Switzerland - land of cheese, chocolate and cuckoo clocks. Swiss bank accounts too, but not having any money makes those irrelevant to NOT. It's also good that NOT got to visit before the city is sucked up in a black hole created by CERN's new supercollider.
Of course, if you're a small flightless fowl, you have to depend on others for the flying. And if you're going to fly, well why not do it first class? NOT likes to travel in style, thank you very much. Another hot towel over here!
NOT barely gets to the city and already he's being insulted by the signs along the street. Quack!
To cool off it's off to Lake Geneva. Rising
majestically from the lake is the Jet d'Eau (Water Jet) shooting water 460
feet into the air and is one of the largest fountains in the world.
It just made NOT feel like he had to pee.
Geneva was hosting this year's UEFA Championships, so as NOT was there, a giant football was being prepared to ride atop the fountain jet. Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!
Martin Luther may have nailed his theses to the door in Wittenberg, but it was Geneva that was one of the centers of the Reformation. The city even remembers where its citizens adopted the Reformation.
At the University of Geneva is the International Monument to the Reformation (The Reformation Wall). Ten men are commemorated with statues, with the center piece a group of four men rendered in 5 meter (over 16 feet) statues are William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox. The four are flanked by smaller statues of 6 other important figures. The memorial was built to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin and the 350th anniversary of the founding of the University by John Calvin. NOT hopes they don't decide to step down from their dias.
The Internal Red Cross was founded in Geneva. And although the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum is there, the original founding site is now the Museum of the Reformation. Geneva believes in multi-tasking.
Geneva loves its doors. Or at least the historical ones. Behind these doors many famous persons were born - Geneva was some kind of breeding ground of famous thinkers. Social Contract philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau walked through this door where he was born.
Finally! Clocks and Geneva go together. And NOT wants to be a "Duck-coo Clock" so he was extremely happy to find the famous flower clock at the edge of the English Garden. Originally the dial was made up of 6,500 flowers, but was expanded in the past few years to eight concentric circles. The second hand is the largest in the world at over 2.5 meters in length.
Quack-coo! Quack-coo!
