A City of Contrasts

     Geneva has been a bit of a puzzle to me ever since I first visited in July. I was prepared to absolutely fall in love with the city: prepared for European architectural charm, Swiss cleanliness and efficiency, and majestic alpine scenery. Geneva certainly has all of that, but it is also, well, a city, with all that being a city entails: areas of trashiness, grafitti, construction, ugly buildings. To illustrate, I'm going to share some pictures taken on my run this morning. I dropped the kids off at school (we've been experimenting with the bus, but more about that in a future post) and then started my run in a beautiful park with pedestrian trails, clearly intended for serious pedestrians, because they have directional signs to nearby cities.

I continued along a lovely path that followed the Aire River, then through some residential areas. My run took me through the old town of Onex. . .

 . . . with its charming buildings and cobbled streets. Then I ran through Parc Brot, which is right near our house:

What could be prettier, right? 

Plopped between Old Onex and Park Brot, however, one finds this:

And that kind of thing is all over Onex, and all of Geneva: street construction, building construction, overcrowding, loud drills, and sirens . . . plus traffic like I have rarely seen, including really crazy motorcyclists who drive by the "Italian rules" i.e. no rules.

The last picture I'll include sums up the city for me. It's taken from a bike/pedestrian bridge that the kids and I cross on the way to school, over a major road called Pont Butin. The unattractive apartments, the busy traffic . . . and the breathtaking mountains.

Is Geneva exactly what I pictured? No, but do I love the city? Unequivocally yes.