[Summer in Grenoble] Geneva - Day 2: Looking for Lunch in Super-expensive Switzerland

June 20th, 2015

After our visit to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum,

my friends and I came out to the road again.
It was around 2 PM, so we really had to look for a place to get food.

but instead of restaurants, we were only able to see cool looking building like these

and a pretty looking hotel.
Still a die-hard Ibis fan

We managed to find a restaurant...
but that looked way too expensive for a bunch of college students to eat at.

so... we had to continue our search
My roommate and I could not even look things up because we did not have data for our phones in Switzerland.

OOOH?
Is that a school??
Looks very different from the school buildings I've been seeing in my life.
Looks like something you might see in Harry Potter movies or something like that.

We were still starving and were still searching..

Then we just noticed that we just went past a small shop that was likely to sell some food.
We all thought it was difficult to find a place to place that serves food past 2PM, so we decided to just buy something that can fill our stomachs at the small shop we walked past.

here we were.

Yaaaay!
We're not going to starve!

Ms. Shop Owner prepared the food we paid for.

but you know what.....?
Everything in Switzerland is Expensive!
That sandwich shown above, costs more than 10 francs (pretty much more that 10 bucks)!!!

Wow..
Dang...
I lost all my words.
I just ate...

[Summer in Grenoble] Geneva - Day 2: International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum

June 20th, 2015

After touring the UN headquarters, it was almost, but a little too early for lunch time.

and we managed to run into the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum's sign along the way.

So, why not? We chose to visit there first.

The Red Cross and the Red Crescent are not two different organizations.
Red Crescent is the alternative symbol for places that are not so comfortable with the cross shape, as in some of the Islamic countries.

From the front desk, we all received my least favorite gadget of all(?) : the audio guide.

and then my friends and I started looking around the museum.

The exhibits were not-so uplifting, because the Red Cross is an organization all about helping those suffering from difficult situations such as wars or natural disasters.

Ooh??
Here's an artwork about Nelson Mandela

I heard some very weird and annoying noise coming from somewhere, and I decided to see what's the source.

Turns out the annoying sound was coming from this "Prepare for the Storm" game thingy.

It was kind of harder than expected.
My friends and I tried it twice and failed both times...

huh??

Now, here's something interesting!
They were the weirdest exhibits about natural disasters I've ever seen.

If the man on the right turns on the fan, that creates a very powerful gale in the image at the center.
If the man on the right pours a bucket of water, that creates a massive flood in the image at the center.
It was a very interesting exhibit.

Anyways, we looked around the rest of the museum and then made our way outside to look for a place to get lunch.

[Summer in Grenoble] Geneva - Day 2: United Nations Headquarters, Palais de Nations

June 20th, 2015

It was my very first morning in Switzerland
My friends and I came down to the lobby to have some breakfast.

It wasn't a huge breakfast buffet or anything, but Ibis had quite a nice food options for breakfast.

Scrambled egg, baguette, toast, cereal, chocolate hazelnut spread, green tea, and etc.
I actually liked a lot of the stuff they had there.

After eating some breakfast, my friends and I headed out to the city.

Got on a bus

that had some state-of-the-art tech built in.
That monitor is so nice! It informs the passengers what the upcoming stops are.

Anyway, we made it to the busier part of the city, that hasn't quite gotten busy yet.

Our first destination was this building

It's the post office

but it also houses Geneva Tourist Information Center.

We were kind of terrified of the language barrier, especially after the things we've been through in Grenoble and Nimes. To our surprise, the Swiss were very fluent in English!
Maybe it's because they're a neutral nation.

Anyway, we got some information, a map, and probably a city pass

then came outside

and exchanged some Francs with the ATMs on the outside of the building, since they don't use euros in Switzerland.

Then we came to this place

that had a large model chair with a broken leg

and some fountains.

The United Nations Headquarters.
but the gate in the picture was not open for public, we had to make a detour to the back entrance.

as I took some pictures along the way,

my friends and I made it to the gate that was actually open for the public.

This also seemed to be the gate you enter if you want to take the guided tour

We entered and passed the security checkpoint.
Yes, they check your passport just like they do at the airports.
Don't forget to bring one with you

Past the security checkpoint was this place, which I remember to be the place you pay for the guided tour.

we still had some time until the guided tour starts, so we looked around the place.

and hey! They have peacocks here!

This white building is where the tour was supposed to start.
However, we still had quite a bit of time

So we wandered around the place to kill time.
The cloudy weather wasn't so favorable for photography.

Anyway, it was almost time, so we came back to the building.

Shortly after, we met our tour guide, who was from Germany.
He told us he could speak 5 languages or so.
One friend I med in Grenoble (a Science major) was also from Germany and he could also do 5 languages. I have no idea how Germans manage to learn all that.

and there's me who can... uh
barely speak 2.
cries*

This was the first conference room we toured.

We were listening to what the tour guide had to say in this observing room.

Then we came to the slightly larger conference room.

I thought this was big, but according to our guide, there was a even bigger room.

We followed the tour guide and saw many things.

Before some of the buildings became part of the UN building, they were actually used for the League of Nations (which something like the UN right after the WW1 that didn't quite work out).
This here is the symbol of the League of Nations.

More touring.
This building had some artworks

and a nice view.
Back at this moment, I couldn't tell if the body of water out there was a lake or a river.
(Definitely not the sea, because Switzerland is an inland country)

The tour continued.

This was the council chamber, which is the oldest conference room
Might have been used since the League of Nations, by the looks of this place.

It had amazing looking paintings all over the room.


and lastly...

We came to the Assembly Hall.

It was the largest room in the UN buildings of Geneva.

At the Geneva UN headquarters mostly meetings for UNCTAD, UNECE, or UNOCHA are held.
General Assembly and Security Council are held in the UN headquarters in NY.

Since UN is a neutral international organization, they tried to make their symbol as unbiased as possible. That's why they used the top-down view with the north pole at the center.
How is it possible to see the southern hemisphere from the top-down view from the north pole? I have no clue...

That's how the tour of the UN building in Geneva went.
When we came outside, the sun was shining through, and it was kind of too early to eat lunch.
My friends and I had to make a decision between finding a place to eat or going to the next destination first.