Day 43: Geneva

Wednesday, September 25

They kept turning the lights on and off, seemingly at random, from about 11:30 until 12:30, when they made the sad choice to leave them on. The electricity, that came and went too; i was glad i'd left my devices plugged in, just in case. And the wifi...well never worked at any point.
    Predictably, i didn't get much sleep on my 10 1/2 hour train ride from Amsterdam to Basel. Personally, i was not in a position to complain; i'd made no reservations and just hopped on a route that would work for me, like i prefer to do. But upon boarding, one woman asked me if i'd reserved a sleeper car, because evidently, she had, and they stuck her in this. There were signs up across both our car and the next one reading, "replacement car." So she was understandably upset.
    I just wish they'd left the dang lights off.
    We were about half an hour late getting into Basel, which was just enough to miss my connection to Geneva. Fortunately, there was another route leaving 25 minutes later, with only one extra quick connection in Biel/Bienne. In the meantime, i grabbed a huge pretzel that had been made into a sandwich. It was...decent.
    It was a one-hour train ride to Biel/Bienne, and i slept great!
    However, i only had six minutes to make my next connection from Biel/Bienne to Geneva. If i missed it...well, guess i'd be going to Zurich. I didn't have any accommodations booked, it would be just as well.
    In any case, i knew there wouldn't be time to run around the station and check the boards to figure out what platform my train was on. The Eurail app, for some reason, does not include that information. But very recently, i've discovered that Google Maps, does! So i was able to get that information pretty painlessly. It's on platform 5.
    We came in on Platform 6. I literally needed to take six steps, and i was on the train.
    Except then i got kicked off the train, because it wasn't my train at all. Well, that explains why it was empty and there were huge crowds outside. That train left, and my actual train to Geneva pulled in momentarily.
    And i slept great on that train, too!
    So. Two little under-one-hour catnaps, after spotty bits of unsatisfying dozing throughout the actual night. Gonna be a day.
    I already knew there were no hostels available in Geneva, so i wasn't planning on doing more than one day in the city anyhow. This stop would be the most like our 2013 Eurotrip, which often put us in cities for just a few hours before moving on. Just enough to say we were there, basically. That's kind of what i'm doing now.
    However, i still hadn't planned where i was going from Geneva, let alone booked accommodation. I had told myself i'd do it on the short connecting route, but instead i slept. So that was on my mind.
    From the Geneva train station, i figured the first thing to do would be to go to CERN and see if i could get a look at the Large Hadron Collider. They have tours, but it's difficult to get one. Groups need to book in advance, so that's a whole separate thing, but with individuals, they create four tour groups per day, with a maximum of 24 people each. It's on a first-come-first-served basis, but you still have to book it online...after you're already in the building. As far as i could tell, the link to the booking page is not available from the web site directly, you have to scan a QR code in the lobby. I'm sure it's so that people don't book the tour an then not show up, thus taking a spot from someone who's really interested. The tour is free, after all. The web site recommends showing up early for better chances at getting in.
    I don't know if it's always like this, but today there were three tours in English and one in French. The first English tour was at 10:30am.
    I scanned that QR code at 10:31.
    Goddammit.
    The 12:00 tour was in French, so it looked like i would be waiting until 1:30. Signup didn't become available until 11:30.
    I considered going elsewhere for a while, but CERN is pretty far away from city center, and they have three other free exhibits that looked kind of cool. I signed up for all three, and asked the desk clerk if there was a place i could stash my bag. I'd meant to see about finding a locker at the train station, but had entirely forgotten.
    "Yes, downstairs, past the cafeteria, there is a locker room," she said, pointing to the stairwell.
    The lockers were also free. You just set a PIN, and you're set.
    Nice.
    I didn't think the three exhibits would fill up the time available before the tour. That would be almost an hour per exhibit. But the cafeteria should be open by the time i was done, and it might be nice to make sure i get some food today. I still hadn't eaten, having slept on the train and transferred directly to a tram out to CERN, but i wasn't quite hungry yet.
