I came from the direction of Genève-Cornavin with an unreasonable question: where were the caves? The name Grottes had lodged in my mind as a promise. I had no evidence for this, beyond a habit of treating place names as if they were instructions. At Place des Grottes, I stopped and looked around. There was no obvious descent into the earth. I smiled at the mismatch between the name I had brought with me and the streets in front of me.
This was not a serious disappointment. I had not bought a helmet or arranged an expedition. Still, the name had given the walk a small mystery before it began. I could either keep asking the neighbourhood to produce a cave, or pay attention to what was here. Place des Grottes made that choice fairly easy: it was a square, a place to pause and decide where to go next, not an entrance to a geological attraction.
### A name with other ideas
La Maison Verte gave me a named stop at the square. I liked having something definite to find after the loose expectation I had carried from Cornavin. A name on a route can be surprisingly useful. It gives the eye a task without dictating what the whole experience ought to mean. I could locate La Maison Verte, take in the square around it and resist the urge to turn the stop into a grand discovery simply because I had arrived there.
That restraint is harder than it sounds. When I travel, I often catch myself preparing a verdict before I have spent five minutes in a place. Is this the interesting street? Is that the sight I came for? Where should I stand to feel I have understood it? The questions are efficient, which is not always a compliment. At Place des Grottes, I had come armed with the wrong question altogether. It helped to put it down.
Grottes is a neighbourhood, not a cave attraction. Once I accepted that, the square stopped looking like a failed opening scene. It became a point from which I could follow the walk at street level. The distinction matters to my dignity, of course: announcing that I had explored Grottes after searching only for a hole in the ground would have been a particularly lazy form of travel writing.
I set off towards Les immeubles des Schtroumpfs. The change in destination kept the name game going, though not in the way I had expected. First caves, now Schtroumpfs: this route seemed determined to make me expect scenery from a storybook. I was beginning to suspect that the most sensible thing I could do was stop taking names so literally.
### The buildings that refuse a straight line
The colourful, curved Schtroumpfs residential buildings stand on Rue Louis-Favre.[1] They were the most conspicuous answer to my search for something unusual, and also a useful correction to it. Here was a place worth stopping for, but not an attraction detached from everyday life. These are residential buildings. My curiosity did not turn them into a set built for my amusement.
I spent time looking at the curves. Straight lines tend to tell a traveller where to aim the camera and when to move on. These buildings kept drawing my attention sideways instead. A colour caught my eye; a bend interrupted the view I thought I had; stepping a little farther along changed what I was looking at. None of this required me to declare them beautiful, or strange, or an indispensable Geneva experience. It was enough that they made me look twice.
The nickname did much of the comic work before I arrived. Les immeubles des Schtroumpfs sounds like an invitation to forget scale and imagine a tiny fictional population at home inside the walls. Standing there, I found the joke less interesting than the fact that the buildings were homes. I could enjoy their playful appearance without pretending that everyone inside had agreed to participate in my whimsical afternoon.
This is a recurring difficulty with conspicuous residential architecture. A traveller sees a shape worth examining; someone else sees the place where they live. I wanted to take my time, but I did not need to turn a walk past other people’s homes into an inspection. There is a reasonable distance from which to be curious. I tried to keep it.
The buildings also complicated my initial idea of what counted as an answer to the Grottes mystery. I had expected the neighbourhood’s unusual feature to be hidden somewhere, waiting to be uncovered. On Rue Louis-Favre, it was right in front of me, yet it was not mine to claim as a revelation. I could observe it and move along. That felt like a better arrangement than manufacturing a secret.
I lingered anyway. Part of me wanted the walk to produce a neat explanation for its names: caves, Schtroumpfs, some final clue that would tie everything together. Another part was enjoying how poorly that plan was working. The streets did not appear interested in my theory. They offered a square, a named stop and an extravagant-looking group of residential buildings. I had supplied the detective plot myself.
### No entrance at the end
Parc des Cropettes was the last stop on the route, a nearby green space associated with Grottes. I headed there on foot with the vague expectation that the park might provide a concluding image. This was another unfair demand to place on a neighbourhood. Parks are allowed to be parks without resolving the ideas a visitor has dragged into them.
At Parc des Cropettes, I could let the walk come to a halt. There was no need to keep circling in search of a concealed entrance or a sign that would explain the name. I had followed three stops through Grottes. The route had led from a square with La Maison Verte, past the curved buildings on Rue Louis-Favre, to a green space. For once, the plain account was the accurate one.
I sat with my original mistake for a while. It had not ruined anything; it had made me notice how quickly I invent a destination inside a destination. A promising name becomes a promise of spectacle. A peculiar building becomes a demand for an entertaining story. A park becomes the place where I expect the story to conclude. Grottes had accommodated the walk, but none of those demands.
I would have liked one final piece of evidence, if only for the absurd pleasure of being proved right at the last minute. The park offered no cave reveal. I cannot say I was devastated. I was a little reluctant to give up the theory, which is different. It had been a pleasant excuse to keep looking.
For now, Parc des Cropettes was the end of it. I had no next destination to announce and no discovery to smuggle into the final paragraph. I stayed a little longer, wondering what other name I might take too seriously when I eventually chose where to go.
