Over the summer I’d kept in touch with Alex Jeffers, a friend from the year above me at Haas. In between graduation and starting work in New York he’d been backpacking around Africa and Europe, and we organized to meet up in Chamonix for the weekend.
I flew in to Geneva on Friday evening and knew I had an ordeal ahead to get down to Chamonix that night. Now I have to admit I’m not a big fan of Geneva. I used to go down to Geneva every couple of weeks to play rugby, and I never warmed to it. It’s definitely more French than Swiss for starters. Then on top of that it’s pretty run down and dirty. But I digress… It turned out to be a real struggle to find out my options. After a lot of asking I discovered that I’d missed the direct bus there, and that I’d need to take the regional trains and a local bus to get there. I eventually got in to town around 11pm and went for a drink with the Colonel (who’d got there the previous day).
The water jet on Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) in Geneva.
The next morning we hiked one side of the valley. To gain some altitude we used the cable car to get up to the glacier, and we then traversed across one glacier to get across to another. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t on our side, it snowed a little and we just got glimpses of the mountains above.
A street in the village. At the glacier’s edge.
On Sunday morning I only had half a day before I had to get back to the airport, so we caught the cable car up the other side of the valley and went for a short hike up to a small alpine lake at one of the passes.
Alex enjoying some of the local cheeses and meats.
At the top of the mountain pass with the Mont Blanc range beyond.
I flew in to Barcelona to visit my friend Jolien, who was working at a bar along the nearby coast for the summer. On Sunday I had a couple of hours free before I had to head to the airport so I wandered around the city. I hadn’t been back to Barcelona since I was backpacking there waaaaay back in early 1999 with four fantastic Canadian girls – Sloane, Tara, Steph and Aili. It took me a while to get my bearings around the city again but one I did a lap of La Rambla (the pedestrian boulevard running the length of the city centre) I was back on track.
I took off from Bonn for the weekend and caught a train into Bayern (Bavaria) to the historic town of Wuerzburg. The Altstadt was razed by the Allies in the Second World War and they’ve done an amazing job of restoring it.
Across the river there was a stone bridge which reminded me a lot of the bridge in Prague with all the statues along its length.
Over the far side of the river, I took a walk up the hill to visit the massive castle/fortress and monastery there.
