We arrived in Geneva reasonably late at night, to discover that they don’t eat out as late as Spaniards do, so we had to contend ourselves with a gallete. This obviously means a souva. Mind you, it was tasty and a lot bigger than the ones I’m used to – but at $10, it would want to be.
My first impressions of Switzerland are beauty, efficiency and expense. Switzerland is pretty damn expensive. Part of it may be me forgetting to convert to Euros all the time, but then when you realise that a Big Mac meal is $11.50, then you start thinking about how the hell you’re going to eat reasonably healthy and stay under budget. Sigh. However, I quickly discovered that they have BEAUTIFUL bright money. Definitely one of the prettier currencies I’ve seen. I also still can’t believe how efficient they are. I know everybody talks about it – but the trains run on time to the minute and they are so QUIET! You can whisper and be heard. The connections only give you a few minutes, but it’s all you need. It’s amazing.
Anyway, we were staying in dorms because private rooms were at prices out of this world, which turned out not to be too bad considering it was a 10-bed dorm – the other 8 beds were made up of one German group, who were lovely and friendly and early-to-bed people. Couldn’t have asked for more!
So my highlight of Geneva was clear and simple. I went to CERN!!! I couldn’t believe the nerdtopia I was in. I couldn’t get in for an official tour, as we discovered you have to book about 3 months in advance (next time, Gadget), but we got to tour the museum and it was fantastic. It’s actually double the distance out of town that the airport is, but our hostel gave us free travel cards, so it cost us nothing!
For those of you who are scratching your head, CERN is the European Organisation for Nuclear Research – where all the nerdy physicists are studying and smashing together particles to find answers to questions about the universe. The LHC (Large Hadron Collider), I think the world’s largest particle accelerator, has just been completed and is due to begin work in August. It’s pretty exciting – they whip particles around a 27km ring (under Switzerland and France) at a rate of 11 000 times a second (!!) and in basic terms, record particles created when two other particles smash together. What is really exciting is that they are hoping to be able to detect the legendary Higgs boson, whose presence will help solidify theories about how the universe works (essentially – the universe has mass that is unaccounted for [some people have proposed ‘dark matter’ to account for this]. It is hoped that the Higgs boson (which is thought be quite heavy) will account for much of this ‘missing’ mass). If not…..well, hell, it’s just exciting.
On the bright side, I had Andrew with me, so he not only knew and understood all of this, but he didn’t mind me jumping up and down like an energiser bunny at all the different nerdy things. He is so great!! I got to stand next to a model of it – I just couldn’t stop smiling!
Amongst other exciting things in the museum; the computer of the guy who invented the internet and his proposal for it; old storage disks used by CERN – the largest with a diameter of roughly 70cm and a storage capacity of a whopping 664 BYTES - for those of you who this means nothing to, an average short word document is about 25kb – 25 000 bytes, or a song is around 3.4MB – 3 400 000 bytes. Absolutely crazy! (And yes any potential nerds – I am well aware that it’s a binary, not a decimal system and that there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte and so on – so shaddup). There is also 1/10th of a mainframe computer in there – about 2m tall and perhaps 50cm wide – that was used in the 1980s for fast processing. It got so hot it had to be cooled down with liquid nitrogen. Today’s personal computers are at least 18 times faster. I love the evolution of technology. They say that it improves by a factor of 2 (e.g. faster, storage capacity) every 18 months. I often wonder if there is an asymptote somewhere, and how close we are to it…
There was also a huge detector there (6m long, 2m in diameter), called the UAI central detector which helped to identify a handful of W and Z particles from billions of collisions. Cutting through the jargon – helping to identify important particles that are really, really, really, really rare – it all helps with theories about the universe. But it was also beautiful – its outside showed its colourful internal wiring reminiscent of computers, and there was a beautiful tube that lit up in rings of yellow and orange.
Sigh of sheer happiness. We wandered around the museum for a couple of hours, looking at different exhibits, learning a little bit and consolidating old knowledge, enjoying the sheer nerd-dom before us.
One thing that has been hard to resist is the overwhelming plethora of Swiss chocolate. Yikes! I’m trying to be healthy, but it’s very, very hard.
For the rest of the day we wandered around Geneva – it was nice, but I think I should have done CERN last, not first!
We looked at a few buildings, went into the old town part which reminded me a little of Quebec, just a lot warmer (though, it is much cooler here – around mid to high 20s. A nice relief!). We also went to Lake Geneva, a beautiful expanse of blue with a touch of turquoise waters and a glut of mute swans. The water jet for some reason wasn’t working, but hey, it’s just water squirting up into the air.
The next day we went out to the Red Cross Museum, which may not exactly have been worth the $10 we paid to get in (when we were told it was free), but it was at least somewhat interesting. It details the history of the Red Cross, helping out in some of the many atrocities that humans have committed (e.g. wars). We then boarded a train to Interlaken – only 3 hours on their whisper quiet trains, but a whopping $65 each. Stupid expensive Switzerland.
When we arrived though, it is just breathtaking. The green mountains in the background, the amazing creamy-turquoise glacial river that flows through – I can’t wait to go hiking and get some amazing views (and shots!). We are staying in what turned out to be a caravan park (with cabins), but it’s not too bad – we’ve got our own room and they’ve even got wireless (mind you, had to pay $15 to use it for 10 hours. WIRELESS!! Who charges for wireless? Europeans, apparently). Anyway, we are heading into the touristy bit to get some information on hiking so we can spend the next couple of days up in the mountains!!
Mwah!!
Geneva photos
