Hardcore acid-jazz?

Friday
We woke around 10 and headed out for croissants and fresh oj for breakfast. Aftrer breakfast we found a nice girl, melanie ewho worked in a tourost info booth. She had a couple of recommendations for us, including a great tip to go to a jazz park for a festival later that evening.

We wanted to see the croix rouge museum. Best way to get there seemed to be to ealk up the side of the lake through the park. While wandering up the park I spied some of those satellite dish whisper communication devices. Yes there is a better name and no I don't care enough to look it up on the blackberry. they have them in front of many science musuems. anyway, niether kev or matt had seen them before so we headed up the hill. Turns out not to be the only science toy. They also have a couple of sundials and other fun science demonstrations in front of a small building. The builkding turns out to be a really great science musuem.

There were a myriad of great old technologiers. Very attainable stuff. Early thermometers and microscopes. The kind of thing that you feel you could have come up with if you lived back in the day. Our tech theses days is so far removed from the casual scientist. Take the blackberry for instance. Nobody  would have designed this in their basement. This is not necessarily true of some of the tech in this museum. Add to that a bunch of hands on demos of basic science and it was one of the highlights of the trip.

We continued throught the park and found a botnical garden. At least, that is what the gate said, it didn't look much different than the rest of the park to me.
We sat for a beer and I noticed a new sans alcool (french?) Beer. It was a blond, which I hadn't seen before.

By then, we were quiote close to the Croix Rouge museum (red cross). If I had thought about it, I would have realized that it was going to be depressing. But I hadn't and it was.  Add to the basic capacity for humans to do dastasdly things to each other, there as a guest exhibit, the Belfast Maze. This was a photo exhibit about some labryinthian prison complex that housed IRA members  uplifting it was not.

After the museum, we decided skip the UN museum and catch a bus back. After some deciphering of the ticket system I decided I needed a 3 franc ticket. This was confirmed by a nice lady waiting at the bus stop. I put in 5 fr and out comes my ticklet but no change. When I remarked on this, the nice lady pointed to a notatiopn on my ticket that I was supposed to go to the trainstation to get my change. Nice racket. I wonder how many people actually go to get there money. Nice little revenue stream for them, I'm sure.

Riding the bus I did a quick email check. Lots of great mail (personal mail is always great) including a message from Lat mentioning that we shouldn't miss the UN museum. Doh!

We made reservations for rafting for saturday. We decided thata 6 hour rnd trip to. Interlaken was just too far and rafting would suffice our adreneline needs.

Stiopped at a bar for the world cup match. I was amused to see that my beer was cheaper than my companions perrier.  We were beat after our earlier excursions and decided to head back to the hotlel for a nap.

Afyer some rest we headed down to old town to attempt some shopping but found nothing useful. We wandered back up to our neighborhood and ate mexican for dinner. Very bland mexican. as in, we can't let any spice in the mexican, it might get some taste. Ahh well.

Kevin baled so matt and I wandered a bit. During dinner we kept seeing young kids going down some alley and coming back w/ WKD (think smirnoff ice). I know the drinking age is lower here in general but these kids looked to be 13 yrs old.

We met a few and got the lowdown after one girl threw her shoe at me. Well actually she tried to throw it into her friends pic but it came at us and they freaked out. Turns out they are all duplomats kids (UN EU presence). They all go to a international school out here.

We continued to the park for the jazz fest. Most od the stalls were african. Lots of great looking food too. I begin to wonder if africa is the next asia. Western culture has been enamoured of asian culture for the last 20 odd years. Now that we have integrated that a bit, I am thinking african is the next frontier, but I digress

We found a bit of grass and sat to watch the kids at play. They have this great swing thing. Think of a pole w/ 4 chains coming down from each side. Attached to the end of the chains are a set of handles. Now, instead of being attached to the pole itself, the chaiins arre attached to a rotating top. The effec of all of this is that you get 4 kids each holding a handle and running around the pole. The kids can jump outwards and swing around on the end of the chain. Not unlike when an adult spins a child around by the arms. Nit sure if you can envision that or not but it looked like a lot of fun.   We kept waiting for a turn but were afraid we would crush the little ones so never did make it on.  It did look a bit dangerous and would probably be suied out of existance in the us.

Another thing I noticed is that the kids have a very long leash. More of the " it takes a village" idea I guess. Kids were running all over the park, out of their parents site. I noticed one exchange where a kid bit the dust and some random guy ppicked them up and brushed them off before he went on his way. Actually, quite a nice site. 

When the band finally started up I was plkeasantly surprised that it wasn't jazzy. I went back and forth as to what it was. Evil trip-hop?  Hardcore acid jazz?  I ended up decidning it was a somewhat less pissed of zach de la roche (rage against the machine) pretending he was tricky playing w/ a white macy gray pretending she was portishead. Quite good. Aloan. Local geneva band. We watched through the concert and headd back yto get some sleep for rafting.

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Sent from a mobile device.  Pls excuse the shorthand.