lake to lake (aka fml)

The rolling hills in
Rural France make for lovely
Scenes and my sad legs.

I like lakes. They're so peaceful and calm: the water just floating around and minding its own business, people milling about and enjoying grassy or sandy lakesides (especially on a warm day like this one), ... So I jumped at the chance to go to Annecy, France, with two other coworkers, namely Hugo and Piotr. It has a lovely lake and a gorgeous old town, and it's basically a composite built of all the things that Americans think about when they think of "romantic Europe." Except the Eiffel Tower. It didn't have that.

But there's this funny thing about lakes. They tend to form in low areas. That generally means that two lakes that aren't connected are separated by something like.. well, like a high area. In this case, it was a very high hill. I just did a map on mapmyride.com and it informs me that we climbed a total of 1210m over our 130-ish km bike ride. That's a shitload of climbing. The woman at the restaurant we went to in Annecy didn't believe that we had come from Geneva.

We did get a late start (about 11:30 we left from Genève), but we got back shortly after sunset. Not too shabby. That includes an hour or so spent in Annecy touristing through the old town and stuffing our faces with as many calories as possible (in the form of pizza and pasta and ice cream).

All in all, the French countryside was really beautiful. Unfortunately, France isn't so friendly to cyclists as Switzerland is; they don't have many bike lanes (we had to settle for the shoulder of small highways), and they lack open stops with fresh water. We were honked at and stuff several times, but Piotr taught me some curse words in Polish, so that was okay.

I now have a sunburn on my back like the ones I used to get when I had long hair that I left braided all the time: burn everywhere except for a nice white strip down the middle of my back where my racer-cut top sat.  Lovely.

Oh, and a map of the ride: Lake to Lake.

bloody adventurous

Crimson slime flowing,
Sanitation optional,
Just use a Band-Aid.

Today marked my donation of blood in the city where the Red Cross was born: Geneva!

I have to say that the blood donation process here in Europe is a bit different, however. Let's do a quick runthrough:

American system:

• Arrive
• Sign in
• Read (or don't read, but tell them you've read) a binder of approximately 12 pages describing risks of blood donation, medications you can't be taking, countries you can't have visited, diseases you can't have had, the fact that you can't be homosexual, the fact that you can't have had sex with a homosexual, body modifications you can't have had in the last year (bone grafts, tattoos, piercings, what have you)
• Wait
• Sign in with your name, birth date, and SSN
• Get called up to answer a series of 40-ish computer questions that are basically everything that was covered in the binder
• Confirm with your name, birth date, and SSN that you are, in fact, the same person who sat down
• Have your blood pressure taken
• Have your iron measured
• Confirm, again, that you are who you say you are
• Get handed some blood bags with your name and birth date and SSN on them
• Walk over to the blood donation tables
• Confirm, again, that these bags are, indeed, your own
• Lie down on the table
• Have your vein checked and outlined in magic marker
• Have your needle site cleaned for no less than 30 seconds by betadine
• Have your needle site cleaned for no less than 10 seconds by iodine
• Get stuck
• Have the needle covered by a piece of gauze so you don't freak out
• Bleed for a while
• Watch the blood bag, which is attached to a little lever that will drop when it is heavy enough (i.e. full)
• Get unplugged
• Get bandaged
• Eat little snacks like raisins and pre-packaged cookies
• Be forced to remove your bandage lest you forget it and it cut off circulation to your arm
• Be given a paper about the possible side-effects of blood donation
• Be given a paper with your whole blood number in case you have questions

In Europe, though:

• Arrive
• Sign in with a questionnaire of about 40 questions covering questions from the tattoo and piercing questions to whether you've been outside Europe in the past 6 months
• Have your iron measured
• Have your blood pressure taken
• Walk over to the blood donation chairs
• Sit down in a chair
• Have your vein checked
• Have your vein briefly cleaned by some unknown substance
• Get stuck
• Bleed for a while
• Watch the blood bag, which is sitting on a little rocking scale which will beep when it's heavy enough (i.e. full)
• Get unplugged
• Get bandaged
• Eat awesome snacks like fresh apple pie and croissants and brownies and have tea and coffee and juice and lemonade and gatorade

That's it.  Yum.

A few things concerned me, though.  No one wears gloves in Europe?  Victor pointed out that they washed their hands in alcohol, but... latex just makes me happier.  Eep.

They had the jankest Band-Aids in the world.  Instead of little individual ones for each person, they'd just got a big one that they cut up to the appropriate size for each person.

On the other hand, it felt like a much more grown up system.  They weren't babying anyone by putting a piece of gauze on his needle so he wouldn't see it, for example.  They didn't ask me every 2 minutes if I remained the same person.  They didn't warn me about what I shouldn't do when I left, because they recognised that I'm a reasonable person (and that I'm living in a place which is not particularly litigious for this sort of thing).

