My boyfriend just left his house to go to the airport in Melbourne to catch his flight to Geneva. Luckily nobody is really expecting me to do any useful work in the next day, as I'm having problem concentrating on anything for more than a couple of minutes. Hopefully this entry isn't too all over the place.
I thought I'd take this time to try and reflect over the past year...
525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear.
525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee.
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.
Sorry, my life sometimes plays like a musical in my head, and that song just popped up as I wrote the above.
Well, my year hasn't been as dramatic as that described in Rent, but then my life isn't a musical. Which is a good thing, since I've spent most of the year with moogle, my laptop, either at work, or watching television, or keeping in contact with people at home. All of which wouldn't make very interesting viewing, or even reading, as I haven't mentioned much about any of the above activities in any of my blog entries over the year.
Though, looking back through all my entries now, as well as through all my photo albums, I have been quite busy. There's been all the sightseeing in spring, all the skiing throughout winter, all the finger operations in autumn and the traveling in summer. Would have been a much better year without all the hospital visits, but it hasn't been bad really, not bad at all. *grins*
It's a pity that my French hasn't improved that much while I've been here though. I started with the best of intentions, until I realised how hard it was to get to the free classes at the university and how expensive outside courses were, instead saying that I'll study at home. But then I got lazy, particularly with nobody nearby at around my level to learn with. *blushes*
The LHC incident last September was also a disappointment, though the start up day was exciting. The fact that the incident delayed the machine for over a year meant that my work here has been less interesting than it could have been, and was the cause of many a period of depression, particularly during the cold months, since I really could have been doing what I did here back home. Having said that though, I have done good work in my time here, and it was easier doing it here rather than back home.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Swiss Government for funding my time over here, particularly paying for my health insurance; and the University of Geneva for hosting me, both offering a room in student housing which meant I had the money to do all the sightseeing and skiing, and giving me office space at CERN, which meant I had company at work all year round, which I'm very grateful for, as it is a little lonely over in the Australian office, and made me feel like I was part of the group.
As everybody knows, experiences aren't only made up of the things you do, but also the people you meet and I have meet some very nice people out here. I was lucky with my housemates; I had fun in my first apartment for a month with the students on summer holidays, and enjoyed my time in the University of Geneva apartment with the other students there. It was nice to socialise with people not at CERN, just to remember that there is a world outside physics. I also got meet other people on the various outings organised for scholarship holders, which was very educational, since most of them were from less developed countries, most of which I don't know very much about. And last, but definitely not least, is all the people I know from work, either from the University of Geneva or ATLAS or the summer school I went to at FermiLab or through other people. It's been a joy working and hanging out with you all and hopefully we'll meet again one day, I am planning to come back to CERN early next year for a couple of months.
And with that, I think I'll end this entry and sign off this blog for now, I'll figure out what to do with it when I get home where I don't think my life is really that interesting to write about.
Au revoir, adieu, à bientôt, à la prochaine, à toute à l'heure!
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Bougy-Villars
Today we had plans to go for a picnic and walk since my time in Geneva is coming to an end. However, it had been raining for a couple of days, so the outlook wasn't promising. Luckily, we were going by car so could drive away from the bad regions in search of better.
The rough plans were to go around Perrot-Malessert and since the weather there looked like it would be better, we headed in that direction. We ended up having lunch there on a bench in a park overlooking the lake, which was scenic and cold, but it least it wasn't raining. We then looked up at the hills for somewhere to walk, and decided that the communication tower we could see would be a good destination and set off in search of some yellow trail signs.
Hiking is one of what I would call the national sports in Switzerland (a list which also includes cycling and skiing) and they cater for it very well with signs at the start and crossroads of every trail with estimated hiking time to the destination of your choice. I heard a couple of weeks ago that the times are locally calibrated, which sounds both very Swiss and not Swiss at once. Very Swiss, since all the cantons are governed differently than each other, so why would there be a federal hiking time calibration. Not Swiss, since they are all about precision timing, but I guess it is hard to find a way to calibrate hiking times, since it depends on so many factors.
Anyway, we found signs to Signal de Bougy which we figured was the communication tower, and drove up to find a parking spot near a sign above the villages and headed up the hill. Little did we know that: firstly, the weather would clear up so the view of the lake from up there would be amazing, a fact I really regret as I didn't bring my camera with me; and secondly, at the bottom of the tower was Pré Vert Park, which is a huge family park, with lots of family entertainment. There was play equipment, some of which looked really fun, and which I would have liked to try, except for all the children already on them. There was also an adventure park, which various courses where you climb up and around trees, which looked really cool, though was kind of expensive. There was a children's farm, including sheep, pigs, fowl and all types of mountain goats and deer. There was also minigolf for the kids and normal golf for the parents. Hm... what else was there? Oh yeah, there was an amphitheatre, a restaurant, picnic and bbq areas, as well areas for various sports. I'm sure there was more that we didn't walk past, but we were very impressed with what we did see. If I ever have kids here, I'll be taking them there every weekend.
This is the view from where we parked the car. Imagine what it would have looked like from the summit... *sigh* Another time on a warmer, clearer day.
Oh, in the park area of the park, they had signs up with scientific multiple choice questions on them on one side, with the answers and explanations on the other side. One of the questions was about the Dahu, which I now know is a fictional animal which supposedly lives in the Alps. It is an alpine deer which has evolved to have with uneven legs so that it can walk on the steep mountain slopes easier. Its major flaw is that this means it can only walk around a mountain in one direction, which you are supposed to exploit when trying to catch one, getting it's attention from behind so that it turns around and falls.
I quite like the idea of this fictional animal, probably because it is foreign to me, and I think a Swiss person on my first trip over here asked me if I had seen one on one of mountain hikes, though he couldn't remember the creature's name. I've never actually tried the drop bear or hoop snake thing on people coming to Australia because I think it's kind of silly, but maybe I will now, since they are amusing creatures.
The rough plans were to go around Perrot-Malessert and since the weather there looked like it would be better, we headed in that direction. We ended up having lunch there on a bench in a park overlooking the lake, which was scenic and cold, but it least it wasn't raining. We then looked up at the hills for somewhere to walk, and decided that the communication tower we could see would be a good destination and set off in search of some yellow trail signs.
Hiking is one of what I would call the national sports in Switzerland (a list which also includes cycling and skiing) and they cater for it very well with signs at the start and crossroads of every trail with estimated hiking time to the destination of your choice. I heard a couple of weeks ago that the times are locally calibrated, which sounds both very Swiss and not Swiss at once. Very Swiss, since all the cantons are governed differently than each other, so why would there be a federal hiking time calibration. Not Swiss, since they are all about precision timing, but I guess it is hard to find a way to calibrate hiking times, since it depends on so many factors.
Anyway, we found signs to Signal de Bougy which we figured was the communication tower, and drove up to find a parking spot near a sign above the villages and headed up the hill. Little did we know that: firstly, the weather would clear up so the view of the lake from up there would be amazing, a fact I really regret as I didn't bring my camera with me; and secondly, at the bottom of the tower was Pré Vert Park, which is a huge family park, with lots of family entertainment. There was play equipment, some of which looked really fun, and which I would have liked to try, except for all the children already on them. There was also an adventure park, which various courses where you climb up and around trees, which looked really cool, though was kind of expensive. There was a children's farm, including sheep, pigs, fowl and all types of mountain goats and deer. There was also minigolf for the kids and normal golf for the parents. Hm... what else was there? Oh yeah, there was an amphitheatre, a restaurant, picnic and bbq areas, as well areas for various sports. I'm sure there was more that we didn't walk past, but we were very impressed with what we did see. If I ever have kids here, I'll be taking them there every weekend.
This is the view from where we parked the car. Imagine what it would have looked like from the summit... *sigh* Another time on a warmer, clearer day.
Oh, in the park area of the park, they had signs up with scientific multiple choice questions on them on one side, with the answers and explanations on the other side. One of the questions was about the Dahu, which I now know is a fictional animal which supposedly lives in the Alps. It is an alpine deer which has evolved to have with uneven legs so that it can walk on the steep mountain slopes easier. Its major flaw is that this means it can only walk around a mountain in one direction, which you are supposed to exploit when trying to catch one, getting it's attention from behind so that it turns around and falls.
I quite like the idea of this fictional animal, probably because it is foreign to me, and I think a Swiss person on my first trip over here asked me if I had seen one on one of mountain hikes, though he couldn't remember the creature's name. I've never actually tried the drop bear or hoop snake thing on people coming to Australia because I think it's kind of silly, but maybe I will now, since they are amusing creatures.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Travel Blog
My boyfriend and I have now created our joint travel blog at http://attphanwmtran.blogspot.com/ . Nothing on it yet that I haven't already posted in this blog, but come this Friday when he arrives in Geneva, I'll probably only be posting there, since my year here would have come to an end, and that's what this blog is supposed to be about.
Farewell Party
Just finished cleaning up after my farewell party last night. There wasn't too much of a mess, just a lot of empty bottles to be put into recycling, glasses to wash and surfaces to wipe.
I was a little worried about it beforehand, since I had invited a heap of people, I didn't actually know how many of them were going to come. And of course, this continued to be a fear until enough people had arrived for multiple conversations to start and things becoming less awkward.
Of course then, the worry was about people not breaking anything and food and drinks running out, followed by the noise we were all making and waiting for the last people were going to leave. Ah, the joys of hosting a house party.
Anyway, it was a fun party, and I think it went very well. *smiles*
I was a little worried about it beforehand, since I had invited a heap of people, I didn't actually know how many of them were going to come. And of course, this continued to be a fear until enough people had arrived for multiple conversations to start and things becoming less awkward.
Of course then, the worry was about people not breaking anything and food and drinks running out, followed by the noise we were all making and waiting for the last people were going to leave. Ah, the joys of hosting a house party.
Anyway, it was a fun party, and I think it went very well. *smiles*
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Travel Map
Just made this map for a presentation tomorrow, and thought that I would post it up here. Each of the blue markers is a destination on my holiday which is starting next week.
