I cannot believe I got to use that post title.

At any rate yes – conference over, there was one more Large thing we wanted to visit in Geneva – CERN, the home of the Large Hadron Collider.  As an accelerator physicist, this place is pretty much sacred ground, even if I didn’t get to see any more than the normal public tour.

Still, the public tour is pretty good.  You get to see the original synchrocyclotron built at CERN in the 1957, and used continuously up until 1990.

If you want to learn more about what a synchro-cyclotron is, and more about cyclotrons generally, you can check out the Wikipedia page on cyclotrons, which I wrote a fairly large chunk of.  Incidentally, you probably DON’T want to be the luckless tour guide with me on your tour asking annoying technical questions.

The tour then progresses to the control center for ATLAS, which is one of the primary detectors on the LHC beamline.  The detector itself, as well as the rest of the accelerator, is located deep underground, but we got to at least gawp at the folks in the control room.

ATLAS, incidentally, stands for “A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS”.  Yeah.

In addition to the tour of the synchrocyclotron and detector buildings, there’s a small art museum located in a big wooden sphere, and a large science museum built directly over the road.  The science museum was very well done, and did a solid job of trying to conceptualize what the LHC is for and accelerator physics more generally.

But with this final bit of entertainment extracted from Geneva, it was time to move on and see the rest of Switzerland!  And I cannot say enough nice things about how easy it is to get around using the Swiss rail app.  Imagine all the mapping and directions functionality Google maps, but it also lets you buy the tickets for pretty much every means of travel, including gondola.

Our first stop was the city of Bern, which immediately charmed us by feeling much less sterile than Geneva. No less f*ing expensive, though.

There was also a giraffe, for some reason.

We had dinner at the Kornhauskeller, a restaurant in a 200 year old corn cellar.  The ambiance was really something.

As was the food, which was very… hearty.  We had definitely moved into the more… Germanic part of the country, culinarily.

A bit more of a walk around town, including an amazing sunset view, and it was time to crash.

For our last full day in Geneva, Leigh was available in the earlier morning and afternoon, but in the middle of the day she had to do (ugh) her actual JOB. So we started by going for a short walk from our hotel to the confluence of the two rivers that meet at Geneva – the Rhone and the Arve.

On the way, we met a few foreshadowing friends.

According to a number of sites, the junction of the two rivers is very striking because of the way their two colors are very different, and there’s a distinct line where they come together. For example, in this file photo here.

Unfortunately, WE weren’t standing where that photo was taken, so the effect visible from where we were was a bit less striking.

Still pretty cool, though.  The nearby graffiti covered building was also pretty awesome.

But after this I had return Leigh to her conference for a bit.

While she was there, I went to check out a small museum of historical scientific instruments. These kind of museums always make me appreciate just how much more dangerous being a physicist potentially was when we had no fricking clue what electricity actually was or how to handle it safely.

Not like today, when only sober, competent people are in charge of science and science policy.  (sobs)

At any rate, speaking of policy, let’s go look at the U.N., the other thing Geneva is known for!

Yeah, that’s pretty cool.  There’s also a giant chair statue out front designed to first garner support for the international land mine treaty, and then to remind people it exists.  People such as the United States, who still haven’t signed it.  Sigh.

There’s a lot of very imposing brutalist architecture in this neighborhood, including the headquarters of things like UNICEF, the ITU, the WTO, UNATCO… wait, hang on – that last one is from Deus Ex.

The International Committee of the Red Cross took over an old hotel, so their headquarters is much less brutalist.

After a LOT of walking around in the sun (these buildings are BIG, and are commensurately spaced well apart from one another), I took the tram back to down and ended up buying some train station empanadas for lunch.  Sure, why not?

In the afternoon, once Leigh had been returned to me, we went to the museum of the watch maker Patek Philippe.  It made an interesting comparison to the Seiko Museum I had visited in Tokyo.

For one, it was MUCH larger, and included a huge array of historical timepieces.  For another, it just felt more like an old school art museum than one about the science of telling time accurately.  There were some really amazing pieces, and the museum was definitely worth the price of admission.

One of my personal favorites was this watch. The hands change length as they proceed around the face.

Definitely NOT designed by Dr. Seuss, or so they claim.

Finally it was time to join the rest of the conference attendees for the official conference dinner of.. fondue!  Yes, we were in Switzerland, it was time to dip bread into cheese!

Which, of course, I forgot to take a picture of.  But it was bread dipped into cheese, what’s not to like?

The next day the conference was over, so we had morning plans in Geneva, and then off to see the rest of the country!

Leigh had already finished most of her conference related duties at this point, so in the afternoon she played hooky and we went to look at a bit more of Geneva together.

We had been told that Geneva was not the most interesting city in Switzerland, and (spoilers) it’s not, really.  But there’s a few really good things worth seeing, and one of those is the archaeological museum under the cathedral.

The cathedral, viewed from the outside, is a proper European pile of stone – towers, arches, all that fun stuff.

But directly underneath is a huge excavation site – an area substantially larger than the church itself has been opened up to show construction going all the way back to the Roman era.  It’s remarkable how MUCH empty space there is, given the fact that there is still an entire CATHEDRAL sitting on top of it.

And there’s some really impressive stuff – the monks apparently had heated floors in their cells at one point.  WE don’t have that, and we live in the future!

This mosaic was the floor of the bishop’s reception chamber.  You can see spots where it was incompetently repaired much later than its original construction.  Good to know Ecce Homo wasn’t purely a recent phenomenon.

Having explored the depths below, it was time for the sky above, in the form of climbing the church tower for a view of the city.  Unfortunately, this was the one day of our visit where the weather was grey and rainy.