    The first exhibit was about CERN itself, primarily focusing on the Large Hadron Collider. There were many prototype parts on display, plus miniatures and hands-on activities for kids to learn the basic physics behind how a particle accelerator works, such as magnetism. There were also many kiosks with touchscreens featuring CERN employees talking about their special focus and what it's like to work there. You can poke through a list of questions to ask them, and they answer. They're all pretty badly greenscreened into their own work areas, though. I'm guessing because the videographer didn't feel like moving equipment around, just set up in one spot and fixed it in post. Either that or maybe for noise reasons. I also have some critiques for whoever placed the lavalier microphones on these people.
    The main feature of the exhibit was several glass walls between exhibits, which each had a graphic of a cutaway of part of the LHC on it, so as you progressed through the museum, you got deeper into the device. It was a pretty nice visual.
    In the back, there were some bits about CERN's other projects, like their data warehouses and data processing centers. But the coolest artifact in there, i thought anyway, was the actual computer which ran the very first web server in 1989. The World Wide Web was invented at CERN, just a hundred or so meters away from that museum display. Not the Internet; we have DARPA to thank for that. I know the terms are used interchangeably nowadays, and if you weren't there at the time, you might not know.

    I spent a lot of time in this exhibit. I slowly worked my way through the displays, watching every video kiosk and clicking all the questions. Interacting with every game and demonstration. Clicking through all the information on every terminal. It's a lot of information. It's really well presented. I think if a kid were really interested in this stuff, they would get a lot out of it, and i don't think it talks down to them at all. There's a lot of concepts in there that i struggled with, as i'm sure many of the adults attending do. But they do their best to present it in a way that's at least interesting.
    As time went on, i noticed more and more people trickling in. When i started, there were only like a half a dozen people, all adults, older than me, through the room. It happened so slowly that i didn't notice for a while, but eventually, the room reached a critical mass of loud teenagers. I was having trouble getting to the displays. When it was just a few people, if one was occupied, i'd move along, and come back to it later. That was becoming impossible.
    I skipped the back of the last room entirely, it was getting much too crowded in there, and moved on to the second exhibit, which the apparent school group had not yet reached en masse. There were a few of them in there, but it was manageable.
    This one's about the Big Bang, and the science explaining how we figured out everything we know about it. The Large Hadron Collider plays into this as well, including using it to find ways to make antimatter and dark matter. Dark matter, while generally accepted as fact, still has never been directly observed. CERN is hoping to change that.
    The Big Bang exhibit is much smaller than the first. There are informational boards running down one wall, which terminates at a cinema. I didn't go in to watch the movie, i knew i was running short on time, both for my tour, and before the high schoolers got there. I wrapped back around the other wall, and started to play with some of the experiments...and it was too late. The teens were coming.
    I am not belittling or begrudging them in any way, i'm happy they're here and experiencing this and learning all the things, and i am not so far gone that i don't remember being a teen, and a pretty noisy one myself, at that. Honestly, if i were here with friends, even at almost 40, i'd probably be a fair sight noisier.
    My point is just, that is not the headspace i'm in, and these teens are not my friends. They are not even speaking a language i am fluent in. I do not need this ruckus.
    I slipped out. Across from that exhibit, there's a room with several large art pieces. A video from one of the artists explains that he is fascinated by the science that goes on at CERN, and when they commissioned these art pieces, they tried to simplify their work enough for him to understand, and then he could take that and turn it into an art piece conveying the feeling of the work. This artist, Yunchul Kim, created a piece called Chroma VII, a knotted form of motorized, transparent polymer cells which change color as they move. I thought it was the most interesting of the pieces, but the rest were just as abstract.
    I'm unclear if the art wing is meant to be the third exhibit, or if the next room, The Quantum World, is. The booking confirmation emails i got all just say "Science Gateway."
