Taming Nature

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Dorm Life

Ever wish you could relive those halcyon days in the dorms-- parties, all-nighters, bull sessions, etc? Well then, I'm living your dream. This year my residence in Lausanne is actually a studio apartment located in the University of Lausanne dorms. The apartment is fine, but at night the dorms come alive. As I type this (it's now past midnight) I can hear dozens of conversations going on, all in different languages. A circle of giggling girls sits at the entrance to the building opposite my window. They're speaking French. There's a party on the top floor of the building on the corner. I can hear smokers standing on the balcony speaking Spanish. There's a crowd of drunken boys laughing loudly in the quad. Unfortunately, they're speaking English, which means they're probably my students. A moment ago a couple speaking German walked under my window. The smell of curry from my neighbor's apartment just subsided, I can hear them speaking Hindi. Occasionally firecrackers, a roaring motorcycle engine, or squealing tires will momentarily silence the conversation soup as speakers pause to consider the contribution. Then, simultaneously, all of the conversations pick up where they left off.

From time to time I look out my window in disbelief. I see lots of lurid scenes going on in lots of windows. A girl leads a boy into her apartment. The lights go on as they enter, then off. A joint is being passed around in another apartment. Then I remember that they can see me, too, standing at my window, shirtless, wearing a sarong, and, most embarrassing of all, old.

Les Mandatory Shelters Atomique

The Swiss have a thing about public safety. Until recently every new home was required to have a shelter atomique. Either that or the owner was required to pay $10,000 to the local government to reserve a space in the public shelter.

The Viccus of Lousanna

Lausanne was still in the distant future when the port town of Lousanna thrived on the banks of Lake Geneva. Switzerland was known as Helvetia then, land of the Helvetii Gauls, and of course Roman military had the place sewed up tight.

Lousanna is still there, bordered by a freeway, a trailer park, a half pipe for skate boarders, and an archery range. All that remains are the tightly constructed foundations of temples and shops, and a boat ramp. Apparently the Helvetii would drag boats making deliveries right up behind the shops to unload them. Of course the lake is now 100 yards away.

I stroll down to Lousanna on lazy afternoons. I find a nice wall to lean against, and I read. Occasionally I notice a tent pitched illegally or a pervert masturbating in the bushes, but everyone else completely ignores the place. If we had something this old in California we would turn it into a theme park.

How do a particle collider work?

I have a million questions I've always wanted to ask someone who operated an atom smasher. Of course I have read all of those coffee table books meant to explain particle physics to the thick headed. From them I managed to wrestle some sort of mental image of breaking a particle into pieces, sort of like playing billiards with eggs, but how is it actually done?

This morning my students and I visited CERN to get a tour of LHC: the Large Hadron Collider. (I make this sound easy, but it took our hosts eight months to negotiate the tour.) CERN is the world's largest particle collider. It features a giant 17 mile ring of tubes buried 300 feet below the Swiss and French country side. In fact, our tour of the facility took us back and forth over the French-Swiss border crossing, which is in the middle of the CERN complex.

Every day all day a beam of particles circles clockwise through one tube while a second beam circles counter-clockwise through another tube. (These beams are not unlike the beam emitted at the back of a picture tube that traces images on a TV screen-- pre-flat screen era.) Giant pulsing magnets push the beams faster and faster like a father pushing his kid on a swing. (When my father taught physics years ago I think he used me for just such a demonstration.) At the right moment and right place the beams in each tube are shunted into a single tube, where they crash into each other. The particles in the beams shatter into a spray of debris. (I picture suicidal north and southbound motorcycle gangs entering the same passing lane at top speed. The lucky ones don't collide, but some do, scattering handlebars, tattoos, and bitches all over hell. Of course if the motorcyclists were sub-atomic, then the debris might paradoxically include newly created motorcyclists wearing tutus and riding tricycles.)

The debris burrows its way out of the tube, but that's okay, because this stretch of the tube is surrounded by a particle detector. A particle detector is a giant barrel filled with concentric layers of digital camera "film". These layers trace the path of the debris. Some debris particles go beyond the film into another layer made out of catcher mitt stuffing (okay, maybe I wasn't paying attention to this part). How far the particle burrows into this layer gives more information about its nature.

Of course these collisions are happening all day long. The whole thing is being controlled from an impressive looking control room. There, operators store the results from the more interesting collisions (which look like scribbles done by a demented child with a box of crayons) in an array of computers.

How big are the detectors? They're huge; picture a shiny metal barrel the size of a submarine. I was struck by the dissonant juxtaposition between the size of the collider and the need for mind boggling sub-atomic precision. Essentially, there is no room for error. In 2008, when the collider was first fired up, a tiny soldering flaw on a computer board in one of the tubes caused a slight variation in the -271 degree temperature that bathes the entire system. An explosion occurred that ripped up 80 yards of the collider in either direction!

