Watching, Eating, Learning…

Since we were in a country famousfor its cheeses, we had to make our way to at least one cheese making factoryto learn how its made. Thus we made our way to a little town and found ourselves at La Maison du Gruyere to learn how cheese is made and also watch a live demonstration as well. Before entering the enclosed area where you can watch the cheese-making process, we walked through a small exhibition which taught us about what the cows eat inorder to produce the required amount of milk for cheese-making. There is also an interactive display to smell the different types of flora of the pastures and of course cheese-tasting! It was a rather small exhibit but rather fun towalk through, and then after that it was off to the enclosed area to watch the demonstration.

Where milk churns to cheese

There are only 3 people making cheese in the area that we could see and it basically requires a lot of churning and stirring. After the cheese wheels are formed, comes the aging process of cheese wheel turning. It is a back-breaking task to mature the cheese and give it the complexity we taste. It is of course all automated now but overall there’s still a fair amount of labour involved. All very interesting but one mind-blowing fact to remember - cheese-making cows eat 100kg of grass a day! That’s more than a whole human’s weight (at least for some of us) in grass!!??

Endless rows of cheese wheels

Next, we headed to the Alimentarium. This is a food museum sponsored byNestle about all things cooking, eating and digesting.

It was a pretty fun museum andthey even have cooking classes there! There was a chocolate making class when we were there but you have to sign up in advance and it was in French. It’s a pretty hands-on museum so we had a lot of fun playing with the displays. One of the better exhibitions was about digesting and we had a lot of fun tasting food and playing the various games. They also had a garden outside featuring all our favorite salad leaves and herbs.

Vegetable Garden

Just outside of the museum is Lake Geneva, the weather was beautiful so we spent some time walking around. As one of the symbols of the museum is a fork, they stuck a fork sculpture into the lake, quite a funny sight.

Anyone dropped a fork?

That’s all for Switzerland, butis that the end of the Alps? Not yet, we have yet another taller mountain to ascend!

Yet more mountains and one waterfall

After leaving Lucerne, we made our way to Grindelwald for yet more mountains and hiking. Grindelwald is one the highest drivable points up to the swiss alps, and having a car meant, why not? Apparently there was an end of season open-air concert the weekend we were there so we were actually pretty lucky to get a room! We didn’t know about it til we were there but none of the artists appealed to us so no biggie.

Lake Thun (on route to Grindelwald)

Similar to Baden-Baden, you get a tourist pass when you check into the hotel, which gives you some discounts. With the pass, we were able to use the sport centre swimming pool for free so that’s what we did. It was really quite wonderful to plunge into a pool of warm water when it was so cold outside. The lovely view of the swiss alps from the pool certainly helped too!

View of Mount Eiger from our room

After a day of relaxing at the pool, we went hiking again the next day and it was freaking hot!! Due to the open-air concert, some of the trails were closed however that didn’t stop us though our original plan was to hike up and then take the cable car down. In any case, it was another heart-stopping cable car ride up and then we spent some time playing with the snow up in the mountains. Ski season was officially over, however there was enough snow for kids to learn how to ski and there were quite a few of them doing practice runs, pretty cute actually. We just fooled around and threw some snowballs at each other, lol... The hike down was pretty alright except for the sun beating down on us, the two of us got totally burnt!

Before the long hike, why not have ice cold beer?

After hiking at Grindelwald, we made our way to Trummelbach Falls which are the only glacier waterfalls inside the mountain and still accessible in Europe. It took us a while to find it as there were many other waterfalls around that region and we thought we could view it from the outside. It turned out that we had to take a lift up to view it up close. It’s enclosed within the mountain so the sound of the water gushing down at up to 20,000 litres per second is pretty deafening. It was a bit creepy as well cos it was quite dark and it was pretty late when we were there so it was also quite empty. It was a bit of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ moment when Frodo and Sam were in Shelob’s lair, as it was so dark, otherwise the sight was quite majestic to behold.

Totoros in the alps!!!

(not native to this region)

Picture perfect Lucerne

Having landed in Geneva in February, we knew how picturesque Switzerland is and Lucerne proved to be the same. We did a walking tour and while nothing stood out architecturally, the scenery was indeed beautiful and everything you imagine a Swiss town to be like. The only structures I remember from the walking tour were the Chapel Bridge and the Lucerne Culture and Convention Centre. The Chapel Bridge is Lucerne’s most famous landmark and is the best-preserved wooden bridge in Switzerland. It also has 122 interior paintings created during the period of the Counter-Reformation promoting the Catholic Church. It probably looked pretty fantastic during its time but it didn’t do much for me. As for the Lucerne Culture and Convention Centre, I remember the guide saying that it looks beautiful but is very difficult to clean, lol.

