Day 14 - Flensburger

Posted by HELiX

We covered another few hundred kilometres today, about the entire afternoon on the highways.

Made our way out of Netherlands and re-entered Germany, because that’s the only way into Denmark.

There are actually two ways into mainland Denmark — either by ferry or by driving across the bridge. The ferry minimises distance but my Dad insists on adding another half an hour to our journey by choosing the bridge from Odense.

So before we enter Denmark tomorrow and continue on our journey to Copenhagen, we stopped in this German town for the night. It’s a rather unknown town called Flensburger, but it’s a really pleasant place.

Like Munich, the people here are able to speak English as well. As far as I can tell, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland encourages their people to learn English, but France just doesn’t give a damn. The French are generally quite crippled in English.

The Germans are famous for their beer. The well-known restaurants here produce their own house brand beer. In fact, their beer is probably what made them well-known in the first place. Back in Munich, I was drinking beer just about every dinner.

Here in even this small slow-paced town of Flensburger, they make their own Flensburger beer, with a decent variety of breweries and brands producing them.

But I must declare that my favourite drink now is Apfelschorle :D

The country, as with most of Europe, is football crazy with Euro 2008 commencing just yesterday.

A decent lot of the cars here can be seen driving around with the German flag, and guys can be seen roaming the streets dressed in the national colours of yellow, red and black. Most of which either carry the German flag in their hands, or have it draped over their backs like a cape.

And others drive around in their cars, shouting out of their windows and honking to other fans they see. And as I type this, the whole neighbourhood just roared because Germany made it 2-0 against Poland.

Distance covered by our car in Europe so far:

Comments(0) 4:32 AM 6 June 2008

Day 13 - Belgium, Netherlands

Posted by HELiX

We left Paris today after lunch, towards our ultimate destination of Copenhagen in Denmark which was still thirteen to fifteen hours of driving away.

We spent most of our time in the car today, driving through the day until 8pm (which is still very bright, by the way). So there’s nothing much to say actually.

Just some highlights, though.

After a few hours traveling north on the French highways, we entered a new country - Belgium.

My Dad was reluctant to stop in Belgium for the night, because there’s nothing much to see and it’d be better if we pushed ahead and maximised the distance covered for the day.

I managed to convince him to take a detour and drive through the capital, Brussels, because I wanted, at the minimum, to take a look at how a Belgian city is like.

No pictures because we were busy getting lost in the city, but Brussels is a really neat city. Quite clean and modern, in contrast to the French cities. Also, unlike many European cities, Brussels doesn’t seem to mind building up and hence there were quite a few tall buildings.

Belgium is actually famous for… well, I’m don’t know much, but at least I know their chocolates are awesome. Whoever hasn’t tried Belgian chocolates hasn’t tried chocolates. Driving through the city, I saw quite a couple of shops surviving on selling just chocolates.

We drove through the heart of Brussels and got out, heading further up north. Belgium is really quite small (as compared to the other European countries), and before we knew it, we crossed into the Netherlands’ border.

Entered Eindhoven in search of a hotel, but failed to find one. So we moved on and we found this random hotel along the highway, where I’m at right now.

Other than me finding Dutch a really humorous language, that’s about all.

PS. Dutch words looks like what you get when you keysmash. Like this: dedafsapdfsa.

Comments(0) 6:11 PM 6 June 2008

Day 12 - Paris Part 2

Posted by HELiX

It was the first time in Europe I’m splitting up with my family to go my own way.

I wanted to climb up Eiffel Tower (the lifts costs money) and visit the Louvre Museum, but the rest of my family just wanted to follow my Mom who wanted to enter Notre Dam and do some shopping in the Avenue des Champs-Elysees.

So with 50 Euro on me, I went around Paris myself. It’s quite scary, when people here look as if they’re about to rob you anytime.

My Dad himself had his only pickpocket case in Paris 25 years ago, back in ‘83.

I took the Metro from my hotel at Menilmontant, to Bir-Hakeim where I walked to Eiffel Tower.

Paris, surprisingly and unlike the rest of Europe, isn’t too costly. A trip up to to the summit of Eiffel Tower costs 12 Euro. That’s not too bad, but I opted to climb up the tower as it’s much cheaper (yes it still costs money!) and will perhaps provide a more memorable experience.