By the way, the plan for the trip is to have a joint blog between my boyfriend and I, but we haven't decided on a url or title yet, but stay tuned, I'll definitely link to it from here.
By the way, the plan for the trip is to have a joint blog between my boyfriend and I, but we haven't decided on a url or title yet, but stay tuned, I'll definitely link to it from here.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Rochers de Naye
Today I went for a hike in the mountains above Montreux, on the other side of Lake Geneva, inspired by short hike I did last week at Moléson, but wanting to go somewhere I hadn't been before, which ruled out the nearby Salève and Jura.
We took cog wheel train from Montreux up to the summit of Rochers de Naye at 2054m, which is a small ski resort in winter and a tourist destination in summer, as well as a station for the usual hiking and mountain biking.
The top is a little spoilt by being a ski resort with the lifts sitting idle, and the yurts in which people can stay overnight in summer. Not to mention the marmot enclosures. Though they meant that I now have actually seen a real life marmot, rather than just pictures and toys. Unfortunately, the alpine garden wasn't open yet, so I can't say the same for edelweiss.
We were a little unfortunate about the weather, as it changed a lot during the day. At the summit, it was windy and cloudy, though it would clear up for the magnificent view towards the lake to be seen.
In the other direction, we were able to catch glimpses of snow covered peaks, but were never able to see them.
After lunch, we started our slow descent down. I say slow, not because we were slow, but because of the frequent photo stops. The trail was quite pretty, with glimpses of the lake, and the valley towards Valais here and there, as well as the view back up the mountain.
It took us most of the afternoon to come back to civilisation, where we decided that the further effort to get back to Montreux wasn't worth the pain, since the path had become fairly steep and we were surrounded by buildings, and took the cog wheel train the rest of the way down from Glion, which had a very nice view of Chillon, the castle which I visited last year on the edge of the lake.
We took cog wheel train from Montreux up to the summit of Rochers de Naye at 2054m, which is a small ski resort in winter and a tourist destination in summer, as well as a station for the usual hiking and mountain biking.
The top is a little spoilt by being a ski resort with the lifts sitting idle, and the yurts in which people can stay overnight in summer. Not to mention the marmot enclosures. Though they meant that I now have actually seen a real life marmot, rather than just pictures and toys. Unfortunately, the alpine garden wasn't open yet, so I can't say the same for edelweiss.
We were a little unfortunate about the weather, as it changed a lot during the day. At the summit, it was windy and cloudy, though it would clear up for the magnificent view towards the lake to be seen.
In the other direction, we were able to catch glimpses of snow covered peaks, but were never able to see them.
After lunch, we started our slow descent down. I say slow, not because we were slow, but because of the frequent photo stops. The trail was quite pretty, with glimpses of the lake, and the valley towards Valais here and there, as well as the view back up the mountain.
It took us most of the afternoon to come back to civilisation, where we decided that the further effort to get back to Montreux wasn't worth the pain, since the path had become fairly steep and we were surrounded by buildings, and took the cog wheel train the rest of the way down from Glion, which had a very nice view of Chillon, the castle which I visited last year on the edge of the lake.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Eritrea
I'm a little embarassed to admit this, but I did not know anything about this country before this evening, when I went to a restaurant of their food:
Cercle Érythréen
1st floor on the left
7 boulevard Carl-Vogt
Jonction
079 348 7862
I put the details up here, because I know I'll never be able to find the place again, since it's in what looks like an apartment.
I still don't know too much about the country, except for where it is in Africa. I can't even pronouce its name. I know what the food there is like though, spicy stewed meat and vegetables served on crepes to be shared and eaten together with your hands. It is very good, but not my sort of thing, as I can't take much spice and don't like sloppy food.
Photo taken from pengrin eats
Cercle Érythréen
1st floor on the left
7 boulevard Carl-Vogt
Jonction
079 348 7862
I put the details up here, because I know I'll never be able to find the place again, since it's in what looks like an apartment.
I still don't know too much about the country, except for where it is in Africa. I can't even pronouce its name. I know what the food there is like though, spicy stewed meat and vegetables served on crepes to be shared and eaten together with your hands. It is very good, but not my sort of thing, as I can't take much spice and don't like sloppy food.
Photo taken from pengrin eats
Moving Countries...
Today I moved from Switzerland to France. Which really sounds more dramatic than it is considering the apartments are only about 15kms apart. *winks*
Moving back to the Australian Apartment in St Genis Pouilly just across the border was very easy, since I've stayed there before and have a key and knew which room I was going to have this time.
Moving out of my student apartment was a little more complicated, since it involved cleaning my room and the common areas to pass inspection to receive my bond back. I must have wiped almost every surface in my room, as well as did a quick clean of the kitchen, bathroom and toilet, which turned out not to be needed since she only checked my room. So now I'm a months' rent richer. *grins*
Moving back to the Australian Apartment in St Genis Pouilly just across the border was very easy, since I've stayed there before and have a key and knew which room I was going to have this time.
Moving out of my student apartment was a little more complicated, since it involved cleaning my room and the common areas to pass inspection to receive my bond back. I must have wiped almost every surface in my room, as well as did a quick clean of the kitchen, bathroom and toilet, which turned out not to be needed since she only checked my room. So now I'm a months' rent richer. *grins*
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Documentary
Just found out about Colliding Particles, an online documentary following a group of British experimentalists on ATLAS who collaborate with French theorists in Paris on a Higgs search technique. It's quite good and definitely worth a watch if you're interested in what I do and the world I work in. *winks*
Monday, May 25, 2009
Disappointment
Today was my control check up for my finger, which unfortunately did not go according to plan.
What I wanted to happen: finger would get examined and everything would be fine, and I would get all the documents in English needed to bring a dermatologist in Melbourne up to date with what has happened
What actually happened: finger got examined and everything was not fine. no regrowth of the mole or anything, but suspected regrowth of little bits of nail. for which the recommendation was another operation to remove the rest of the nail bed, since the areas where there does seem to be nail regrowth do hurt, but I just thought that that was part of the healing process. luckily, the operation isn't urgent and can wait until I get back home, and I did get all the documents and the recommendation to give a dermatologist to follow up, though they are in French, so I'll have to get them translated. so at least I won't have to waste another day going out to the hospital.
So, does anybody back home know a good dermatologist? one who could remove the rest of my nail matrix with just one operation? and somebody who can translate the documents for me? without charging me fifty dollars a page?
What I wanted to happen: finger would get examined and everything would be fine, and I would get all the documents in English needed to bring a dermatologist in Melbourne up to date with what has happened
What actually happened: finger got examined and everything was not fine. no regrowth of the mole or anything, but suspected regrowth of little bits of nail. for which the recommendation was another operation to remove the rest of the nail bed, since the areas where there does seem to be nail regrowth do hurt, but I just thought that that was part of the healing process. luckily, the operation isn't urgent and can wait until I get back home, and I did get all the documents and the recommendation to give a dermatologist to follow up, though they are in French, so I'll have to get them translated. so at least I won't have to waste another day going out to the hospital.
So, does anybody back home know a good dermatologist? one who could remove the rest of my nail matrix with just one operation? and somebody who can translate the documents for me? without charging me fifty dollars a page?
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Gruyères
Today I had another sponsored trip by the International Relations Office of The Unviersity of Geneva. This time it was a day trip around Gruyères, in the canton of Fribourg, on the other side of Lac Geneva.
After a rocky start, with a student arriving over half an hour late and the bus breaking down, but we got to La Maison du Gruyère in the end, and did a tour of the cheese exhibit. For those who don't know, Gruyère is a hard yellow cheese made from cow's milk which has Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée status as a Swiss cheese. The exhibit wasn't all that exciting, narrated by a cow called Cherry, with not all that much information about the region or the cheese. Though we do get to see the cheese being heated, pressed, bathed in salt, and ripened on shelves, with a robot which went down the aisles flipping and wiping all the cheeses.
After the fromagerie, we headed out to Moléson , where we headed took a furnicular up to a restaurant for lunch and then a cable car up to the peak, which had a wonderful view of the surroundings, despite the layer of pollution.
We then took the cable car back down to the mid station, and walked the rest of the way. It was a lovely, easy hike down, past lots of green grass with full of alpine flowers, surrounded by hills with ringing with cow bells.
Photo enhanced using iPhoto
Our next destination was the medieval town of Gruyères, which is the most touristic place I've seen in this country so far, with a very pretty main street full of restaurants and souvenir stores, a church, all of which is looked over by a chateau.
It also contains an H.R. Giger Museum which showcases the artist's paintings, sculptures, furniture and film designs. I actually haven't seen any of the movies, but I did recognise some of the work, which was quite interesting, though kind of disturbing. There was also a themed bar next door, which was very cool.
Photo taken from www.hrgiger.com
We only got to spend an hour in the town before we had to head off for diner by the lake in Rolle, which was very tasty, though not very many of us were hungry after the huge lunch we had.
If I had planned the day, I wouldn't have gone to the cheese factory, but the chocolate one nearby instead, and definitely wouldn't have had two three course meals in the day. But it was an enjoyable day nonetheless, and actually fairly tiring.
After a rocky start, with a student arriving over half an hour late and the bus breaking down, but we got to La Maison du Gruyère in the end, and did a tour of the cheese exhibit. For those who don't know, Gruyère is a hard yellow cheese made from cow's milk which has Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée status as a Swiss cheese. The exhibit wasn't all that exciting, narrated by a cow called Cherry, with not all that much information about the region or the cheese. Though we do get to see the cheese being heated, pressed, bathed in salt, and ripened on shelves, with a robot which went down the aisles flipping and wiping all the cheeses.
After the fromagerie, we headed out to Moléson , where we headed took a furnicular up to a restaurant for lunch and then a cable car up to the peak, which had a wonderful view of the surroundings, despite the layer of pollution.
We then took the cable car back down to the mid station, and walked the rest of the way. It was a lovely, easy hike down, past lots of green grass with full of alpine flowers, surrounded by hills with ringing with cow bells.
