Sylvia and I went to Geneva, Switzerland, for a family event. We stayed near Geneva in Nyon for five days, and then went on to Paris for a week. So now I’m photoblogging some of the things I saw.
This is a garage near Levis stadium in San Jose, completely irrelevant, although the dark image does set the tone for William Gibson’s The Peripheral, which I was reading on my ebook for much of the trip. Well, actually I didn’t get it till we’d been there a few days, waiting for the download.
We stayed in a once deluxe hotel now on the skids and run by unpleasant people, but handy for our purposes, the Beau Rivage in Nyon, looking out at Lake Geneva. It’s kind of a wonderful lake, so clean, with the Rhone running through its length, and huge mountains along the edge in spots.
Vineyards all along the lake. The Swiss white wine is good stuff, kind of dry and sour. Not that I drink it anymore, but it’s worth sampling. Not sure if they export much of it.
Like so many European town, Nyon has a little castle from yore. When you get up in a high place in Europe, like in a plane or on a mountain, you can see that there’s a village every two kilometers or so. Really settled in. When you fly over the US, most of it is stone cold empty. Even California. We have a few megalopolises, some towns, and that’s about it.
I’ve always liked coin operated “rides” for kids. The spotted fly agaric mushroom is a big standard icon in Europe. According to the ethnomycologist Gordon Wasson, the Siberian shamans and the Greek Eleusis cult got high off these. And saw overly animated caterpillars in red top hats. Cf. my story with Bruce Sterling, “Storming the Cosmos.”
It was nice, walking around Nyon one morning, everything a little misty, and these European constructs, like a crane of a string of lights, everything a little different from how we’d do it. Like, not quite as SAFE. Sadly, the assumption in the US has to be that, whatever you set up outdoors, there will be people who are blindly bent on destroying it. More communality in Europe, I’d say.
I love when birds fly low across the water. In Santa Cruz, when the pelicans do that, I always think of Hells Angels.
This is a nice, mysterious, paradoxical image. A marble and alabaster statue on the left, and on the right is a doubly reflected image of the statue.
This was in the Beau Rivage Nyon. Good breakfasts and terrif views. But they actually wanted to bill us separately for each cup of coffee we made in our room. And they flatly wanted to refused to drive us half a mile in their van to get to the train station. “The van is only for business guests. People from the Gulf.” “I’m a business. Transreal Books.”
Sylvia and I went into Geneva a few times. Over the years, we’ve been here more than forty times. Sylvia’s parents lived in Geneva during the latter half of their lives. We’ve always liked Geneva’s big old museum of art and history. Dig this armor, it looks so SF. And the light glaring on the glass could be death ray beams from the dude’s eyes.
All marble in there, so frikkin’ deluxe.
Love marble nudes. It doesn’t show here, but in back there’s a marble dog sniffing the guy’s butt.
There was a wonderful artist in Geneva, Ferdinand Hodler, and his works are one of the reasons we like to come to this particular museum. I think you’re not supposed to take photos in here, but usually I sneak one or two. Love the door here with the Hodler in the background.
Gotta get a shot of the famous Jet d’Eau fountain in Genva. During the World Soccer Cup one time they filled a giant soccer-ball balloon with helium and tethered it so that it was hovering right at the top of the water, so it looked as if, cartoon like, the huge ball was indeed floating on the fountain’s spurt.
We went to Lausanne one afternoon with Sylvia’s brother Henry. Fab statue of the Sphinx lady were with her afternoon shadow.
And within the Lausanne cathedral, the Reaper lurks.
