Multi-lingual Rescue Operations

So, there I was enjoying the Switzerland the way it was meant to be enjoyed - climbing up a windy, twisty path in the Alps with a big blue glacier looking down on me invitingly.

That's the glacier!

Lynn and I had just spent an hour hiking to get up here, but she had to turn back at this point, hoping to catch an earlier bus and get back to Geneva in time to take Loki out for a walk (yes, Lynn named her dog after the Norse God of mischief). I kept going, the path quicly turned twisty, windy, narrow, and steeply climbing. I felt this was just fine - I was, in fact, pretty excited about the whole thing. I was just upset that I wouldn't have time to reach the ridge above me and get a glimpse of Mont Blanc... but you can't have everything. Regardless, the path I was happy with. Turns out, not everyone shared in my excitment - the first sign of trouble was when I ran into a Spanish couple hurrying down the mountain and asking me [in Spanish] how far it was to anything down below. My brain initially refused to accept the situation and had to do a double-take - they are not talking to me in French, but I understand, must be English, right? No, don't understand that well - oh, right, Spanish... There's a little restaurant a little ways down below - you can probably get there in twenty minutes, treinta tops! What's going on? Turned out, a little ways up above there was a woman who had broken her leg. I considered the path we were climbing and decided this didn't seem entirely unexpected, unfortunate nonetheless.

By this point, I couldn't climb much further up the mountain anyway if I were to make the last bus back to Martingy, so I settled for simply going up to investigate. I discovered two women, both probably in their 40's or maybe early 50's - one in seemingly good spirits, but with a broken ankle, which was starting to swell; the other seeming a bit frazzled. We chatted a bit - I started with Spanish, they turned out to not be Spanish. Didn't speak any English either, so we were stuck with French - the chatting was rather limited. The frazzled one was on the phone with someone trying to explain where we were - I produced a map and pointed roughly to our location. It didn't seem to help the other end of the line all that much - I wished I knew more French. By now, I figured friends or family, not rescue personnel, had to be on the other end of the line - we started talking about trying to make it down the mountain. I offered that I'd be perfectly happy to take her pack down - I actually think that's all she had really wanted, but through some combination of misunderstandings and my trying to help, we decided to see if she could make it down to the hut-restaurant below herself as well. We tried to come up with some sort of a workable way of getting down without putting any weight on the broken foot, which was a challenge, since the path was tiny, twisty, and steep. Eventually we settled on slow progress with me holding the woman around the waist, while she hopped along on one foot.

By now, I was starting to give up on the bus, figuring I could always hitch-hike my way down to the train station at the bottom of the mountain, so I could play Good Samaritan for a while - maybe learn how to say 'broken ankle' in French. So, we hopped for a while. Not entirely surprisingly, it turned out to be fairly tiring for both of us - we took a break. The frazzled one was worried too. We chatted - they asked about my bus. I, in turn, asked if they had a car taking them down the mountain? No, they were staying somewhere in the mountains and had some sort of a car arrangement (that I wasn't entirely clear on), that would pick them up, if and when they made it down the mountain. Or maybe, they'd send a helicopter... Either way, I should probably go and catch my bus... and see what the Spanish had managed to accomplish down at the hut?

Fine... after a few more assurances of calm and safety, I grabbed her pack, and took off down the mountain. Well, the first thing I actually did was trip myself and watched a rock accelerate at an alarmingly high speed towards my face, but I've still got hands for occasions such as these, so I came away largely unscathed. And proceeded down the mountain, a little more carefully this time. The Spanish were, in fact, waiting down at the bottom of the hill. I tried switching from French to Spanish to explain to them what I had learned, but my brain refused to process language switches quite that quickly - fortunately, they now had somebody that spoke English with them. My brain acquiesced to processing English. A few minutes later, Spanish became acceptable too, so I learned that the Spanish were from Tenerife, and lo and behold, they had been up in the Swiss Alps just last year too, when she had also broken her leg - and had to be airlifted out by helicopter... interesting... Anyway, I headed on down towards my bus, while the English speaker, whom I gathered to be some sort of a guide, hastened up the hill to try and help the two women get down. The people at the restaurant had apparently just shrugged their shoulders at the report of the injury, so a rescue team was probably not imminent. The Swiss seem pretty calm and stoic...

Anyway, I headed down the mountain, reflecting that all I was missing at that point was somebody speaking to me in Russian about what had happened. I've no idea what happened in the end, but from where I had left them, getting down to the little restaurant shouldn't have been all that difficult with the help of the guide. And from the restaurant, they could probably get a stretcher, so she'd be fine, presumably - just a memorable day in the mountains! Probably not even a helicopter ride to add to the excitement... Supposedly, a doctor was coming to see them wherever it was that they were staying.

As for the Alps!

The Trient Glacier stretches for 4.3km in the Mont Blanc Massif, flanked by a pair of snow-capped peaks

I've been to the Southern Alps in New Zealand, and the Japanese Alps in, well, Japan - finally time to see the originals!