Chapel Bridge

Honestly speaking, Lucerne doesn’t have much to offer other than its views and maybe skiing. Since we don’t ski, we could only enjoy its views, namely by scaling two mountains, Mount Pilatus and Mount Rigi, and doing a lake cruise.

Mount Pilatus from afar

To ascent to Mount Pilatus during the summer, you can take a cog railway up, but since it was winter when we visited we had to take the heart-stopping cable car. I was rather freaked out actually and avoided looking down as much as I can though I did sneaked in a few peeks here and there. There was a dip for about 2 seconds where it felt like the car was free falling, that was an experience I wouldn't want to try again. CS says that could scare the sh~t out of anyone. When we reached the top and caught the spectacular views, it was an amazing feeling, amongst the mountain peaks. Though it was very high, it was surprisingly warm. The sun was blaring down and perhaps being closer to it makes you warm up faster.

"Top of the world" views

There was no heart-stopping cable car ride up Mount Rigi, instead it was a good old-fashioned train ride up after getting off the lake cruise. There were quite a few people hiking up the day we went and I really admire their determination. It was a seriously hot day and also 439m high!!! Again the views were pretty good and it was also different from Pilatus. Pretty glad that we went up both mountains in the end, though it was also seriously expensive to do so.

Wining and Dining

My update on our food journeys.

1. Chez Arno

Segny, France

13 Impasse du Vieux Bourg 01170 Ségny, France Segny France

Lovely little restaurant in a really small town.

Waitress couldn't speak English but was very welcoming and friendly. Had a few good laughs with her trying to understand the menu and in the end, the chef stepped out of his kitchen to tell us about his menu (first for us, anywhere in the world).

We started with the Rabbit Pate which was recommended by our hotel owner.

Never had rabbit before and enjoyed it. Complemented by slices of good French bread.

Rabbit pate with good ole French bread

The next 2 photos don't do the food much justice. I didn't have the patience to take a nice shot as the aroma was just too much to wait any longer to sink our teeth into it.

Veal with blue cheese sauce

Expected a pungent smell (as associated with blue cheese) from the sauce but was surprised with very flavorful grilled cheese aroma. Taste was just nice with the perfectly seared veal.

Veal with blue cheese

Beef steak with mushroom sauce

Perfectly medium well steak (not that the Chef gave me a choice, but maybe there is only one way to serve this steak).

Beef steak with mushroom sauce

Both served with potato gratin, brussel sprouts, carrots and a minced vegetable (texture like coconut but I suspect it could be fennel).

2. Roasted chicken place in Geneva

Roasted chicken with potatoes and salad

Food wasn't great in my opinion although place was recommend in guidebooks and hotel guides but I choose not to mention name or location.

The chicken flavor was lacking or completely overpowered by salt although roasting doneness and texture was good (meat was falling off the bone type).

Side dishes didn't complement and individually wasn't surprising, just normal.

I shall continue with more entries on our food adventure in Torino later on.

Had some pretty good dishes here.

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.

CERN and more Geneva

The Globe at CERN

Woke up bright and early yesterday to head down to CERN. Admittedly I never heard about CERN til I watched Angels and Demons but it was enough to pique my interest.

Anyhoo, we made our way there in time for our 1030am tour. Our tour guide was a young guy with a Phd (of course...) in Particle Physics (like duh...) and we started it with a video about the history of CERN etc. After that the guy opened up the floor for questions and all these people started asking questions which totally flew over my head! Some girl asked something about string theory and its connection to something and some young boy asked something chim too. I probably never felt as stupid as I did yesterday. Our guide was pretty good and I did understand some of his answers but most of it flew over my head. CS asked something too, but I can't remember what, will leave it to him to add it in here.

After that we went one of the detectors for the LHC, ATLAS to watch another video (!). Actually in all honesty the videos were a little boring to me at least but the scientists do have a sense of humor, on the first floor the 2 videos of the ATLAS project were named 'A New Hope' and something along the lines of 'The Empire Strikes Back', lol... After that it was more questions of which again I couldn't understand half of them. We spent most of our time there watching the video explaining about the LHC and after that we had time to explore around the first floor where there were more explanations. We also got to press the emergency button, haha... All in all pretty cool stuff and the explanations were more layman so it was better for my little bird brain.

