Old-world charm
UNEXPLORED
Don’t read up about Geneva before you land there. Give randomness a chance and you will get to explore the grandeur of this Swiss town, says Rashmi Vasudeva
No, I didn’t take the cable car. I saw no snow. Obviously then, I didn’t ski. I didn’t exactly get any ‘mountain top breathtaking view’. Nah, didn’t buy watches either. Eating Swiss chocolates and cheese were the only concession I was willing to give for being in Switzerland. And it paid off.
Never on my list of must-see places, Geneva is the kind of surprise you get when you go there not expecting to see heaven. It is then that you are willing to ignore the clinical affluence of the place, steer clear of its famed haute couture and wander instead into an eye-poppingly green park. First you hear the laughter; and then you see cliques of youngsters dotted all over the park, some just giggling and a few others trying to play the bass guitar. A few feet away, completely oblivious to this exuberant din, are very formally dressed men (whose age I am conservatively estimating to be between 80 and 90) sternly planning moves on a giant chessboard installed in the park. Their completely un-mock seriousness in playing the game makes it obvious that they belong to Geneva as much as we hapless tourists don’t.
Warm and inviting
After I get the third nasty stare for trying to get a little too near to the massive chessboard (I wanted to kick the pieces around) I decide to give them a wide berth and walk down further with the limp sun, the still wet grass and the cool breeze enough to offset all kinds of stares.
The park is below one of Geneva’s best known monuments, Le Monument de La Reformation, which was built in early 20th century along a 16th century rampart beneath Geneva’s old town. It is a dedication to the famous four — Geneva reformers — Knox, Calvin, Theodore de Beze and Guillaume Farel. All four look down sternly on the aforementioned sterner players of life-size chess. This is the best place to lie on the grass, leisurely lick a fat tub of creamy yoghurt clean and breathe in life.
That’s the thing about Geneva. Its air is shockingly pure and it makes you want to take great gulps in and store it somewhere; to be summoned up when the next auto farts black smoke into your face. Truly green, Geneva, it seems, has as many parks as it has international organisations. It is also home to the Red Cross Museum that not only traces the history of the humanitarian organisation but organises fantastic photo exhibitions regularly. It is a stark, dark place though; long corridors full of carefully filed and indexed archives, grainy world war footage and exhibits about suffering and valour. Your nose expects a musty smell, but since this is Switzerland, what it gets instead is the smell of thoroughly vacuumed carpets.
From here, you can either choose to duck inside the typically officious-looking UN headquarters (squat and square building, lots of flags, inscribed lettering) or take the leisurely tram back to the quay. Walk along the promenade, which offers you stunning views of Lake Geneva, one of western Europe’s largest lakes with its trademark fountain that throws water some 400-odd feet into the air. Why is a fountain so fascinating? Is it because it mirrors our own lives, constant and relentless till somebody switches it off?
The promenade is also a great place for making further inroads into your observation of human nature. It is almost as if its long stone benches, the accompanying gardens, the quiet gazebos next to the pebbly brooks, are all designed to encourage you to do just that — observe how our fellow beings tackle life and wonder why tourists are enamoured by a silly clock made of flowers.
Better still, don’t wonder. Don’t read up about Geneva before you land there. Give randomness a chance and it might lead you to a suburb just outside the city where uneven streets criss-cross each other, Mediterranean style houses look down on cute (there’s no other word for it) gardens and where you instantly smell a general air of bohemia so unlike the Swiss that you turn into the tourist you don’t want to be. Carouge was apparently a township that was gifted to the King of Sardenia in 1754. He wanted it to, well, look Mediterranean. So he got architects to give the town a ‘chessboard design’ (the official website tells me) and wooden houses with compact gardens of their own.
The suburb still retains most of that striking architecture though the houses have now mostly been converted into old-worldly but fashionable cafes, antique galleries and curio shops.
And then, just when you think you have had enough of such serendipity, you are enticed to climb what feels like 800 steps up Geneva’s oldest cathedral, to just look at its ancient, corroded tower bell. For your efforts, while climbing down the precariously spiralling stairs in near-complete darkness, you are gifted with a single slant of sunlight that cuts through you. Perfectly, diagonally.
