We got up insanely early, at 6 am. Packing the tent was a bit of a nuisance because it was all wet on the outside. We tried wiping the bottom of it with paper towels (it was muddy), but that didn't help much. We didn't bother waiting til 9 for the reception to open, and just left. We figured we could do that since we paid when we got there. We took a train to Geneva. It stopped in Zurich, Bern, Lausanne and Fribourg, and the journey took about 3 hours.
In Geneva, we left our bags in a security locker at the station. We didn't have the right amount of coins for it, but some nice locals exchanged a 2 CHF coin for two 1 CHF coins, which was very friendly of them. We wanted a map of the city, and headed for the tourist info, which was supposed to be near the railway station. It took us a while to find it, but eventually we did, and got ourselves maps, yay.
Our second mission was finding a place to eat, and we settled on a Mexican restaurant that seemed affordable. There was a couple speaking English at a table close to ours, and both of us were eavesdropping on their conversation. It seemed like they were on a date, and the guy made very bad small talk: he started talking about how once he ate so much mango he got a migraine, and then continued with how people that suffer from migraines are prone to suicide. Smooth. Very smooth.
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| There hasn't been a picture of food in a while :P |
There was an ad for some internet cafe in the map, and it said that you get 15 minutes of free internet if you show your map there. We did that, and it was nice to connect to the outside world for a little bit. After that break we started exploring Geneva. We walked to St Pierre's Cathedral, which was quite a long way uphill. After that we walked downhill to the University, and saw the Reformation Wall as well. Realized that neither of us really know much about the significance of it. I'd at least heard of John Calvin, Pinky hadn't. I guess it's safe to say that neither of us is a history nerd :P
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| St Pierre's Cathedral, or at least the part that fit into the picture... |
Gigantic chess in the University park, and the Reformation Wall
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| The University |
We walked through the park by the University and ended up on a street that we nicknamed "Helvetin Bulevardi". Followed that until we reached the shore, and then walked up to the Jet d'Eau - the very tall fountain in the lake. We got quite close to it, and at one point the direction of the wind changed, so we got some water on us. But not too badly. It would've been possible to walk through the jet, but neither of us dared. It wasn't a very warm day, so it would've taken too long to dry.
Heh heh heh, easily amused? Who, me?
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| Jet d'Eau |
We continued towards Jardin Anglais, where the flower clock is situated (it wasn't as cool as I thought it would be), and then back towards the railway station because it was starting to get late. Made a pit-stop at Starbucks, after which took a train to Bern. There, it took us a while to get our hands on a map, because there was a line at the tourist info. After that we had to figure out whether or not we could get a discount from travel tickets with our InterRail passes. Turns out we couldn't, so we just got a ticket for 6 trips and took the two buses to Camping Eichholz. While looking for the correct bus stop we saw a bus going to a place called Wankdorf, which amused us greatly :D
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| Taken from the train, somewhere close to Bern |
Anyways. We got to the camping site and checked in. The receptionist was very nice and helpful. He gave us another map of the city, along with an info booklet, and also explained where the nearest grocery store is. We had about 20 minutes until the store would close, so we left our bags at the reception and hurried back up the hill to the main road. Found the Coop shop and got what we needed. We even bought a couple of strange flavored beers, forgetting that we didn't have a bottle opener with us. But we managed to open them with a can opener - took like half an hour, but I felt very proud of our success.
We got back to the camping site, put up our tent for the last time, and eventually went to sleep. There was a pretty bad thunderstorm in the middle of the night. It rained heavily, and there was thunder and lightning. It was a bit scary to be in a tent in that kind of weather, but we survived.
-Brain
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