And just for completeness, here’s a view of the church from the inside.

Swiss cathedrals are interesting, because they were generally built before the Reformation, meaning they were highly decorated and ornate, but then stripped down to the extent possible afterwards.  So it’s obvious that there used to be a lot more stuff here.

Except for this chapel – this one’s still bonkers.

After this, we visited a small gallery we had seen an ad for on a bus.  It’s dedicated to artwork that revolves around clockwork and time.  Some really amazing pieces, NONE of which we remembered to photograph, although Leigh at least got a video of a marble clock.

They had a “build your own Swiss mechanical clock” kit that I really wanted, if it hadn’t been somewhere north of $10,000.

After that we just bonked around the city a bit more, had some more chocolate, and then went back to our hotel to hide from the rain.

Leigh’s conference started on Monday, so I went geocaching.  As a reminder, geocaching is a silly hobby where people hide stuff and other people go and find it and then mark that they’ve done so on a website.

Sometimes it takes me to some interesting places, though.  My goal for the day was a very difficult puzzle cache in a park area northwest of downtown.  So I decided to go for a long walk from our hotel, pick up some caches on the way, and see what else I happened to see en route.

And in a suburban park, what I spotted was a tall security fence with a gate in it marked  “Zoo.”  Now, this was just a random gate in a fence. It had to be an employee entrance, or an emergency gate or something, right?

Nope.  Unlocked, come-right-in, help yourself, self service zoo.  No employees in sight, just come on in and wander around.

To be fair, it’s not the San Diego zoo – there’s not a panda in sight.  Rather, it focuses on largely native animals.

Also peacocks, for some reason.

So I just wandered around and looked at the animals.  It was fun.  There were goats.

Leaving the zoo behind, I continued my hike through the woods.  Found some caches, didn’t find some caches, bought an espresso at the random café near the zoo, and finally DID make the grab on the destination cache I had in mind.

Returning to the city, I was getting hungry, but had not yet acclimated myself to the staggering food prices in Switzerland.  As such, although I sat down in what looked like a tasty Afghan restaurant, the prices startled me so much I ordered something called a “Kabul Wrap.”

I figured that might be a nice kebab kind of thing.

No.  It was easily the worst thing I ate on the entire trip – hot dogs and egg salad wrapped in a flatbread.  I have no idea what was in any way Afghan about it.  Yeesh.

But at least it was calories.  You don’t want to know what it cost.

After lunch I went and saw some more Geneva sights, like this statue of Rousseau.

Or this clock, measuring to the tenth of the second the time until the sun is going to explode:

If I ever need to explain to someone the difference between accuracy and precision, I’m showing them this.

As an afternoon snack, I stopped into a nice indoor courtyard for a chocolate apricot patisserie.

And finally ran across Frankenstein’s monster.  As you do.

Finally, Leigh was done with her conference and we had dinner at a nice Turkish place near the monster.  All in all, a perfectly nice day of wandering around.

My one day in Paris accomplished, it was time to leave for Geneva.  As a reminder, we had planned two weeks in Switzerland long before the Belgium / Turkey portion of this trip was requested by my job, so I would actually be meeting Leigh there.  She’d have a conference for the first few days, but I’d still get to SEE her for the first time in three weeks.

But first, I had to get out of Paris.  I had deliberately picked a hotel close to the train station, and as an added bonus, it had a piano, so I could actually PLAY a bit for the first time in a while.  After waiting out a teenager playing the legally required “The Piano” noodle-fest, I played a bit of Debussy, and then went to wait for my TGV to Switzerland.

It was crowded, but the architecture sure was nice.

The TGV is fast and reliable, and I was soon in Geneva, where I checked into our hotel and waited for Leigh to arrive.  Once she did, I managed to walk halfway back to the train station and then board the tram she was on, since I didn’t want to wait the extra 5 minutes to see her again.

It was now early afternoon, so we decided to bonk around the city and see what we could see while Leigh attempted to remain awake to catch up with her jet lag.

First, we walked through a big open air market with a million food stalls of different types.  Geneva is the home of the UN, after all.  I had some cow hearts on a stick. (Less glibly, “Antichucos,” a classic Peruvian food item.)

Next, we found a SERIOUSLY imposing monument to the Swiss founders of the Protestant Reformation.  (Not the German ones, don’t be silly.  Martin who?)

Do not even THINK of buying an indulgence.  These gentlemen will know.

But the absolute BEST thing to happen today was when we turned around from Calvinballists and realized that just across the street was a museum that not only had an exhibit of sculptures by Jean Tinguely, but was even free admission!

And before you ask – does this fountain also move and light up?  Of COURSE it does.

Seriously, it’s awesome.  As is this.

The museum has all the kinetic pieces set to only operate for a relatively small duty cycle, in order to preserve them, but oh man – when this thing gets going it is AMAZING. Here’s a video.

Unfortunately, we got there somewhat late in the day, so they did make us leave before too long.  Despite the threatening skies, we did some more walking around the older part of Geneva.  There’s a famous flower clock:

It’s fine. The womens’ Euro Cup was going on while we were in Switzerland and it was pretty much omnipresent in every town we went to.

We saw the main cathedral, which we would return to later in the week, but it had this cheery fellow in the courtyard.

I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine.

Finally we went and had dinner and encountered the first of many sticker shocks associated with eating in Switzerland.  It is SERIOUSLY expensive – you pretty much just have to accept that you will be blowing a tremendous amount of money just to put calories in your system when you come here.

And that was day 1 in Switzerland!