Geneva Part III

Other things I did on that Friday before I had all the nice chats with my roommates:
I headed across the lake to see the starting of le Jet at 10AM... lots of fun, the guy let this little girl push the button and up it went, the biggest landmark in the city born each morning... such fun. After my lunch, I went up in the towers of St. Pierre's cathedral for a nice view of the city and the lake, then took a bus to the east end of town where the city zoo was. It was really more like a farm yard as you will see in my pictures, but the peacocks were funny and the marmots rocked my socks. The best part of the whole Geneva zoo though was the park nearby... this park is the home of a cousin of the Teeter-Go-Round!!! I was so excited! Except I had no one to ride it with and the little kids were hogging it, but that's okay because this thing was more like a Wobble-Go-Round and didn't seem capable of handling the jokes I wanted to put it through. Here's a nice short video of how it went (my memory card was getting full at this point, that's why its so short.) So yeah, that was all before I went back and talked religion with the roomies as I told you about in the last post. Can't believe I forgot that goodness.



Saturday was my day for hiking and yes, even though there's a part IV to the Geneva experience, I'll give you pictures now because holding out for this long is just cruel. The bus (with my wonderful free ticket from the hostel) took me to the south of town as the dude at the tourist office suggested and from there I walked about five minutes across the border into France (didn't even know I had crossed the first time... one tiny little sign and that's all). Five feet into France, there's this cable car place that sends you up for like 7 euro (heck yes, no more Swiss francs) and I pretty much spent the entire day hiking, chilling, and lounging around on top of le Saleve. Magnificent views of Geneva, I could see all the way to Lausanne, and plenty of the Alps. I fell asleep in a little meadow I found and ended up a bit sunburnt which was a little unexpected. The snow was old and mostly melted but it was still amusing to see. I found one of those lovely double chocolate Magnums- chocolate ice cream surrounded by fudge, then encapsulated by the chocolate shell. Downright glorious.
I wanted to stay there all day until the last cable car down, but I felt like I needed to get back and tie up loose ends from the conversation I had had last night with the roomies. So, I tore myself from the mountain and headed back and arrived at the hostel in time for dinner. Mahdi was of course there because the only two places he went in Geneva were the hostel and the mosque- never saw any other bit of the city. And we were lucky enough to Ejavet and Erga deciding they didn't want hostel food.
At this point, my roommates and other who know me well will laugh: we decided to have a roommate date and all go out to dinner. That's right, even when I'm only roommates for three nights and we barely speak each other's languages, I've gotta instigate a roommate date. I'm such a dork. Of course I didn't call it that in front of them... just the guys having dinner, but I knew Reno would enjoy my awkward terminology. :-)
We had pizza at a little Italian place and chatted for quite a while as we waited on Mahdi to get back from his evening prayers (he never came back after dinner and we ended up leaving without him... kinda made Ejavet mad). For the rest of the night, the Germans and I just strolled around hitting up random places to get drinks- Erga always got a couple German beers, Ejavet an espresso and me however many cokes Ejavet wanted to buy me. They wanted to get rid of their swiss francs so they didn't mind buying me a few. Trouble is, I hate coke, but I didn't want to drink alcohol in front of them and I hate coffee more, so whatever. I had loads of nasty tasting caffeine, but it was all right because Erga drank like seven beers and didn't seem the least bit tispy. He is a beast of a German after all: a big jolly guy. We all got to know each other a lot better and it turns out that Erga built his one room house into a 27 room mansion over the years, while Ejavet is a philosopher with a couple papers published and a book in the works. We talked a lot about things like justice and random things like the likeness between swans and dinosaurs. From there we got onto evolution and such and looking at the stars, marveling at the universe. At this point, I saw another evangelical opportunity and commented that the word universe comes from the Latin for "one truth" pointing toward an absolute reality and a designer, but silly me, I had forgotten that Ejavet was a Muslim who also believes in a Creator God... we agreed on everything and I laughed at myself for trying a move that is supposed to be used on atheists.
After a while, Ejavet grew quieter and moody, leaving Erga and I to talk in his broken in English. He's such an amusing guy though! I wish I could hang out with him more. We talked a bit about Mahdi and how angry Ejavet was with him for being closeminded, impolite and all sorts of stuff, but Erga and I agreed that Mahdi was a good guy at heart, just a confused kid with a crazy love interest and no sense of time. We convinced Ejavet to forgive him before we got back to the hostel.
When we got there, I saw that Mahdi had picked up my book on religious pluralism (that I had for homework). Wondering if he had read anything good, I asked him about it, but he turned at me really mad looking- Apparently the author mentions Muhammed once and I had left the book under my bed (on the floor) which really bothered Mahdi. I apologized and put the book in my bag and he calmed down and laughed and said it wasn't a big deal, but it seems apparent he didn't really read much more out of the book.

The four of us all had breakfast together the next day, Sunday as we all prepared to leave. The Germans were in high spirits (no sign of a hangover at all from Erga despite the huge amounts of alcohol he consumed) and Mahdi was looking up tickets from Libya to "the Russia" to see that girl. We all parted and told each other we were glad to have roomed with good friendly guys instead of creepy thieves or something. It was a great time.

Then I headed to church and later to grab a train to Paris- but that story will wait til next time


Pictures!