We’re off to a mountain retreat tonight, and won’t get back till Sunday evening, so can’t really write anything about today till then as we still don’t know what we’re doing! So here instead is a photo of the gardens near Yverdon station, with a picture of me for a change. Marianne still hasn’t got the hang of photographing everything that moves while on holiday and sorting out the good from the bad afterwards.

One possibility is to visit Montreux and wander around there. Seems to have been a haunt of the hard rock brigade in the early 70s. We won’t take the train past Gstaad to Interlaken today, or visit the Reichenbach Falls. But it seems most likely we’ll revisit the Reformation Museum in Geneva.

Having now returned and it is Sunday evening, let me first reply to Sarah-Ann’s question. Heidi lived in the far east of Switzerland, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi it is east of St Gallen. One of the northbound trains from Yverdon goes through Zurich to St Gallen. We will probably (tomorrow, Monday) go to Zurich, and again on Tuesday as we attempt a grand tour of Switzerland by train, heading south from Zurich to Locarno, through the St Gothard tunnel, and then through Italy and the Simplon tunnel and back via Montreux and Lausanne.

So it was off to Geneva (this being typed Sunday evening). We got there as efficiently as on all Swiss trains and walked down to a different bridge across the River Rhône. We passed the same African woman begging, with her baby on her breast. I began to wonder if in fact the baby was real or whether it was a life-like doll. By taking a different route we came up to St Peter’s cathedral and the Reformation Museum from a

different direction and arrived at the other end of Rue de Jean Calvin where we found a plaque about the authoress George Eliot. Just a little way up from it appeared to be a church building for French speaking evangelical (although sometimes the word “evangelical” is a synonym for protestant). We walked down the Rue de Jean Calvin past the site of his house, which, of course, has a plaque outside. We felt we’d sufficiently done the cathedral last time, so we walked round hoping to visit the Auditoire de Calvin, next door, usually used by the Church of Scotland, but this day it was closed and in use promoting something Japanese, as can be seen from the photo.

Round the back of the cathedral there is a play area name after a 16th century Huguenot, a D’Aubigné, doubtless an ancestor of the 19th century Reformation historian, Merle D’Aubigné. Round the other side of the Cathedral we came again to the Reformation Museum. Having a vegetable soup and coffee first in the tent nearby where a video was showing of how they put the exhibition together. This included scenes of actors with sensors stuck to their faces before being filmed. These films were then overlaid on pictures of several Reformers, so that it appeared that they were talking. They also had animations of Calvin, and others, moving about and speaking in the part of the exhibition entitled “A Day in the Life of John Calvin”.

We re-entered the Reformation Museum, once again free because of the Swiss Pass. I asked about the “no photograph” signs and they confirmed that there was no photography allowed ANYWHERE.

But they did say that there was a gentleman who visited a few months ago who asked permission, so perhaps I’ve been casting aspersions on you Peter. This example was right by the entrance to the exhibition.

Reading more closely what we’d only glanced at before, it was sad to read of the French wars of religion, which resulted in massacre of the Huguenots, all because many of the people of that time had the dotty idea that the state had the right, under God, to prescribe what was and was not true religion, and to impose it, by force, on the population under their authority. I’ve just been reading about George Whitefield again and he suffered from this mentality in Scotland with the Associate Presbytery, who said, as only they were the Lord’s People in Scotland he should preach only for them, renounce Anglicanism, become a presbyterianism and sign the Solemn League and Covenant. George refused, considering it more important to preach to everyone, whatever their views on church government.

Some of the exhibition showed how, within a generation of Calvin’s death, they had lost his biblical emphasis and began trying to rationalize theology. Inadvertently human reason became the arbiter of biblical understanding rather than revelation. It was this that led to discussions about the extent of Christ’s atonement. Surely, they reasoned, if Christ died for all men all men are saved. Therefore, since not all men are saved he cannot have died for them all. All sorts of philosophical gymnastics were used to reinterpret clear statements of Scripture that Christ died for all. Scripture clearly states that Christ died for all and that not all are saved, though God desires all men to be saved. Surely it is better to stick with Scripture rather than trying to rationalize?

We headed back towards the station, passing the Rue do Purgatoire (a surprise in Protestant Geneva!) and this interesting form of begging. I assume he gets paid for standing stock still all day and looking like a statue—until someone goes up to him and discovers he’s real! The main bridge over the Rhône had flags flying in the blustery wind, but once again the Jet d’Eau was turned off. We stopped off at Starbucks for refreshment and consequently missed the 16.56 to Montreux by 30 seconds. So we caught the Lausanne train 15 minutes later and texted Anne to meet us at the station.

So being picked up by Anne at Lausanne we were whisked of to the end of Lac Léman (which is what everyone calls Lake Geneva) shopped at Montheys where you price up all your own fruit and vegetables by a code system, and up into the mountains to her apartment at Morgins, where she often goes skiing when there’s snow on the ground. After a very nice dinner (I had steak—Anne always was an excellent cook) we collapsed into bed after another long day.