TGVs- photos to come.

I love TGV transport. Our departure from Geneva wasn't easy. The train had been replaced by a bus for the first 50km which was a real pain, and involved a fair bit of lugging our gear around. Bagging the terns isn't the ideal way to move them, and with all the bracing they require in preparation for assault by handlers, you can't unfold them and wheel them around. At 17kg each, carrying two plus a backpack isn't fun in the heat. Mary had her own fun trying to manage two uncooperative Aldi sports bags plus her backpack plus Satchel and bag of food. We look like a camel train without the camels!

But once you board the TGV and find your seat it's wonderful. Air conditioned… power output. I'm working on this blog at over 100kph and it's pretty quiet. You forget about the velocity until a train goes the other way and the suction jolts you and your carriage even seems to lift a little… or you enter a tunnel and your eardrums billow out of your external meatus.

So the end approaches dear reader. Sorry I've been slack in the last segments… finishing this blog with a bit of a rush. It's been such a full and fulfilling holiday. The only pleasures that await are the Novotel at CDG, CDG itself and Singapore Accor hotel.. I'll report from these if there's anything notable.

Rural existence and juxtapositions

Rural existence 

Mouvis is hardly rural, and Marc-Andre laughed when I described it as such, but their house is old (built early 1800s) and the neighbourhood is dispersed enough that neighbours seem not close.

Not far from Mouvis.. definitely rural here.

While there is a freeway quite close, it is submerged in a valley, and the sound is vague only- it becomes inaudible as the brain's built in noise cancelling technology does its work

In St Julien en Genevois. What is this?

Some poppy shots.

I love these flowers

Mouvis is also the situation of my favourite tree in the world. It's the cherry tree that on my last visit was replete with (admittedly slightly over-ripe) dark luscious cherries. On that occasion I overindulged. On this visit, global warming and the disruption of the seasons had determined that the tree had finished fruiting… nothing remained. In addition it had suffered the indignity of a severe pruning, reducing it from the majestic giant to a crew cut punk tree. I gave it a hug nevertheless and look forward to a future meeting. Meryl was great as a cherry scout, and managed to repeatedly arrive with kilos of cherries. As our time in Geneva continued, the cherries became cheaper and cheaper. The last batch was only 2 euros a kg (about $3) from the supermarket, and were still superb. 2 kg was consumed within an hour. I didn't realise they were to share!

Sunset over Mouvis

The other feature of Mouvis is Max, the very hairy and now old (12 ans) Golden Retriever. Max spends much of his day looking longingly through the gate, waiting for a walk or attention. We took him for a walk on our last morning.

You may notice that there's no photo of Max here... it's coming.  

Juxtapositions

One thing that differs from home is that in France, you can be in a residential area, and in between two apartments you might find a field of corn, or wheat. There doesn't seem to be the zoning that we are familiar with. They do have a zoning system (for example many towns have a Zone Commercial) but there seem to be many exceptions. It's not unusual to find, for example, a garage or tyre repair service next to a convenience store, right in the heart of a big city, with cars all crammed in and overflowing onto a residential street.

Slow life and fast lane juxtaposed.

How much of this is planned? Maybe it's historical, with some industries evolving from others that extend back decades. Nevertheless, it's noticeable to me, coming from a young and essentially town planned Australia.

Dinner and Lunch and our French family

I love the kitchen at Mouvis.. scene of some of the best bread consumption ever

It all happens here.. Steph and Rani cooking while Meryl and Marc-Andre supervise

The weather in Geneva was sultry, cloudy or wet for most of our visit. In fact, this is consistent with each of my three recent visits, but Marc-Andre insists "It's not normally like this". He normally says this, because sunny days are, in my experience in Geneva, limited to the week before my arrival or the day of departure and following days. Such is life.

Because of this we weren't able to enjoy dinner in the garden, which is a treat that Marc-Andre and Catherine really look forward to.

Garden in evening

A highlight dinner was our visit to their city apartment, overlooking the airport. What a view! I have a plane identifying app, so the apartment serves a dual purpose as residence and observation tower. Catherine loves being close to work, but still has a problem with being so close to those jets!

In the skies near the city apartment.. conflict

On the last full day, I cycled into town and had a wonderful lunch at the Ariana Museum, dining on the balcony, sipping Simalco and enjoying a hearty salad with a citron tart.

Lunch on the balcony

 It was wonderful to have a quiet chat with Marc-Andre, opportunities being limited at home on account of the resident cricket team of guests.

Some images from my ride home after lunch...

Camille, Hadrien and Caroline all made appearances this visit, and we had one night watching them shouting at the TV as Germany beat Argentina in a match that I could only describe as 99% boring 1% exciting.

The TV room.. about to watch the game.

Hadrien was great company, and we all had a lunch in town near his work

Not a great shot.. but that's our lunch

Camille was also a wonderful guide and taxi driver. The trip to return the hire car to the French side of Geneva airport was a particular talking point, involving getting closer by increments, nearly driving on the airport tarmac and making a final surprise approach by leaving the airport, driving several kilometres over the border and returning to within 50 metres of where we had been. I'm sure we shook off any spies who were trying to follow us. I was a little sad to say goodbye to the Citroen with its built in GPS which had proved incredibly reliable. We had formed quite an attachment to Martin and Martine, the voices who always stayed calm even when repeating "Where possible, do a U turn". 4700km later, all was well. We had managed to all cram in, getting by with a smaller vehicle than planned on account of the correct vehicle having been commandeered by others before Rani did the initial pickup.

