After darkness light!

In one of the parks in Geneva one can experience the stony stare these four cheerful fellows. They are standing at the center of a longer wall flanked by other apparently less prominent gentlemen - less than 5 meters tall at any rate - and a selection of bible quotes. One of the fellows is Calvin so we presumed it had something to do with Calvinism. This was confirmed as we read about it on wikipedia: It's the international monument to the reformation.

What you can't see in the picture is that around these four cheerful fellows is engraved in large letters Post Tenebras Lux, which our limited knowledge of Latin is sufficient for translating: After darkness light.

John Calvin, by the way, also founded the University of Geneva.

On the flipside

So far the mailbox series has been mostly about all the people who have put some extra effort into their mailboxes... but of course there is another type of mailbox owners: does who sit back and do nothing when in fact action is long overdue. Curiously we found these 3 examples on one and the same street in Goleta.

Salève

While Steen and Kirsten were visiting we made an excursion to the top of Salève which is the mountain that is most clearly viewed from our balcony as well as Geneva in general.

The trip involved a busride to the French border, a short walk to the village on the other side of the border and finally an aerial tramway - called a téléphérique - up the side of the mountain.

Saléve is approximately 1375 m højt and the view was amazing (see above). We walked further on - up and away from the téléphérique area - and enjoyed biscets and grapes while we admired the thunderstorm that were passing across Geneva below us (see photo below).

We were less excited when - contrary to our expectations based on the direction of the wind - said thunder storm hit Saléve just as we were making our way back to the téléphérique! Lets just say that we became RATHER wet...

Visit from Denmark

In July we had visitors from Denmark, more specifically Tue's parents. As usual such cannot happen without at least a short appearance here on the blog.

The picture is from when we visited this year's Tomato Festival here in Geneva. Tue was mainly interested in going in order to see if it was possible to find some tomatillos - which it wasn't. Instead we bought some very ripe yellow and green tomatoes. Furthermore it was amusing to learn that such a festival here in the heart of Europe functions by the basic principles as in the USA (see e.g. here): a few stalls fitting the proclaimed theme as an excuse for town partying: loud music, draft beer, pigs on spits and entertainment for the kids...

In fact, we hurried on to jonction.