I dunno.  For your judgement.

darmstadtery & the like

Xynthia's blowin'
My kite up in the sky, now
Push the big button!


The LHC is go, my friends!  And any time you want to know, just check out lhcportal.com or meltronx.com.  They've got the lowdown.

Today I got a tour of CERN's Control Centre, which is located in a big room on the secondary campus.  There are 4 "islands" where people control every accelerator at CERN, and there are a lot of accelerators.  There's a map on the wall in the conference room that shows how they're all hooked together.

Fun things:

• The LHC runs a "beam" which is comprised of 2800 smaller beams
• Each small beam is 20cm long and has 10¹¹ particles in it
• There are 3 metres between beams
• The magnets that steer the beams are kept at 1.7K (that's -271.3C or -456.34F... damn cold)
• It takes 4-6 weeks to warm the magnets up or cool them down for repairs and stuff
• The LHC tunnel is 27km long, 100m underground
• It was previously used for an accelerator called LEP
• The guys who maintain the physical equipment like to get around underground on bicycles
• There is a big box with lots of red buttons in the control room

The dude who gave us our little tour knew what he was talking about, and I learned a lot from it.  :D  He also offered to lead tours of any friends who may show up, so if you guys are thinking of coming to Geneva any time before April...

Other than that, I had a weekend!  I went to good ol' Deutschland to spend it with Olex and Julius: my friends from my days at TU Darmstadt.  We went to a snowboarding and skiing tricks competition, ate food, drank beer, played Risk, played Left 4 Dead 2, cooked food, watched movies (Meet the Spartans, The Book of Eli), played Jugger, and flew a kite.  I also finally had an opportunity to upload more photos: you can see them in my Picasa album or on Facebook.

There was a huge windstorm this weekend: it's been named Xynthia, and I guess it killed several people in Western Europe (particularly France).  It also closed all the train stations in Hesse (the German state that Darmstadt is in) for about 15 hours, so instead of leaving on Sunday afternoon, I took a train at 6am on Monday.  Uuuggghhhhhhh... going to work with no sleep is the worst.  Flying a kite in gale-force winds is the best.

But that's nothing compared to the earthquake that happened in Chile, I guess.  8.8 on the Richter scale, and it shifted the earth's axis 8cm and shortened the day by 1.26 microseconds.  Sure, you won't have any occasion to notice those things, but Earth is flippin' big.  It's amazing that it managed that!

This week has a few things I'm excited about, too:

• Pub Quiz yesterday!
• CERN Control Centre tour today!
• D&D tomorrow!  (Well, okay, it's some knockoff of D&D from Germany, but it is reputed to be just as fun :D)
• Board games Friday!
• Zürich Saturday/Sunday?  (Looking for anyone else who might want to go?)
• Joe arrives on Sunday!

Hooray!  ^_____^

Slow rain becomes snow,
And a quiet outside finds
Its way in. Look up.

I've been through most of Geneva's moods by now, or so I think I have. Today has been on the verge of freezing all day, bouncing just enough to keep one guessing whether it will be raining or snowing from one moment to the next. Half of everyone is skiing, and the other half trudges through the beginnings of slush to visit grocery stores or malls. It's quiet around here.

As of this morning, I am officially moved into my NEW APARTMENT. Yes, that's right! I now have a real, permanent address (for the rest of my time here, anyway):

14 Rue Jean Dassier 1er étage
1201 Genève
Switzerland

Please write!

How long since the last blog post... oh, I guess that photo post doesn't count. Well then. There's news, I suppose.

I am now deeply mired in my project for CERN. I guess I didn't mention what the topic was before (and I spouted something about NDAs), but every person from CERN or elsewhere who has read my blog chided me for being so corporate. There are no NDAs here.

So I mentioned previously what INSPIRE is, and that I am working on that. More specifically, what I am doing is writing an image search for INSPIRE; something that will crawl through physics papers, grab the charts and plots in them, and make those same charts and plots searchable. I think it will ulitmately live someplace like images.inspirehep.net or so. I mean, it will live there once it's done and the INSPIRE beta is released. ;) We're hopefully going to release it this weekend or next week, so stay tuned!

I am learning French through a series of frustrating and embarrassing situations. Today I went to rent a snowboard (I'm going snowboarding tomorrow! wooo!) at a store called Athleticum, where all the shirt logos, signage, and fliers are in English. I timidly asked the man at the rental desk, "Parlez-vous anglais?", at which point he glared at me, said, "Non," and turned to the next customer. The next guy did speak English, and he took pity on me and kindly asked the salesman to help me first. Although I don't really have grammar still, my vocabulary is building steadily, and I managed to navigate the ensuing conversation about snowboard sizes and foot placements and insurances and policies rather reasonably.