Rani and Nik were heading home via Milan, where I suspected some serious shopping was in order. Mary and I were heading home via CDG where I suspect some serious stressful situations might evolve. Coincidentally, Lis and her daughter Esther were also heading home from Europe with a couple of days stopover in Singapore. We were all converging on Melbourne at about the same time. We might even see E and L in Singapore airport for 10 minutes between our arrival and their departure!

The United Nations and the Red Cross.

Geneva is an amazing city. It's home to diplomacy, humanitarian endeavours, bankers, the extreme rich, and a poor underclass who service the place, with little right to exist. Switzerland has a reputation for ejecting its guest workers if they become a liability. Of course too, Switzerland has conveniently avoided joining the European economic Community, but has hedged its bets nicely. Every time the EU enacts a new policy, it's not unusual for Switzerland to undertake similar reforms so that if it wanted to, it could join the EU tomorrow, without legislative upheaval. 

The inconvenience of the Swiss independence is that if you can't be bothered exchanging your Euros for Swiss Francs, you pay premium. The benefit of independence is that a hell of a lot happens here that is important to the world. The UN is one such thing. We did a tour of the United Nations building and gazed down on a Conference room in use. I spotted the Australian flag, but was unable to identify the representative. I made it my personal mission to let the other people on the tour know that Tony Abbott is largely perceived as ignorant and out of touch, and that his policies on immigration and refugees are an embarrassment to us all (or nearly all). The UN guide was cuttingly aware of our national xenophobia, but some of the tour participants were shocked when they heard about our offshore piracy practices on refugees, and the breaches of the UN charter of rights. 

The UN building in Geneva has a new and old section. The bookshop was worth a visit. I saw a book about Edward Snowden on sale for $20. I was able to download a copy to my iPad Kindle app for 9.99 using the UN free Wifi. High five!

Near to the UN is the Red Cross museum. It's about an hour and a half to tour, including listening to testimonies from refugees and prisoners of war. 

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Scott Morrison's voodoo doll

The missing persons register is haunting. 

Catherine's father was a co-founder of the Red Cross. We found this book about him.

Also near the Red Cross is a replica of a Japanese bell, with a bit of a story.

The story goes that it was a monument in Geneva when a visitor recognised the bell as having disappeared from his home town. Investigation revealed that the bell indeed came from this town, having been acquired by a local collector and donated to the City of Geneva. The city decided to do the right thing and return it to Japan, but the Japanese offered a small statue as an exchange. 

This statue was deemed to be nowhere near the artistic appeal of the bell, so while the statue was accepted, Geneva deemed it not to be an exchange and returned the bell anyway. The Japanese made a replica and donated it to Geneva, and the two towns are now sister cities with an exchange program. Heres the bell and the statue. 

You can decide if they are of equivalent aesthetic value.

The bell will fall soon anyway.. wasn't impressed with this.

Bike riding.

Geneva has some bike paths, but they seem disconnected and are so variable in their presentation that it's hard to keep up a steady pace on them.

Some paths are marked

They sometimes share the tramway which must be disconcerting when a tram comes up behind. I managed to find myself on a tramway that was exclusive to trams. It was difficult to get off it, so I decided my best ploy was to impersonate a tram and continue on. While the passengers who boarded were a bit inconvenient, I managed to make a direct route to my destination.

Marc Andre and myself on a ride

Another creative effort was losing my path to my secret border crossing, resulting in me being perched at the top of a steep slope looking down at my intended path. 

You can't really see it here.. but this is steep.

To gain access legitimately meant a fair bit of backtracking, and the descent was on moist terrain, and very steep. It looked challenging. I love a challenge and hate backtracking. I forged ahead carefully, using the bike with brakes on as a sort of wheel frame, and all ended well when, with a sigh of relief I reached level ground. As I approached the border I noticed a helicopter patrol. I was a bit conspicuous in my fluoro safety vest, so I resolved to shed it on the return trip. The strafing from the helicopter was an added incentive. My resolution paid off.. later that evening they were still overhead as I crossed the border in camouflage gear, holding shrubbery above and with my face blackened. I threw in a few commando rolls for good measure.

Approaching the border. Lights off and camouflage on.

Me testing the camouflage. I'm the third grapevine on the right.

One day we ventured out to Yvoire, and old village on the Lake of Geneva. Hadrien led the way, and with Nik also taking the lead, I streamed along in their wake.

 I had a despairing experience on this trip with the bike jumping a cog in all gears. I couldn't identify the problem and Nik tuned the gear changer in an attempt to fix it. No improvement, and my fear was that the internal gears on the hub changer had become stripped. I tried to carry on, but progress wasn't encouraging and decided to pull out of the ride. A last investigation revealed that the problem was a stiff link in the chain and some repeated flexing of the joint fixed the problem. in retrospect I realised that the occasional slippage had been present from when the bike was new. With the chain freed up, and with Nik's tune, my gear changing was better than it had ever been! Thanks Nik.

Yvoire is pretty