The Cross, the Watch and the Weird

Our last day in Geneva was rather educational, we went down to 3 museums!

First up was the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in the morning and whaddaya know, there was a whole bunch of teenagers on excursion too! Just our luck... We wanted to rent the audio guide but it was all reserved for them. The guy at the counter was quite funny, he was telling us the exhibits were rather self-explanatory and the teenagers need the audio guides cos 'they don't read anything', haha.. After we bought our tickets and went down for the first exhibit, there was another tour group there as well! Apparently it was a popular day to go down to the museum.

One of the founding fathers of the Red Cross, Henry Dunant

Apparently the Red Cross is known as the Red Crescent in Muslim countries out of respect for their religion. Some of the functions of the Red Cross I feel is pretty similar to the UN, but I guess there can never be too many people championing the same cause.

Exhibit on the horrors of land mines

The exhibits about the current work of the Red Cross were the more interesting ones to me. They had a few small exhibits on their current work, like social programmes such as AIDS, homelessness, aid for land mine victims, protection for prisoners etc. All in all, a pretty good museum to visit.

Then it was off to hunt down our lunch, which will be posted by CS.

After that, it was off to the Patek Philippe Museum. We mistakenly thought that there was a guided tour but apparently it's only available on Saturday. The museum was positively oozing with money and grandeur, as can be expected of Patek Philippe. Well, I guess they have to live up to their tagline of 'You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation'.

No camera was allowed in the museum so no pictures. Suffice to say, if you are a watch lover, you probably think you died and went to heaven. Apparently Patek Philippe was set up by 2 Polish businessmen but its now owned by the Swiss. It was an interesting museum to go but after a while, all the watches got to me. They had like a mini workshop on the first floor where there was an actual guy doing something to a watch. Whether it was for show or the guy actually does work, it was interesting to observe nonetheless. Obviously someone who is more into watches can tell you all the technical aspects of watch-making and if we actually had a guided tour, it would probably be more informative. They apparently have one lady who does enameling work exclusively for Patek Philippe and she produces 1-3 watches a year! After her polisher retired, she had to go learn it herself cos no one else could do it, it's totally crazy.

Finally, it was off to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. There was only one floor opened for visitors so we got in for free! Hehe... honestly I don't think I got all the pieces that were on display but I did rather like the series by On Kawara. I didn't know who he was but I thought the 'I Got Up' and 'I Met' artist books were quite interesting. No pictures of those though.

Can't remember the artist who did the below but the colors appealed to me. I actually felt like going in to play with the blocks but I didn't, haha... Although I do wonder if anyone would have stopped me or just let me be, since it is Modern and Contemporary Art afterall, hehe...

Colorful blocks which reminds me of Lego

And that concludes our last day in Geneva! We had a lovely dinner at Segny, which I'll leave to CS to post.