Not to mention the other two people who I'm living with in this apartment don't speak any English. What an adventure this will be! I took some photos around the apartment today, but I'm afraid I won't be posting them until after I find someone with an xD card reader again.

Oh, I'm officially a member of the French Skiing Federation now. Hahaha. It's a rule for the CERN ski club that you have to be a member of this other thing, which is reasonable because it provides insurance for skiing or snowboarding (in French, snowboard the noun is "snowboard" but snowboard the verb is "surf (de niege)") accidents. That's probably something I should have. ;)

I guess I should babble about my apartment (jeez, this blog post is jumping all over the place) for a bit here: I love it a lot! It's right near the main train station--Gare Cornavin--, which makes it nice for going, well, anywhere in Genève. Also anywhere in general: I don't know if I mentioned before, but Genève is a big hub for EasyJet, which, along with RyanAir, is one of Europe's notoriously cheap airlines. The airport is about 7 minutes from my apartment by train.

This place is in an old building, along with damn near everything in Europe, and it's really lovely. My room has a window that looks out on what seems to be a fake courtyard in the middle of a bunch of buildings. I know there are offices across the street because Thursday when I woke up (I was staying with my friend Nicos, who lives just down the street and on the same side of the building as I do) I realised I had left the window open and could see a bunch of suited business-types at a long table for a meeting while I looked just exactly as though I had just gotten out of bed.

There's even a balcony off the living room! The living room itself has a little fireplace, and its walls are lined with bookcases filled with ancient volumes. There are decorations everywhere; on my wall is a tapestry of an African village, the overhead light in my room is a Chinese paper lantern, there are masks and flowers along the hallway... it's adorable. ADORABLE. And only 600CHF/month; apartments in Genève run from (apparently) 600CHF/month to 2500CHF/month (that would be a studio apartment, probably with no frills) to well upwards of that (for something super fancy). I got super lucky on that one.

Last night I went out with one of the girls (Jenni) from my group and a bunch of her friends. She's Finnish, and they all were, too. I guess the point I'm making there is that I was introduced as Walküre. We went to a club in Meyrin (Meyrin is a suburb of Genève and where CERN is located) called UnderTown to see a performance sponsored by the CERN Music Club. I have seen my share of theoretical math raps before, but I'd never seen a theoretical physics rap. Almost all the performers were CERN people, but they rocked it out. One group played Take Me Home by Guns n' Roses, another played Chemicals by, uh, someone who isn't Guns n' Roses, and, well, they generally covered a lot of fun songs. The second group that played, though, was a bunch of kids--I'd guess early high school--who seemed to have written a lot of their own stuff. They did
metal in French. French, as you may know, is a very smooth and light language, and it does not really lend itself well to being screamed.

Next week, I am going to spend some time entertaining Evan on his visit here. :) I haven't really figured out what it is that we'll do yet, but... I'm reasonably sure it will involve skiing or surfing at least a little bit. :D Maybe I'll be passable at that by the time I head home.

In the meantime, I have some things to do before I head out to Nicos's going away party this evening. Like find internet. Unfortunately, the password (mot de passe) that Mme. Maret has for her WiFi doesn't seem to work. She's going to call the guy who set it up to come 'round tomorrow and see if he can get me online, but in the meantime I'll probably just trek back to Nicos's apartment, since I still have the key for it, anyway.

Oh, did I mention? I think one of the things I am most excited about in this new apartment is the fact that I have finally gotten to hang up my Goats in Trees calendar. THANK YOU ZACH JAKUBIAK.

living with nuns

Aging, hesitant
To hold cars, streets of Old Town
Wind through misty dawn.


So my housing search may finally be at an end: I discovered the amazing Home St. Pierre, an all-women's residence in the heart of Genève's Vielle Ville (Old Town).  I would definitely recommend that any female (between 18 and 30, I think, is the criterion) investigate it for long-term stays, as it's pretty cheap for a double (around 500CHF/month, and includes breakfast!), with a single running to about 750CHF/month for the rooms that are big and have views.  That's cheaper than most places around here, and you can't beat a place that's furnished, has free internet, provides breakfast and cleaning, blah blah blah, in the middle of the most gorgeous part of Genève and right across from the famous Cathedral St. Pierre.

I have to flex my writer muscles here for a second, because I really love this part of the city.

So far on this trip, I've only seen the Old Town at night or in half-dawn; it seems like a magical place that doesn't, perhaps, exist in full light.  Lost last night as I searched for the Cathedral, I chanced upon an impossible playground.  I'd found the edge of the Old Town, but the large balcony I was on seemed to drop only onto blackness.  There were basketball backboards with psychedelic artwork, wooden rocking horses, and a contraption like nothing I'd ever seen: a circle of connected bicycles, child-sized, built to rotate like a munchkin merry-go-round.

