The Weekend I Inadvertently Tried to Kill Myself

Since my internet has been refusing to cooperate -- I have tried making and publishing this post 3 different times -- this is going to be a short one. This past weekend I spent a day in Geneva, hiked to a cross on a mountain peak, and took a slightly disappointing trip to a nearby monastery. I told you all about Geneva in my last post, so this one is just going to focus on La Croix du Nivolet and L'Abbaye d'Hautecombe.

On Sunday, our fearless leader, Guillaume, took a group of us on a hike up the mountain. The destination: La Croix du Nivolet. Brief history lesson: In 1861, the town of Chambéry decided to drill on Avenue Comte-Vert (the very avenue my apartment is on), which meant they would have to demolish the chapel of the Black Penitents. So the cross was built in memory of this chapel, and on September 15th of that same year, the bishop of Maurienne inaugurated the cross into the Christian church system of the area. Or at least, that's the gist of what I was told. The hike to the cross was supposed to take an hour, after we drove halfway up the mountain to the official starting point. However, some of us made the hike last an hour and a half. In the picture below, you can just barely see the cross on the peak of the mountain to the left of the gas station sign.

At one point during the hike, a few of us managed to get separated from our apparently very athletic group. At first this didn't faze me, since I figured that the path would take me right to the cross, but then we came to an area where our one dirt path split into two. This freaked me out a bit. It turned out, though, that the paths merge back into one at some point, so it didn't matter which path we took. Whew! The path was mostly mud and muck and most of the uphill treks were laden with slightly loose rocks -- in fact, I just slightly twisted my ankle when one of them moved underneath my foot. All of this combined with my complete lack of any form of athleticism made for an interesting hike (I thought I was going to die!). I was beginning to wonder just why I thought this sounded like a fun trip when we reached the top of the mountain, and the view answered my question for me. Not many people actually cared about the cross once we reached it -- it isn't near as impressive up close -- but the view that lay behind it is just spectacular! You can see all of Chembery from that cross, as well as the lake and some of the surrounding towns. I marveled at this view for what had to have been an hour.

Above: La Croix du Nivolet, still 10 minutes away
Right: View of the lake from the cross

Though the hike wasn't exactly my idea of a good time, I'm glad I went. The view was better than anything I could have imagined, and now I can officially say that I hike up a mountain!


Monday, however, wasn't quite as rewarding of a trip. Once again, Guillaume led the group on an excursion. This time we ventured to L'Abbaye d'Hautecombe, Catholic monastery in just off the lake and in the side of a mountain. My research of the abbaye made me more than excited to go -- a historic monument, full of rich history, and still inhabited by the monks who worship there twice a day. The reality of it, though, wasn't near as impressive as I was expecting. The abbaye was left in ruins for a couple of centuries, then a duke (or someone like that) decided to rebuild it in a troubadour gothic style. The sad thing is that this wasn't to restore the abbaye -- it wasn't originally built in that style at all -- but rather it was because that was how the duke thought it should have been built. Over 90% of the main church and the artifacts in it were less than a century old, and the only truly historical part of it was the large number of kings, princes, and dukes of the Savoie region who were buried beneath the church (that is, if their bodies weren't dredged up in the reconstruction).

Above: View of L'Abbaye d'Hautecombe from tour boat
Right: The main chapel used by the monks

The trips to and from the Abbaye probably made my perception of it that much worse. After being starved and shoved and dealing with some extremely rude people, I expected the actual site to be worth the trip, like the view at La Croix du Nivolet did for the hike. Unfortunately, it did not. After taking the train to a nearby city, we still had a half-hour walk to the boat dock. This wasn't really a problem, since my walk to class each day is 20 minutes -- half of it up mountain -- and this walk was mostly along the beach. It was around 1:00 and since we met to walk to the train station at 11:30, none of us had eaten lunch yet. On the walk we passed through an area with small permanent kiddy rides and little beach-stand food shops with seats in the shade. I expected Guillaume to stop there for us to eat. Instead he took us to the marina and told us we had 20 minutes to find food before our boat left. There were only 4 restaurants in the area and they were all very expensive and very busy. Some of us finally decided on the least busy place and tried to scarf some food down as quickly as we could. I had only eaten a third of my  9 euro (over $13) salad when Guillaume told us to pay and run to the boat dock. On the walk back, we spotted a McDonald's and talked Guillaume into letting us eat there. McD's here is so much more expensive than back home! My McDouble combo meal cost just over 7 euro (over $10), and the fries and drink were even smaller than the medium size back home. The food wasn't greasy at all, though, like American McDonald's tend to be.

So I was already put in a bad mood by hunger before we even got to the Abbaye, and then the Russians in our group were their own rude selves the whole time (a rant for another post, I'm sure). The only things that made the "false" historical monument worth seeing were the souvenirs I bought for 2 people back home. Oh well, chalk it up to a learning experience.