To enter the tower by climbing the stairs, it costs 3.10 Euro since I’m under 24. The stairs are only to the 2nd stage, and for the final journey up, you’ll have to take the lift for 4.20 Euro. I didn’t really had a choice, but at the same time I didn’t mind either since the distance from the 2nd stage to the summit is insane. Total would be 7.30 Euro, way cheaper than the 12 Euro, and I’d get to reach every stage.

I queued at where I saw everyone was queuing. It took me a painful 45 minutes to reach the front, where the ticket counters were. And then, the person in the counter told me that I was queuing in the wrong line, because the ticket counter and the entrance for climbing the stairs was on the other side, at another pillar of the tower. Crap.

The queue for climbing the stairs only took me 10 minutes to get through, where I started my ascend of the 347 steps to the 1st stage. Not an entirely easy task.

The 1st stage offers quite a good view of the city already. Also, available are nice little boards of information indicating the various places of interest of the city and a short description. Spent quite a good amount of time reading and taking shots for panoramas.

Climbed another 355 steps to reach the 2nd stage. The view there’s better, of course, but it only tempts you to reach the top even more. Because the lifts serving the ground floor, 1st and 2ns stage are separate from the lifts serving the summit, everyone has to re-queue for the lifts and it takes about 20-30 minutes to get into the lift.

So I took the train up and oh yeah, the view from the tallest point in Paris.

It’s really nice and breathtaking to see Paris extending all the way to the skyline.

Also, they didn’t forget to remind visitors how far away from home they are.

Not much at the summit actually. It’s the smallest platform of all three stages, so it gets a little cramped. So once again, grabbed a couple of panoramas and took the lift down.

For the journey down, you can take the lifts down for free even if you took the stairs up.

After that, I rushed over to Louvre Museum. If you read Da Vinci Code, I don’t need to explain any further.

Much like the Eiffel Tower, it isn’t overpriced unlike the rest of Europe. An entry for adults costs 8.50 Euro, and as with most museums over here in Paris, entry is free for persons under 18 :D

Got in using my passport as the ticket, and immediately got lost.

Louvre is really, really, BIG.

It was formerly a palace for the Kings in the past, until they converted it into a museum. Being a palace, it was extremely well designed and large.

Of course, like many others, I headed straight for Mona Lisa. There are many, many signs pointing the direction towards her, and is probably the only exhibit you can find without the map.

Mona Lisa is displayed in the largest room of the palace, which as you can expect, has an insane number of rooms and corridors. They have a barrier set up for people to queue and keep a distance from the painting.

This is Mona Lisa, which was taken from where they allow people to view it from. It’s so far that one can hardly examine it, much less appreciate it.

And this was the crowd.

Conclusion: Mona Lisa - OVERRATED.

On top of all that, they already have the painting enclosed in an oversized glass panel. Seriously overrated, considering there are much nicer artworks throughout the museum.

There have tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of exhibits, spread out over three floors. quite a lot of really nice artworks especially the paintings and sculptures. It’d help a great deal if you can appreciate art for real, because many people including myself got tired and bored after walking around for a bit.

Even if you lack the artistic taste to apreciate the exhibits, you’ll be awed by the museum itself. Being a former palace, the interiors are architectured beautifully, with carvings and ceiling paintings. Very generous with their use of Gold too.

I just hurried around to the famous exhibits, and could only cover one floor (out of three) in an hour. The entire museum, if you actually look at all the exhibits unlike me, can take up an entire day.

An hour or two was I had, so I left the museum. But not without revisiting Da Vinci Code.

I found the Inverted Pyramid. With the small pyramid sticking out from below. If Dan Brown’s fictional story was true, I’d be sitting right above Mary Magdalene’s remains.

Of course you can tell that’s unlikely when you examine the little pyramid. It hardly looks like it extends downwards to form a chamber.

And well, that’s pretty much all for Paris.

We’ll be on the move again tomorrow. This time, we’ll be heading for Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Maybe just driving past and through it, depending on whether my Dad thinks it’s worth the night there. About a 300km journey.

Comments(0) 6:16 AM 6 June 2008

On Another Note

Posted by HELiX

With all the daily entries, it’s difficult enough to keep my blog up-to-date, and sometimes I find myself typing the entries until 2am.

But I shall spare sometime now to comment on something that wouldn’t fall within my vacation.

AstroChallenge is today. In fact, as I type this right now in the morning over here Paris, AstroChallenge Day 1 is probably drawing to a conclusion, waiting for the observation for the Senior Category.