Photo enhanced using iPhoto
Our next destination was the medieval town of Gruyères, which is the most touristic place I've seen in this country so far, with a very pretty main street full of restaurants and souvenir stores, a church, all of which is looked over by a chateau.
It also contains an H.R. Giger Museum which showcases the artist's paintings, sculptures, furniture and film designs. I actually haven't seen any of the movies, but I did recognise some of the work, which was quite interesting, though kind of disturbing. There was also a themed bar next door, which was very cool.
Photo taken from www.hrgiger.com
We only got to spend an hour in the town before we had to head off for diner by the lake in Rolle, which was very tasty, though not very many of us were hungry after the huge lunch we had.
If I had planned the day, I wouldn't have gone to the cheese factory, but the chocolate one nearby instead, and definitely wouldn't have had two three course meals in the day. But it was an enjoyable day nonetheless, and actually fairly tiring.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Report Time...
Since today is between a public holiday and a weekend, I decided that I would get some long overdue administration done and actually fill in a final report for my scholarship rather than let it sit in my inbox for another couple of weeks. There are always things one has to do when receiving scholarships, and one of these is usually a report in the form of questions to be answered/points to be addressed.
This one was fairly easy, I copied the bulk of it from previous phd progress reports, with the necessary adjustments to bring it up to date and make it more relevant to the scholarship.
I was stumped for a while on a question regarding What knowledge I have acquired in Switzerland that can benefit my country? Seriously, it's such a open question that I didn't know where to start, but luckily, I was only given 1000 characters to answer with, so came up with CERN is a unique laboratory, run by a council of representatives from 20 European Member States, employing around 2500 people, where scientists from some 580 institutes representing 85 nationalities come for their research. It is located just outside Geneva, a city that hosts around 200 international organisations. Living and working in such an international environment, I think the most beneficial knowledge I have acquired is how people from all different backgrounds and cultures can communicate, cooperate and collaborate. Which is a very nice sentiment isn't it?
They also had the usual comments and suggestions for improvement at the end, in which I was very careful to be very thankful for the scholarship and all of its benefits, which I am very grateful for, except for the part that it meant spending a year away from my boyfriend, family and friends, but that's kind of the idea of a scholarship which enables you to spend a year studying in a foreign country.
The only negative comment which I had was the fact that they didn't offer me the French language course, which I know they did to other scholarship holders who are studying in English. I know it's kind of my fault that my French hasn't greatly improved from a year of living in a French speaking area, but it is hard when all I know is enough to travel, but not enough to live and I don't need to use it at all on an everyday basis. *sigh*
This one was fairly easy, I copied the bulk of it from previous phd progress reports, with the necessary adjustments to bring it up to date and make it more relevant to the scholarship.
I was stumped for a while on a question regarding What knowledge I have acquired in Switzerland that can benefit my country? Seriously, it's such a open question that I didn't know where to start, but luckily, I was only given 1000 characters to answer with, so came up with CERN is a unique laboratory, run by a council of representatives from 20 European Member States, employing around 2500 people, where scientists from some 580 institutes representing 85 nationalities come for their research. It is located just outside Geneva, a city that hosts around 200 international organisations. Living and working in such an international environment, I think the most beneficial knowledge I have acquired is how people from all different backgrounds and cultures can communicate, cooperate and collaborate. Which is a very nice sentiment isn't it?
They also had the usual comments and suggestions for improvement at the end, in which I was very careful to be very thankful for the scholarship and all of its benefits, which I am very grateful for, except for the part that it meant spending a year away from my boyfriend, family and friends, but that's kind of the idea of a scholarship which enables you to spend a year studying in a foreign country.
The only negative comment which I had was the fact that they didn't offer me the French language course, which I know they did to other scholarship holders who are studying in English. I know it's kind of my fault that my French hasn't greatly improved from a year of living in a French speaking area, but it is hard when all I know is enough to travel, but not enough to live and I don't need to use it at all on an everyday basis. *sigh*
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Bike Ride
Today was a CERN holiday, due it being both a Swiss and French public holiday, for the Ascension of Jesus to Heaven forty days after his rebirth. It's a pity we don't have these extra Christian holidays back home. There's another one in ten days for Pentecost, whatever that is.
Anyway, I took advantage of the holiday and the weather to ride downtown and around part of the lake...
...and wandered around the gardens on the other side.
Open House Day on Saturday reminded me how pretty the lake front is and how I hadn't gone further than the jet on the other side, and while today wasn't clear, the weather wasn't that bad.
Anyway, I took advantage of the holiday and the weather to ride downtown and around part of the lake...
...and wandered around the gardens on the other side.
Open House Day on Saturday reminded me how pretty the lake front is and how I hadn't gone further than the jet on the other side, and while today wasn't clear, the weather wasn't that bad.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Austria not to leave CERN
New rumours floating around about Austria not pulling out of CERN after comments by the Austrian Federal Chancellor Werner Faymann in respose to the worries of Science Minister Johannes Hahn. Will probably get official information from CERN tomorrow.
Random note: I can't type Austria without typing Australia and then needed to do back and fix it. It would be easier if it was spelt more like the German, Österreich.
Random note: I can't type Austria without typing Australia and then needed to do back and fix it. It would be easier if it was spelt more like the German, Österreich.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Lots of alcohol...
The plan for yesterday was a fairly full one... Firstly, it was Open House Day for the wineries in Geneva, a day when the wine made from the previous autumn’s harvest is put on the market and most of the wineries are open for tasting. Then there was a going away barbeque, followed by the Eurovision 2009 final. *grins*
Open House Day was fun. Seriously, how could it be bad with the combination of a lovely sunny day and free transport, food and wine? It was nice to be able to try more wine from the region since the wineries are usually only open for a couple of hours on Saturday morning for casual tasting. Swiss wines are fairly consistent. It's hard to find an undrinkable one, but it's also hard to find a really good one. Doesn't really matter for a tasting day though, since they all start tasting the same after the first few. *winks*
We decided to take the Navette Pinot Noir on the left side of the lake even though there are more wineries on the right side because none of us had ever been on those villages and they probably would be quite pretty with views of the lake and the mountains. We were a little disappointed with the bus, since the driver didn't know anything about the wineries in the area, and the bus didn't stop near them most of the time. But we did go through a village where we could see a few wineries within walking distance of each other and the bus stopped every close to them, so we got off to enjoy the wine, the sunshine and the picnic food which we brought with us. *smiles*
The barberque and party was also fun, despite me not knowing many of the people there. I was kind of looking forward seeing Eurovision live in Europe, though I didn't actually know it was this week until I saw news paper articles about how Switzerland didn't make it into the final in the Swiss papers.
Then I remembered the Russian singer, violinist and Olympic ice skater last year on what was probably the world's smallest ice rink in Finland. It was kind of weird watching the show with French commentary, though we could hardly hear it or the music over all the people in the room. But really, since Eurovision is more about the spectacle than the music, I guess we didn't miss anything by not being able to hear it. *winks*
None of us voted, but it was interesting to notice that the new voting system didn't really change the well known political pattern of countries giving the greatest number of points to their neighbours, or dilute the effect of immigrants voting for their home countries. Though the fact that Norway won with points from almost every country kind of validates the change, particular because it was actually a farily good song and performance, by Eurovision standards.
Open House Day was fun. Seriously, how could it be bad with the combination of a lovely sunny day and free transport, food and wine? It was nice to be able to try more wine from the region since the wineries are usually only open for a couple of hours on Saturday morning for casual tasting. Swiss wines are fairly consistent. It's hard to find an undrinkable one, but it's also hard to find a really good one. Doesn't really matter for a tasting day though, since they all start tasting the same after the first few. *winks*
We decided to take the Navette Pinot Noir on the left side of the lake even though there are more wineries on the right side because none of us had ever been on those villages and they probably would be quite pretty with views of the lake and the mountains. We were a little disappointed with the bus, since the driver didn't know anything about the wineries in the area, and the bus didn't stop near them most of the time. But we did go through a village where we could see a few wineries within walking distance of each other and the bus stopped every close to them, so we got off to enjoy the wine, the sunshine and the picnic food which we brought with us. *smiles*
The barberque and party was also fun, despite me not knowing many of the people there. I was kind of looking forward seeing Eurovision live in Europe, though I didn't actually know it was this week until I saw news paper articles about how Switzerland didn't make it into the final in the Swiss papers.
Then I remembered the Russian singer, violinist and Olympic ice skater last year on what was probably the world's smallest ice rink in Finland. It was kind of weird watching the show with French commentary, though we could hardly hear it or the music over all the people in the room. But really, since Eurovision is more about the spectacle than the music, I guess we didn't miss anything by not being able to hear it. *winks*
None of us voted, but it was interesting to notice that the new voting system didn't really change the well known political pattern of countries giving the greatest number of points to their neighbours, or dilute the effect of immigrants voting for their home countries. Though the fact that Norway won with points from almost every country kind of validates the change, particular because it was actually a farily good song and performance, by Eurovision standards.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Too Many Meetings
ATLAS has lots of meetings. I think, if I actually went to all the meetings associated with my work, I would average about two a week not including my two group ones (one from each university I'm affiliated with). This fact has now been recognised by the management... and a "Meeting Optimization Committee" has been formed. You would think having a committee to do this would mean more meetings, but it seems that everything here has to be done by committee for political correctness or something. Let's see if this actually improves meeting efficiency...
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Monte San Salvatore
The day was a nature based one, the plan being, a furnicular up the tallest mountain on the lake, Monte San Salvatore, and hiking down to another town and taking yet a another ferry back.
The walk along the lake front from the train station to Paradiso, where the furnicular base is, was very pretty, in between rows of trees.
The ride up the furnicular was fairly impressive, as we went from around 300m in altitude to 900m, where the view over the glacial lake was magnificent.
We followed the trail from the peak through the town of Ciona and to Carona, where we tried to find lunch, but instead found a botantical garden full of rhododendrons, which was lovely.
But where we couldn't stay long as we needed to get down to the ferry, which luckily we caught and had plenty of time to catch our train back to Geneva.
