Geneva Diary Part 2

So today, apart from lovely food and knitting, we went for a walk to the lake and beyond. I am staying with a friend who lives a few minutes’ walk from everything so getting about is easy.
Like most European cities apart from the UK, Geneva has buses, trains and trams running on 25 Dec. There are even some tabacs and cafes open. The lake is beautiful, and from there you can see that Geneva is almost completely enclosed by mountains – well, mountains to me and to most, though some might designate the flatters ones ‘dodds’.

The cold was fierce – perhaps the base temperature alone wasn’t too bad, but the wind sliced at my cheeks rather uncomfortably.

Over the river, one comes to the Old Town, though all of Geneva seems old to me, stuck in the whites and greys of mid-twentieth-Century architecture. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but it did make me expect to hear Claude François playing on the radio every time I entered a shop.

Up steep, narrow cobbled streets to the Old Town and the Cathédral St-Pierre which we entered. It’s a beautiful 12th-Century structure with a high, vaulted central corridor and some nice little carvings. Nothing ornate, but very lovely. Sat for a while warming up and watching an orchestra rehearse for a concert in the evening. My cheeks thawed first, then my hands, then I started to feel the cold in places I hadn’t noticed before. My whole body was implicated. Sitting in the warm cathedral, listening to music being played and halted and taken up again was quite soporific. It made sense to leave for a coffee and come back later for the concert.

There was a curious little crêperie round the corner, open, and decorated in a very bizarre Tropi-suisse style. I had an overly sweet mulled wine and eavesdropped on the very disorganised staff who had to have a panicked conversation about what each customer had consumed (they never wrote anything down) every time a bill was requested. It may have been a family business – the brother and mother of one of the girls came in at one point and took a table.

As we were leaving, an American couple came in and asked what time they served ‘til. 2am! Thought about returning there at midnight for crêpes just for the fun of it, but it was so cold after the concert I decided to make some instead. This led to a bit of a treasure hunt for brown sugar (to make caramelised bananas to go on the crêpes) and the discovery that some grocery items have different names in France and Switzerland (kind of like the way English and American differ). I never thought of that (though, like the Belgians, they do say ‘nonante’ here for ninety).

Concert, walk home, thawing period, dinner, Toy Story. A very pleasant day.