I have no idea how the team is doing. Which I mean, the AC team. It was supposed to be my last competition, where I will attempt to draw with Rong’en’s national record in the number of Golds won from all Astronomy competitions. I’m at 10 with 8 Team Champions and 2 Individual Champions. Rong’en’s at 12 with 7 Team Champions and 5 Individual Champions. I could have made it 11, but I strangely lost to my junior team (Team 2)at AstroChallenge 2006, something which I haven’t come to terms with since I still believe that we rightly should have won.

But, of course, that goal is now impossible as I’m missing AstroChallenge 2008 where I pledged myself to pick up both Team and Individual Golds last year.

Not expecting that last year’s would be my last, I wasn’t prepared to reflect about the retirement from competitive Astronomy. Rong’en gave his take a year ago, and I shall do the same as well.

So after 4 years of participating at 9 local Astronomy competitions, it’s hard to swallow that all the experiences cannot be repeated anymore. Never once again will I be at the front of an LT, staring hard at the screen, fully ready to buzz in a split second. It’s the adrenaline rush that I feed on, and the simple goal that I’d be leaving the venue heading for celebration, not home.

It has worked well. 9 Astronomy competitions over 4 years is a feat by itself, and to perform again and again can be quite tiring.

Rong’en felt relieved that everything has come to an end, that there won’t be anymore pressure on him to bring back Golds. Funnily enough, I don’t feel and didn’t ever felt that.

What I feel is… numbness. I’m not disappointed that  it has all come to an end because it’s getting tiring, but neither am I relieved because I loved the adrenaline rushes.

But much like Rong’en, in JC, I found my focus changed from competitive Astronomy to promoting Astronomy. I figured that it’s because we have achieved enough and needed something more meaningful to do. Also, the lack of competitions at the JC level forces you to spend your time doing other stuff for the love of the Science.

With that new objective, I found myself organising activities (AstroFest), getting to know others within the small community better and even helping other schools.

I hope to stay second to Rong’en for a while to come. I’m contented with it. I’ve taken part in all Astronomy competitions I’ve been given the opportunity to join, and this is the exhaustive list, chronologically:

2004 - Secondary 2
NYP Astronomy Quiz - Team Champion
NJC Astronomy Quiz - Team 4th
NUS-NTU AstroChallenge - Team Champion

2005 - Secondary 3
NYP Astronomy Quiz - Team Champion, Individual Champion
NUS-NTU AstroChallenge - Team Champion

2006 - Secondary 4
NYP Astronomy Quiz - Team Champion
RJC Astrigue - Team Champion
NUS-NTU AstroChallenge - Team Champion, Individual Champion

2007 - JC1
NUS-NTU AstroChallenge - Team Champion
International Olympiad of Astronomy and Astrophysics - Honorable Mention

Not counting IOAA which is a totally different experience, perhaps the most memorable and emotional moments came in my first two.

NYP 2004 when it was my first ever, and as you may know how the scoring system works (the top four scorers out of a team of ten), the odds were against me to get among the top four as a newcomer. I did, and in doing so, was shaking on stage as I couldn’t believe it. That was a start.

Then came NJC 2004, the oldest Astro quiz competition until they halted it entirely in 2005 due to budgeting issues. Due to some errors Zhili made when marking the selection test papers, I ended up in Team 2. But it gave me an opportunity to be in the underdogs. Our team consists of newcomers who have barely won anything in the Astronomy scene, basically looking like a joke. During the quiz, Team 1 (which will go on to win Champion) was unsure themselves whether they’ll make it into the finals at all, while us in Team 2 had almost entirely gave up. Amazing miracle that we were announced as one of the finalist which made Zhili cry tears of joy. All of us in Team 2 were equally shocked and elated at that time. Of course we struggle against giants in the finals, and were thrown back to settle for 4th placing. But it was a really unique experience to be the one buzzing in and answering questions at just secondary 2.

Perhaps I must be thankful for the people who guided me along this path. Xin Jie, who chose Astronomy at secondary 1 and hence made me reconsider my choice of Robotics, and eventually joining him in Astronomy. Choon Hwee, the most inspiring leader one can ever have, who taught me well enough as a secondary 1 to succeed in the coming years. Spectating him at NJC 2003 as a secondary 1, I learned a lot from just that. It was a competition where the four finalist teams were plainly RI, RI, BP and BP.

