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| This looks like several different buildings, but they are all connected pieces of the cathedral. |
Sunday 16 July 2017
Sunday we decided to go to Catholic Mass
in St. Pierre’s cathedral, and then have lunch in the old part of town before
catching our bus back to Grenoble. We got checked out of the hostel, and took
the tram. We had to switch trains, but we couldn’t see that any of the trams
stopped near the Cathedral, so we ended up walking a long ways to get there,
but that’s ok, good exercise right? And we still made it on time. We told the
door greeter we were there for mass, and he said, “no, this is services, this
is Protestant cathedral”. . . . “oh, we said. . .ok, we’re here for services.”
So embarrassing! We had no idea it was protestant, and apparently Geneva has a
history for harboring protestants when all the religious wars were going on, so
quite the faux pas, but they still let us in.
It was kind of dark inside with the only
light coming through the stained glass windows. We found an empty pew and laid
our weekend bags with all our stuff on the ground by our feet. Pretty quickly
services began with the sound of an organ being played. The pipes were behind
us at the back of the cathedral, and I never could figure out where the
organist was sitting, but the playing was so professional. It sounded as if
this person had been born to play organ and spent their entire life perfecting
their gift. I thought I was at an organ concert, not just Sunday services. I
have to admit, I was in musical heaven.
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| The Organ Playing |
When the organ stopped, the pastor stood
up from his seat on my left side of the cathedral and began his sermon. He
spoke very clear and slow and I felt like I understood so much of what he was
saying. I even recognized scriptures he was quoting in French, like “love the
lord thy god with all thy might, thy heart, they strength”. After about 10
minutes of speaking, he asked us to stand, and we sang these beautiful, what
sounded to me like medieval hymns that related directly to what he had been
speaking about. This repeated another 3 times, he spoke, quoted scriptures, we
sang about it. Every time the organ music was spectacular. I couldn’t believe
that we got to sing with the organ, our poor voices certainly didn’t compare to
the precision and beauty of the instrument, but still, I loved the idea that we
were singing because we love God, and surely he would not reprimand our voices.
At the end the organ played another solo
and this time I couldn’t help but record the music, even though I covered the
lens so there would be no picture. It didn’t seem right to take video of the
service, but I had to capture the sound.
A man, probably in his 60’s or 70’s
sitting in front of us turned around after the service ended and introduced
himself. He was wearing blue jeans, and blue denim jacket, with a blue scarf
around his neck. (Can I just say I love that men wear scarves in Europe, I
don’t know what it is, maybe just that it shows men take an interest in fashion
and accessories, and I don’t think it makes them any less masculine. That’s
another thing about guys in France, they kiss each other on the cheek to say
hello, they use man bags, and wear scarves, and still manage to be sexy and
masculine.) His name is Michel Weiss. He lives in France, only about 20 minutes
outside of Geneva.
After introductions were made he asked
what our plans were, and we told him we wanted to find a restaurant to try
Swiss Fondue. He actually walked around the neighborhood with us to help us
find a fondue place. Before leaving us he said it is great to meet young people
who love God, and told us how much he also loves God, and wished us well in our
journeying.
At the restaurant the menu said cheese fondue
with herbs was $27 Swiss Francs. We asked if this was per person, or if it was
big enough for all of us to share one. We were told we could share one, so we
thought, perfect, we will split the cost. When we ordered, we told the waitress
we wanted Fondue to share between 4 people. Then she asked for 4? And we said
yes. Then she said, do you want different types, or all of you want fromage and
herbs? We said all the same, and were a bit confused, because we wanted to
share one, how could we each have different flavors?
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| First fondue |
She left, and we began to worry, what if
they were going to bring out 4 different bowls of fondue and charge us $27
each? We decided we needed to clarify and when she came back we asked her
again, specifying we only wanted 1 fondue. She seemed really upset with us and
said, you will be hungry, it’s not a lot to share between 4 people, and then
ran back to the kitchen to change the order. Thank goodness we clarified! She
wasn’t very nice about it, and then we were worried it would be really tiny and
each of us would only gets a bite or two.
I also ordered an endive salad which was
really disappointing, except for the goat cheese. It had canned apricots,
straight up, canned, not fresh apricots. The tomato was diced so tiny you
couldn’t even taste it in the salad, and it only had 4 lettuce leaves with a
ton of endives. The cheese on the other hand, were these large chunks of goat
cheese that were so soft and creamy they melted in your mouth, like glorified
whipped cream. It was by far the best goat cheese I had ever tasted.
