Geneva

The trip to Geneva (described in the last post) proceeded like, well, clockwork:

(we love these Stoptogo Swiss clocks. We bought one for our kitchen)

And that was a good thing. We arrived in Geneva around 1:30, and had tickets for a guided tour of CERN at 3:00. (Doreen really indulges me). I had to get up at 1:30 AM 15 days ago to get these tickets.

The hotel (Hotel de la Paix) was great - they gave us a three day Geneva Pass, so we could just take the metro to the site. 

It is quite a place, but not really set up as a tourist site. Doreen described it as NASA before it became Disneyfied.

There is real work going on here, and they haven't taken too much time to cater to fans of the Big Bang Theory.

Me, CERN, and Sputnik. All from 1957.

The first piece of equipment installed at CERN was the Proton Synchrotron (now decommissioned) 

This was the machine used to confirm the pion (pi meson) theory:

π+	→	e+	+	ν e
π−	→	e−	+	ν e

in 1958. Very cool.

Some of the original office equipment. An adding machine and a manual typewriter.

Big wrenches.

Here I was, trying to free the Pions!

This is what the Large Hadron Collider tubes look like:

The Atlas experiment building:

They have painted the outside to look like what the equipment is inside - to scale.

A magnet (prototype)

Atlas control room:

Demo stuff.

Then back to our hotel. (It was very hot. Not because of radiation from CERN, plain old solar radiation)

This is the view from our hotel room:

The Jet d'Eau! Famous all over the world as the symbol of Geneva.

Geneva's Flower Clock

Lenin lived here:

Another mechanical clock with little figures that appear at noon.

This IS Switzerland, after all.

And a diorama of Geneva in 1814!!!

I love this sort of thing.

And this sort of thing! John Calvin's chair!

I was afraid to touch it, but then I remembered that Calvin believed in predetermination. So it doesn't matter what I do, I'll be in heaven if that is what is ordained no matter what I do!

Happy at the realization.

But was this a sign?

We climbed to the top of the cathedral. It was very scary, but the view was nice.

I am not too happy.

Art in  the museum. That is a painting of the Jungfrau.

Lake Geneva

Me with Frankenstein's Monster. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein (or The New Prometheus) on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1818. She was 17 years old.

Mont Blanc in the distance:

That's our hotel.

Then we went home. Via Washington, DC - a very nice connection.

Murren and the Berner Oberland

After Zurich, we took a train to Mürren in the Berner Oberland. Well, let's me more precise. Zurich to Bern. Bern to Interlaken Ost. Interlaken Ost to Lauterbrunner. Lauterbrunner  to Grütschalp. Grütschalp to Mürren. It was complicated and troublesome, but as you can see below, worth it. Never more than seven minutes between trains)

Because this is the view from our hotel room:

The Jungfrau:

The Eiger and the Mönch:

AND us:

It is hard to capture the beauty of this place.

If you like mountains

I goofed up this photo. It is supposed to look like a James Bond title shot:

On Her Majesty's Secret Service was filmed here.

Mountains

Mountains

More Mountains

and more mountains

Here we are, begging for asylum:

A warning

Which Doreen ignored:

The crows of Piz Gloria:

An Ibex!!! I mean, an actual IBEX!!!

We were on the last cable car down for the night. There were only these few hardy souls who stayed up that long. One of those Japanese women came a took a photo of my phone, with this photo on it. Very meta!

This is an edelweiss.

I can tell you this, it was not white, clean, or bright.

The Eiger and Mönch at sunset.

We took a couple of very long (about nine mile or so) hikes up there in the Berner Oberland:

a perfect U-shaped valley:

And cows

And waterfalls. We took our lives in our hands to get to this little beauty. I am very afraid of heights, and this took all my nerve to get to. (Not as bad as the Bridge of Death in Quebec, but bad none the less)

Here is the sign to the waterfall. (The Sprutz. Hahahahhaah!) You'll note it says "Vorsicht!" which in Swiss German means "Almost Certain Death!"

The next day we decided to do it again.

Here is Doreen pointing out our path - to the bottom of the valley:

We went by beautiful meadows:

These folks use a lot of wood. Or at least they store a lot of wood:

A lot of wood!

Touching the water. That's one of our things.

This was the "Dia de los Chorros" or the day of the waterfalls.

I'm not posting all of them, because there were do many!

That U-shaped valley.

The trails are called "Wanderweg" in German. Wander ways. Nice.

That's where we came down from! And yes, we walked. 

Cows with bells.

Good looking cows.

That's where we were. But no, we did not walk back up.

Our hotel

 Last view

 And down on the train, starting our trip to Geneva. (Mürren to Grütschalp. Grütschalp to Lauterbrunner. Lauterbrunner to Interlaken Ost. Interlaken Ost to Bern. Bern to Geneva.)