So this is the point where I must wish the team all the best. Unless the teams have changed, I believe it’s Dong Wei, Shaun, Sujay and Edwin. Two are veteran quiz winners, one has this string of Silvers, and the final one is a totally newcomer who just got introduced to Astronomy two weeks before the competition.

Odds are heavily against them, but I believe in the abilities of the two veterans. With RJ fielding quite possibly their best team ever (no other RI batch has picked up the treble before), it’s gonna be the toughest competition in a long time. And there are the other schools like HCI, VJC and NJC who all offer a good challenge for the title as well.

May the best team win.

Comments(0) 6:08 AM 6 June 2008

Day 11 - Paris Part 1

Posted by HELiX

Coming into Paris, the city which registers more tourists annually than any other, I noticed a few things.

First, the endless display of graffiti. They’re freakin’ e-ve-ry-whereee.

Driving into the city from the outskirts, the sides of the highway are spray-painted from edge to edge. Kilometres of graffiti, and they don’t spare an area of concrete.

Then when you take the Metropolitain (their train system, FYI), you’ll find that even their train tunnels are vandalised from  end to end. The tunnels are quite well lighted on some lines, so you’ll be able to see them. It’s like the graffiti artists stayed in the station through the evening until the train service stops for the night (about 1am), and they run into the tunnels and wreck the place havoc.

Vehicles, phone booths, buildings and shops are not spared either.

The graffiti artists here can consider a career in Spider-Man.

Second thing you’ll notice is the strange lack of lifts. Before we arrived, my parents mentioned that what was memorable (in an irritating way) during our last stay in Paris back in ‘98, was that the hotel we stayed at didn’t have any lifts, which made my family go through hell in transporting the luggages up to the rooms. I was too young back then to remember.

So yesterday, we spent the night in the outskirts of Paris, about 30 minutes from the city centre. The hotel was cheap alright, but they didn’t provide any lifts. But we took it up anyway as we were only staying for a night and we didn’t really mind carrying the luggage up a storey. So that makes two consecutive hotels without lifts, in Paris.

This morning we drove into the heart of Paris in search of a hotel. We drove past quite a few, but couldn’t find a parking lot for the car. So we moved on until we found a carpark. We got out and just a minute ahead, we found a small hotel. We couldn’t be bothered to search on, and my Dad was tempted by another ridiculously low-priced hotel, so we took it up. The catch? No lifts. One room on the third storey. Another on the fourth. Went through hell, once again, to carry the luggages up.

That pretty much sums up our arrival in the city of lights.

We haven’t had our day planned out, so we just headed out towards Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoille using the Metro.

Arc de Triomphe!

The Arc was built by Napolean I, and took 30 years from 1806 to 1836. Other than that, I don’t know much of its history.

At Arc de Triomphe, you can purchase tickets to head up to the top to view the city. Because it costs money, we didn’t take it. Right at the front of the Arc, there’s the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

I don’t know much about its history either, but if I’m not wrong, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is simply the burial ground for a random unknown soldier who died in World War I. It has been there since 1921 as a memorial. The unknown soldier signifies the many soldiers who were killed during the World Wars, and whose bodies were later unidentified so they remain ‘unknown’. To remember these soldier, they picked up some random lucky (or unlucky) dead body and buried him under Arc de Triomphe so people could pay their respects to the soldiers who were never recognised for their bravery and courage.

After that, we walked down the world-renowned super wide Avenue des Champs Elysees, which leads straight down from Arc de Triomphe. It was built by Le Notre, King Louis XIV’s exceptional lanscaping artist.

It’s pretty much this entire street equivalent of Orchard Road which stretches down quite far and wide. It’s just shopping and all, which as a boy, I can’t seem to get myself interested at all.

So I quickly dragged my family out of the place and back to Arc de Triomphe, where we decided to head towards Eiffel Tower. Eiffel Tower was 4 Metro stations away, which totally isn’t that short. But with the weather about a perfect 15-20′C or so, walking long distances wasn’t that difficult.

Eiffel Tower!

Nothing much to say about the Eiffel Tower, because everyone knows it.

I wanted to take the stairs to climb up, but the entrance to the stairs closes at 6pm. It was 6.30pm.

I’d return the following day, but for now, we tried to maximise our sightseeing by making a trip to the Notre Dam.