    The Quantum World seems like it's more of a science-themed arcade, full of games and activities aimed at younger children, using applications of the principles of physics. There were a few smaller kids in there, but mostly, the teenagers were already starting to overrun it. I made a quick loop around the room, just to see what was on display, and left.
    I was kind of glad that that's how it ended up, with each exhibit being a progressively quicker and quicker experience, and the last one being something i could skip without feeling bad about it. Because yeah, where i had initially worried about these three exhibits maybe not being enough content to fill the three hours before my tour, that somehow ended up not being quite enough time.
    Since i had come as an individual, and not part of a group, i was issued a badge for the tour with my name on the top, and "Group of Triggs" on the bottom.
    The tour was supposed to run about 90 minutes, starting at 1:30. We started outside the main entrance to the visitor center, and walked across the road. I couldn't hear the tour guide for much of the outside stuff, i was at the back of the pack, as usual, and his voice was not really cut out for tour guide stuff. Very soft spoken, also rambled a lot, i wasn't quite sure i understood him half the time.
    We went past some more prototype pieces of the LHC that are displayed out on the grounds, and through a locked gate into an employee parking lot, leading to several buildings. We only got to go inside of one, though.
    This building contains the 600 MeV Synchro-Cyclotron, CERN's first particle accelerator, which began operation in 1957 and far outlasted its expected useful life, finally being decommissioned in 1991. This building now has a large screen on one wall, which a movie about the foundation of CERN plays on, before additional projectors begin blasting amazing graphics and a relevant light show on the Synchro-Cyclotron itself. It was a stunning experience. I'm really amazed at how they got the projectors to line up the colors and graphics perfectly with all the nooks and crannies of the device, it must have been a ton of precise measurements and math.
    Which. Well i guess that's what they do here.

    From there, we were led back toward the visitor center, past it, and into another gated employee parking lot, which came to the building where the ATLAS Control Center for the Large Hadron Collider is located. The building is like three stories tall, and there's a mural across two sides of it, showing an interpretation of the tubes of the LHC, with an embellishment of a smashed particle radiating out from the middle.
    "This isn't exactly accurate," the guide said. I was expecting him to say something about how smashed particles don't actually look like that, or about the artistic license taken with the colors or shapes of the components. But he followed it with, "It's actually much larger than that. This painting is about two-thirds scale."
    Oh.
    Wow.
    Inside this building were a few more models and prototypes. There's an ATLAS Event Counter on the wall, documenting how many particles they've pushed through this accelerator, and how many Higgs-Bosons they've observed. The device was shut down today, so the counter didn't move while we were there, although it was supposed to be turned back on tonight. Current count: 31,411,620,000,000,000 events. 16,040,610 Higgs-Bosons observed.
    The Higgs-Boson is a pretty rare event, which is why it took so long to prove the thing existed. You have to accelerate a lot of particles to get useful data. The LHC smashes 40,000 particles per second.
    I am forgetting the number now, unfortunately, but i think he said they only save the data from about 1 in 10,000 events, the rest is ordinary and unimportant. Even so, they are creating 2,000 terabytes of data per month. Hence why they created the data warehouses i mentioned above.
    For comparison, i'm expecting to create about five terabytes of 4K video content on this entire trip. In Amanda's and my entire lives leading up to this trip, we have created a combined total of about 8 terabytes of photos and video.
    Then, he de-glazed the smart glass, and gave us a look inside the ATLAS control room, where we could see the rows of computers needed to control the entire Large Hadron Collider. ATLAS is not the only monitoring point for the device, there are two others, but the guide said the entire thing *can* be operated from here.

    As mentioned, it was not currently running, unfortunately. But there were still about half a dozen people in there, working diligently on their computers. I tried to spot someone playing Galaga, but no. It was strict professionalism in there.
    He opened it up for questions, and there were many. Most of the other people on the tour with me were actual scientists. Most everything that came up was far beyond my level of understanding. I just stood in the back and listened.
