Mountain Dogs of Martigny

When I was a child, I remember reading a book about the St. Bernard dogs from the monastery in Martigny, in the southeastern part of Switzerland.  The book was about one dog in particular, Barry, who worked, like all the dogs at the monastery, with the monks rescuing travelers and pilgrims caught in the snowy mountain passes.  Barry was a special dog because in his few years of working as a rescue dog, he saved over 40 people. Click here to purchase on Amazon. Today, I had the chance to go to Martigny (map), the place where Barry is from where the monastery still breeds St. Bernard dogs.  Martigny is located at the valley of the Saint Bernard Pass in the Alps and is right at the convergence of roads from France and Italy...

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Posted in: 3L,Alps,Castle,Dogs,Martigny,monks,Mountains,Museum,St. Bernard,Switzerland

#Fraaaaaaaance

"Look!  There is the mountain you'll never climb! Isn't this fun? NOT!" Chamonix Fail.  The words to describe this whole day's experience. Before leaving the U.S. to come to Geneva, I saw this article on The Atlantic talking about a new attraction just build at the peak of Aiguille du Midi in the French Alps called "Into the Void."  It is a glass box suspended over a 1,035 meters (3,396 feet) drop down the side of the mountain's peak.   Obviously, after seeing these pictures, of course I wanted to go.  So, I found a classmate to go with me, and we purchased tickets from a station in France, routed through the tiny French town of Saint Gervais, to arrive in Chamonix to make our adventure...

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Posted in: #Fraaaaaaaance,3L,Aiguille du Midi,Chamonix,English,France,Into the Void,J-Mad,skiing,St. Gervais

French Classes in Geneva

Considering that we are going to be living and working in Geneva, my friends and I thought that we should explore opportunities to learn French in the city.  None of us have had any formal instruction in French before, so classes of some kind are definitely necessary.  We found a great deal through the Geneva Interns Association network and enrolled in basic beginner's French.  Classes are twice a week for an hour and a half each.  There are about 12 people in the class, and we all struggle-bus it through together. It's actually a little funny that one of the perks of living and working in Geneva, even with a law school seminar and biweekly writing assignments, is that you don't have law school classes - and here we...

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Posted in: 3L,English,French,Geneva,GIA Network,J-Mad,Switzerland

Weekend in the Alps: Grindelwald, Interlaken, Engelberg, and Luzern

Grindelwald This past weekend, four of my fellow classmates and I took our first over-night trip together in Switzerland.  We had a busy weekend planned: Grindelwald, Interlaken, Engelberg, Luzern, then back to Geneva by Sunday night to be ready for work on Monday morning.  We decided to pack very light and to save our money for a night at a hostel, so we left at 6:00am from Geneva for our first stop: Grindelwald We arrived here around 10:00am on Saturday, February, 1, 2014.  Walking from the train station, everything is surrounded by mountains.  And these aren't the beautiful-but-far-away mountains that we saw in Gruyeres.  These are the real deal - the Alps of the Jungfrau region and we were right in the...

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Posted in: 3L,Alps,Cave,Engelberg,English,Glacier,Grindelwald,Interlaken,J-Mad,Lucerne,Luzern,Mountains,Switzerland,Titlis,Winter