It was a really nice weekend. Lugano is a lovely town, though the whole area had a resort feel to it, with lots of multistorey hotels in the town, and resorts along the lakefront. But it was very pretty with the lake and the mountains, with all the green trees and flowers in bloom.
The walk along the lake front from the train station to Paradiso, where the furnicular base is, was very pretty, in between rows of trees.
The ride up the furnicular was fairly impressive, as we went from around 300m in altitude to 900m, where the view over the glacial lake was magnificent.
We followed the trail from the peak through the town of Ciona and to Carona, where we tried to find lunch, but instead found a botantical garden full of rhododendrons, which was lovely.
But where we couldn't stay long as we needed to get down to the ferry, which luckily we caught and had plenty of time to catch our train back to Geneva.
It was a really nice weekend. Lugano is a lovely town, though the whole area had a resort feel to it, with lots of multistorey hotels in the town, and resorts along the lakefront. But it was very pretty with the lake and the mountains, with all the green trees and flowers in bloom.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Lugano
The day started off well, with barely a cloud in the sky, though it was quite hazy. We walked down from our hostel near the train station to the centre of town by the lakefront, which looks very different than Geneva, because of its different topology, with mountains literally rising out of the water.
Our first tourist destination of the day was Swissminiatur, which we got to by the first of many ferries of the weekend.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I like models, so I was looking forward to a whole park full of them. And it didn't disappoint with over 100 models of Swiss landmarks, kilometres of working train tracks, moving toy cars on a motorway, mini paddlesteamers going around a minilake and working minicable cars going up to mini snow covered mountains.
The only issue was well, the sameness of all the models. There aren't really any major standout Swiss architectural landmarks, and all the cathedrals, castles, houses, chalets, town centres, farms, while they do have their regional differences are all fairly similar. There were lots of castles in which looked like the one below, though not all of them had ducks sleeping them. *smiles*
The most impressive model, which was big enough for people to walk through, even though it was to the same scale as all the others was of a building that wasn't even in Switzerland - the Duomo di Milano, which I unfortunately forgot to take a photo of the exterior. I'll just have to go see the real thing someday. *winks*
On the way back to Lugano on the ferry, we stopped by the exclave of Campione d'Italia which has some special tax status, and takes advantage of this through a large casino right on the shore, with this fountain in the lake.
After arriving back in Lugano, we strolled around the small town centre and part of the lakefront, in which I didn't really notice anything particularly spectacular, though it was quite pretty. We went into a free art exhibit at the cultural museum, which started kind of disturbingly with photos of deer with colored snakes wrapped around them, and ended freakyly in a small room in which was a swarm of dead flies on fishing wires.
We went to the tourist office to ask for information about the hikes around the area, as we had planned to do one the next day, and the girl there convinced us to do one that evening, the so called 'Olive Tree Trail' between two towns on the lake, Gandria and Castagnola, along which there were signs about the history, production and use of olive oil. So we got on our third ferry of the day and headed out to Gandria, which is a small fishing village built into a hill and followed the markers and signs back.
We caught the bus back to Lugano in time to catch the end of the a Swiss Classic Racing time trail in the centre of town, where vintage cars were tested on a very short track for consistency.
Our first tourist destination of the day was Swissminiatur, which we got to by the first of many ferries of the weekend.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I like models, so I was looking forward to a whole park full of them. And it didn't disappoint with over 100 models of Swiss landmarks, kilometres of working train tracks, moving toy cars on a motorway, mini paddlesteamers going around a minilake and working minicable cars going up to mini snow covered mountains.
The only issue was well, the sameness of all the models. There aren't really any major standout Swiss architectural landmarks, and all the cathedrals, castles, houses, chalets, town centres, farms, while they do have their regional differences are all fairly similar. There were lots of castles in which looked like the one below, though not all of them had ducks sleeping them. *smiles*
The most impressive model, which was big enough for people to walk through, even though it was to the same scale as all the others was of a building that wasn't even in Switzerland - the Duomo di Milano, which I unfortunately forgot to take a photo of the exterior. I'll just have to go see the real thing someday. *winks*
On the way back to Lugano on the ferry, we stopped by the exclave of Campione d'Italia which has some special tax status, and takes advantage of this through a large casino right on the shore, with this fountain in the lake.
After arriving back in Lugano, we strolled around the small town centre and part of the lakefront, in which I didn't really notice anything particularly spectacular, though it was quite pretty. We went into a free art exhibit at the cultural museum, which started kind of disturbingly with photos of deer with colored snakes wrapped around them, and ended freakyly in a small room in which was a swarm of dead flies on fishing wires.
We went to the tourist office to ask for information about the hikes around the area, as we had planned to do one the next day, and the girl there convinced us to do one that evening, the so called 'Olive Tree Trail' between two towns on the lake, Gandria and Castagnola, along which there were signs about the history, production and use of olive oil. So we got on our third ferry of the day and headed out to Gandria, which is a small fishing village built into a hill and followed the markers and signs back.
We caught the bus back to Lugano in time to catch the end of the a Swiss Classic Racing time trail in the centre of town, where vintage cars were tested on a very short track for consistency.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Arrival
Just a quick entry before I try to go to bed tonight. I'm not too sure how I'm going to manage that actually, I'm currently in a sixteen bad hostel room in Lugano, in Ticino, the Italian speaking canton of Switzerland.
In addition of the many other people in the room, of which at least one will snore, the outdoor seats and tables where people hang out are just outside the door, which is next to my bed, and additionally, we are close enough to the train station that I can hear the trains passing by.
Anyway, I am in Lugno for the weekend, to see what Italian-Switzerland is like, with another PhD student from CERN. Let's hope it lives up to its hype - it is where Swiss people supposedly go on holidays, probably due to all the advertising which depicts Ticino having a tropical climate, with lots of sunshine, palm trees and cacti. It is south of the Alps, so it is probably warmer on average tham the rest of the country, though I'm not too sure about tropical.
In addition of the many other people in the room, of which at least one will snore, the outdoor seats and tables where people hang out are just outside the door, which is next to my bed, and additionally, we are close enough to the train station that I can hear the trains passing by.
Anyway, I am in Lugno for the weekend, to see what Italian-Switzerland is like, with another PhD student from CERN. Let's hope it lives up to its hype - it is where Swiss people supposedly go on holidays, probably due to all the advertising which depicts Ticino having a tropical climate, with lots of sunshine, palm trees and cacti. It is south of the Alps, so it is probably warmer on average tham the rest of the country, though I'm not too sure about tropical.
Russian Visa
Just got back from the Russian Consulate (for the forth time *sigh*). This time however, I came back with a Russian Visa in my passport. *grins*
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Austria to leave CERN
Rumours are afoot about Austria pulling out CERN, with the Science Minister citing budget concerns "The 20-million-euro yearly membership in CERN makes up 70 percent of the money available in Austria for participation in international institutes and could be better used to fund other European project. The science ministry was aiming "to enhance Austria's research profile" by participating in a variety of projects across a wide range of disciplines, and while CERN's work was high-profile, Austria's role in it was rather limited".
This of course is bad news for CERN and the laboratory would be sorry to lose Austria as one of its Member States and sincerely believes that it would be in Austria's best interests to remain a member. Austria has an excellent tradition in particle physics and world-class capability in the field today.
Let's see what happens in the coming days/weeks...
This of course is bad news for CERN and the laboratory would be sorry to lose Austria as one of its Member States and sincerely believes that it would be in Austria's best interests to remain a member. Austria has an excellent tradition in particle physics and world-class capability in the field today.
Let's see what happens in the coming days/weeks...
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Talk
For the past week, I've only basically been working on this talk. I wanted to show more results than I have here, but I had software issues and this is all I had.
This was the first time I have presented my sliding window work in a trigger meeting, and I think it was received fairly well. Though I believe this is because I went after another talk about alternative level two electron algorithm which wasn't as well tested.
This was the first time I have presented my sliding window work in a trigger meeting, and I think it was received fairly well. Though I believe this is because I went after another talk about alternative level two electron algorithm which wasn't as well tested.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Free money!
Yeah! I qualify for the Training and Learning Bonus for Postgraduate Scholarship Holders. Well, I will qualify once I'm back home anyway. $950 for me! Sorry My Rudd, I don't think I'll be helping the Australian economy with the money... I think I should finally pay back the School of Physics for my half of my laptop...
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Painting...
Last week we got a letter from the Lodgement office informing us that our bathroom was getting painted this Tuesday and Wednesday, and that for those days we shouldn't take showers or baths as the humidity of the water isn't good for the new paint.
As you can expect we weren't very pleased about this, though it was good that they fixed the leak in the ceiling, I think we could have all dealt with some peeling off paint until the summer when less of us would be around.
Ah well, now we have a newly painted bathroom which we can use again.
As you can expect we weren't very pleased about this, though it was good that they fixed the leak in the ceiling, I think we could have all dealt with some peeling off paint until the summer when less of us would be around.
Ah well, now we have a newly painted bathroom which we can use again.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Shift Training
Just finished a day of DAQ/HLT shift training. For those who don't know, the Atlas Detector which I work on is run on a shift system, and each institute is allocated a number of shifts which they need to cover a year according to how many people there are from the institute. Last year I sat Trigger shifts (which I wrote about here) but since the LHC isn't running yet, and they aren't running any Trigger shifts until after I leave Geneva. So I had to look for another type of shift which was running next month and which I could easily train for. And from the training today, it seemed like DAQ/HLT shifts were fairly similar to Trigger ones, they are both looking at the data aquistion off the detector, just with different focuses, but I'll find out more when I sit some shadow shifts later.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Angels & Demons
I've written about Angels & Demons before and the fact that I didn't get to be part of the press event at CERN. Which turned out to be a good thing, considering some of the television segments which where made about that visit. Particle physics groupies? What the?
I'm in two minds about the book and movie really. I dislike the book for all its inaccuracies, particularly those which pertain to CERN and the physics which we do here. Ivy League like grounds? Our own airport and plane? The proton is the antimatter partner of the electron? We're trying to measure the mass of the neutron? The Z boson is massless? Seriously, how hard is it to get somebody to check the correctness your manuscript?