    I was still holding out hope that we'd be able to see the collider itself. I knew the tour did not include tunnel access, but i hoped for a glimpse through a window, or something. I thought he had said there would be a point where we could look down into the tunnel and see a bit of it, but that never came.
    A man in a suit popped in through the door we'd entered the building from. "Hey. Gotta wrap it up. It's time to go," he said.
    "Ah yes, we were just finishing," the guide said.
    I checked my watch. I'd started a walk when the tour started. It was showing 1:11. I thought we should still have 20 minutes. I was still hoping to see the collider.
    Eh. What am i gonna do about it. Doesn't really seem like that's in the cards.
    He led us back outside, still working on answering that last question. Once we were past the gate, he said, "Well, that's all. Um. Bye."
    A few people dispersed immediately. Some were still trying to get their questions answered. I stayed for one more question, and then walked off toward the tram station out front. Where was i even going? I can't remember the name of the place where i started.
    There was a tram sitting at the station, mostly empty, seemingly powered down. A few people had entered. I got a pretty choice seat, looked around, recognized a couple people from the tour, and then figured i should get to work.
    Because i still didn't know where i was going from here. All i knew was i could not stay in Geneva.
    I'd say, "Here's where i started fucking up," but you may have noticed that i've already made a huge mistake. We'll get there. If you noticed, just steep yourself in the anxiety for a bit. If you haven't, well, these words have caused a different kind of anxiety, haven't they?
    It would be pretty easy to go to Bern tonight, it's a short train ride, and then i can have some more time in Geneva before i go. Maybe see some of...that...Convention.......stuff.
    I was leaning away from Bern, though, because i'd kind of decided not to retread any more of Amanda's and my ground from 2013.
    Plus, i just really had my heart set on Italy. Either Turin or Milan, and i'd already determined that Turin has no hostels. I remember Milan having some pretty nice-looking ones the last time i looked, though.
    Looked at train times, there were a few decent options for routes, although all of them would require me to make seat reservations for €15. Should take about four hours, not too bad.
    Let me just verify there's still a good hostel available...switched over to Hostelworld, found one that i really liked.
    Yeah. Okay, everything's lining up. Let's go ahead and pull the trigger on this.
    I booked the hostel. Non-refundable.
    Oh, wait. As soon as i clicked the button, that thought popped into my head.
    There's an order of operations to this, and i've just done it backwards. Book the train first, then the hostel.
    Okay, it's probably fine. Back to the Eurail app. Here's the train i want, here's the seat reservation link, click on that, and...
    Not available.
    It's.
    It's sold out.
    Oh shit. Oh fuck.
    There's one that's an hour later. That'll get me into Milan at 10:45pm, though, and it's a 45 minute walk to the hostel, and reception closes at midnight, so that's cutting it pretty close. Well, let's...
    That's sold out too.
    Oh god damn it.
    Anything later than that is an overnight, which will leave me with a five-hour layover in the middle of nowhere, i.e., a cold nap on the train platform.
    Ugh, fuck. Is there any other way to get to
    MY BACKPACK
    OH NO
    I LEFT MY BACKPACK AT CERN
    FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK
    I'm already 20 minutes away by tram. I am almost back to my train station of origin.
    What else can i do?
    At the next stop, i hopped off, waited for the next Route 18 going the other way, and rode another 20 minutes back to CERN, all the while getting emails from Hostelworld saying "Congrats! Milan is booked!" and "Your Reservation at QUO Milano - Confirmed!" and notifications from the Milan chat in the Hostelworld app, asking if anyone wants to do a bar crawl or asking where the best place for dinner is.
    I've now lost almost an hour of potential travel time. If there even were any options for getting to Milan, they were getting slimmer by the moment, as i trammed myself in the wrong direction.
    I got to CERN and retrieved my bag, no problem. For some reason i had convinced myself that they would be closed when i got there, but i was doing that thing that i do every now and then where i confused 15:00 for 5:00. I've had my watch set to military time for literally my entire life. I don't know why this still happens to me. Usually only when i'm panicking anyway, i guess. I'd already made plans to bang on that glass wall until a security guard came to let me in, although it was only 15:25, there's no way the whole staff cleared out within 25 minutes of close, right?