It was one hell of a walk, covering over 6 km and almost stretching across much of the Seine. But in doing so, we actually unintentionally saw many other landmarks like the Invalides, Concorde, Le Musee d’Orsay, St Germain des Pres, etc. Most of which I don’t know about.

The Concorde’s interesting though. Saw it from a distance, Straight down Champs-Elysee from Arc de Triomphe. It’s this place where the guillotine was in the past. Over 1000 people were executed there, including the entire Royal family of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette. That’s how the monarchy of France ended.

We reached the Notre Dam, but I didn’t see any hunchbacks. Just know that construction lasted from 1163 to 1330.

The Pantheon was nearby, so I made my way there as well. It’s a church built by King Louis XV, but was converted into a tomb for illustrious people like Voltaire, Victor Hugo and Marie Curie. Didn’t go in though.

Mmm, by then, it was already past 9pm, so we just ate dinner and returned to the hotel. That’s day one is Paris.

Comments(0) 6:03 AM 6 June 2008

Day 10 - Chamonix, on to Paris

Posted by HELiX

Call me slow, but I’ve finally figured what’s making Europe so expensive. Or at least, more expensive that it already is. I s’pose it differs from country to country, but here in France, the Value-Added Tax is a murderous 19.6%.

Today in Chamonix, we planned to do either one of the following:

1) Take the Aiguille du Midi cable car — The Aiguille du Midi cable car is one of the highest cable cars in the world. It starts at 1035m and finishes at a staggering 3810m. From the bottom to the top, it has the greatest vertical range in the world.

2) Take the Montenvers rack railway up to the Mer de Glace — Literally means Ice Sea if my French isn’t too bad, and is one of the biggest glaciers in Europe.

Both offers fantastic view of Europe’s tallest mountain, Mont Blanc.

For those who are still unconvinced of the breathtaking views from Chamonix, please visit take the jump here.

However, it happened that the weather today was as horrible as it can get. It started raining in the early morning, and got heavier as noon approached. By the time we checked out of the hotel, the clouds all rolled in and there was slight-to-moderate rain.

I’d actually prefer the Aiguille du Midi, but it’s kinda pointless now as vision is severely limited with the clouds. So we decided on the Mer de Glace, because at least we’re able to see the glacier.

We arrived at the Montenvers rack railway and checked. They’re open alright, but the counter advised us that it’s not an advisable day to visit the glacier and we can’t see anything up there anywhere. It was a discounted 17 Euro per person, down from 21 Euro, because of the bad weather.

So we considered our options and had a look around. This was the view from where I stood.

You can see all the clouds. Low-clouds isn’t the appropriate term I would think, because we were already at an altitude of 1087m above sea level as determined by the GPS on my PDA phone.

Speaking of which, I think it’s about time I mention the dependence on GPS during this trip. Basically me and my brother installed TomTom Navigator into our PDA phones (which have GPS), along with the map of Western Europe which was over 900MB.

Basically, every route is planned using TomTom, and it helps us locate the hotels, restaurants and even petrol stations. It’s really quite amazing what they can squeeze into that 900MB map file of western Europe. Along with it, are all the roads mapped out with GPS coordinates, from major highways to the smallest roads in some random town. Included are the locations and names of almost everything, from road names, landmarks, petrol stations, motels and motels, monuments, house numbers, restaurants, police stations, etc. Also, they record the speed limit of each road or highway you’re on, and warn you when you exceed that limit. It makes me wonder just exactly how long they took to do the surveying required for the entire map.

So all I need to do is to activate my GPS, and it detects your current location, altitude and speed. And then you choose your destination, which in my case would be Copenhagen, Denmark. It then calculates through the millions of roads that separates the two locations for about a minute and finally determines the shortest route. If you dislike the route, you can further refine it by recalculating an alternative route, and in my case, I wanted to go through Paris so I had it to redirect my route so that it goes through Paris. It calculated out the shortest route that I needed to take which was over 1700 km and also calculated using the speed limits that it’d be 13 hours of traveling. After all that you also have the options to avoid roads that are tolled, or avoid road blocks, etc.

That said… so where was I again?

Oh right. Mer de Glace. Eventually, we decided not to go up and save on the costs, and instead, head out for Paris immediately.

So we did just that.

Paris was about 580 km away, and we were determined to get as near as possible.

For over 5-6 painful hours on the French highways, we pushed towards Paris and by 8pm (NOT nightfall, because the Sun sets at 10.30pm over here), we reached the outskirts of Paris.

