Experiencing Geneva from different dimensions

What an amazing weekend it was! Not only because I had one of my best friends around, not only because the weather was highly tropical - around 30 degrees - and not only because I discovered Geneva and its surroundings in many new ways. It was just the whole atmosphere in the city. Sun, summer, happy people, music, I truly had the feeling of being on holidays for a weekend.

After a delay of one hour, Michael finally arrived last Thursday here in Geneva. We had a pizza at my place, and went to Plain Palais afterwards so that Michael could experience the soccer-craziness here in the city. After the game we met with a couple of interns, had some drinks at a bar, and we then went back home where the sneezing process started for Michael… Because one day before my new roommate had arrived: Snoopy. A very sweet stalker cat (he follows you all around), but unfortunately Michael's immune system doesn't really like cat hairs…

So after waking up the next morning we quickly went outside for a long day of walking in the sun. I had taken a day off from WHO so I could have a long and touristy weekend.

At night we went into the city again because this weekend was the weekend of Fête de la Musique. In all the parks and on every green field artists were performing. From bagpipes to unidentifiable instruments and from French chansons to Acrobatic dancing, it was all there.

The next day we decided to go to Nyon.

>Funny story: a friend of mine told me she had gone here by train and came back to Geneva by boat. It sounded like fun trip, so for already a couple of weeks I was telling everybody that I would go by train and come back by boat from… Lyon. Haha tiny misunderstanding! Funny thing is; everybody believed me, even the French thought it was indeed possible to travel from Lyon to Geneva by boat :)<

Anyway, so we indeed took the train to get there! It was a small village but so nice and so beautiful! It's lying along the lake, in between Geneva and Lausanne, and it really has a Mediterranean vibe. For some reason I felt like being in Italy or Spain or whatsoever.

After walking around for a while, we found a nice spot for a picnic and… a dive in the lake! Yay, my first swim in Geneva water!

Around 5 'o clock the boat arrived and we went back to Geneva. It was so beautiful to see the lake by boat in stead of standing on the shore, really a different experience. And because the weather was so great, we could see the Mont Blanc very clearly!

After another hot walk in the sun back to my place, we had a fast dinner and a small make over… Well, I won't spend many words on what happened that night, but let's say that Holland for sure did not loose because we were not supporting enough, or dressed in orange enough! The only good thing about loosing is actually that now I don't have to wear my 'Miss Holland' belt anymore. Because I don't think all the guys really realized that it was a joke… I did not really feel that comfortable of all these strangers taking pictures of me…

Sunday was a very exciting day! On Wednesday afternoon, when I had gone for a mountain bike ride, I had seen a lot of people floating in the air above me. I got inspired, I managed to convince Michael as well to be crazy like me, and we had decided to go… for a paragliding ride off the mountain! Unfortunately, when I called the paragliding school, the wind was still too strong at 3 o clock, so we had to call them back around 7. While waiting, we decided to go for a long walk. Or I should actually say: we went hiking. Because you don't walk here in Switzerland, but you hike - much cooler to say!

We walked for two hours along the river, and we then realized we were already almost at the border of France. And since it was still windy, we figured that paragliding would probably be cancelled, so we decided to go up the mountain on our own. Well, not entirely because we were transported by the Télépherique, but we ended up on top of the Selève and the view was really breathtaking…

When our feet were standing again safely back on the ground, we noticed that it was already 7 and since the paragliding school was really close by, we decided to walk there. Just in case, because we still thought that the trip would be canceled. Well, it wouldn't! We arrived at the school, and a couple of 'laid-back, easy going, surfer dude style' guys were already waiting for us. Waiting to go up the mountain… So there I was, standing in my tiny skirt, flip-flops on and no money with me. Completely unprepared. But, laid-back as they dudes were, 10minutes later - after changing in a small office in the back of their school - I was wearing somebody's shoes and wearing a pair of shorts of one of the paragliding teachers. Haha we were ready to go!

We jumped in the car together with 6 others - who were all speaking very fast French - and we had no idea where we were actually going. First we dropped off some persons, and new persons jumped in, and then we finally drove towards the mountain. Just this car trip itself was already memorable… Especially for my stomach! Imagine a laid-back surfer dude, driving a small van, paying more attention to his buddies and his phone, and then taking a steep way up with a LOT of hairpin bends…

But we survived, and 30min later we were on the 1300 m high top of the mountain. The views were even more amazing as the ones we saw one hour ago..! I really felt like I had just stepped into a Milka commercial. The mountains were there, the fields of grass, and there were even some cows. They only needed to be purple…

Unfortunately - we already saw it a bit coming - after sitting there for 15 minutes, one of the teachers came to us with the announcement that the wind was still too strong and that we couldn't go paragliding :( Really a shame. Especially for Michael, cause I will go back for sure! Now that I have seen the view, I can't wait to jump off that cliff - completely against my instincts - and make a 40minutes ride down!

So we drove back down, crossed the border to France again, we just missed the buss, we also just missed our transfer, so only at 22:30 we were finally back home. We had a huge hamburger, watched football, drank a beer, and at 00:30 we closed our eyes and felt asleep with a very satisfied feeling. It truly was a great weekend.