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Published: July 20th 2008
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I have had an incredibly busy two weeks. Last weekend, I took a weekend trip to Munich with my friends Brandi and Chen. It was raining the whole time we were there, but we still got to experience a lot. After leaving our bags at the hotel, we took a metro directly to the city center. All around us was the Christopher Street festival. I guess it happens once every year in Munich and is a really big festival within the gay community. Thousands of people were packed into the city center to experience it. So, we did what any tourists would do and found the most outrageously dressed person to take a picture with. Then, we started exploring the city. We saw tons of cool architecture, including many churches, museums, etc. that I have since forgotten the names of. One of my favorite things, though, was a cute little statue replica of downtown that was supposed to be used as a map. I couldn't help taking a picture of.
After an afternoon of exploring, we made our way to the Hofbrauhaus. Apparently, because of Octoberfest, Munich is famous for its beer and the Hofbrauhaus is where tourists are recommended to
try it. Chen insisted we go. It actually turned out to be a good atmosphere with reasonably priced food, its own brewery, a polka band, and its own famous song. Since we went to a brewery for Chen, Brandi and I got to choose a more girly activity for the rest of the night. First, we went to see a free opera that was playing in the city center as part of a Munich opera festival. It was Tschaikovsky and absolutely wonderful. Then, we ended up going to a club called the Atomic Cafe that played dance music mixes from alternative/indie rock and 60's songs. It was very hip, and a nice balance to a fact that I had to eat dinner at the place where the phrase "one, two, chug" was coined. Sigh.
On Saturday, we took the metro to all of the famous places we couldn't see in the city center. This included the site of the 1972 Olympics, the soccer stadium, and the English garden, which was completely void of people because it was still pouring down rain. We walked for a long time to see the Chinese tower at the English garden, which is incredibly famous.
Then, we headed to the train station to go back to CERN. It was a 7 and 1/2 hour train ride back. All was well, we even caught a tram to our bus stop, but then we realized the buses had quit running. Sound familiar? I guess my pledge to always check the bus schedule failed. Of course, none of us had cell phones with us because they are outrageously expensive to bring abroad. To make matters worse, there are no taxis near the bus stop. So, faced with the choice of walking back at 1 am to CERN or finding a better option we walked, in the rain, to the nearest hotel. They called us a taxi to pick us up. It ended up being an exhausting end to a day. I was glad to get back to the hostel but still happy I had gotten to experience Munich. Overall, it was a blast!
I followed up the weekend in Munich with a much more restful time in Geneva this week and weekend. I have been working on my final paper all week, as we can not run data because of some things they were doing to the LASER
system. It is a little odd to be so far along so soon, but at least I won't be stressing at the end of the summer. On Tuesday and Thursday, I walked in the evening to St. Genis with different groups of friends. It is about a 40 minute walk from CERN. Food is MUCH cheaper there, because it is in France, not Switzerland. On Friday, I went to a CERN summer student party, which was an experience in itself. They had big sheets of papers on the walls with markers and the words "Write on me." There was a horrendous amount of Feynman diagrams, Einstein quotes, etc. on the wall considering we were at a party. However, I did know the DJ, so I was able to put in a request for some American music. On Saturday, a took a train to Montreux, Switzerland. I was able to see castle chillon (learn more about it at www.chillon.ch). It is the first castle I've ever seen in my life. I was struck by how OLD it was. Next to the castle was a beach for swimming, so I got to swim by the castle! Unfortunately, I don't have the pictures
from the castle on my computer yet. I will post a more detailed entry about the castle once they are ready. I finished off the weekend by going to an art museum this afternoon in Geneva. It was very fun, but unfortunately the whole second floor was closed for renovations, so we didn't really get to see any artwork past the Byzantine era. We did get to see some suits of armor and weaponry from the 15th and 16th centuries that were very interesting though.
This weekend I will be in Barcelona starting very early on Friday morning. I will try to post another update about the castle, and anything else noteworthy that happens, before I leave!
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