However, I don't really mind the publicity that it gives us, since this time it's a little more positive than the scares about the LHC destroying us all by producing black holes when we started up last year. It's nice that people have heard of CERN and since it's book they aren't scared that we are building a bomb of anitmatter.
And of course CERN is taking advantage of all this and people have organised a series of lectures around the US of A explaining the science behind it all. I had a look at the template talk that was made and it's quite good really. I've always found it very hard to explain what I do and all the science to people outside the field since I've never had to understand it without the background. Luckily, there are many other people out there much better at it than me.
I'm in two minds about the book and movie really. I dislike the book for all its inaccuracies, particularly those which pertain to CERN and the physics which we do here. Ivy League like grounds? Our own airport and plane? The proton is the antimatter partner of the electron? We're trying to measure the mass of the neutron? The Z boson is massless? Seriously, how hard is it to get somebody to check the correctness your manuscript?
However, I don't really mind the publicity that it gives us, since this time it's a little more positive than the scares about the LHC destroying us all by producing black holes when we started up last year. It's nice that people have heard of CERN and since it's book they aren't scared that we are building a bomb of anitmatter.
And of course CERN is taking advantage of all this and people have organised a series of lectures around the US of A explaining the science behind it all. I had a look at the template talk that was made and it's quite good really. I've always found it very hard to explain what I do and all the science to people outside the field since I've never had to understand it without the background. Luckily, there are many other people out there much better at it than me.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Basel
This weekend I had a sponsored trip to Basel by the International Relations Office of The Unviersity of Geneva. The trip has been the best perk of my scholarship so far, though the other various outings and associated meals have been nice. Each time I go on one of these, I feel so embarassed about my French, since almost all the other speak it reasonably well since most of them either study in French or were offered a fortnight of free language courses before their scholarship started.
There are around sixty Federal Scholarship holders currently affiliated with the University, but only around thirty of them came on the trip. Considering the train, hotel and almost all meals were paid for, I can only imagine that the other students already had plans, were too busy or sick, like my housemate. As soon as I received the email about the trip, I signed up, and then emailed the people I met on ski camp who live in Basel to see if they were around this weekend and wanted to meet up, since it is always nicer to be shown around a city by somebody who knows it. Actually, I lied before, the peak of my scholarship was definitely having my ski camp subsidised. This weekend comes easily in second place though. It has been really fun, informative and interesting. All possible because Basel is a very very different city than Geneva, with much more for a visitor to see and do.
The trip started with an early meeting at the station to catch the train to Basel, check into the hotel, after which we had a free afternoon until dinner. We were staying at the Dorint, which is located outside the old town of Basel, across the Rhine, in which the locals call "Little Basel", as opposed to "Big Basel" (both of which sound much better in their original Swiss-German). It was a lovely hotel, except for the minor problem that we were sharing rooms and the two single beds which made up the double bed in the room couldn't be moved more than a couple of centimetres apart due to built in side tables. Luckily I was placed with a girl from Argentina who could speak English, otherwise it would have been an even more awkward situation.
I guess now would be a good time for me to locate Basel for all you lovely readers, in case you've never heard of it and perhaps impart some of the random facts I remember from my tour this morning.
As you can see, Basel (Basle in German or Bâle in French) is located to the north of Switzerland and borders both France and Germany. Supposedly there is a pole in the port of Basel which marks the intersection of the three countries. The airport of the city is actually in France, with Switzerland buying the land and the road leading there. It is probably the only Swiss city which does not have a view of the Alps and one of the rare ones that isn't by a lake.
According to my tour guide, the name of the town comes from a mythical creature, the Basilisk, which can be found in various places around the city holding their coat of arms, on which is a crosier, a stylised staff synifying the fact that Basel was ruled by Prince-Bishops before the Reformation.
The city is the third largest in the country, after Zurich and Geneva, though it feels bigger than Geneva as the old town is larger and there are many more shops and people around on Saturday, and in fact it was only in the last couple of years that its population fell below Geneva's. This is supposedly in part due to the fact that the half-canton of Basel-City taxes its higher income earners more than Basel-Country.
Anyway, we had Saturday afternoon off, which we used to eat a long lunch and walk around, focusing mainly on the Rhine, which is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe, originating in the Swiss Alps and ending in the North Sea, acting as part of the border between Switzerland and Germany as well as between France and Germany. The bridge in the above photo is one of the oldest across the river and the reason why Switzerland owns the land on both sides of the river here is because they wanted control of the bridge.
Though if you didn't want to walk across the river, you could take one of the four ferries, which have been crossing the Rhine for the past 150 years. They are motorless and work by using the current of the river, via the shape and angle of the boat which is controlled by a rod which can be swung from one side of the boat to the other depending on which direction it needs to go.
Basel is sometimes called the "cultural capital of Switzerland" and it really deserves this title due to its 30 odd museums, though some of them are collections of the strangest things like, Sammlung Friedhof Hörnli which houses funernal objects, and the Hoosesagg Museeum which advertises itself to be the world's smallest museum and displays small objects which can fit into ones pocket in themes in a window.
We saw this fountain made of kinetic art by Jean Tinguely and decided to go to the Tinguely Museum. He made 'artwork' by collecting items from junk yards and putting them together with some sort of motor along some sort of theme. I didn't understand the art aspect of it, but it was kind of cool walking around and pressing big red buttons to get the sculptures to start, and seeing how everything was connected to each other and moved or made sounds, one of them being so big, you could walk on and in it.
Basel also boasts Switzerland's tallest building at 105m. There are other structures taller, but this is the tallest building. And on the top 31st floor, with a fairly decent view of the city, is Bar Rouge, so named due to the red lighting, where we partied after dinner.
Which was probably not a great idea, since we had a full itinerary on Sunday, starting fairly early with check out planned for 9:15am with a tour of the old town starting at 10am at the Rathaus; a gorgeous red sandstone building dating from the 16th century, with lovely colourful roof tiling and beautifully decorated with frescos.
Next door to the building was the TALLY WEiJL main store which had a huge poster starting "We make Basel totally sexy" with an appropriately dressed girl, which kind of spoiled the view a little. Though that was the only piece of tacky advertising in the old town, which was such a nice contrast to Geneva with all its lit signs along the lakefront advertising banks and watch brands.
Actually, the whole old town of Basel had more character than Geneva, with its history of guilds which the streets are named after in the lower areas, and the grander buildings on the hills with colourful shutters and flowering creepers, with what seemed like more restaurants and cafes with outdoor sitting.
After the tour, it was time for another couple of museums, the first of which was the Kunstmuseum during what was planned to be our lunchtime, but they had a rare Van Gogh exhibition opening which most of us wanted to see. It was titled "Between Earth and Heaven, the Landscapes" and I really enjoyed it. They bought Van Gogh paintings from all over North America and Europe on this theme together and displayed them in chronological order. Starting with his time in Nuenen, where he returned to live with his parents after failed attempts as an art dealer and a preacher, and where he attended the Art Academy in Antwerp. His pieces from this time period were so different from what people associate with him, in a different style with tight brushtrokes using a darker colour palette. The exhibition then followed him around France, starting in Paris where he was influenced by the Impressionists there, using brighter colours and freer brushstrokes. After two years in the city, he decided to move to the countryside for his health and went to Arles, where he painted his sunflower series (not part of the exhibition) and where he mutilated his left ear. After which he admitted himself to a sanatorium in Saint-Remy, where his paintings are pervaded with coils and swirls, which can be seen in his magnum opus, The Starry Night (also not part of the exhibition), a painting I remember on the title screen of an old game, I think it was Hocus Pocus. The last room of the exhibition was of paintings from his time in Auvers, which was his most prolific period, but also where he ended his life.
Anyway, the last museum we went to, Foundation Beyeler, is one that I wouldn't have gone to on my own, and was kind of interesting, with a fairly small collection of Western artwork ranging from impressionism to pop art, which was displayed in time order with collections of artifacts from Africa and Oceania. It made for a strange juxaposition, with the information booklet trying to draw the parallels between them. Most of the group spent a short time in the museum and rested outside in the gardens, which were quite pretty with a pretty view of the surrounding countryside, since the museum wasn't in the centre of the city.
There are around sixty Federal Scholarship holders currently affiliated with the University, but only around thirty of them came on the trip. Considering the train, hotel and almost all meals were paid for, I can only imagine that the other students already had plans, were too busy or sick, like my housemate. As soon as I received the email about the trip, I signed up, and then emailed the people I met on ski camp who live in Basel to see if they were around this weekend and wanted to meet up, since it is always nicer to be shown around a city by somebody who knows it. Actually, I lied before, the peak of my scholarship was definitely having my ski camp subsidised. This weekend comes easily in second place though. It has been really fun, informative and interesting. All possible because Basel is a very very different city than Geneva, with much more for a visitor to see and do.
The trip started with an early meeting at the station to catch the train to Basel, check into the hotel, after which we had a free afternoon until dinner. We were staying at the Dorint, which is located outside the old town of Basel, across the Rhine, in which the locals call "Little Basel", as opposed to "Big Basel" (both of which sound much better in their original Swiss-German). It was a lovely hotel, except for the minor problem that we were sharing rooms and the two single beds which made up the double bed in the room couldn't be moved more than a couple of centimetres apart due to built in side tables. Luckily I was placed with a girl from Argentina who could speak English, otherwise it would have been an even more awkward situation.
I guess now would be a good time for me to locate Basel for all you lovely readers, in case you've never heard of it and perhaps impart some of the random facts I remember from my tour this morning.
As you can see, Basel (Basle in German or Bâle in French) is located to the north of Switzerland and borders both France and Germany. Supposedly there is a pole in the port of Basel which marks the intersection of the three countries. The airport of the city is actually in France, with Switzerland buying the land and the road leading there. It is probably the only Swiss city which does not have a view of the Alps and one of the rare ones that isn't by a lake.
According to my tour guide, the name of the town comes from a mythical creature, the Basilisk, which can be found in various places around the city holding their coat of arms, on which is a crosier, a stylised staff synifying the fact that Basel was ruled by Prince-Bishops before the Reformation.
