The Swiss Alps and Lake Geneva

11-13 September 2006

I arrived back from Assen on Sunday, September 10th. The very next day, the IPC Staff headed to Lausanne, Switzerland for a joint Games Management seminar at the Olympic Museum. 17 staff members boarded a bus and drove the 9 hour trip to southern Switzerland. Lausanne is a beautiful city, situated on Lake Geneva. Sitting on the banks of the lake, you get a wonderful view of the Swiss Alps and at the same time a scenic display of the French city, Evian (yes, like the water). This picture is a little blurry..I thought I had better ones.

The presentations at the meeting were interesting as it was good to see that the International Olympic Committee has some of the same problems that the International Paralympic Committee does – yet they have 4 times the amount of people to deal with the issues. After the seminar, the IOC and the IPC went to Aigle, Switzerland (about 30 minutes away) and had the chance to watch the evening sessions of the 2006 IPC Cycling World Championships. If you have never attended a cycling event in a Velodrome, I would definitely recommend it.

The trip back to Bonn reminded me of a car ride across Kansas when I was a kid. The Air-Conditioning broke and it was a bright sunny day outside. Needless to say, it started to get a little warm and musty. Luckily, we stopped for a late lunch and the bus cooled itself down.

Next up: Oktoberfest 2006