I entered my room tonight, threw my things on the floor, put my llama in place, and set out to explore.  Just down the hall from my door is one leading to an attic staircase.  This staircase leads, rather unsurprisingly, to an attic, where it appears girls are to dry their clothes during winter months as it is strewn with drying racks and the like.  A door in the attic leads to a terrace overlooking the lake and the city... everything.  The bells of St. Pierre's towers ring out over the city as they chime the 23rd hour.  It's snowing lightly.  It's probably bedtime.

hunting and gathering

Basking in the glow
Of SCIENCE, mes amis, one
Can stand to learn much.


So the whole someone-else-will-get-an-apartment-for-me thing seems to have fallen through, and I'm neck-deep in French and English websites, trying to find a damn room for four months.  If you know of anyone who is looking for a temporary roommate, do let me know.  Interesting fact: roughly 80% of the people who live in Switzerland rent their homes/apartments because it is so damn expensive to buy them.

I am learning more and more about CERN during my time here (surprise!).  There's a lecture tomorrow morning about the LHC that I'm thinking I'll go to.  The LHC is definitely off right now; my team and I were talking about it at lunch, and I guess just that machine draws 20% of Genève's power, so it is off until springtime when human beings don't need energy for doing things like... heating their houses.  What else... oh, yesterday I got to see CERN's server farm, including the backbone of the Internet (for this region of Switzerland)!  That's pretty sweet.  It's a bunch of fibre-optic cables in a really obnoxious yellow case.  There are huge cooling units in the room with all those servers, and one of my friends who works there said that if the cooling units go down the temperature can rise 1 degree Celsius per minute.  That's hot!

One of my lovely coworkers, Jan, has offered to lend me one of his bikes for the time I'm here.  I got to ride to the grocery store!  It's super fast!

I also got my first letter from home today.  Hoooooooray.  Seriously, y'all, feel free to send things to my desk.  Or, if you want a postcard from lovely, mountainous Suisse, send me your address.  :)

les alpes

Mountain peaks peek o'er
Seas of cirrus, flurries flit,
Stirring up skiers.

I am a "skier" now!  Well, kind of.  I tried it out yesterday--at a place called Flaine in France--for the first time, and it didn't go nearly so badly as I'd expected it to.  I made it out without anything broken or sprained or bruised, and although there is no finesse to my style as yet, that'll surely come with practise.  Or something.

Anyway, I went with some friends from work.  Well, from fake-work.  I'm hanging out in a different (but related) department this week to learn a bit about the systems that the system I'll be helping built is going to be built on.  If that makes sense.  One of my friends (Nicos) is a snowboarder, and he was the one who was trying to peer pressure me into snowboarding instead of skiing earlier this week.  I did wind up skiing (since "Ski the Alps" is on my list, after all), along with my other friend, Javier.  They were all patient and wonderful and laughed at the right times when I fell down and helped me at the right times too.  Several sweet, old Frenchmen also paused their skiing to help the poor, stupid, mountain-retarded Midwestern girl to her feet.  The Pikachu hat was a hit.

Today I wandered Genève (after sleeping in and whining to myself about being sore for a few hours).  I still can't get friggin pictures off my camera, agh.  I did see a lot of stuff, though, including what was apparently the Old Swiss Man Sunday Chess and Smoking Club.  And would you believe that outdoor cafés are open now?  It rained and stuff yesterday (in Geneva, not up on the mountain; there it was gorgeous weather all day), and Geneva's snow plan worked!  It has certainly all cleared from the streets now.  It also felt a bit like spring, which weirded me out.  I walked around in just my t-shirt and jeans for a while.

Oh, jeez, what else... oh, when I got back to the hostel this evening, there was a crowd of girls cluttering the hallway.  There was a woman speaking to all of them in a British accent, and I was amused when she she said, "You girls crossing the street is what keeps me up at night.  They drive on the wrong side here!"  Oh, you UK people.

landed it!

Snow pours, innocent,
Over the North.  Plane delays,
Jet lags... these are friends.

I've now finally landed in GVA, Geneva's airport.  It's roughly 2am in this time zone, and I don't really remember this city very clearly, so it looks like I'm going to camp out in an airport restaurant for tonight.  Sucks, yes, but it's probably the most reasonable option.

Yup, I guess that's it for now.  Flights are getting canceled all over Europe because of a snowdump.  My flight out of London was delayed something like 3.5 hours.  I can tell you that Heathrow gets very tiring when you've been there for 14 hours.  Blah.

It's..... naptime!  Goodnight, western hemisphere.