Geneva, Lausanne, Jungfrau

Yesterday, Saori and I got up early and took the train to Geneva. Our Swiss Pass is only worth using if I'm spending more than $60 a day to get around, so we just bought tickets at the train station at the bottom of the hill and hopped aboard. The train to Geneva from Laussane takes about 40 minutes. On the train, with all the commuters in their black coats, I read about the city cathedral, St. Pierre. It sounded cool so when we left the station, we wandered over in that direction without worrying about what streets we were taking.

We followed our noses across the river to the narrow, winding steets of old town Geneva, up the hill and through tiny cobblestone passages to the church square. The church was nice- for the tourist, a pretty standard European Old Cathedral in the Middle of the City. We went up to the top of the towers, which had some really nice views of Geneva from above, and the old construction was fun to see too.

Unusually, this cathedral had its floors torn up for a major renovation and excavation, and when the floors were replaced, the excavation was saved and opened to the public. Accessible from a side stairway, you head underground and wander around the space below the floor. Huge and complex, the site walks you through the various buildings built on the site of the church from millenia ago. Apparently, around 50 BC when Geneva was a small collection of huts, a famous tribal chieftain was buried on the hill. Over the centuries that followed, his grave monument became more and more elaborate and permantnly built. During the Pax Romana, the Romans developed the town around the monument, and when the early Christians came, they built a small cult of relics church on the same site. Centuries of redevelopment and expansion later, the Cathedral took its final form around 1100 AD. John Calvin, one of the leaders of the Protestant reformation, was based in this cathedral and Geneva became the "Protestant Rome."

So anyway, by the time we were that deep in history, it was getting on in the day so we headed back to Lausanne, where we had lunch and then walked over to the Brut gallery, which is a notable museum as it houses artworks by psychotics, criminals, and psychic mediums. Unfortunately it was closed, so we just walked down to the lakeside at lake Geneva.

Today, we got up even earlier and jumped a train to Jungfraujoch, the highest railway station in Europe at above 11,000 feet. This took awhile. We took a train from Laussane to Bern, Bern to Interlaken, walked through Interlaken to get to the other Interlaken station, to Lauterbrunnen, to a ski resort on the mountain, and finally to another small train. The last two trains were really mountain trains, with a cog drive and a toothed track, as we were heading up very very steep slopes. It took us about five hours each way.

Jungfraujoch was very much worth it. Amazing views from "the top of Europe". Although it was bitterly cold with windchill, it was a clear and sunny day. We had lunch up there, wandered around, saw the ice palace, and took the trains back to Lausanne. Long day of riding trains.