When she brought out the fondue, we were
relieved. It was a huge pot, with a huge basket of bread, there was more than
enough to share between the 4 of us. During the meal our waitress warmed up to
us a little bit as well. At first when refilling our water, she said she was
sorry for us that we got Trump as a president. We’ve all heard this before, but
without any prior conversation with her, it seemed like a pretty rude thing to
say.
Then when she came back, we talked to her
a bit more and she got really into politics with us, talking about how the
young people don’t vote enough, asking if it was the same in the US, and how
the Swiss vote about everything, even minor things, all the people vote and
that is how everything is decided. I like that, and I wish the US let us vote
on more subjects than just regional and national elections. Even then though, I
think our voting system is defective, when someone can get elected without the
majority of the vote due to the electoral system. I much prefer France’s way,
where it’s just simply the person with the most votes, period. So much simpler.
After talking to the waitress, I realized
that the way Europeans make small talk, is to talk about politics. To
Americans, this seems intrusive and a bit rude and brash, but here, it is a way
to get to know people. My first reaction was dislike of the practice, but now I
realize the politics gets a lot of good conversations going. More to say on
this from later in the week.
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| another lovely fountain in old Geneva |
We walked to the bus station and took our
bus home. There’s really not anything interesting worth mentioning about that. I
took the new bus route to get home. The bus which goes directly to the stop
near my house only comes every 4 hours on Sunday, but there is another bus that
comes every 10 minutes, and stops a 30 minute walk away from my house. I
decided to take this bus instead so I’d have a good walk, and wouldn’t have to
wait a couple hours for the other bus. Earlier in the week I used the GPS on my
phone to map the walk from this bus stop to my house and explored the area.
It’s really pretty, one of the streets is called Chemin de la Chartreuse, and
it’s a very small shady path with a stream running along the side. I like this
walk very much.
When I arrived home, as promised by
Helene, her son Rémi was there along with her friend Monique. Before dinner, as
Helene always does when she has guests, we had drinks in the sitting room, a syrup
flavored water. Rémi can speak English, and per Helene’s request I spoke
English to him, but when speaking to the group I spoke French because Monique
doesn’t speak English. It was actually quite interesting, the conversation
continually switching from French to English, back and forth, and Rémi was
really nice, always explaining parts of the conversation to me in English.
Helene also likes to eat dinner in the
garden when she has guests. I’ve had so many mosquito bites since I got here,
that I’ve learned it’s best to take precautions, so I quickly changed into long
pants and long sleeves and doused myself in bug spray before going in the
garden. Helene has a low wooden fence around her yard, but growing all around
the fence, in the way I have seen all fences in France, she has planted tall
bushes, non-flowering, and also rose bushes and other flower bushes I do not
know the name of. In one corner of the yard there is a large tree, similar to
the one that grows in my Utah front yard, and this is where the outside table
is. It’s just white plastic, but Helene puts nice cushions on the seats, and
always uses a nice table cloth so it seems fancy.
Rémi brought a bottle of red wine, and of
course they all think it’s strange that I don’t drink, but they are always
considerate to have a carafe of water on the table for me. Helene is a chef if
you ask me. Most of the meals, aside from the octopus and sardines and
anchovies, have been better than any restaurant I’ve ever eaten at. The first
course was cantaloupe. The main dish was another seafood dish, which was not my
favorite. It’s called tartine or terretine, something to do with the clay pot
it is baked in. It’s basically like a meatloaf, but made with fish which she
bakes in the oven, then puts in the fridge to cool and is eaten cold. She says
it’s good for summer because it’s not hot. It kind of reminded me of maybe what
a fish pâtée would taste like. I didn’t love it, but it wasn’t bad either. I do
love the salad, the leaves here seem so much more delicate and sweeter than the
leaves at home. We had a very funny conversation as I tried to ask what the
lettuce was called.
For desert Rémi also brought some stinky
cheese from Dijon, where he lives. It was orange on the outside, creamy on the
inside, and very stinky, but the taste was much milder than the smell and I
liked it a lot. After that, fruit for dessert as usual. I was very tired from
traveling and so after dinner I begged their pardon to be excused and went to
bed.
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