I am back... got a lot of mountain blogging to do over the coming days. 
Day 1
My birthday is two days before Christmas. Birthdays are, as far as I am concerned, fantastic. Don't quite make it to the Christmas levels of greatness, but great nonetheless. As a kid though, my enjoyment of my birthday was always tempered by the big Christmas tree in my face, not to mention the tantalisingly wrapped and almost irresistable presents beneath it. Resist them I had to though, for two whole unending days.
After looking forward to it for almost a year, I finally arrived in Geneva.
It is alarmingly flat.
Where the feck are the mountains?
I took off for a stroll to try to find them despite the irritatingly persistent rain.
I found them at the waterfront, tantalisingly wrapped in cloud. As they will be for two whole, unending more days until I finally get my boots on and into the snow on Sunday morning.
So, Geneva. It's pretty I suppose, but isn't going to do anything to change the overriding feeling of 'meh' that I get when visiting most cities. There's a fountain and a funny football flower clock.
I did have an outstanding spinach and chicken crepe though. Then I had an equally outstanding lemon sorbet one, with lashings of cream. I was going to have another but decided against it, in order to postpone the massive heart attack that it would cause from 'immediately' to 'halfway up Mont Blanc'.
Why are there Hotel Bristols everywhere? I mean, the town of Bristol hardly lends itself to the idea of luxury and decadence that its hotel equivalent provides. I think they should all be renamed 'Hotel Colchester' or 'Hotel Scunthorpe', just for fun.
For a city that doesn't have any visible mountains, Geneva is pretty anxious to push the Mont Blanc connection. Rue du Mont Blanc. Ponte du Mont Blanc. Toilette du Mont Blanc. Mont Blanc. Mont Blanc. Mont fricking Blanc. Where the feck is it then? When I get back to Berlin, I am going to start campaigning for everything to have the suffix 'von den Himalaya'. I think it's exactly what Berlin needs, a bit of exoticism. We'll just blame the smog and excessive cloud cover if anyone actually wants to see mountains. And then distract them with endless ads for little red knives with little white crosses on them.
I am full of crepe tonight, as you may or may not have noticed. Off to snuggle up in bed with my DS and Zelda. Tomorrow: meeting my climbing buddy and then a bus up to Chamonix, where hopefully there will be at least a small amount of evidence of the existance of mountains in some shape or form.
