Stunning Switzerland (and France)

Last weekend, ESN Besançon, who are the Erasmus Society for us international students, very kindly organised a trip to Geneva and Annecy, in Switzerland and France respectively.

We were originally told to meet at 6.45am, but that swiftly became 7 and then, the French being the French, the coach didn’t actually come until more like 7.15. Anyway, considering we were only going away for 1 night, we Brits were shocked to see the size of some people’s humongous suitcases. The coach ride took 2 or 3 hours which flew by due to napping and Sudoku.

The Geneva which greeted us was unfortunately rather overcast: grey buildings, grey lake, grey sky, grey clouds, grey mountains…

However, that was to our advantage as there weren’t that many tourists around. One of the first thing we set eyes on was the city’s famous “jet d’eau” (a 140m tall fountain which is apparently one of the biggest in the world) which I have to say was pretty impressive.

After a bit of a wild goose chase, when we were directed over the wrong bridge (there are lots), we stumbled upon “Le Jardin Anglais”. I’m not quite sure what made the park specifically English, but it was fairly colourful and pleasant. It also housed a ginormous clock made from flowers and the ticket office for another “petit train” like Ania and I had ridden around Colmar, which was what we’d been searching for all along.

Whilst Sophie, Maddi and Dani rode around the old town from the comfort of a miniature train, I decided to explore on foot. I came across a very imposing church with pseudo-roman columns, the birth-place of the Red Cross, and another building which had lots of cannons.

After we had regrouped, we had another stroll around the city and I got the bargain of the day. For 5 Francs (roughly £3.28) I got a huge bag full of fresh, hot churros. I was meant to have got 6 bits, but he put more in and then at the last minute decided to give me another bonus one. After having shared some with the others, I was still able to wander round munching salty, sugary pastry goodness for the best part of the day.

Other notable things about Geneva:

1) The water in the lake was the clearest I have ever seen

2) The tram network was immense, they seemed to go down basically every street. Another thing I didn’t quite understand is why the buses were also physically attached to the same overhead cables as the trams.

3) I knew that Geneva is one of the most expensive cities in the world, but I was not expecting to see Dior, Cartier, Rolex, Chanel (etc) shops at every turn.

4) Swiss money is weird. Not only are the notes weird colours, but the coins are exclusively silver and gold in colour and incredibly thin. In fact, it took me a full 2 minutes to manage to pick up the tiny gold coin in order to take this photo!

5) Swiss maps are VERY misleading. We’d left about an hour at the end of the day to go visit the headquarters of the United Nations. On the way there, we bumped into Weronika, another Erasmus student from Besancon, who told us that it was about a 40 minute walk from where we were and yet it looked fairly close on the map. Unfortunately, we therefore didn’t get time to visit the imposing building.

Having bought some chocolate and some postcards, it was time to jump on the coach again and head back over the border again to Annecy in France.

Having chosen who we wanted to share a room with at the hotel, the room allocations were pretty random, so Danielle and I were delighted to find out that we had got lucky and had a balcony! Here’s us feeling a bit like the Royal Family as we waved from the balcony at passers-by aka Maddi.

Some exciting things about the hotel:

1) Our beds had duvets! That may sound pretty standard, but I had just about got used to the normal French thing of just using a sheet and blanket.

2) There was a bath! Again, hadn’t seen one of those since coming to France nearly 2 months before

3) Free sweets and water! Instead of the usual British thing of tea and coffee making facilities, it seems that sweets and bottled water are top priority for the French.

4) Television! I spent the evening watching a weird show which seemed to be the equivalent to Children in Need.

5) Breakfast! This was an all-you-can-eat affair and included: cereal, bread, toast, fruit, meat, cheese, yoghurt, fruit salad, pastries, cake, juice, tea, coffee AND boiled eggs.

Once breakfast was done and dusted and we’d all checked off, it was time to head off to a boat trip. Whilst the walk from the hotel should have been a quick 10 minute thing, it turned out that Sunday was market day and our route encompassed all of it. Picture 40-odd people trying to get through a narrow street packed with people and stalls. Oh and some of those 40 people are trying to wheel massive suitcases!

When we eventually got there, the boat trip was great. We went right across “le Lac d’Annecy” and the views were all really beautiful.

Then it was time to explore Annecy itself, the climb to the castle (which was closed) offered really amazing views of the city and surrounding mountains.

We came across a “glacier” which offered 58 different flavours of ice cream. As most of you know, I’m awful at making decisions, so I took a quick photo of the menu and spent much time deliberating before eventually deciding on lychee.

Annecy proved to be a really gorgeous place and the views presented from “les Jardins de l’Europe d’Annecy” were probably some of the most striking that I’ve ever seen, especially from “le Pont des Amours”.

Everything considered, this was a really great weekend, so a thank you to ESN Besancon (especially Wendy and Amélie) is in order.

PS- I would have posted this sooner, but the internet in my halls was down from Friday afternoon until now 🙁