CERN Visit

Our awesome physics teacher gave us a 4-day trip to Geneva to visit CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Day 1

Mountains

We took off on saturday and I had packed my Sansa Clip+ and my DS. During the flight I got hooked on Rune Factory 3 (which I had played before, but got stuck when I failed to talk to everyone in town).

A 10 minute train ride awaited us when we landed, and we checked in at a shabby youth hostel. The rooms were quite tiny and I spent my visit with 5 of my classmates.

It was already pretty late, so we stockpiled some food/drinks and went out to eat. The restaurant we went to was an italian pizzeria, where I ate the most delicious pizza ever.

Day 2

The refridgerator

The following day I woke up and played Rune Factory 3. Our schedule for the day was to visit some science museum and see the UN building.

The science museum was one of the most interesting places during the trip, and had a bunch of awesome-looking-stuff-that-I-didn't-really-know-what-was.

After the museum we headed straight for the UN building and saw a huge chair. Class photos naturally followed.

The rest of the day was spent eating at a chinese restaurant and playing poker in our room.

Day 3

Henry Stroke

The following day we had to wake up early, as we were going to visit CERN.

Upon arriving we were escorted by a fellow norwegian, who did his thesis at CERN and was now working there. He gave us a short presentation about the place and his job, before putting on The Large Hadron Rap and leaving us. Smooth.

We then listened to Henry Digression Stroke, who talked about atomic magnetic resonance imaging, quantum physics, and his meeting with Einstein to discuss atomic clocks (!).

We were then guided around the library and to the cafeteria, which was frightingly stuffed with people.

The cafeteria

The accelerator tube section, that you may have seen, was located outside, and we ended up doing another class photo.

We were then guided through a cute exhibition hall, and were given another presentation about CERN. At the end we could ask questions to an actual scientist who was pro@particle physics.

After that we were guided over to France and into another part of CERN. The guy who showed us around knew his stuff, and taught us about how the old detectors and accelerators worked. We were unfortunately not allowed to go down into the tunnel and see the LHC.

The old accelerator

Next we went to the datacentre, and saw the first server ever built!

After visiting CERN I was quite hungry, and we decided to eat at a japanese restaurant, where I recieved my first chopstick-eating experience. I also swore to never ever trust the menu photo for a dish, when estimating the size.

Day 4

For the last day we checked out of the hostel at 10AM. Early enough. We strolled around the rich part of Geneva and went to "the old town".

Beautiful scenery

There we visited some-old-church and found an antique store for scientifiques. Afterwards we got stuck at a park with some huge chess pieces for an hour or two.

When we got hungry we went to an expensive looking restaurant, where I ordered a lasagne and a creme brulee. The lasagne was disappointing, and the creme brulee looked awfully similiar to the lasagne. Thankfully it was pleasantly delicious.

At the end of the day we went for Geneva airport. We landed at Copenhagen at like 11PM to swap planes, but due to something blowing up at Gardermoen, our flight to Norway was delayed. So I played Rune Factory 3 until 1AM, when we could finally leave. I ended up not getting home until 3-4AM, and was naturally quite exhausted.

For some more pictures, see the gallery below.