L'Escalade. A little bit

Today and tomorrow Geneva celebrates its miraculous 1602 victory against the Savoyards. It says miraculous on the flier, and it sounds like a David beats Goliath fight, in which a cauldron of soup plays a role. Tim and I took the bus/tram downtown and saw the pikemen going through their paces, decided against paying \$8 for a bowl of lentil soup, and looked at the vendors. Some were in period costume, including some little girls selling ribbons, but there were plenty of others--including a FIAT dealer and a children's ski slope where young ones could take their first ski slide. The slope is gentle, they have instructors going down holding their hands, and there was a moving belt escalator to bring them back to the top. One booth sold African masks, another Russian dolls and icons, yet another the little (and big) glass laser sculptures for 4 times the price in the mall in Madison. Several groups sang Christmas carols. One group of Chinese ladies sang familiar songs in a language I didn't recognize: not English, French, or German, and it didn't sound Chinese. The usual sidewalk musicians were out, as well as a man on crutches bouncing a ball off the crutches and his head--and some beggars sitting on the ground. And there were booths for causes: Red Cross, something in solidarity with Cuba, and the Scientologists claiming they they had done disaster relief for Katrina and 9/11. (Forgive me for not believing a word of it.)

We got some roasted chestnuts (never had them before) and split a panini and a Lindt bar. (The chocolate truffles were \$45/lb.) The Red Cross was selling mulled wine for "prix libre" instead of the usual \$3-\$4.

There is also a "Trees and Lights" festival sponsored by a watch firm, so a number of trees are burdened with very odd accouterments. One is completely plastered with Christmas balls and surrounded by floodlights. In another small park are 3 giant stacks of pallets of bottled water: about 8 feet high and 20 feet long!

I hadn't known that there's a noisy shopping mall under the train station.

After returning I realized I'd never been to the Globe outside CERN. I got there shortly before closing. The outer spiral walkway is, unsurprisingly, closed. The inner one is decorated with posters describing the situation from now back to the big bang; where the tour ends. They ran out of ideas before they ran out of ramp. The ground floor was full of superconductor demonstrations, with docents explaining the exhibits in French to groups of visitors. You need to have responsible parties there, because the place was full of liquid nitrogen bottles--the stuff is needed to make the maglev demonstrations work. One of the demonstrations was a small maglev scooter which kids could ride on--pouring cold clouds from the 4 magnets it rode on. Cool.