Geneva, Switzerland
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
A drive though Geneva
Generally the first place you arrive in when you get to Geneva is the airport. Well, if you are coming from far away that is. If you are already on the continent you will probably arrive in the train station.
The airport is called Cointrin and was until recently the airport from which all Swissair planes left from. Now the company is based in Zurich and was replaced by Easyjet,yepee-not!
Taking the Taxi is quicker and if you need to get to your hotel to have a rest is best, when you have many baggages to do so but if you aren't too tired;take the bus.
The airport is almost in town and leaving and landing planes pass over pretty nice, though noisy residential areas. Though the city limits stretch beyond the runways the first thing you see that tells you you have arrived is a gigantic Mc Donalds arch sign. This neighbourhood is called Servette. Servette is also the name of Geneva's football team. The football field is not far from there on the route of an other bus line. This area boomed in the 70's and 80's it has a diverse population. The UN is at the very end of the road on the left at the crossroads where you see the Mc Do sign. Still looking to the left at the end of the street with planted trees you can see an Irish pub that is the mecca of UN staff and generally English speaking residents of the area. When I was a child there used to be a traditional Valaisan restaurant called La Pinte Sedunoise. The owner must have retired
Over the past five years there has been a prolifiration of non-typical Irish pubs to satisfy the growing Brit population and tourists. As we all know a Brit can never imagine not finding a pub and/or chip shop everywhere he/she goes a little like the Americans with almost everything we find normal to have in a civilized town.
The lower part of the Rue de la Servette is another neighbourhood called les Grottes. It is a very old part of town and has many little restaurants, cafes, art galeries and antique shops. The ugliest buildings in the area are new like to one where the cinema is. There used to be a 2 or 3 hundred year old sicomore there infront of a beautiful late 17th century house that had been divided in five appartment. The City council said that the tree was dangerous and that is was in danger of falling on the road below, however that tree was one of the oldest in town and was the only sicomore in the entire region. It was eventually torn down allong with that beautiful house and replaced with an entire section of new appartment buildings that have nothing to do with the mid 18th century architecture of the other buildings. Les Grottes are just behind the train station. The building you see is not the original trainstation. La place Cornavin, where it is, used to be much bigger than it is now. The neibourhood of the Paquis came shortly after the original building burned down and the new one was built, creating a divide not only visually but also psychologically and economically, by blocking from view a large section of town.
The bus from the airport turns right and left and goes down another main road that streches below the Basilica Notre Dame on to the lake until the Mont-Blanc bridge. This road is basically where the other divide takes place this is truelly where the 'Rive Gauche' starts. Beautifull and old buildings follow each other like nothing most of them home to a bank, a luxury chocolate store or a four to five star hotel. The bus crosses the bridge from which you can see on the left and in the summer the jet d'eau, a 112 metre jet of water that totally changes the perspective of the piece of lake within Geneva city limits [called La Rade] and of the buildings right around it. Still on the bridge to your right you can see an island called Ile Rousseau. The place is dedicated to the memory of the Genevan humanist and philosopher [he is not French!]Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is also the home of the lake's White Swan community. You can also see on the left, if there is trafic or if you are quick at the end of the bridge you can see the flower clock or Horloge Fleurie. It was moved recently because the sidewalk space before it then was not wide enough to allow tourits to have the whole clock in the frame, a few unlucky ones steped back onto the road and on coming trafic though the years and they moved it a couple of years ago. The parc you see behind the clock is the Jardin Anglais or as some aficionado's call it "le djard'". There is nothing horticulturally English about it but I think the person who donated the piece of land to the town was English. Most of Geneva's parcs-and the most beautiful ones-were at some point private property.
To be continued
More on the history of Geneva:
http://www.geneve-tourisme.ch/eng/index99.html
