Taken two years prior, during a 2004 trip to Geneva for the World Trade Center global assembly, the carousel is still a child magnet when we tour old city Geneva in Summer 2006.
The line “some city in Europe says you have rights” comes from a US version of a British show called, simply, The Office. The city in question, Geneva, has a long history of reform and progress, first as one of three recursive epicenters for the Protestant Reformation and now as the home of UN European operations and many NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations).
While most of my time in Geneva has been for business, including World Trade Center and brainstorming sessions for FP7 – a European Union multi-disciplinary research program that I’ve been involved with off and on via IDIAP and AMI – today was a family sightseeing day, showing the rest of the family what my two oldest children and I had found when we spent a morning here on the day we came to see the Tour de France.
We rode the train from Sion to GVA – Aéroport International de Genéve – to meet my sister-in-law who was coming over for a brief visit. We then dropped the bags at the central train station, stopped by the market for meal supplies and headed across the footbridge to visit the old city.
We passed through one of the gates of the old city, dropped postcards in La Post, made our way past the InterDiscount (which previously delighted my son with four floors of electronics and demo video game consoles!) and the carousel. After a brief stop to fill the water bottles at a fountain next to the Dante Alighieri room – imagine finding a société pour la diffusion de la langue et de la culture italienne in the heart of a French Swiss bastion straddling the border with France! – we finally climbed the steps to Rue Jean-Calvin.
Those of you who know me probably also know I have been influenced in my adult life by the Reformed teachings of Luther, Calvin and Knox. While I’m not keen to see the way these men are almost deified in Reformed circles (wasn’t that part of the issue the reformers had with the mother church as they broke away from Roman Catholicism?) it was still breathtaking to see the place where Calvin lived during his sojourn in Geneva.
His stop in Geneva in 1536, after fleeing Paris and religious persecution, was intended to be brief. The school he founded and pulpit he filled at St. Pierre Cathedral, however, ended up having a profound impact on the Scots Reformers such as John Knox and established Geneva as a city of refuge and international thought.
This day we rounded the corner on Rue Jean-Calvin and headed up to St. Pierre, where the north tower of the three-naved basilica offers a unique view over the city and lake and where a small playground is tucked away behind the imposing church. After a bit of merry-go-round and see-saw fun, we entered St. Pierre – and witnessed the Ugly American first hand.
She was at the information table near the front of the church, close by to where Calvin and others would ascend the pulpit to preach. We were waiting patiently behind her, to ask about the WC, as the children had been on the train for several hours.
She apparently thought she wanted a series of souvenir postcards and a book. What she really wanted was a free history lesson, in English, but when the attendant wouldn’t pay her enough attention and turned to help the next in line, she grabbed a handful of postcards, shoving one in his face.
“Who are these men?” she demanded. He, with a weary look, started to give her the names: Calvin, Farel, de Béze . . .
This litany was apparently too much; she then snatched up a book and said she could read all about them in there, and asked to purchase the book and the postcards. He replied the book was a reference and not for sale, as a label on the book clearly showed in several languages, which annoyed her more. He suggested helpfully that she could get the book in one of several bookstores in town and then told her the purchase price of the postcards.
She pulled out two bags – one with Swiss Francs, the other with Euros – from her purse and opened the Euros bag. I should have said something right then, but living for so many years in the South, politeness (and fascination at the growing comedy of errors) won the moment.
She counted the Euro coins aloud and then handed him the stack of coins. When he handed her back the postcards and a stack of coins that were higher than the stack she’d given him, though, she looked thoroughly confused.
Hoping to be helpful, and noting she sounded like she was a New Yorker, I explained in US English the reason for the second stack of coins: he was providing her change in Swiss Francs for her purchase in Euros, and Euros were worth much more per unit than Francs. His mouth twitched in a slight wry smile, a French Swiss equivalent to our wink and a nod.
“All the money is the same over here, and I can’t tell it apart,” she blurted to me as a pained expression passed over his face and his lips narrowed. “Why don’t they just use dollars – or at least the same money across all of Europe?”
A question to be pondered and debated, for sure, at the UN compound a few kilometers away, but not to be answered in haste by an American visiting a country whose independent streak is more than double his own country’s length of existence.
