An adventure to Annecy
The resolution to go to France got off to a slow start the next morning on the grounds that we didn’t know where we wanted to go. I recently did a translation exercise in an Esperanto course book where the passage described a Polish railway worker trying to sell a ticket to a man who neither knew nor cared where he was going, and our situation reminded me somewhat of that as we wandered vaguely around Geneva’s bus station looking for a vehicle which might be about to depart for France. No such vehicles appeared to be in existence and so my boyfriend approached a pair of drivers who seemed reluctant to recommend a destination, but mentioned that a bus to Annecy was departing in a little over an hour. Knowing next to nothing about the place, this was enough inspiration for us to shell out considerable quantities of francs for a ticket, and feeling excited in a reckless sort of way, we set off to kill another hour in Geneva.
I was very excited indeed a few minutes later when I caught my first glimpse of the famous Jet d’eau, the world’s tallest fountain which rises up out of Lake Geneva and is supposed to be the city’s most famous landmark. Having read in the guidebooks that it wasn’t operational during the winter months, the distinct lack of an enormous plume of white water across the skyline on Monday night had caused me to fear that we might not get to see it at all. But happily everything was in order on Tuesday, and it really is a sight to behold. According to something I read somewhere, it started life as way to release excess pressure during the generation of hydroelectric power in the nineteenth century, but the sight soon became so popular that the local council decided to maintain it as a permanent tourist attraction. I attempted to take a couple of photos of it but it really was rather difficult to capture the full effect with the aid of a not very good mobile phone camera, and so we had to resort to buying a postcard for our own records.
Other sites of Geneva we managed to cram into sixty minutes included the jardin anglais which is a tiny little park by the lakeside. Well, perhaps I am unkind to call it tiny but when I see the name I can’t help but think of der Englische Garten in Munich which is big enough to get lost in for several days at a time, and in comparison to that it seemed tiny. The English part, I assume, consisted of the fact that there was a bandstand and after dark it was a prime location to buy drugs. It was a very pleasant place though, filled with busts of austere looking Swiss men who looked so terribly important that we felt guilty for not knowing who they were. Just outside the garden is the famous Geneva flower clock which somehow manages to tell the time by means of clock hands embedded in the ground and a clock face made entirely out of plants. It was totally fascinating and very beautiful, so we purchased a postcard of that also 
Next halt on our whistlestop tour was the cathedral. Geneva has somewhat of a Calvinist past, occasionally being described as the Protestant Rome, and so I wasn’t expecting great things from the cathedral in terms of decoration. I have to confess that the constraints of time meant I didn’t give it more than a cursory glance before handing over a few francs and dashing off up the tower. I find climbing cathedral towers both exhilarating for the wonderful view which generally awaits you at the top, and terrifying on account of the fact that I am scared of heights and steps. Especially steep narrow steps which spiral round, and especially when there are other people coming in the opposite direction and you have to let them past. Luckily, the time of year meant that we had few other tourists to compete with and so were able to sprint up without encountering too many obstacles, pausing only for a few minutes at the top to gaze at a cloudy Geneva before heading back down again and off to the coach station.
The bus to Annecy was very pleasant, although I felt like a naughty child because we sat on the back seat surreptitiously eating bread and cheese. I blinked and completely missed the border crossing on the way there, which was a bit of a disappointment, but even through the abundance of low cloud, the scenery was spectacular enough to make up for it Tantalising glimpses of mountains were visible through the mist as we made our way deeper into France.
For the last fifteen minutes or so of the journey I actually became unaccountably tired, and so the first thing we did upon arriving in a rather drenched Annecy was to seek out a restaurant where we could buy a coffee. The coffee, when it came, turned out to be a shot of espresso which was slightly daunting because I had never tried one before, but proved incredibly effective at livening me up for the next few hours It was accompanied by a rather delicious piece of quiche. My boyfriend expressed surprise that someone as fussy as me actually deigned to eat quiche, but I was equally surprised that he enjoyed it, having been told by someone else that Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche 
By the time we’d finished, Annecy appeared to be in the throes of a torrential downpour. I had carefully packed an umbrella in my suitcase in order to be prepared for such an eventuality, but had then proceeded to leave it back at the hostel, and so we decided to seek refuge in an indoor shopping mall. As a rule I am not a huge fan of indoor shopping malls, but this one was surprisingly fascinating.
First stop was a gigantic electricals and book store combined which we wandered around idly on the look out for Asterix books. My French being as appalling as it is, I wasn’t able to understand most of the titles that I saw, but what fascinated me was the layout of the bookshop. French language books were in one place, English language books in another, and books translated into French but originally written in another language were elsewhere. What was worthy of note was the volume of French language books on display. That may sound a silly thing to say, but if you compare it to a visit to Interdiscount which we made in German-speaking Bern the next day, it was really amazing. True to form, the Bernese bookshop displayed shelf after shelf of literature translated from English or American authors and I struggled to find anything written by a German, never mind anything Swiss. In the end I tracked down one copy of a book by Martin Suter (the best Swiss author ever – sorry Max Frisch!) but it was hardback and so cost more than i was prepared to pay. Had i been able to read French, however, I would have had no such problems in Annecy.
Next stop was a large supermarket where we took advantage of the incredibly low prices to stock up on some groceries. There was rather a weird system in operation where you had to weigh your own grapes before you purchased them, but the most exciting thing was a 1.5 litre bottle of mineral water which we bought for 19 cents 
It was a shame that we were an hour and a half away from Geneva by bus and so couldn’t buy any perishable food stuffs 
By now the rain had abated slightly, so we were able to go for a bit of a walk. Actually, it ended up being quite a long walk, probably by virtue of the fact that we didn’t have a map, but it was thoroughly enjoyable We headed down to the lake which although not as big as Lake Geneva was both extensive and beautiful. Gaps in the cloud allowed us to catch further glimpses of mountains, and one in particular was so alluring that we started walking towards it in order to get a better view. In the process I think we accidentally managed to walk out of Annecy itself and into a little village, but it was very pleasant and we even found somewhere else to stop for an espresso top up Annecy was a delightful place which is probably even more attractive on a sunny day when you can see the Alps properly, and indeed I would like to revisit it one day in the summer because they had cute little pedal boats on the lake which you could hire out. Overall, the place reminded me of Arosa, a small town in Graubünden Alps. There is perhaps little reason why it should, since Annecy is undoubtedly much bigger, but something about the way the mountains rose up behind the lake combined with the all the little boats moored on the shore gave it a distinctly Arosa-esque feel
I think I dozed for most of the way back, although I did spot the border crossing this time, and before long we were home in the hostel eating a rather delicious meal of pate and fresh bread which we had picked up on the way back. The next day the plan was to indulge a whim of mine and go to Bern