Stream of snow-melt heading down from the glacier

Just wouldn't be Switzerland without cows grazing in the mountains, cow-bells ringing


Switzerland, I've discovered, is also rather fond of some utterly random sculpture, like this Minatour in the middle of Martingy

Bienvenue a Paris!

Welcome to the City of Lights! The Eiffel Tower presiding over in the middle of the night

Or would you prefer a more artsy black and white version of the tower?

How about an artist's rendition of the Tower from the Musee Pompidou?

I like Paris...

Ah the Catholic Church...

Yes, there are a few things that I understand - for instance:

- the Catholic Church, just like most other religious institutions is constantly competing to win (and keep) the souls (and wallets) of the common man, and building giant, imposing religious structures has always been a sure fire way of proving to the populace that your deity's the most awesomest

- even so, the church itself didn't actually have to build all the awe-inspiring churches and cathedrals that you find scattered all over Europe; lots of them got built by rich nobles, hoping to curry favor from the church. In this life or the next.

I understand all that, but still, sometimes it's just a bit of overkill. Take the French city of Lyon: it's got a nice, beautiful, and appropriately imposing Cathedral:

The Cathedral St-Jean - you'd think it ought to really be enough to convince most mortal commoners that your deity is, in fact, the awesomest

Some beautiful stained glass windows inside too

But here, in Lyon, that was apparently deemed insufficient. Maybe they were feeling a little threatened by all the Protestants across the border in nearby Swiss Geneva. Or maybe the nobles here just had more than their fair share of sins to atone for. Whatever the reason, enough people felt that the Cathedral just wasn't doing its job, and felt obliged to erect a second gigantic church, on a hill directly above the Cathedral St-Jean, and overlooking the entire city of Lyon:

Overkill? Probably... But the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourvière is certainly a beautiful piece of art in its own right

Equipped with a crypt, bigger than most churches

And a Chapel standing next door - the Virgin Mary guards the city from her perch - she's credited with saving Lyon from both the plague in the 17th century and the Prussians in the 19th century...

Was in necessary? Was the second church the difference between losing dozens of souls (and wallets) to Calvin and his Swiss Protestants? Who knows, but for now, Lyon has a pair of amazing churches. I might not understand the Catholic Church, but it's a good setup for the tourism industry!

Defcon III

Also known as, fuck off, my dear Mr. 江婷! You probably aren't actually reading though... and it isn't really your fault, you are getting paid by people like the ones here. People who want to increase the ranking of their site among Google search results by artificially increasing the number of sites on the internet that link to their [useless] sites. In the end, it just becomes spam on blogs, when these people hire some Chinese shmuck, like our Dear Mr. 江婷 (who's probably a perfectly nice fellow, when he's not spamming my blog!) to post spam comments on blogs in order to artificially create links to their sites on the internet...

Since I am, however, sick of deleting these comments as soon as they show up, I've turned on comment moderation. This means if you want to leave a comment, it'll be sent to me for review first, before showing up on the blog. There have not been a whole lot of non-spam comments on the blog recently, so it shouldn't affect much, but should you run into this, don't be surprised! And feel free to send angry spam mail to Dear Mr. 江婷, if you like.

That's a mighty big bridge you've got there!

Viaduc de Millau

This is the Millau Viaduct, a 400+ million Euro project in the South of France completed fairly recently, in December 2004. It's a gigantic bridge, as you can probably appreciate, spanning the valley above the town of Millau. Several records were set over the course of design and construction, it's the tallest bridge in the world (taller than the Eiffel Tower), and has highest support pillar - yeah, somebody does keep track of such things... apparently! The entire project only took about three years from start to finish too, which seems quite impressive. Especially here in France, where the work week is only 35 hours anyway, and that's if we are not on strike that week!

The cool thing about this bridge though is that in addition to the functional part of alleviating traffic in the valley, it's also actually quite a picturesque site to look at... And on that note, some other memorable bridges around the world:

The Coolest (also the Oldest, actually) - the Forth Bridge outside Edinburgh, Scotland. Looking better than ever at night

The Best - San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Who knows if I'm biased or not, but it's hard not to love the looks of this bridge!

The Highest: Viaducto de Polvorilla - a railroad bridge outside of Salta, Argentina, the base is at an altitude of 4,200 meters above sea level

The most, Australian? Sydney's Harbor Bridge, yes it gets bonus points in this 'competition' for having the Sydney Opera House right beside it, life's not fair!

The Most Old School - for all its old world flare, London's Tower Bridge was actually constructed some thirty years later than the Forth Bridge above. I prefer the more modern-looking types, but it's surely quite the famous bridge

Tongariro Crossing, New Zealand - nope, I'm not picking on New Zealand here, I really did very much like these little bridges in the Tongariro National Park of New Zealand. Carrying capacity: one 'tramper,' a.k.a. hiker in the rest of the world.

Some views of the Brooklyn Bridge coming in a couple of weeks, I hope!