Here's the thing: when this happens you don't just flip the off switch and go downstairs to repair the damage. The radioactivity has to cool down for a month. Then, special engineers who get hazard pay go down to fix it. They can only be down there for a few days per year.

While my students asked our physicist/guide intelligent questions about the building blocks of the universe, my questions were more along the lines of: "What would happen if you stuck your head in the tube?" Well? What would you see? Would there be a flash of light? Would there be a loud bang? After all, that's what the endless stream of animations we were forced to watch suggested.

It turns out that a trip anywhere near the tube would be fatal. Not the kind of fatal where you die from cancer in 10 years or even six months, our guide explained with some pleasure, it would be more like three minutes! Curiosity roused, I shot back with "What would it feel like if I put my hand in the beam?" (At that point I noticed my students easing away from me.) When they want to turn the collider off, the guide explained, slowing the beam down is a bit of a challenge. Instead of my hand, he rhetorically suggested a big rock. Turns out, that isn't a good idea. If the beam hit a rock, then au revoir Geneva. Instead, the beam has to be guided down a long, long tube filled with soft graphite.

The question I really wanted to ask, but didn't have the nerve, was this: does anyone here really know if and how this thing works? From time to time during the tour the guide admitted that he didn't understand how some bit of technology worked. I could hardly blame him. CERN is not only immense in size, it is immense in complexity. It may be too complex for any one person to understand it all, especially in our era of intellectual balkanization. Could CERN be the emperor (I want to say Pope) in new clothes? Here's a giant machine that costs billions of dollars. Periodically it churns out scribbles like those found on any conscientious parent's refrigerator door. Scientists look at the scribbles, nod their heads knowingly, maybe write some coffee table books, then collect their paychecks. Who would (or could) dare poke holes in such a cash cow?

Inside a glacier

Switzerland is centrally located. Every place is near. It's small, about a tenth the size of California, yet it shares borders with Germany, Austria, Italy, and France. I am three hours by train from Paris and Turin. I could fly to Marrakesh on Easy Jet for a couple hundred bucks (less in the off season).

Of all the perks they give me, my Swiss Pass is the most valuable. With it I can hop on any bus, train, or ferry in the vast and well-oiled Swiss transportation network. When I show it to any curious conductor, he nods and says "merci" (or "danke" or "grazie" or "grazia" in the Romansh-speaking areas). The pass comes with a little map showing all of the routes. Yesterday I had the day off. I woke up around eight, poured myself a bowl of Special-K, and studied the map while I ate. I noticed something I hadn't seen before. A micro-thin red line indicated a spur off the main line that runs from Geneva to Zermatt. Held inches from my nose I could see that the spur twisted and turned its way to the French town of Chamonix, on the slopes of Mount Blanc. I grabbed my rucksack and was out the door by nine; by 9:40 I was boarding a train in Lausanne, cup of coffee in hand. Rick Steves would have been envious.

In Martigny I transferred to the Mount Blanc Express, a little two-car electric train with big windows. It turns out the big windows were needed to frame the big scenery. Around each bend I would audibly grunt as the vista punched the breath out of me. I couldn't see any ground between the track and a yawning deep ravine filled with roiling billows of mist. On the opposite side of the ravine glaciers spilled off of peaks that even the big windows were too small to capture. I thought of the word suggested by Allain de Botton in Art of Travel to describe such scenery: sublime. I reached for a word beyond that, a word to capture the profound feeling of insignificance and deflation caused by such immensity. Remembering my Beavis and Butthead, I murmured the words "Whoa, this place kicks ass."

(My camera battery wore out, hence the wordy, overblown descriptions.)

"Ice axe chic" was the phrase that came to my mind when I stepped off the train in Chamonix. The first published accounts by outsiders of Chamonix appeared around 1750. Thereafter a trickle of adventure seekers would trek to Chamonix to see up close the Mer de Glace glacier that girdles the slopes of Mount Blanc. The first winter Olympics were held there in the 1920s. From that point Chamonix became a playground for aristocrats. In the fancy boutiques I saw well dressed shoppers with expensive climbing packs strapped to their backs.

In Chamonix I caught a funicular that took me to a point on the mountain overlooking Mer de Glace. From there a gondola took me over the lip of a cliff and down to the top of a 350-step stairway that led to the advancing edge of the glacier. Proving yet again that there is no terrain man can't subjugate, a cave had been drilled into the glacier. At the back of the cave you could have your photo taken with an unhappy looking St. Bernard for six Euros.