The city is the third largest in the country, after Zurich and Geneva, though it feels bigger than Geneva as the old town is larger and there are many more shops and people around on Saturday, and in fact it was only in the last couple of years that its population fell below Geneva's. This is supposedly in part due to the fact that the half-canton of Basel-City taxes its higher income earners more than Basel-Country.
Anyway, we had Saturday afternoon off, which we used to eat a long lunch and walk around, focusing mainly on the Rhine, which is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe, originating in the Swiss Alps and ending in the North Sea, acting as part of the border between Switzerland and Germany as well as between France and Germany. The bridge in the above photo is one of the oldest across the river and the reason why Switzerland owns the land on both sides of the river here is because they wanted control of the bridge.
Though if you didn't want to walk across the river, you could take one of the four ferries, which have been crossing the Rhine for the past 150 years. They are motorless and work by using the current of the river, via the shape and angle of the boat which is controlled by a rod which can be swung from one side of the boat to the other depending on which direction it needs to go.
Basel is sometimes called the "cultural capital of Switzerland" and it really deserves this title due to its 30 odd museums, though some of them are collections of the strangest things like, Sammlung Friedhof Hörnli which houses funernal objects, and the Hoosesagg Museeum which advertises itself to be the world's smallest museum and displays small objects which can fit into ones pocket in themes in a window.
We saw this fountain made of kinetic art by Jean Tinguely and decided to go to the Tinguely Museum. He made 'artwork' by collecting items from junk yards and putting them together with some sort of motor along some sort of theme. I didn't understand the art aspect of it, but it was kind of cool walking around and pressing big red buttons to get the sculptures to start, and seeing how everything was connected to each other and moved or made sounds, one of them being so big, you could walk on and in it.
Basel also boasts Switzerland's tallest building at 105m. There are other structures taller, but this is the tallest building. And on the top 31st floor, with a fairly decent view of the city, is Bar Rouge, so named due to the red lighting, where we partied after dinner.
Which was probably not a great idea, since we had a full itinerary on Sunday, starting fairly early with check out planned for 9:15am with a tour of the old town starting at 10am at the Rathaus; a gorgeous red sandstone building dating from the 16th century, with lovely colourful roof tiling and beautifully decorated with frescos.
Next door to the building was the TALLY WEiJL main store which had a huge poster starting "We make Basel totally sexy" with an appropriately dressed girl, which kind of spoiled the view a little. Though that was the only piece of tacky advertising in the old town, which was such a nice contrast to Geneva with all its lit signs along the lakefront advertising banks and watch brands.
Actually, the whole old town of Basel had more character than Geneva, with its history of guilds which the streets are named after in the lower areas, and the grander buildings on the hills with colourful shutters and flowering creepers, with what seemed like more restaurants and cafes with outdoor sitting.
After the tour, it was time for another couple of museums, the first of which was the Kunstmuseum during what was planned to be our lunchtime, but they had a rare Van Gogh exhibition opening which most of us wanted to see. It was titled "Between Earth and Heaven, the Landscapes" and I really enjoyed it. They bought Van Gogh paintings from all over North America and Europe on this theme together and displayed them in chronological order. Starting with his time in Nuenen, where he returned to live with his parents after failed attempts as an art dealer and a preacher, and where he attended the Art Academy in Antwerp. His pieces from this time period were so different from what people associate with him, in a different style with tight brushtrokes using a darker colour palette. The exhibition then followed him around France, starting in Paris where he was influenced by the Impressionists there, using brighter colours and freer brushstrokes. After two years in the city, he decided to move to the countryside for his health and went to Arles, where he painted his sunflower series (not part of the exhibition) and where he mutilated his left ear. After which he admitted himself to a sanatorium in Saint-Remy, where his paintings are pervaded with coils and swirls, which can be seen in his magnum opus, The Starry Night (also not part of the exhibition), a painting I remember on the title screen of an old game, I think it was Hocus Pocus. The last room of the exhibition was of paintings from his time in Auvers, which was his most prolific period, but also where he ended his life.
Anyway, the last museum we went to, Foundation Beyeler, is one that I wouldn't have gone to on my own, and was kind of interesting, with a fairly small collection of Western artwork ranging from impressionism to pop art, which was displayed in time order with collections of artifacts from Africa and Oceania. It made for a strange juxaposition, with the information booklet trying to draw the parallels between them. Most of the group spent a short time in the museum and rested outside in the gardens, which were quite pretty with a pretty view of the surrounding countryside, since the museum wasn't in the centre of the city.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
End of the ski season...
Today I returned my rented ski equipment to Intersport (which for future reference isn't open at lunch time, those slack French). The skis have really served me well this season - Val Thorens, La Faucille, Crozet, Crozet x 2, Avoriaz, Morzine, Beatenberg, Grindelwald, Contamines, Morzine x 2, Avoriaz x 2, Argentière. Twelve outings! And that's not including the six days of skiing I did on the Engelberg ski camp using borrowed equipment. That's eighteen skiing days over the winter! Not bad for my first season... I'm quite happy about my progress over that time as well, I reckon I could now probably safely make my way down any groomed slope... Note I say safely, not elegantly... I'm nowhere near an expert skier and still freak out when faced with a steep or bumpy slope.
The ski gear definitely paid off the 112 euros I paid to rent it all. (For my piece of mind, I'm not going to add up all the money I've spent on skiing over the past few months since I know it's defintely in the vicinity of 1-2k). I was quite worried when I forked out that first set of money for the gear and the clothes at the end of October since I had only ever skiied once before a few years ago (in California of all places!) and it was only for a couple of hours. My fears weren't alleviated by my first outing to Val Thorens back in November, which was quite a painful adventure. But things improved from there and I've really come to enjoy the sport and already miss it and the beauty of all the mountain resorts, though I'm quite happy about the arrival of spring and all that it brings with it... warm weather, leaves and blossoms on trees, flowers in the fields, more of my research group at CERN (though this last one has mean I had to give up the CERN van and am now riding into work)...
Here's hoping that I'll be back for the end of winter next year, preferably in time for ski camp... (I don't want to come back any earlier than March since winter in Geneva really is miserable with skiing being its only redeeming factor and I don't know if I'll have the time for it next year with the LHC actually being on and needing to write my thesis and all.)
The ski gear definitely paid off the 112 euros I paid to rent it all. (For my piece of mind, I'm not going to add up all the money I've spent on skiing over the past few months since I know it's defintely in the vicinity of 1-2k). I was quite worried when I forked out that first set of money for the gear and the clothes at the end of October since I had only ever skiied once before a few years ago (in California of all places!) and it was only for a couple of hours. My fears weren't alleviated by my first outing to Val Thorens back in November, which was quite a painful adventure. But things improved from there and I've really come to enjoy the sport and already miss it and the beauty of all the mountain resorts, though I'm quite happy about the arrival of spring and all that it brings with it... warm weather, leaves and blossoms on trees, flowers in the fields, more of my research group at CERN (though this last one has mean I had to give up the CERN van and am now riding into work)...
Here's hoping that I'll be back for the end of winter next year, preferably in time for ski camp... (I don't want to come back any earlier than March since winter in Geneva really is miserable with skiing being its only redeeming factor and I don't know if I'll have the time for it next year with the LHC actually being on and needing to write my thesis and all.)
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Post Easter Chocolate
So back home after Easter every year, they discount all the Easter chocolate to get rid of it all, and I went to the supermarket earlier this week in anticipation of lots of cheap chocolate... only to find that they had just replaced the display with the usual specials of the week. Where did all the chocolate eggs go? Did they go to a larger supermarket to get sold? Or back to the factory to get melted down?
Ah well, this just meant that in the midst of a sugar craving today, I decided it was time for the bunny I won from the ski race camp to die. He was so cute that I did have the heart to smash him any earlier than today. But after opening the package and smelling the chocolate, I had no more qualms about eating him. After all, he was made to be eaten...
Ah well, this just meant that in the midst of a sugar craving today, I decided it was time for the bunny I won from the ski race camp to die. He was so cute that I did have the heart to smash him any earlier than today. But after opening the package and smelling the chocolate, I had no more qualms about eating him. After all, he was made to be eaten...
Thursday, April 16, 2009
LHC Repairs
...have reached a milestone with the 53rd and final repaired dipole magnet being lowered today into the LHC tunnel and is probably now in place.
I wonder if it was one of the ones where they used the blue dipole casings which were dotted around the LHC countryside for CERN Open Day last year and then mysteriously disappeared after the incident...
I wonder if it was one of the ones where they used the blue dipole casings which were dotted around the LHC countryside for CERN Open Day last year and then mysteriously disappeared after the incident...
Monday, April 13, 2009
Cité Day
All of today's attractions were situated on the Ile de la Cité, one of the two islands in the Seine and the site of the first human settlement in Paris.
First on the list was Notre Dame, which I'm sure needs no introduction, supposedly being Paris' most visited attraction. I think it being free to walk around the church might have something to do with that, though I did wait over an hour to go up the towers which you do have to pay for.
It is a beautiful church, both inside and outside, though I do like the outside better with all the sculptures on the facade, particularly the gargoyles and chimeras, though the rse windows inside are amazing.
I had seen the church on my previous visit to Paris, but never went inside, deterred by the line, which snaked all the way across the square in front of the church. I am now glad that I left it until now, as the gardens around the church were full of colour, which they weren't in winter, and I was able to take a couple of really nice photos, my favourite of which is this one, where it looks like its floating on a sea of blossoms.
I want to add that it was around here that my camera almost reached the end of it's usefulness, the memory card only had space for around thirty more photos and I wasn't too sure that the battery was going to last that long as the low battery indicator started flashing at me. Note to self for next trip, either buy a larger memory card or redce the quality of the photos, and charge the batterties overnight and carry the spare around. Or be less happy snappy. But that's the least favoured option. I like all my photos. *smiles*
From Notre Dame it was a hop skip and jump to Sainte-Chapelle, my next destination. A chapel built by Louis IX to house the relics of the Passion of Christ which he bought, The lower chapel is pretty, but the upper chapel is absolutely breath taking, whith it's 15 stained glass windows, supposedly 600 square meters in area, all depicting a different religious tale, not that I know any of them well enough to follow the depictions. Well, at least the ones which were well lit by the sun.