    Actually, in Europe, yes, i would believe that could happen. People have stronger unions and are more protective of their time away from work.
    I recognized two more people from the tour, just leaving at the same time i was walking out again.
    I spent the whole tram ride back to the train station trying different combinations of nearby stations, trying to piece together my own route, and find something that would work. I used Google Maps also, sometimes it comes up with options that the Eurail Planner app doesn't. I finally found something that should work. There were two options, they'd get me to Milan at about the same time, and i'd have about an hour to wait at the Geneva station before going. Getting out of Geneva would be free, but i'd still have to make a €13 seat reservation for the second leg. It was a choice between a layover in Bern, or in Brig.
    I chose Bern, because at least that way, if something went wrong, at least i was in Bern.
    I booked the seat reservation for Bern to Milan.
    With that hour i would now have, i first checked Atlas Obscura to see if anything was near the train station. No luck. I'd wanted to try a local Geneva food while i was here, since i was getting limited Geneva time anyway, but now it looked like it was gonna be train station food. I still hadn't eaten all day. It was 4:15pm.
    The Geneva Central train station, or at least the end of it i found myself on, had pretty limited options for food. I ended up at an Italian place called Il Forno, and got a slab of margherita pizza. I saw the clerk take it off the buffet and put it into the oven to warm up before packaging it and handing it off to me, but by the time i got up to the platform to eat it, it was room temperature again. It was decent. Might've been happier with a sandwich.
    As i stood on the platform, waiting for the train to take me to Bern, a woman who'd been standing near me for a while suddenly turned and approached. "Excusez-moi," she began, followed by a bunch of French. I hesitated, so she said, "Oh, parlez-vous français?"
    "Eh, un peu, mais ce n'est pas bon," i replied. Nailed it.
    "English?"
    "Yes, please."
    "Do you have experience with this? Do you know how this is going to work?" she asked, showing me her phone. It was a message from SBB, the train company running the line we were about to get on. It was in French. "It says there's a disruption on the line between Romont and Fribourg. It says passengers traveling toward Zurich from Lausanne can travel via Biel/Bienne."
    "Oh," i said, slowly processing. "I came in this morning from Biel/Bienne and it was fine." Trevor, i don't think that's what she was asking.
    "I'm going to Bern. Does that mean i should get off at Lausanne?"
    "I'm not sure," i said. "Where did you get this information? I'm going to Bern also, and this hasn't been sent to me."
    "It's from SBB, it's in the app," she said.
    "Oh, i don't have that, i have Eurail," i said, pulling up my app. There were no such reports in the Eurail app.
    We talked about it for a few minutes more, and she said, "Maybe i can ask someone else, with more experience with this sort of thing."
    "That's probably a good idea. And if you find out, can you please let me know, too?"
    As she walked away, i pulled up the SBB web site directly. I found the announcement in English. It says there will be a free bus service between Romont and Fribourg.
    "Okay," she said, returning. "That girl over there says that the majority of people on the train are going to Bern, it should just re-route the train via Biel/Bienne."
    "Oh, good," i said. "That would be really convenient. I found the announcement, and it looks like they're operating buses between those stops. They might just have us get off the train at Romont, put us on a bus, and take us to Fribourg. I have had that happen to me before." It did, between Frankfurt and Budapest, in 2013. It was very confusing, nothing was explained to us, and mobile data wasn't as prevalent then. "I hope you're right, though, that would be much better. Although i feel like i am going to miss my connection in Bern."
    We ended up making small talk for a while. She's French, has been living in Geneva for a few years, and is moving up to Bern to learn German. She said she was happy to have someone to practice speaking English with, i told her she was doing great, everything sounded perfect, i wouldn't have even known she was new to the language. She said that meant a lot, coming from an American. She offered to let me practice speaking French with her, but i was not confident enough for that.