But I was too agape to be cynical. The ice inside the glacier was blue like the ocean! Only this ocean was frozen and I was under it, touching the ancient ice with my hand while it rolled over me one centimeter per day.

Sunday Night Blues

After my successful trip to Chamonix, I was anxious to get back into the Alps today. A colleague told me about a hike at a place called Le Grammont, high in the mountains overlooking the French side of Lake Geneva. Google gave me some sketchy instructions on how to get there. It would involve several trains, a bus, and then it said I should just walk the rest of the way. Good enough, off I went.

Advancing

What I didn't take into account was that on Sundays the train and bus schedules are greatly reduced. This can be especially problematic in small towns. I found myself in just such a town when the train I was on stopped half way to my destination and declared that it had reached the end of the line.

I stepped out into the streets of Tombstone just before the big showdown between the Daltons and Wyatt Earp. No people were in sight. The stores were shuttered. A tumble weed blew down the main street. I studied the train schedule. Nothing would roll through for an hour, and it would be going in the wrong direction. I ran to the post office figuring that's where any bus would stop in a town like this. Sure enough, there was a bus schedule posted. It took a while to decipher all of the French fine print. I had just missed the last bus.

Retreating

I took the train heading in the wrong direction. At the next stop, while I was sitting on the train, I noticed another train in the station going back the way I just came. I took a chance and jumped aboard.

Advancing

This train did take me to the town where I was supposed to catch the bus. When I arrived, I went to the town's post office and studied the fine print on their bus schedule. My bus would be passing through in two hours, but on Sundays, the schedule warned, there would not be a bus coming back. However, in an hour there would be a bus heading for St Gingolph, a little French town on the shore of Lake Geneva. Surely I could catch a ferry there and get back to Lausanne.

Retreating

My bus arrived in St. Gingolph just as the ferry for Montreux was boarding. In Montreux I learned a train would be leaving in five minutes heading back in my original direction.

Advancing

It was past three, too late for hiking in the Alps. This time my plan was to go further south to a town I had passed through on my way to Chamonix. Just outside of that town I had noticed a sign saying Trient Gorge. It looked like an easy but spectacular hike. At the train station in St. Maurice I realized that by the end of the day I would have stopped here four times!

Retreating

The hike was nice, but too short. It was six before I caught the train that would take me all the way back to Lausanne. I forgot that Sunday night is when all of the soldiers have to report back for duty. The train filled up with guys wearing camouflage and carrying machine guns. I had to hold one soldier's machine gun while he hoisted his duffle bag into the luggage rack. He held the gun between his knees while he read a comic book. I was nervous the thing would fall and go off. But later, when I heard some troublemaker shouting at the back of the train, I wanted the soldier to shut him up by squeezing off a few rounds. I would have been happy to do it, but didn't know how to say "lend me your machine gun" in French.

And to top it off

After dinner I discovered a rookie mistake I made in my plane reservations. Next week I'm going to Helsinki from Geneva with a layover in some city called Riga, which I learned is in some country called Latvia. I arrive in Riga a 1:05 PM and catch the plane for Helsinki at 2:15 PM. Almost perfect, except that tonight I noticed that the 2:15 flight to Helsinki is the day after I arrive in Riga! To make matters worse, I remember congratulating myself on how careful I had been when I made the booking. An earlier version of me would have had a major anxiety attack over this problem. But now I live by something my sister once told me: in life there are no problems, only expenses.

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Photos

The Twins
I stayed with them for a few days when I first arrived in Lausanne. Here we are crossing Lake Geneva to have lunch in Evian, France.

My Spot
The ancient wall in Lousanna where I sit and read.

Travelling well
On a train rolling through the Swiss countryside with my coffee, journal, and passport. Doesn't get much better than that.

Controlling reality
This is the control room at CERN.

Event Result
This is what CERN produces, the scribblings of a demented child.

???
A lot of CERN technology makes it into the commercial sector. This device advanced the frontiers of bong design.

CERN ear plug dispensers
Very futuristic.

Still up
I took this picture with my computer camera while I was writing this entry.

Trient Gorge
This walk way goes about half a mile into the gorge. Must have been a pain to build.

Avalanche?
Me being paranoid in the gorge.

Castles everywhere
You don't get this on California hikes.

Romulus and Remus
Hiking through a town proud of its Roman origins I noticed this statue. I especially liked the wolf's pained expression. "Hey, whose damned kids are these?"

Comments

[debrah]

your writings delight me
Hi Jon - I love reading about your adventures. You transport the reader through your adventures...a true art. Thinking about you and hoping all is well. Take care, my friend!