeds. They get scarier every year to keep up with the crowds demanding more adrenaline, I guess. I convinced Ian to go on one of the less alarming ones: a slightly modified octopus ride that turned in two additional directions, including upside down and around. It was... interesting... the ride operator kept adding dimensions of rotation, colored spotlights, loud music, strobe lights. It was like an experiement in sensory overload, and after a few minutes I actually felt myself go beyond some threshold of passiveness. Kind of like zen, only that it was hard to walk afterwards because of the post-adrenaline thing.

The fireworks

The highlight of the fêtes is the fireworks show at the end. We got to climb onto the roof of an uncle's apartment building on the lakefront for the best view in town. It's rather difficult to take pictures of fireworks, but the choreography was really impressive. The coolest thing I saw, I think, was the green lights that exploded in the air and then stayed alight on the surface of the lake for a long time.

This one is neat because of the way the water is lit up.

They were really big and close.

At the end they light up the water jet.


Posted by nadia on August 13, 2002 05:41 PM |

Comments

"I convinced Ian to go on one of the less alarming ones"

What you don't mention is that you refused to go on the other scary ones. :-P

Oh, and yeah, even I think that Fr 5.- (around $3.50) for a glass of orange juice is overpriced. Then again, name one other fair where you can get glasses of freshly pressed lychee juice or bowls of raspberries as well as cans of beer. I guess choice costs.

Posted by: Ian Hickson | August 14, 2002 02:11 AM

Waffles my ass.

Also, what the hell is a kebap? Unless you strange people have a different way of spelling Doner Kebab...and that would just be odd. They're also evil, horrible, horrbile things which are only consumed after much alcohol. I am proud to say that one has never passed my lips.

I'm gonna have to do this photo thing sometime. Definitely adds colour to a blog.

Posted by: Phil | August 14, 2002 10:00 AM

I've seen kebab spelled 'kebab' 'kabab' 'kebap' and I think 'kebob' too. So much for phonetic standardization. I like 'kebap' because it distinguishes the food item in question from a shish-kebab (or 'kebab' for short), a skewer. I bet it's the same word and it actually just means meat or something.

Maybe the doner kebabs you British people make are horrible, but I quite liked the ones I had in Berlin. It's more than an entire meal for about 2.50 euros. (Note: what normally passes for a sandwich around here is a horrible bland thing. Kebabs are much better. Makes me miss places like Intermezzo.)

Posted by: Nadia | August 14, 2002 01:32 PM

For the love of god. dictionary.com lists kebab, kebob and kabob where the latter are a variant on kebab. What is wrong with the world to cause this shit going on?

The traiditional british doner kebab is this..

A piece of pita bread folded around some chunks of warm rat/dog. It's certainly not prime meat. This is then covered with salad (if wanted) and then chilli sauce and mayo.

I used to think that getting one of these things was the worst possible thing to do in life. Then i saw one of my ex housemates eating a "microwavable doner kebab." I've never quite recovered.

Posted by: Phil | August 14, 2002 02:32 PM

Ok, I think I see what you british people are getting wrong: sandwiches are supposed to have fresh vegetables in them. I did, in fact, have the worst sandwich I've ever had in my entire life in Britain. I should have figured.

So yes, the sandwich base consists of pita bread + weird meat shavings. I think it's pork, but you can also get chicken sometimes. The rotating shaft of meat is the international symbol for kebab, for any americans reading. Then you have your choice of garlic, chili, and some other kind of sauce that I never understood because it was in German, and *then* (most importantly) the sandwich is piled with all sorts of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and I forget what else.

The reason it's good, of course, is that the meat is flavored, garlic sauce is damn tasty, and fresh veggies are crunchy and yummy. Phil, I suggest you move to a country that knows what cooking is.

Posted by: Nadia | August 14, 2002 03:27 PM

Phil is correct that the meat is rat, or dog, it's not pork, or chicken (the light coloured ones they say is chicken was the local tramp population.) That said most kebab shops you get around here give you the fresh salad, vegetables, and fruit.* Of course maybe London is more sophisticated than wherever Phil may be...

All kebobs (my favourite spelling) other than Doner are very nice, doner is just minced up bits of any old crap formed into lump with lots of lard.