The tour was supposed to take 2.5 hrs in total but we took more than that mainly due to the numerous questions asked. In total, we only went to ATLAS and no where else. After the tour ended, we went to the Globe of Science and Innovation to catch the exhibition 'Universe of Particles'. Again pretty cool stuff but CS was way more interested in it than me. After that, we went to the Microcosm to finish looking at the exhibitions.

Universe of Particles at the Globe

All in all, pretty educational though they should probably have separate tours for people like myself who is a complete physics idiot and people who are way more technically inclined. It did bring back some memories of secondary school physics though, which was honestly a bit of a nightmare for me. All in all, if you are totally in this kind of stuff or even if you're not, I do think a visit there is a must if you are in Geneva.

After the heady morning, we headed down to Old Town Geneva to basically walk around. The Old Town was well, old, haha.... We saw Cathedrale St-Pierre, Jet d'Eau, Old Arsenal, Hotel de Ville. Pretty productive eh, hehe... anyway after a while we stopped near a playground where tons of kids were playing, all I can think of watching them play was that it must be very tiring to have to wear so many layers to go out to play, lol... There were also a bunch of old men playing giant chess in a park, pretty idyllic life.

All the Swatch watches ever produced since 1983

While walking to take the bus back to Ferney-Voltaire, we chanced upon a Swatch exhibition. The exhibition supposedly had all the watches Swatch had ever produced from 1983 onwards, though there were some missing ones, perhaps under repair? We had a fun time trying to spot our Swatch watches in the collection.

Swatch with Champagne cork

So far, it still feels like we are on a 2 weeks holiday or something, perhaps when we are into our first month, it will feel more like our major big adventure.

United Nations and wandering around Geneva

After resting and doing nothing for the first day, we decided to be a little more productive on our second day, hehe…

First up, was to send in our visa forms to the French authorities. We have to drive to Ferney-Voltaire to get that sorted and then it was onto a bus to the UN building. The UN building is near quite a few other buildings such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), International School of Geneva, Red Cross Museum etc. We had lunch at the IOM and then walked down to the UN Building.

I had expected to see a row of flags at the UN building but there was only the UN flag. The building itself was of course impressive and security was obviously tight. We had to wait til 2pm before the doors were opened for us to register for the tour so we walked around a bit and took some photos. I got my photo taken for the visitor pass (only one person needed to get that done, between the two of us, strangely enough) and then it was off to pay for the tickets and then start our tour. We started our tour by going into one of those rooms you always see in movies where it’s a semi circle and all the interpreters are up there looking through the glass windows. The room was one of the smaller ones but it was still interesting to sit there and listen to some UN facts. I felt like I was on the movie set of ‘The Interpreter’.

Doesn't this look like the movie set?

UN Fact #1 : Only 2 countries remain which are not member states of the UN. The Vatican City and Palestine Territories. I thought it was a bit weird that Myanmar and North Korea are member states, also the guide didn’t mention Taiwan, haha…

UN Fact #2 : The 6 official languages used in UN are English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. Participants/ observers for the conferences etc just need to speak any one of the languages.

UN Fact #3 : Countries are arranged in alphabetical order, but if one country really doesn’t want to sit next to another, that can be arranged (haha…)

After that we moved on and the guide was telling us that the various art pieces around the building was donated by the various countries. China obviously donated a painting of the Forbidden Palace and I also saw figurines from Egypt, mosaic work from Jordan etc.

My little bird brain cant remember the name of the room we went to next but it was the biggest room of all and I think that’s where the major conferences are held. Actually the UN headquarters are in New York so most of the major stuff like security happens there but in Geneva, they have the human rights, WHO stuff etc.

The Spanish Room

Then it was off to another room where the Spanish government has paid for the renovations and thus its also known as the Spanish room. A Spanish artist had covered the walls and ceiling with paintings depicting progress and also the consequences of war, pretty interesting stuff. Apparently countries can volunteer to sponsor the renovations of rooms, which is what the Spanish government did.

The interesting thing to me was that the building had so many art pieces scattered all over. Some were obviously very old and probably extremely valuable but they were just all over the place. CS was saying that the Europeans really know how to appreciate art. I hardly think we will have that many art pieces all over government buildings in Singapore.