We’re just 30 minutes from the heart of Paris right now, but we stopped to spend the night in the outskirts because of the cheaper hotel rates.

Mmm hmm. So that’s that for today. Traveled about 550km.

Au revoir!

Comments(0) 5:02 PM 6 June 2008

Day 9 - Geneva, Chamonix

Posted by HELiX

We entered the Swiss border today, just a short distance from where we were at Archamps, France.

Switzerland isn’t in the European Union, because they insist on their neutrality and refuse to take sides. Well, it’s a good thing for them.

But it’s really bad for us. Not being in the EU means that they have their own currency, own ways of controlling their borders, highways and everything.

In Switzerland, they use the Swiss Franc, in contrast to the Euro used by the member countries of the EU. Also, while the EU has done away with all immigration and checkpoints at each countries borders to allow for easier traveling between the member countries, Switzerland hasn’t.

Upon entering the Swiss border, we were made to pay their highway toll –  a whopping 30++ Euros (we paid in Euros because we didn’t have a single Franc on us). That’s nearly S$70 just to enter Switzerland by car. They pasted a sticker on our car’s windscreen, which basically allows us to move in and out of Switzerland free-of-charge for A YEAR, which was incredibly pointless since we’d only be in Switzerland for A DAY. Basically, we paid for their highway tax for a year when we’re only using their highways for a day (or few hours, in fact).

Reached Geneva slightly passed noon.

We parked somewhere and walked around on foot for a bit, looking for a hotel to check in.

We entered the first. It’s an ordinary 3-star hotel. They had only one room left for 3 people (we have 5), and the price for that room is 350 Franc.

Just for your information: 1 Swiss franc = 1.30692371 Singapore dollars

And we were like, Oh Shit. But we thought, Maybe This Hotel Is Very Expensive.

Throughout Europe so far, a normal 2 or 3-star hotel costs us about 70-80 Euros a night for one room, so we usually get two. The conversion for Euro to Swiss Franc is 1 Euro to 1.60 Swiss Franc, so that’s about 256 Franc for all five of us usually.

So we walked a bit, and checked the next hotel. They’re full.

Walked further down, checked another hotel. Full again.

To save my time:

1) Walk down street.
2) Find and hotel and enter.
3) Ask the reception counter for the availability for rooms for five.
4) Ask for price
5) When told unavailable or quoted a ridiculously high price, return to step 1.

We did that for over an hour and concluded with this:

There are hardly any rooms left in the hotels. And they cost an arm and a leg.

The only decently-priced hotel able to accommodate all five of us was willing to charge us a price of — get this — 450 Euro for two rooms fitting four people in total (we have to squeeze three into a bed for two). And if you do the math, that’s almost freakin’ S$1000 for a night.

Seriously, I can stay at a five-star hotel in Singapore for over a few nights at that price.

On top of all these, that hotel is two-star. And they include parking for the car. Which means, we have to park in a public carpark, which is crazily priced in Geneva as well. A full 24-hour parking would be over 30 Euro.

So we gave up on staying at Geneva for the night. It would seriously exhaust our supply of cash we have on hand.

We simply parked our car in some underground parking (For security purposes. Have a boot full of luggage is enticing for thieves.). We left and went on foot to explore Geneva.

Perhaps the face of Geneva to the world is this:

Jet d’eau, a fountain-geyser thing which rises up to 150m, making it the world’s tallest fountain. It draws its water from the lake (Lake of Geneva) and discharges it at a rate of 110 gallons per second and at a speed of 124 miles/hour. The column of water in the air at anytime weighs 8 tons and is powered by 1360 horsepower pumps. Also, it operates only when the wind speed is less than 12 miles/hour, or less it’ll create artificial rain for the people near it.

After looking through some brochures, we realised that there isn’t really much to sightseeing in Geneva as well.

Geneva is this place famous for having international conferences and meetings because of Switzerland’s neutrality. Many international organisations either are headquartered in Geneva, or at least have a building in it. There’s the United Nations and World Trade Organisation, among many others. We found out that in just this week alone, there are two major international conferences involving 4000 people, and more importantly. EURO 2008. Hence explaining the lack of accommodation in the city.

Euro 2008 starts in four days, and is hosted by Switzerland and Austria. We saw quite a few set-ups in Geneva itself in preparation for the event, and around the city, the Swiss flag is hung like what we do in Singapore for National Day.

