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Published: September 19th 2006
I starting to be tantilised by India... Finally, during my last days here I have managed to buy a guide (why has the English Lonely Planet cut out their 'Northern India' edition? - the French version is twice as expensive, so I settled for the French backpacker's bible - Guide Routard) and start reading a bit about where I'm going... I'm in for a fascinating adventure! It has always been my dream to travel to Nepal, and I think India will only wet my appetite for the upcoming leg of my journey! Stay tuned!
Friday I did a tour of CERN - the Centre for Nuclear Energy Research - about time after living here for 5 years and knowing heaps of guys working there. It was fascinating, and Malcolm, my guide, gave me a great explanation of the place in layman's terms. CERN is a huge underground facility comprising 27km of tunnels encircling Geneva and its surroundings where a relatively small stream of particles are projected in a circle with the aid of bipolar magnets. At four points in this circle, machines are being created where particles collide and they trace back to the point of collision to test what is happening in the reactions and what particles are made up of - to put it simply, these guys are trying to understand how the universe was created along the lines of the 'Big Bang theory'. The energy used would be enough to service the whole of Geneva, although the machine is only run once for a couple of weeks each year for the scientists to test the software and theories they have been creating the rest of the year, and about 2 pounds of every European taxpayer's money goes toward the experiment. Mind boggling. They were responsible for discovering the Internet, but could all this time and resources not be spent more wisely??
For the first time I had people come to see me off at the airport - and Eric and Gisella even kindly gave me a lift! Thank goodness as my flight was delayed and we all had a fun excursion to the local Migros supermarket while we were waiting! Thanks guys!
PHOTOS TO COME (Unfortunately I accidently formatted my camera and lost all the great photos from my last days in Geneva 😞 including Carlos' birthday party combined with my farewell on Saturday night - sorry Fred, I can't give you a copy of the photos of you playing the Didgeridoo!)
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claudia
non-member comment
allo
U take care Cathy. I am hearing about your travels, health issues et al from Mum ha ha. Just make it back here safely for Mum's birthday and Christmas ok? You have an exciting story to tell so think you should collect all your website stuff and publish it. Fantastic!