After the UN building, we went down to the city of Geneva to walk around. We originally wanted to find this restaurant in the guidebook to grab a quick bite but we forgot that we are in ang mo land and restaurants usually close after lunch time before opening again for dinner so we had to make do with kebabs instead. I honestly can’t remember if we saw any significant landmarks but just wandering around was pretty nice. It did get rather cold after a while and we then headed back to our hotel.

Next up, CERN!

Edit : Apparently we went to the non-official entrance for UN, thus no flags! We went to the correct one yesterday so this was the entrance I was expecting. In any case the entrance for the guided tours is not through here.

Main entrance to UN Building

There was also a chair with 3 legs outside the UN Building. The story behind the chair is to remind countries the horrors of landmines and to get countries to agree not to use landmines in times of war. Pretty effective way to get the message across, oui?

Chair with 3 legs outside UN

Landed!!!

After what seems like forever we have landed and also checked in to our hotel. Of course, we also took a nap in between and went grocery shopping (!) haha so its not like we just just checked into the hotel.

The flight from Singapore to Zurich was uneventful. We were lucky to have no one sitting next to us so I could lie down to sleep while CS slept upright (he prefers it this way and no I'm not bullying him, haha...). We both managed to watch 3 movies too, so all in all pretty alright. Both of us managed to sleep a little but well, how much can you sleep on a plane? The Zurich airport was alright I guess, I'm probably biased but I still think our own airport beats any out there, or maybe I just haven't been to the right airport yet. From Zurich to Geneva, the flight was crazy full. Though it was a small plane (think the ones you take to go to Bangkok) I just didn't expect it to be so packed! Anyway both CS and myself were so tired from the Singapore-Zurich flight both of us fell asleep almost immediately. After landing in Geneva we were supposed to exit at the French side to get our passports stamped for our visa but we just couldn't find it! Oh well, since we had already gotten our passports stamped in Zurich we have decided to leave it as it is and just send in our official forms to inform the French authorities we have landed. We were also pretty unlucky to have the wheels on one of our luggages broke on us! And it's only the first day!!

After that, it was off to get our car. The Renault guy came to pick us up and I think because we greeted him with Bon jour and I said merci when he helped us with our luggages he thought we can speak French, haha... He was pretty friendly and nice actually, we were warned that they may not help us with the car or go through anything with us but he was asking CS to check the car and also answering our questions and showing us the functions. After that, CS took a few spins around the car park to get used to driving on the wrong side, hehe.... Oh, we also placed our 3 totoros in the car, so its almost like we're driving our own car, especially since the number plate here is also red, hehe... Then it was off to pump some gazole (diesel) and also stock up on some groceries. After that it was off to the hotel (or rather lodges) to check in and get some shut-eye. The lodge is rather nice I must say, it comes with a fully equipped kitchen, so of course we are going to cook! Or rather CS is going to cook, I'll just boil water for tea. He is actually cooking fried bee hoon now for dinner! Not exactly classic french but we'll leave it to the experts when we have lunch tomorrow. We went to Carrefour after we woke up to get more groceries (!) and we actually spent about an hour inside, lol. Other people go sightseeing, we go grocery shopping, haha... Oh they don't have plastic bags here at all in the supermarkets so you either bring your own bag or buy one, luckily I packed the Xmas gift V gave so we have a nice grocery bag for shopping.

This is our lovely lodge with the fully equipped kitchen, fridge, tv, and bathroom. The owners are also really friendly and helped us out with all our questions. We have been lucky so far that the French we have met so far are quite nice, hehe.. Hope this continues for the rest of the trip.

Our dinner of fried bee hoon! Hehe..

First impressions so far, its cold but not freezing so that's nice. I can get away with 2 t shirts and a jacket. The scenery is also of course lovely with all the mountains as backdrops. Honestly we haven't really seen much of anything cos today was more about resting, getting used to the time difference and of course driving on the wrong side! Tomorrow will be settling our visa, walking around Geneva and visit to the UN building!

Lastly, thanks to all who came to the airport to send us off, we honestly didn't expect so many people to come! For a while, CS and I thought only MH will be there since she was coming to our house and we were driving down together, but in the end there were so many people! I actually felt quite bad cos the next day was a work day and I knew some of them had to wake up really early for work. So thanks again everyone, we really appreciate it. As for those who couldn't make it, we still love you anyway, hehe.. Actually we were packing right up to the last minute, so it was a big rush to get to the airport. Was supposed to meet YX as well but in the end she had to go in to catch her flight.

So, all in all, a really long day for us, good night everyone!