Geneva and the Salève

My traineeship at the EU Mission to the WTO is rapidly hurtling towards its end, and I will be leaving Geneva soon. In preparation for this inevitable event, my dad visited me to help me move some of my things back to Prague – namely my guitar, some collared shirts, and an extra suit. Since he is a fast walker, we saw practically everything there is to see in central Geneva on his first day here, and I struggled to come up with a programme for Sunday.

At long last, it occurred to me that we could visit the Salève, a mountain just outside of Geneva that faces the city with its rocky, sedimented side. The weather did not seem particularly auspicious when we got up in the morning, and when we reached the base of the Salève on the Number 8 bus, the mountain was shrouded in a cobalt-coloured cloud. When our cable car emerged from the clouds, however, we saw nothing but blue skies and distant mountains. Geneva itself was somewhere below, concealed by a thick white curtain.

We wandered around the mountain for a while, sometimes losing our way and following narrow paths through fields and forests. The presence of an occasional tourist confirmed when we were walking in the right direction, and their absence cautioned us to pay attention. At one fork in the footpath, we heard distant chanting, and one look into my map revealed there was a Buddhist temple nearby. Intrigued, we walked towards the sound, and found a massive building draped in Buddhist prayer flags. Accompanied by a white stupa, it overlooked the Swiss mountains as though they were the Himalayas.

We still had a little more time to kill when we returned to Geneva, so we visited the Russian Orthodox Church before climbing the towers of Saint Peter’s Cathedral. My dad had read that one of the artworks to escape effacement by the Protestants were the carved wooden dragons on the chancel seats. I had never noticed them before and seeing them was quite a surprise as they are remarkable.      

The entrance to the Église Sainte-Trinité
The Holy Trinity Church from farther away
A view from Pont des Bergues
A statue of the Duke of Rohan
The wooden dragon
A carved seat
The Chapel of the Maccabees
Beth Yaakov Synagogue
The same
The Salève cable car
The same
A view of the Alps
A view of the Jura
A view to the northeast
Mountains emerging from the mist
Another view of the Alps
The Buddhist temple: Shedrub Choekhor Ling
The nearby stupa
The entrance to the temple
The clouds tearing above Geneva
The Buddhist temple again
Mont Blanc
Peaks and forests
Another view of Mont Blanc
The Alps
The Russian Orthodox Church
The view from Saint Peter's

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