Switzerland and CERN

ACK!!!!! THIS FORMATING IS THE WORST















So Julianne has been bugging me to put some pictures up about CERN and what I am doing and such so here we go. The above picture is a typical picture of CERN. This is on my walk to my office. I just learned how to do panoramic pictures while here. I have a bunch more but they are BIG.

People ride bikes more here, but actually not as much as I would have thought. CERN has a bunch that you can borrow, but I don't think I am going to get one while here. There is a quite a waiting list and I am almost a month on it.

So I went to an awesome castle called Chillon. It is supposedly Switzerland's most visited historical place and I can see why. Is is a 12th century castle that was never attacked so it's condition is fantastic. I went with some other people from Purdue and we rented a car and split the cost. It was a really fun day. I am just going to put the pictures so you can look at them. Oh, the clock is from the 15th century and is still working! Cool eh. there was an even older clock that this replaced after it stopped working. The old clock's weights were cement! Never really thought of a castle as a place to put a clock!

There was not a lot of things in the castle but what was neat is that you could have full reign of the place going almost everywhere. They had some cool cannons (picture) that I really liked. I think it is funny in movies you see cannons with huge balls, like a bowling ball, but from what I have seen of cannons (and watching Mythbusters) most cannons shoot more like a 3-5 kg ball that isn't that large. Anyways I digress.

So for you literary buffs this is the castle that gave Lord Byron some inspiration for something he wrote. (I'm no literary buff) You can see in one of my pictures that they put a little plaque around where he carved his initials (what a vandal) when he visited the place.

I didn't post any pictures of it but that evening there was a festival and they had a troubadour and a juggler, some historical music, fighters, a priest, a lady giving birth (not for real, just a demo.... go to know how to do that), a forlorn lady, weapons expert, meat and cheese over the fire, and MORE! It was a lot of fun and I am really glad that I went. I have always wanted to go to a castle since I was a wee lad and this one certainly did not disappoint. Now that I have tasted castle I want to see more though. My only regret is that Danny my best friend wasn't there. That would have have been perfect (ok with his wife and son and my wife and son, but being greedy never helped anyone)