SwissViss: The Shores of Lake Geneva

Sunday, July 3 2011

Since the dawn of time, man has always dreamed of flying. On Lake Geneva, Sunday July 3, we’ve taken one giant leap forward… What are we talking about? JetLev, a German company, have developed a water-powered jet pack and they brought it to Lake Geneva for a handful of lucky (and wealthy) individuals to partake. We first learned about it through a Geneva Buyclub (aka Groupon) ad and were blown away by both the concept and the cost (200 CHF for 30 minutes!). Even though we couldn’t experience it ourselves, we had to go see it in person.

15 minutes in and we only saw the bogus attempts by those that paid the admission fee. Was this personal flight device for real or was this some scam that the Germans had cooked up? We were almost ready to give up when the instructor gave it whirl. The rest is hard to describe - just watch…

It was a pretty good advertisement because we were both ready to suit up right then and there. Then we reminded ourselves of the price and were both suddenly satisfied with the demo. :)

Activity #2 of the day was the Montreux Jazz Festival. If you haven’t heard of this festival, it’s one of the biggest in Europe each year. The name is actually a little misleading because the festival draws all sorts of bands, not just jazz – probably the biggest name this year was Sting. We however couldn’t score tickets before they sold out so we decided to just go hang out for the day and enjoy the free shows and atmosphere.

The festival has been going on since 1967. A fun Montreux and music fact is that the song “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple depicts an actual event in 1971 (although not during the festival) when a fan shot off a flare gun inside the Montreux Casino that started a massive fire, burning down the entire venue. Check out the lyrics, it’s kind of interesting.

Montreux is just on the other end of Lake Geneva – an hour by train and a very scenic ride that we’ve taken many times when connecting to other cities by rail. It was the perfect day to be outside and Lake Geneva never looked so blue and inviting (too bad we forgot our swim suits!). We had only visited Montreux once before on our “Look/See trip” before moving to Geneva. That was in the rainy and cold month of March so it was nice to see the city in a different light.

The festival itself was OK – it actually just reminded us of a small fair and a glorified flea market because the main walking path was lined with delicious food stands and merchandise booths. Our free entertainment was surprisingly a little taste of the U.S – the University of Kentucky Jazz Ensemble happened to travel over for the festival and was playing that day. They were quite talented (the song below was composed in a Steely Dan style – you can hear it). The setup reminded Dave of playing in Jazz Band in high school (a memory not distant enough… just kidding Mom and Dad). :)

We also walked by the life-sized memorial statue of Freddie Mercury. He had a home in Montreux and recorded at the famous Mountain Studios here.