Jim.

* lettuce comes from the "salad" family, toms from "fruit" and only onions and cabbage from the "veggies"

Posted by: Jim | August 14, 2002 03:53 PM

Y'all missing the fundamental point that all food in the UK sucks. The equivalents in continental Europe or in the US are automatically nicer by orders of magnitude.

Posted by: Ian Hickson | August 14, 2002 04:28 PM

Ah, You don't think that the problem is actually the westc'ntry a place where people are too busy shagging their cousin and drinking zider to ever cook - come to London...

Posted by: Jim | August 14, 2002 05:10 PM

If i knew how to take offence at a comment, i might be inclined to take offence at that one :)

There's nothing wrong in this, the place of farmers and tra'ors (tractors).

Actually I disagree with you both. Food does not fundamentally suck in the UK. There are many fine establishments who serve great food. I've been to several in Bath and London. (My kitchen being one of the best ;) )

Also, I don't have any cousins living in the west country to enjoy that particular luxury and the only people known to drink cider are 16 year olds. Nobody older than that drinks the stuff because they can all remember a really bad incident that happened when they drank cider and were 16.

My main objection (agreeing with Jim) was to the rat/dog used in kréßöppies. Also the bizarre link to them and massive food poisoning and sickness. I believe the latter is from mixing them with alcohol.

Posted by: Phil | August 14, 2002 05:26 PM

Oh come on. I don't know anywhere in the UK which can serve food better than Mountain View's Burrito Real, to take one example (and an expensive meal there is just $10).

Plus, UK citizens are desensitised to the poorness of UK food at a young age, so you probably wouldn't notice the problem anyway. I haven't noticed much in the way of really good food in London. Not that I've been there that much.

Posted by: Ian Hickson | August 15, 2002 12:01 AM

Hmm... Hixie your argument is similar to "Oh c'mon I don't know any browser better at css than IE 4, not that I've actually looked elsewhere." live a little in London find some good food. There's good and bad food everywhere - it purely depends on where you go (within the city) and what you eat.

Phil - I really shouldn't've said that, I actually have 3 cousins living in Bath, and another 10 or so living even further west...

Oh yeah and Hixie, I stole your mowmow for http://jibbering.com/2002/8/text-mixup.svg hope you don't mind...

Posted by: Jim | August 15, 2002 03:13 PM

Originally, my post had comments to the effect of London being a special case and not really representative of the whole of the UK ("it sucks, but in different ways"). I cut that out, without realising that it made my argument weaker. My bad.

Regarding the image: would have been cool if you'd asked me first, but that's ok! :-) See http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1029429358&count=1 for further comments on the matter. :-)

Posted by: Ian Hickson | August 15, 2002 06:41 PM

Actually, food in the UK is far better than anythingh I've had in the US. I live in New York at the moment and everyone raves about their food, but in all honesty, food in London at the finer establishments is far better than the quality of food in London.

Yes, if you want shit food, then go to a hole in the wall and buy a doner kebab. Or some fish and chips. But whats the US equivalent? macdonalds, hot dogs and other crap too.

quality restaurant food in London is as good and better than anywhere you could find in the world.

There is any cuisine you want. The only problem compared to places such as Melbourne (another city I would rate as high or higher than London for food) is that London is ridiculously expensive. New York on the other hand has a good selection of fast food Pizza places, a tonne of shitty diners that serve oily brunch, and farcically bad attempts of mediteranean cuisine.

Posted by: Ben | April 19, 2003 12:37 PM

When I say everyone raves about their food, I'm talking about Americans. They think everything about themselves is way better than anything the rest of the world does, yet only 7% of them even have passports, fewer have travelled to Europe, so please explain to me how they could possibly know that they have good food. Fact is, London, may have at one time 20 years ago lacked decent rectaurants, but it has some of the best today.

Posted by: Ben | April 19, 2003 12:40 PM

"Hi guys! Talkin' about food I see! Yeah sometimes I eat food too; by the way, Americans sure suck huh? Man do I hate Americans. Here let me list all the ways I am superior to America."

Posted by: Ralp | August 17, 2005 05:30 PM

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