We figured that the Lake of Geneva is probably worth a good look at. So we signed up (and paid) for this boat ride, Swissboat, which will take us to a 1 hour 15 minutes tour of the lake. The lake is the largest body of water in Central Europe, and crosses into the French border as well.

The boat ride was at 3.30pm, so we went out for brunch while waiting for it. That’s when we were, once again, totally pissed off at the prices. In the end, we settled for the the most decent food we can find at some Italian restaurant. A plate of spaghetti (and nothing else) costs about 20 Franc on average, which converts to nearly S$26 easily.

Our brunch for the five of us totaled S$150, with us eating and drinking in moderation.

The boat ride following that was… well, quite okay?

They bring you on a tour along the river, seeing all the landmarks along the river and GENEVA HAS A HELL LOT OF VILLAS FOR RICH PEOPLE. That bit I could tell.

For example, this is the villa built in 1890 by the creator of Colgate’s toothpaste.

And this is a skinny-dipper we found.

Switzerland is famous for a couple of things other than it’s neutrality. Swiss watches are of the finest in the world — You have Swiss brands like Rolex, Omega, Swatch, Swiss Army, Tissot, etc. Swiss Army knifes are cool. Swiss chocolate is something that few can differentiate from heroin (c’mon, we ALL know Tolberone, just one of the more popular Swiss chocolate brands). And also, there’s Swiss cheese, wine, cuckoo clocks, and… the amazing mountaineous landscape of Switzerland.

After the boat ride, we happen to be recommended, by chance, to visit a shop that’s having a closing down sales — for real, this time. And what’s better is that they (like many other shops in Geneva) sell only Swiss products.

They have Swiss Army knifes, Swiss cuckoo clocks, Swiss watches and everything that Swiss is famed for. All are branded original products which would normally be priced astronomically, but are going for about 50% the original price because of the clearance sale. The owner is this 75-year-old guy who’s decided that it was about time to retire.

So we picked up a couple of Swiss Army knifes, and a few other things. Because I lost my Casio calculator-watch a few weeks ago on the last day of school (ONE OF YOU ASTRO DUDES TOOK IT, I KNOW), I told my parents that I needed a new one so I looked at the watches.

There were no Rolex or Omega, but I wouldn’t be so crazy to wear one to school either. So I settled for their most branded watch (what else?), Swiss Army (Victorinox, I believe).

Filtering away all the watches with Gold (I’d be mugged on my way to school), I chose this design that was priced at 459 Franc before discount. That’s S$600, and they sell it at that price everywhere else. But after discount (plus more, with my Mom’s professional bargaining skills that were foreign to the Europeans), we got it.

Still, it wasn’t cheap.

Before leaving Switzerland, we decided to visit one more location in the area — Mont Blanc.

Mont Blanc, which literally translates into White Mountain if my French isn’t too bad, is the tallest mountain in Europe at 4807m. White because, I suppose, of the snow-capped peak. Fortunately, Mont Blanc is in France, in the Alps which is connections from Switzerland to France and perhaps Italy. My geography isn’t that good.

We traveled about an hour and half to the area, where the mountains started popping up, indicating the start of the Alps region.

Mont Blanc was there alright, but with the bad weather, the cloud cover was affecting the scenery so we decided to stop somewhere and check into a hotel for the night. We found Chamonix — a small town in the valley of the mountains, and the view of the mountains towering over the buildings is simply breathtaking. My Dad says it’s Chamonix where they hosted the Winter Olympics just two years ago, much thanks to its beautiful ski slopes.

On the car outside-air-temperature sensor, the reading dropped from 17′C to 11′C in that short drive from Geneva to Chamonix.

We checked into a two-star hotel at less than half the price we’d pay the Geneva.

This is view from my room:

Chamonix offers really incredible views of the Alps.

Tomorrow, weather permitting (forecasts has it bad), we will attempt to head up one of the mountains to have a good view of Mont Blanc via cable car. Or perhaps, we’ll just head up Mont Blanc itself on a tram to view glaciers.

After that, we’ll get out the area towards our newly decided destination: PARIS.

PS. Paying for anything at McDonald’s is entirely worth the price for their free Internet.

PPS. I didn’t see anything that proves that CERN is occupying a space of 27km underneath me when I was in Geneva. Disappointed!

Comments(0) 5:06 PM 6 June 2008