Switzerland - Cheese, Chocolate, and CERN

Switzerland is a country of delicious cheese (of a bunch of assorted types, not just Swiss… go figure…and expensive), yummy chocolate from the same cows (expensive), and a very VERY large (27 km circumference…also expensive) physics lab that doesn't look like much, but causes Swiss patent clerks with crazy hair (+5 internet/science points if you get the reference) to shiver with excitement in the grave.

---

Did I mention Switzerland is expensive?


The room in Zurich that we stayed in was one of the sparser rooms we've had in Europe, but easily the most expensive. The equivalent of ~$150 CAD per night, with one of the smallest mini-fridges I've ever seen, no kitchen, two separate twin beds, and no thermostat to speak of. Heating was via radiators behind the desk and curtains (why do we need to heat the wood?) and in the bathroom, each with separate knobs to turn up the water flow. Good luck if you wanted it to be warm in a few hours though… I think it was finally getting warm when we left…

It was also a 20 minute tram ride and a 10 minute walk from the city center. Prices in the core easily rival the Banff Springs Hotel for cost… look it up if you don't believe me! Not that lodging is the only expensive thing in Switzerland… a 12” turkey sub from subway cost 15.30 CHF… that's ~$20 CAD for a SINGLE SUB!!

Okay, so I've established it's expensive, but the views make up for it… mostly… when it's not snowing. The day we arrived was partially cloudy, but you could still make out the mountains in the distance, across the lakes and such. Switzerland has a very large number of lakes, and since they're glacier-fed, they're also very clean. The colour of the water was an incredible blue-green, on top of being clear to the bottom.

Lakes near Geneva

We decided to take a tour to Mt. Titlis (really doesn't transition well to English, does it?) the next day, as it would be our only full day in Switzerland… and hoped for good weather. It didn't cooperate, more or less as expected, so while it was reasonably clear but overcast on the way to the mountain, it started snowing when we got there. Snow is rather effective at blocking views on top of mountains… did you know? So instead of the glorious views of some 72 peaks that you should be able to see from the top, we have pictures of a lot of white blurs, with the occasional rock outcropping.

One of the best photos we could get... damn snow...

Not to be deterred, we had ice cream at the highest ice cream boutique in Europe, right next to the highest bar in Europe. Though of course, before that, we took the “ice flyer” chair lift to see, supposedly, a glacier and a mountain, as well as Europe's highest suspension bridge for more of the same views. As expected, mostly blowing snow. But we wouldn't be true Canadians if we let a little snow stop us from going outside!

Visibility... not enough.

What?

MMmmm icecream...

So following the snow and the cable car descent, we stopped in Lucerne for some sightseeing and souvenir shopping…also chocolate. For the chocolatey goodness (spread over several days), see the entry in the TrippyFood Blog: “Battle: Swiss Chocolate”. The bridge, being winter, had no flowers on it, but was still interesting to look at, as was the worlds' largest rolling ball clock in the Bucherer store close to the bridge. The clock covers all 4 stories of the building, and is quite interesting to look at… though the balls don't actually have anything to do with the timekeeping, they're just interesting to look at.

Looks better with flowers

After being dropped off in Zurich again, we ventured forth to meet our cheesy destiny at the fondue restaurant in the airport's parking lot. Yes, parking lot. For that post, please take a look at the post in our food blog TrippyFood: Swiss Fondue.

Left Zurich the next day to go see Geneva, and rather predictably, the CERN facility there. CERN is a world class physics laboratory that houses the largest particle accelerator in the world (27km in circumference) that created such a fuss a few years ago with the search for the so-called “god particle”. I'll admit it wasn't quite as well put together as it probably should be, now that the LHC accelerator made such huge waves and got them a bunch of media coverage. That being said, the “Universe of Particles” exhibit in the relatively new “Globe” across the street from main reception was engaging and interesting.

Glowy

The older exhibit in the same building as main reception (which is across the street from the lab proper) is called “Microcosm” and is definitely geared towards the junior high school groups of 20 years ago. Most displays were cheesy and very dated, but still had a large amount of current information and displays of scientific firsts.

I know most are bored at this point, but I promise I'm almost done…

CERN, besides being a major high-energy physics laboratory, has also contributed to the computer sciences in major ways over the years. Tim Berners-Lee, while at CERN, initiated a project titled “ENQUIRE” that later became the world wide web and transformed into the internet. His NeXT workstation became the first-ever webserver, complete with a hand-scrawled sign warning never to power down, and lately, CERN has become a major player in grid computing; the latest project is the largest and most powerful grid computing network in the world, capable of handling the data from the LHC (300 GB/s raw data, and 300 MB/s after filtering) in almost real-time.

One of the first Cisco IP Routers in Europe

Souvenirs and merchandise should be classed up a little, as most stuff is typical corporate-wear, and not something that either scientists or tourists would be likely to purchase. We found some small things, and then headed back to the train station to catch our train to Lausanne and our connection on the TGV to Paris.


More to come from Paris!