Swiss chocolate and CERN

It has always been a small dream of mine to live in Europe and travel frequently to many important sounding cites like Rome, Paris, Geneva and London. Ideally in this dream I would also be wearing high heels, a chic black coat and maybe be working for the UN or as some sort of exciting undercover agent.

This weekend my dream almost came true. I was invited by my friend G (mentioned in a previous post) to visit her for the weekend in Geneva. I wasn't wearing heels when I stepped off the plane in Geneva but I did feel very chic in my new black Italian coat (see previous post) and I tried to look purposeful and important as I road the train into Geneva.

My very first stop in the city was at Starbucks. I have been going through Starbucks withdrawal the past few months. It didn't even matter to me that my Grande Frappuccino cost me 8 Swiss francs (approx 8 Canadian dollars). Definitely the most expensive Starbucks I've ever visited. This fact also didn't stop me from going back two more times this weekend. I also purchased a Starbucks Switzerland mug for my collection :)

Ordering Starbuck in French for the first time wasn't very hard - it mainly involved saying 'Grande Frappuccino' with a slightly more French accent. I realized after though that most people in the Starbucks were actually speaking English - probably because Geneva is 40% expatriates because of all the different international organizations that are there.

That evening G and I went to one of her friend's places for dinner. G has interesting friends - everyone seemed to work for either the United Nations or for some NGO like Amnesty International. I met an Italian PhD student, who works for CERN and who offered to give us a private tour on Sunday.

On Saturday we mainly did the touristy stuff in the morning (old town, lake Geneva, Calvin's church etc.) and then went to the house of another friend to prepare four big buckets of sangria for a party they were hosting that night. G is part of a 'Couch Surfing' network. Basically this is where you sign up on a website to let people stay on your couch when they are travelling though and you can stay other places when you travel - they also do social events in different cities and G and a couple of her Spanish friends were planning the sangria night for this.

That night about 50 people showed up with finger food to drink the four buckets of sangria. I chatted with people from Italy, Switzerland (in French too), America, Spain, Germany, France etc. Very cool.


Sunday morning we got up early to catch the bus to CERN for 10am for our tour. Honestly, I don't know very much about Physics, but for some reason I do really enjoy going to sciencey things like this. Maybe somehow it feeds my inner science geek ;) CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research and it where they have an enormous particle accelerator. We visited a number of the buildings including the offices where they invented the World Wide Web. They also have things like their own post office, bank and travel agency onsite - which I guess is pretty handy.

After the visit I headed to the airport - slightly overcaffinated from my third Starbucks - and caught my 45 min flight back to Nice. The view of the Alps from the plane was amazing (see below). Overall a fun weekend :)