Week Nine: Harry Potter’s Birthday, Bears, and the Castle that Inspired the Little Mermaid’s Castle
Hello again everyone!
This week marked my second-to-last week in Switzerland and my final weekend here before heading back to the States. While I’m sad things are wrapping up here, I couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend my last weekend, and I am getting so excited for the fall semester at William & Mary!
This week at IBJ, I continued to work on my legal analysis project relating to LGBTQ+ rights in the countries where IBJ operates. In particular, I focused on Rwanda this week. While certainly not as severe as the other legal situations I’ve studied in other countries, LGBTQ+ people face advanced challenges in Rwanda that straight and cisgender Rwandans do not. Thankfully, neither homosexuality nor homosexual acts are criminalized in Rwanda, which allows human rights defenders to operate more freely to help marginalized communities in Rwanda. With this project, I am drafting an advisory of rights for LGBTQ+ people that IBJ will promote and distribute while operating on the ground. Outside of my legal project on the criminalization of LGBTQ+ identities, I also helped draft a memo for the founder and CEO of IBJ, Karen Tse, about a number of ambassadors and embassies she would be visiting during a trip to Rwanda this week. Karen and other IBJ staff were able to meet with the embassies this weekend, and it seems like those connections will be incredibly beneficial to IBJ as it continues its work in Rwanda.
Outside of work this week, we definitely had a lot of fun! Wednesday – July 31st – was the birthday of one of Laura’s and my favorite fictional characters: Harry Potter. Laura has a tradition that every year on July 31st she bakes a birthday cake that is a perfect match to the one Hagrid gives Harry in the first book/movie to celebrate the fictional birthday. I got in on this tradition this year and Laura and I woke up bright and early on Wednesday before work to buy a cake pan, bake and decorate the entire cake, and watch the Sorcerer's Stone before work started! Laura’s decorating skills were phenomenal and the cake turned perfectly! We brought it with us to IBJ, and it was perfect timing to celebrate the end of the internships for some of the other IBJ interns.
On Thursday, we celebrated the Swiss National Holiday – August 1st – and we had a day off of work because of it! We took the time to hang out at the beach because it was unbearably hot. In the evening, we walked to the other side of the lake to watch the fireworks for the holiday. The Jet d’Eau was lit up red and had a Swiss flag projected into it, which was very fun. Another tradition the Swiss have for the National Holiday is that each town lights a bonfire to symbolize the connectedness of the towns, cities, and cantons. It was a very fun day, and the fireworks were fantastic.
This weekend, Laura and I decided to go on quite the journey across Switzerland! We got an all-day train pass and hopped on the train bright and early at 7am. We didn’t return back to Geneva until sixteen hours later after a very full day! Our plan was basically to hop on a train and hop off at whatever towns and cities we thought would be fun to explore. Our first major stop of the day was Lucerne. Lucerne is a gorgeous old town and its history can be traced back to around 750 AD when the Benedictine Monastery of St. Leodegar was founded. We went on the perfect day – it was nice and cool (a rarity in Switzerland this summer), and there was a farmer’s market up and running on Saturday morning. Laura and I wandered across the Kapellbrücke, a wooden footbridge that is one of Switzerland’s great landmarks. In 1993, tragically, a large portion of the Kapellbrücke burned down when a boat caught on fire and set the bridge alight. It was a tragedy for Switzerland, and we saw some of the remaining burnt beams in the bridge. It was interesting to see that some of the burnt beams remained to remember the tragedy of the fire. After wandering around a bit, we went up to the city walls, climbed the clock tower, and went up the watchtower for a beautiful look around the city. We finished our time in Lucerne by walking down to the lake and exploring a different section of the city. Lucerne is definitely one of my favorite places I’ve visited in Switzerland!
After finishing in Lucerne, we hopped back on the train again. We took the train all the way to the mountains, past the Reichenbach Falls, and into Interlaken. I was excited to be back in Interlaken and got to explore the town more than I did last week. It was fun to explore all of the shops in the town, and there were dozens of paragliders landing in the city’s park. Interlaken is definitely more touristy, but it still is a very fun place to visit! My favorite part was the river that runs through Interlaken. It had perhaps the most blue water I've ever seen in a natural body of water. Interlaken itself is absolutely adorable and horse drawn carriages populate the streets. It's easy to see why it's such a popular tourist destination!
Once we’d spent a bit of time in Interlaken, we hopped back on the train and made our way to Bern – Switzerland’s capital city. Bern was a gorgeous city, and I would have loved to spend more than an afternoon exploring the town! Bern has a beautiful cathedral, ornate, medieval water fountains, and a clock tower that is the largest cuckoo clock I’ve ever seen. Before we had to leave, we made sure we saw Bern’s big attraction: the bears! The bear is Bern’s symbol, and the city has had live bears since 1513. Today, there are three bears in Bern’s main bear enclosure, and it was very cool to see a slumbering brown bear by the city gates.
We finished our day with one final stop before heading back to Geneva: Montreux! Montreux is at the opposite end of Lake Geneva, and it was on our bucket list to make it to Montreux by the end of the summer. We had one primary goal in Montreux, and it was to see the Chateau de Chillon – a castle that has parts dating back to the 11th century! The Chateau is actually the castle that inspired the design for the castle in The Little Mermaid. We got to the castle at the perfect time and were able to watch the sunset over Lake Geneva. It was the perfect end to a fantastic day! By the time we finally arrived back in Geneva, we had walked 14.3 miles over the course of the day.
This week was so much fun, and I can’t wait to see what my last week in Geneva brings!
Kristen