A Weekend at the Prater and Geneva

Trip Start Jan 09, 2007
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Trip End May 11, 2007


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Monday, April 23, 2007

Between returning from Germany and heading off to Switzerland, I spent a few days inbetween feebly attempting homework and visiting the Prater, Vienna's huge and beautiful park, which contains the Wurstelprater, the somewhat-famous amusement park, which itself contains the famous Riesenrad (giant ferris wheel) as seen in "The Third Man" and "Before Sunrise". Other than the Riesenrad, I only went on a few rides (you pay per ride instead of a single entrance fee), but me and my friends walked around the whole place and the actual park itself too. Great place. I'm very glad I finally got out there. Special attention is deserved by the Kugelmugel, a self-proclaimed micronation owned by an Austrian artist who managed to buy a small plot of land in the Prater and then refused to pay taxes.

Friday night I took a twelve-hour night train across the entirety of Austria and Switzerland to get to Geneva. To go on a tangent, note that the English name of the city sounds fine. The French name, Genéve, is great when pronounced by the French locals. The German name, Genf, is horrible, ugly, and pointless. What were they thinking? No wonder Geneva is in the small part of Switzerland that speaks French instead of German. The whole country is supposedly trilingual (German, French, Italian), but French is only spoken in the western cantons and Italian in the southernmost. My German skills were nearly useless as Geneva is more English-friendly than German-friendly.

Anyway, I stayed with my friend Jon, who attends Webster-Geneva. He showed me his campus (somewhat comparable to Webster-Vienna), the Palais des Nations (UN, etc.), the Cathedral, the old town, the Jet d'Eau (the huge water jet in Lake Geneva), the Botanical Gardens, and a place where you can pick up Indian pakoras and samosas. I later went to the Red Cross (and Red Crescent) Museum, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, a pleasant market in this old field area (Plaine des Plainpalais), and a really nice park by the university (Parc des Bastions). I intended to go to the archealogical dig under the Cathedral to see the Roman ruins they found, but it was closed when I got there. Before leaving, I scored some Swiss chocolate (which may have melted a bit...) and took the long train home.
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