Geneva... & a few hours in France

This past weekend I went on my first seriously outside-Zurich trip in Switzerland. I spent my time in Geneva with a friend who is also from Rice in my year, majoring in physics and working at CERN this summer. It is a bit of a sad fact that he can speak German and is stationed in Geneva whereas I can speak French and am in Zurich, but I suppose irony has a way of introducing us to interesting new things we would never bother to learn about before. Anyway, I was at least able to help translate during this weekend and teach him whatever basic words that could be useful. Geneva itself is actually a very vibrant city; I thought that once I had seen Paris, which I had visited a few years ago, I would then be pretty desensitized by the attractions of other big French-speaking cities in Europe. But Geneva has a lot to offer; there is CERN of course which I hope to see more of later when my friend has more access to their facilities. We also visited the Palais de Nations and the Red Cross museum, both of which were very interesting even to us scientifically minded students. We also went on a pretty rigorous hike in the Jura Mountains in France, to a peak where on one side you could overlook some beautiful French countryside and Geneva city, and on the other side the majestic Alps in the distance. Anyway, I definitely plan to return to the French side of Switzerland at some later time in the summer.

And if anyone plans on visiting Zurich, let me know and I'll try to show you around as much as I know (sorry, no German-speaking services offered).