Combined with my tickets to Sainte-Chapelle was one to the Conciergerie, which is part of the current Palais de Justice, which was where the Revolutionary Tribunal was held during the Reign of Terror and the Conciergerie was used as a prison where most of the captives ended up on the guillotine. There was a room full of boards which contained a list titled "liste generale et tres extacte des 2780 condamnes a mort a paris" where each person was listed with their occupation. The most famous immate, Marie Antoinette wasn't on the list, but there was a chapel there dedicated to her and a reconstruction of the cell she would have lived in for the two to three months she was there. It was an informative visit, but a little underwhelming, I don't think the displays really gave a sense of what it was like that the time, probably needed more background, since most visitors are from overseas and don't know all that much about the French Revolution.
Actually, with that ends my break to Paris, the last couple of hours were spent walking back to my hostel and grabbing my bags and walking to the train station. I've really enjoyed myself this weekend. I was worried about it being lonely by myself and not having anything to do in the evenings when all the sights were closed, but this wasn't a problem as I always found something to do, even if it was sit down for a couple of hours and write while resting my feet. I'd forgotten what it is like to be in a big city, with lots of people and lots of cheap take away food. Mmmm... I really like the city, there is so much to it, and I think the fact that I know about it from books and films really helps, though knowing more would have obviously been better. Also, because I've been living in Geneva for so many months now, being in a French speaking city doesn't feel foreign anymore.
Paris, je t'aime.
As a postscript though, I want to add that while it is a lovely city to visit when it's sunny and warm, I didn't really enjoy my time there in the dead of winter with cold and the sleet and slush; and I can see how living there might not be all that pleasant, particularly if you can't afford to live near the centre.
Paris tu paries Paris que je te quitte
Que je change
De cap de capitale
Paris tu paries Paris que je te quitte
Que je te plaque
Sur tes trottoirs sales
First on the list was Notre Dame, which I'm sure needs no introduction, supposedly being Paris' most visited attraction. I think it being free to walk around the church might have something to do with that, though I did wait over an hour to go up the towers which you do have to pay for.
It is a beautiful church, both inside and outside, though I do like the outside better with all the sculptures on the facade, particularly the gargoyles and chimeras, though the rse windows inside are amazing.
I had seen the church on my previous visit to Paris, but never went inside, deterred by the line, which snaked all the way across the square in front of the church. I am now glad that I left it until now, as the gardens around the church were full of colour, which they weren't in winter, and I was able to take a couple of really nice photos, my favourite of which is this one, where it looks like its floating on a sea of blossoms.
I want to add that it was around here that my camera almost reached the end of it's usefulness, the memory card only had space for around thirty more photos and I wasn't too sure that the battery was going to last that long as the low battery indicator started flashing at me. Note to self for next trip, either buy a larger memory card or redce the quality of the photos, and charge the batterties overnight and carry the spare around. Or be less happy snappy. But that's the least favoured option. I like all my photos. *smiles*
From Notre Dame it was a hop skip and jump to Sainte-Chapelle, my next destination. A chapel built by Louis IX to house the relics of the Passion of Christ which he bought, The lower chapel is pretty, but the upper chapel is absolutely breath taking, whith it's 15 stained glass windows, supposedly 600 square meters in area, all depicting a different religious tale, not that I know any of them well enough to follow the depictions. Well, at least the ones which were well lit by the sun.
Combined with my tickets to Sainte-Chapelle was one to the Conciergerie, which is part of the current Palais de Justice, which was where the Revolutionary Tribunal was held during the Reign of Terror and the Conciergerie was used as a prison where most of the captives ended up on the guillotine. There was a room full of boards which contained a list titled "liste generale et tres extacte des 2780 condamnes a mort a paris" where each person was listed with their occupation. The most famous immate, Marie Antoinette wasn't on the list, but there was a chapel there dedicated to her and a reconstruction of the cell she would have lived in for the two to three months she was there. It was an informative visit, but a little underwhelming, I don't think the displays really gave a sense of what it was like that the time, probably needed more background, since most visitors are from overseas and don't know all that much about the French Revolution.
Actually, with that ends my break to Paris, the last couple of hours were spent walking back to my hostel and grabbing my bags and walking to the train station. I've really enjoyed myself this weekend. I was worried about it being lonely by myself and not having anything to do in the evenings when all the sights were closed, but this wasn't a problem as I always found something to do, even if it was sit down for a couple of hours and write while resting my feet. I'd forgotten what it is like to be in a big city, with lots of people and lots of cheap take away food. Mmmm... I really like the city, there is so much to it, and I think the fact that I know about it from books and films really helps, though knowing more would have obviously been better. Also, because I've been living in Geneva for so many months now, being in a French speaking city doesn't feel foreign anymore.
Paris, je t'aime.
As a postscript though, I want to add that while it is a lovely city to visit when it's sunny and warm, I didn't really enjoy my time there in the dead of winter with cold and the sleet and slush; and I can see how living there might not be all that pleasant, particularly if you can't afford to live near the centre.
Paris tu paries Paris que je te quitte
Que je change
De cap de capitale
Paris tu paries Paris que je te quitte
Que je te plaque
Sur tes trottoirs sales
Sunday, April 12, 2009
History Day
I don't really know if that's the correct title to sum up the day, but it's the first thing that came to mind, so it'll have to do.
Actually, I just noticed, I got so caught up in describing the opera theatre and its patrons of the time; I forgot to mention it's most famous patron, namely, the Phantom of the Opera. When they were building the Palais, they had to drain a body of water underground, during which the neighbours heard voices, which is how the myth began, and any mysterious occurrences at the theatre were attributed to a ghost. In particular, the falling of one of the counter weights to the auditorium chandelier on a woman in the renters area. An incident which was embellished in the novel by Gaston Leroux, on which the musical was based, in which the ghost received his own box but luckily for the theatre, the musical has never been performed in Paris, nor the movie, so audiences sit in Box 5 which no thoughts regarding the phantom.
Oh, and the ballet I saw was a contemporary one, choreographed by John Neumeier to Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony. I didn’t a playbill until afterwards, so I didn’t know about the season theme or the love story, but I quite enjoyed it. I would have really enjoyed it if I had a seat though. It was a two hour performance with no interval, and after the first act, I was finding it hard to concentrate on the stage, and by the last act, I was fidgeting all over the place. Which was a pity, since the choreography was really interesting and the dancers very good. Note to self for the future, it is worth paying more for a seat at a theatre, though in this case I didn’t really have a choice as they were all sold out. It was an experience though, they had two doors that went to standing room seats where they had padded rail for people to lean or perch on. The more seasoned of the audience went in early and stood near the rope separating the standing audience from the seated audience in the hope that they would be allowed into any empty spots, though there weren’t any at this performance. We didn’t have that bad a position actually, an unobstructed view of the whole stage. I’ve paid much more at home for worse.
Anyway, I should stop talking about the theatre and mention what else I’ve been doing. Which has been a whole lot of walking. Yesterday I way, very slowly, from Opera Garnier to Opera Bastille, doing some window shopping and sight seeing along the way. I breezed though Galleries Lafayette, which was very luxurious (I had a peak at the Tiffany section) and did have a very big lingerie department, though I don’t know about the largest in the world. It also had a very nice view over Paris from the terrace and a very pretty dome.
I also looked inside Le Printemps, the department store next door, but it wasn’t as pretty, so didn’t bother looking around. I also went though Passage des Panaoramas, a covered shopping arcade, which was a bit of a let down from my guide book description, not as nice as the arcades back one and away from the entrance lots of empty stores.
I also stumbled across the Eglise St-Eustache, which has a very beautiful façade with lots of arches, though the inside doesn’t really match it with lots of the paintings needing restoration work done.
And with that, I think I’ve finished describing yesterday. Today’s plan was kind of similar, I had a couple of places I wanted to go, and whatever was interesting in between or around I would decide to visit when I got there.
The first attraction was the Hôtel des Invalides, which houses the Musée de l'Armée and Napolean’s Tomb. Before I went there however, I made a slight detour to the École Militaire, from which, there is a great view of:
Le Tour Eiffel. I didn’t bother going any closer as I have plans to go up it in summer with my boyfriend, but I thought that I would at least take a photo of it since I was so close.
From there it was a short walk to the Hôtel des Invalides, which for those who have been to Paris, is the gold domed roof near the Eiffel Tower.
This is the roof of the aptly named Dome Church, in which is Napolean’s Tomb, where he lies within five successive coffins encased in a sarcophagus on a floor on which is written eight of famous victories and on the surrounding walls are ten marble sculptures of his civil achievements, one of which lists all the buildings he commissioned in Paris. Quite ostentatious really. Granted, it wasn’t planned by the emperor to be interred in such a state, all he supposedly specified was to ‘lie by the Seine, among the people he loved’ but I’m pretty sure he would approve of his final resting place:
Who wouldn’t be? 12kg of gold was used to gild the dome when it was restored in 1989!
The rest of the complex wasn’t as ornate, since that church was originally built for King Louis IV to come and hear the same mass as all the veterans of his wars for whom the complex was built, which encompassed the functions of a hospice, barracks, convent, hospital and factory. It you’re wondering, the royal church was never used for the military, they had their own plainer church, behind the royal one, currently decorated with flags and standards taken from enemies.
The Musée de l'Armée is split into three sections, one of which was closed for renovations. I only went through one of the remaining two, The Antique Arms and Armour Deparment, knights to permanent army. The other was devoted to the First and Second World Wars, but I ran out of time and wasn't really interested in the topics, as in the past I've found it difficult to stomach exhibits on those wars. I'm fine looking at swords and muskets and chain mail and suits of armour but find it hard to look at guns and tanks. I think it's because history has romanticised knights and sword play and it is hard to identify with the individual people on the battlefield who couldn’t write and tell us about what it was really like, but there is nothing romantic about mechanised warfare, which is more recent of which there are plenty of memoirs describing the horrendousness of it all.