    A train pulled in. It was labeled for Lausanne.
    "Is this our train?" i asked.
    "I'm not sure. Maybe we can just get on, and get off in Lausanne?"
    We boarded the train, and she quickly found someone cleaning. They had a conversation in French. Another woman had joined us, she was also asking questions in French.
    The monitor in the main entryway to the train car said St. Gallen, which is the direction the train was supposed to be going, according to the Eurail app. So i was sure we were in the right place.
    We parted ways, as she headed to her assigned seat, and i stayed in the first class car. As soon as i was seated, i pulled up the Eurail app, to see if there was any way i was still making it to Milan.
    There was one more train leaving Bern for Milan, a half hour after the one i had already purchased a seat reservation for, with an additional transfer...in Brig.
    Son of a biscuit.
    If i'd made the other choice in the first place...
    I put in all of my information to buy the seat reservation, but did not click confirm. This way i was ready for it, but i wasn't going to pay until i was sure i could make that train. I hoped i'd still be able to make the reservation at the last minute like that; Eurail requires the reservations to be purchased 3 hours in advance when you go through them. Fortunately, ÖBB doesn't have that requirement if you book the reservations directly through them. But, the whole reason trains have seat reservations sometimes is because those are the ones they expect to fill up...

    The train reached Lausanne. There had been no announcements regarding the disruption, although i felt like the French announcements had been significantly longer than the English ones. Maybe it was cleared up? Maybe we'd still make it to Bern?
    The train did not divert to Biel/Bienne. At Romont, everyone was requested to disembark.
    I followed the throng around the station, and got on a bus marked Fribourg.
    It was 30 minutes on the bus. I watched 6:35 tick by. The train i had purchased a reservation for had just left Bern.
    Once i was off that bus, i checked schedules. The next train to Bern would be leaving Fribourg at 7:04.
    The last train to Milan left Bern at 7:07.
    That's it. There's no way i'm making it to Milan tonight.
    I got on Hostelworld and booked two nights at the only hostel in Bern that still had availability, Hostel 77. The rating's a solid 9.3 from over 1,000 reviews, and it's not *too* pricey... Which is great, because i would have accepted anything at this point.
    I emailed QUO Milano, explaining the situation. "I know i can't cancel my booking, but i was hoping it might be possible to move the dates to September 27-29?" I still have enough time to see Milan before i go to Sitges, if i go straight from here. If they'll let me move the dates, then at least i haven't thrown that money straight in the fire.
    They emailed back quickly. They can make the change, but the price for those dates will increase by about €20, is that okay?
    "I can live with it, yes. Thank you. See you in two days."

Bern looks very different than i remember. I feel like Amanda and i must have come in through a different train station, because absolutely nothing was familiar.
    I had a 35 minute walk to the hostel, which started with a long downhill, and ended with a long uphill. I was sweating bullets by the time i walked in.

    The clerk was very pleasant. I've forgotten his name, but he regaled me with tales of his visits to Wisconsin; he has family up in Superior, and he had a wonderful time with friends in New Glarus. I also bought a vegan lemon poppyseed cookie and a ginger drink from him.
    Two of my roommates were in the room when i got up there. They were very pleasant, saying hello as i entered the room, small bit of chit chat.
    "I have to ask," i said after a moment. "Your accents...New Zealand?"
    "Yes! Are you American?"
    So we got to talking about that for a bit. They were also familiar with Wisconsin, and i told them a bit about our trip to New Zealand.
    "What was your favorite place in New Zealand?"
    "Oh, hmm. Probably Milford Sound."
    "Yeah, that's what everyone says!"
    Nice couple. They are also doing the Eurail pass, with extremely loose plans, very similar to what i'm doing.
    They left for dinner, while i got my things set up, and picked up writing where i'd left off from the train. We talked a bit more after they came back. Didn't get their names, though.
    All right. Well, i guess i'm in Bern. The situation turned out okay in the end.
    I should've just gone to Zurich, though.