More Geneva! Hiking! Poorly executed metaphors!

Thursday

Lake Geneva (Leman), like much of Switzerland, is surrounded by mountains, and during my second day I climbed one of the trails that was accessible via a short bus ride out of town.  The trail started out steep but well-groomed and stable (with steps at some points!).  Several trails traverse the ridge, so I transferred to another one of these trails, and this one was decidedly trickier - there were many points where rope was strung along the trail because the bath was too slanted and slippery otherwise.  

As I walked along the trail, I noticed a long quarry being mined right next to the mountain.  When making sand castles as I was younger, I didn't put the hole where the sand was dug from right next to the castle.  Apparently, the miners never made sand castles as a child.  

Although I had successfully navigated for a while, I am a creature of habit, and so got lost roughly 3/5s of the way up the mountain.  The face at this point was steep and slippery - a definite transition from hiking as difficult as the stuff depicted in the Fellowship of the Ring to the hiking in the Return of the King.  And just like in the Return of the King, (spoiler alert!) I finally found my way, (spoiler alert!) made it to the top of the mountain, and (spoiler alert!) had my finger bitten off by a deformed halfling, sealing its fate and the fate of the powerful magic ring they both plummeted into the fiery depths within the mountains below.  I then rode down the mountain on a giant eagle.  

My trek down the mountain ended at a point significantly different from where I started, so I walked through Swiss towns for several hours until I found my way back to the city.  Along the way, I almost accidentally walked into France.  I was originally planning on spending another day in Geneva, but felt at this point that I had seen the majority of what the city had to offer, so I pushed forward my schedule to  leave early the next morning for Italy.  The train was going to depart at 5:30 in the morning.  I didn't feel like paying for another night in the hostel when I would be there for only a short amount of time, and, lacking a phone or alarm clock, I was afraid I would miss my ride, so I grabbed my bag and headed outside the station.  There were several other standing around outside: a cadre of taxi drivers, several clearly drunk people wandering aimlessly about, and a group of locals who had missed the last train from the city center out to their town.  I conversed for a while with a man who spoke only French, which, because my polyglotism extends to a pretty good knowledge of English and a high-school language program's worth of Spanish, meant that communication was rather difficult.  Aside from the French guy trying to fleece me out of cash several times ("No, good sir, I will not give you 100 euros (~145USD) for 100 francs (~120USD)"), the conversation was entertaining.  Eventually, the station opened and I boarded the train.