I also got distracted by the Musée des Plans-Reliefs. As some of you know, I have a thing for maps, I like seeing how things are organised on a larger scale and maps made in times past are even more interesting as you can compare them to today and see the development. Oh, as anybody who has travelled with me probably knows, I also have a thing for miniature models; I always look at them and take photos of them if there are any around. So the relief maps were the combination of these, scale models of fortified towns and surrounding countryside all along the French border made from 1668 to 1870. They were pretty cool, but I didn’t find them that interesting since I hadn’t been to any of the places except one and all the descriptions were in French. Though, the thing that interested me about most of the models was the star-like shape of the town defences:
which I had never seen before, supposedly built in this shape as round towers have blind spots. You can see how the town could go in hold out in a siege until they ran out of supplies. They had a cool set of models showing the stages of a battle from as the advancing army comes in from the distance to breaking the walls and entering the town.
From the Hôtel des Invalides, I headed, again very slowly, east toward my second attraction, the Panthéon, going past the Eglise St-Sulpice whose name you may recognise from Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, which he places a meridian line he calls ‘The Rose Line’ and is the setting of a murder. For those who have seen the movie, there really is a meridian line marked on the floor of the church
but as a sign in the church states, this was placed there for a scientific study conducted by the Paris Observatory, directly south of the church, and the P and S symbols in the windows don’t stand for the Priory of Sion, but Peter and Sulpice.
Anyway, I finally made it to the Panthéon, which I was looking forward to for numerous reasons. The geekiest of which is:
it is where Foucault set up his first pendulum back in 1851, demonstrating the rotation of the Earth. Now the last time I saw one was at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles last August, after which I said I was going to find out how it worked. I remember looking at the Wikipedia page, and I can’t remember how it differs from an ordinary pendulum. I’m it has something to do with the length of the strong and the weight of the ball and I know the angle through which it rotates changes with latitude, and at the poles (or was it the equator?), it would act as an ordinary pendulum (or rotate though the full 360 degrees), but I can’t remember why.
The building is magnificent and has a very interesting history, which I won’t bother to go into here, because I will probably wrong and I want to mention the other reasons I wanted to go there, namely that Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas and Pierre and Maris Curie are all interred in the crypt along with lots of other French people, most of whom I don’t know, though I did recognise some of the names, like Voltaire and Rousseau, though these don’t interest me as much as Nobel Prize winning scientists and novelists whose books I know and love.
From these, I headed to the Jarin du Luxembourg, where I am currently writing this very long entry and in which there is a multitude of flowerbeds in bloom
and grass you can’t walk on with guards posted to blow whistles at people who try. Oh, they are also there to tell everybody to leave the park when it closes…
Actually, I just noticed, I got so caught up in describing the opera theatre and its patrons of the time; I forgot to mention it's most famous patron, namely, the Phantom of the Opera. When they were building the Palais, they had to drain a body of water underground, during which the neighbours heard voices, which is how the myth began, and any mysterious occurrences at the theatre were attributed to a ghost. In particular, the falling of one of the counter weights to the auditorium chandelier on a woman in the renters area. An incident which was embellished in the novel by Gaston Leroux, on which the musical was based, in which the ghost received his own box but luckily for the theatre, the musical has never been performed in Paris, nor the movie, so audiences sit in Box 5 which no thoughts regarding the phantom.
Oh, and the ballet I saw was a contemporary one, choreographed by John Neumeier to Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony. I didn’t a playbill until afterwards, so I didn’t know about the season theme or the love story, but I quite enjoyed it. I would have really enjoyed it if I had a seat though. It was a two hour performance with no interval, and after the first act, I was finding it hard to concentrate on the stage, and by the last act, I was fidgeting all over the place. Which was a pity, since the choreography was really interesting and the dancers very good. Note to self for the future, it is worth paying more for a seat at a theatre, though in this case I didn’t really have a choice as they were all sold out. It was an experience though, they had two doors that went to standing room seats where they had padded rail for people to lean or perch on. The more seasoned of the audience went in early and stood near the rope separating the standing audience from the seated audience in the hope that they would be allowed into any empty spots, though there weren’t any at this performance. We didn’t have that bad a position actually, an unobstructed view of the whole stage. I’ve paid much more at home for worse.
Anyway, I should stop talking about the theatre and mention what else I’ve been doing. Which has been a whole lot of walking. Yesterday I way, very slowly, from Opera Garnier to Opera Bastille, doing some window shopping and sight seeing along the way. I breezed though Galleries Lafayette, which was very luxurious (I had a peak at the Tiffany section) and did have a very big lingerie department, though I don’t know about the largest in the world. It also had a very nice view over Paris from the terrace and a very pretty dome.
I also looked inside Le Printemps, the department store next door, but it wasn’t as pretty, so didn’t bother looking around. I also went though Passage des Panaoramas, a covered shopping arcade, which was a bit of a let down from my guide book description, not as nice as the arcades back one and away from the entrance lots of empty stores.
I also stumbled across the Eglise St-Eustache, which has a very beautiful façade with lots of arches, though the inside doesn’t really match it with lots of the paintings needing restoration work done.
And with that, I think I’ve finished describing yesterday. Today’s plan was kind of similar, I had a couple of places I wanted to go, and whatever was interesting in between or around I would decide to visit when I got there.
The first attraction was the Hôtel des Invalides, which houses the Musée de l'Armée and Napolean’s Tomb. Before I went there however, I made a slight detour to the École Militaire, from which, there is a great view of:
Le Tour Eiffel. I didn’t bother going any closer as I have plans to go up it in summer with my boyfriend, but I thought that I would at least take a photo of it since I was so close.
From there it was a short walk to the Hôtel des Invalides, which for those who have been to Paris, is the gold domed roof near the Eiffel Tower.
This is the roof of the aptly named Dome Church, in which is Napolean’s Tomb, where he lies within five successive coffins encased in a sarcophagus on a floor on which is written eight of famous victories and on the surrounding walls are ten marble sculptures of his civil achievements, one of which lists all the buildings he commissioned in Paris. Quite ostentatious really. Granted, it wasn’t planned by the emperor to be interred in such a state, all he supposedly specified was to ‘lie by the Seine, among the people he loved’ but I’m pretty sure he would approve of his final resting place:
Who wouldn’t be? 12kg of gold was used to gild the dome when it was restored in 1989!
The rest of the complex wasn’t as ornate, since that church was originally built for King Louis IV to come and hear the same mass as all the veterans of his wars for whom the complex was built, which encompassed the functions of a hospice, barracks, convent, hospital and factory. It you’re wondering, the royal church was never used for the military, they had their own plainer church, behind the royal one, currently decorated with flags and standards taken from enemies.
The Musée de l'Armée is split into three sections, one of which was closed for renovations. I only went through one of the remaining two, The Antique Arms and Armour Deparment, knights to permanent army. The other was devoted to the First and Second World Wars, but I ran out of time and wasn't really interested in the topics, as in the past I've found it difficult to stomach exhibits on those wars. I'm fine looking at swords and muskets and chain mail and suits of armour but find it hard to look at guns and tanks. I think it's because history has romanticised knights and sword play and it is hard to identify with the individual people on the battlefield who couldn’t write and tell us about what it was really like, but there is nothing romantic about mechanised warfare, which is more recent of which there are plenty of memoirs describing the horrendousness of it all.
I also got distracted by the Musée des Plans-Reliefs. As some of you know, I have a thing for maps, I like seeing how things are organised on a larger scale and maps made in times past are even more interesting as you can compare them to today and see the development. Oh, as anybody who has travelled with me probably knows, I also have a thing for miniature models; I always look at them and take photos of them if there are any around. So the relief maps were the combination of these, scale models of fortified towns and surrounding countryside all along the French border made from 1668 to 1870. They were pretty cool, but I didn’t find them that interesting since I hadn’t been to any of the places except one and all the descriptions were in French. Though, the thing that interested me about most of the models was the star-like shape of the town defences:
which I had never seen before, supposedly built in this shape as round towers have blind spots. You can see how the town could go in hold out in a siege until they ran out of supplies. They had a cool set of models showing the stages of a battle from as the advancing army comes in from the distance to breaking the walls and entering the town.
From the Hôtel des Invalides, I headed, again very slowly, east toward my second attraction, the Panthéon, going past the Eglise St-Sulpice whose name you may recognise from Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, which he places a meridian line he calls ‘The Rose Line’ and is the setting of a murder. For those who have seen the movie, there really is a meridian line marked on the floor of the church
but as a sign in the church states, this was placed there for a scientific study conducted by the Paris Observatory, directly south of the church, and the P and S symbols in the windows don’t stand for the Priory of Sion, but Peter and Sulpice.
Anyway, I finally made it to the Panthéon, which I was looking forward to for numerous reasons. The geekiest of which is:
it is where Foucault set up his first pendulum back in 1851, demonstrating the rotation of the Earth. Now the last time I saw one was at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles last August, after which I said I was going to find out how it worked. I remember looking at the Wikipedia page, and I can’t remember how it differs from an ordinary pendulum. I’m it has something to do with the length of the strong and the weight of the ball and I know the angle through which it rotates changes with latitude, and at the poles (or was it the equator?), it would act as an ordinary pendulum (or rotate though the full 360 degrees), but I can’t remember why.
The building is magnificent and has a very interesting history, which I won’t bother to go into here, because I will probably wrong and I want to mention the other reasons I wanted to go there, namely that Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas and Pierre and Maris Curie are all interred in the crypt along with lots of other French people, most of whom I don’t know, though I did recognise some of the names, like Voltaire and Rousseau, though these don’t interest me as much as Nobel Prize winning scientists and novelists whose books I know and love.
From these, I headed to the Jarin du Luxembourg, where I am currently writing this very long entry and in which there is a multitude of flowerbeds in bloom
and grass you can’t walk on with guards posted to blow whistles at people who try. Oh, they are also there to tell everybody to leave the park when it closes…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)