Gotta Share, Gotta Share, Gotta Share an Eclair!

In Chicago you have weekends for BBQ ribs, in Santa Cruz weekends on the boardwalk for clam chowder and in Paris weekends for the Eclair! Fouchon, a rather pricey, upscale gourmet shop is gotta be starting a new tradition by celebrating the first weekend of the Eclair this Sept. 5-6. It's gotta cheer up all the Parisians back to work after their month long holiday. You take your pick of salty or sweet. Maybe their web-site will entice you to join me here for a taste test?
Eclairs have never looked so pretty or sounded so delicieux.

Wifi Gardens, Internet Blues, and Homecomings!

Dear blog fans,

Sorry I have not written recently but I have been without internet at the Paris apartment for days and then took a quick journey up to Oxford, England in between my internet blues. More on that trip in another blog. Not having access to the internet at my home away from home forced me to hit the streets and discover what other internet options Paris has to offer. I quickly found that McDonald's offers free wifi and so do most cafes. Believe it or not almost all the parks in Paris offer free wifi too! Yes, you can sit, picnic and read your latest email in your local park. The nice thing is the internet is free.

Unfortunately for me wifi connections requiring I provide my own hardware would not work as my computer is so old that the battery no longer keeps the charge. This can easily be solved by buying a new one of course or better yet fixing the internet at home. Yet, I ran into another interesting French phenomena. Most stores are CLOSED in August for the entire month. I mean quite literally the entire month.

I had always heard that the French go on vacation in August but I did not think the entire city of Paris would be absolutely empty. I took a quick survey of the restaurants listed in the Michelin Restaurant Guide for Paris and 85% of them are closed in the month of August. On our market street of Rue Daguerre, over 70% of the shops have signs saying closed until Sept. 1st. It's a new surprise every day on which ones will be open. Sundays mean even the stores that are open in August may be closed. Most of the tourist sites are still open but quite honestly it somehow does not feel like Paris without all the noise of the Parisians. However if you don't like crowded Metros, August may be a great time to visit Paris. This unique French tradition presented yet another obstacle to resolving my internet blues.

Little did I know that the light at the end of the tunnel was the great Parisian Reentree! (this word is not correctly accented) . The advertisements through - out the city changed from Soldes to REENTREE! In case I had not mentioned this before there are two months in France in which stores can have sales - January and July and Soldes means Sales in French.) According to the locals Reentree is like Welcome Home! Welcome Back! Happy New Year! Let's celebrate your return! Similar to the Back to School celebrations and store sales except it's for everyone. How fun! I am sure the shop keepers are very excited to have their customers return. And thankfully, the landlord made his reentree back to Paris and fixed up the wifi for me. Goodbye internet blues! In a few weeks I will be celebrating my reentree as well.

Be well, do good work and keep in touch!

Les Grandes Eaux Musicales (The Musical Water Fountains of Versailles)

Though some of the water fountains of Versailles may be not be impressive by today’s standards, it is impressive to think that in a era where indoor plumbing and running water were not a standard in homes that Versailles had 34 fountains and to operate them a river had to be re-routed. These fountains were only possible because of new technology developed and commissioned by French King Louis XIV also known as the Sun King. These fountains were created much like kids placing their thumb over a water hose and creating a spray. It was rumored that the water supply was so low that the fountains were only run when the King was within eyesight of them. This might explain the limited operation of the fountains which is only on the weekends in the summer during certain hours. Little has been done to alter this technology and the pipes used then have never been replaced and that is impressive.

From the granite slab patio near the Chateau you can see distant fountains shooting up like a whale’s spout above the shrubbery sea. We made a day of waltzing to the Baroque music played in the vast maze of manicured shrubbery and stumbling upon all the fountains hidden in rooms of shrubbery. Some of the geyser-like fountains were integrated into the golden sculptures of Bachus, Apollo or Neptune and often surrounded by large reflecting pools and evenly stepped waterfalls. While today many gardens are designed to look like they might in nature, the fountains and gardens of Versailles were a sculptured and manicured and nature tamed by human will. Even the smells of the garden were enhanced by artificially perfuming the air to lure you closer to the spray. A custom used during the Sun King’s reign and it was heavenly.

The universe is on the starting blocks of change….

photo descriptions -
Row 1 - Cern smart car, cooling building with lots of water running through it, entrance sign, interior poster,
Row 2 - CERN cafeteria, plaque in hallway where web was invented, coffee machine, tent buildings,
Row 3 - trunk with 20 wheels to move detector to CERN, observation tour, nice red building, vineyards surrounding CERN,
Row 4 - Sheep at CERN, interior of building, sign for Atlas experiment

This fall in Geneva, Switzerland the world’s biggest scientific experiment, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is about to get started at the international lab called CERN. This experiment may explain why matter is matter. In an earlier blog I discussed our car ride to Geneva, Switzerland to visit CERN. The journey to CERN was magical, fun and peaceful but was only a teaser to what was to come with my visit to CERN. J. always talks about CERN with great fondness and excitement and I have heard quite a few stories over and over again. After years of hearing these stories that have now reached mythical dimensions in my head, I finally arrived with eager anticipation to conduct my own experiment and not only observe but also to participate in a
small way.



The first time I entered CERN, I half expected a parade of bands marching down Blvd. Einstein or at the very least the fanfare of some drummers’ drumming. I only have to guess that these events are in another dimension. However, I could not miss the buzz and the murmur of excitement among the hum of cooling towers and computers – as J. calls it it’s the buzz of a common purpose. The place felt like the anticipation of a baseball game about to begin between the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs. After 20+ years, 10,000+ people working
representing 60+ countries from all the major continents, this Sept. 10th will be the big turn on where protons will be created, smashed and the detectors will pick up their tracks in the search for a particle called the Higgs, and maybe a black hole or two and the ability to study of the quantum affects of gravity and maybe other warped dimensions. On Sept. 10th, the big turn on is being celebrated at parties across the globe. Maybe the Large Hadron Rap (youTube video – very entertaining) will help get a party started in your neck of the woods.



You would hardly suspect that there is a serious scientific experiment going on in these very non-descript office buildings among the sunflower fields, grazing sheep and vineyards. The first clue that something may not be as is it seems is the guarded checkpoint scanning badges of folks in cars, bikes and on – foot and it’s not the border crossing. The hotel we stayed in was in
France so every morning we crossed the border into Switzerland but I found that I was asked for my CERN visitor pass more times than my passport. The streets of the lab’s grounds are creatively named after famous scientists like M. Plank or Fermi or Einstein. The buildings and their names take after minimalism with names like building 40 or building 20. A few buildings have been embellished –like this one with the bike. Some buildings are actually canvas tents that sound like a drum when tapped. Finally I found the drums! Every so often the building’s lawn is graced with blue columns that kids play on. Could it be a contemporary version of the columns found at the Forum in Rome? Nope - These large blue columns are the magnets that act as a kind of leash to guide the electrons around the 27KM of track underground. I can only
assume that they are not working and since they are special orders cannot be returned and henceforth trash turned to art.



Inside these plain white Corbusier type buildings are office spaces that have been loved over the years with yellowing posters of past experiments, maybe a comic or two related about physics, stacks of old hardware, chairs, empty boxes, desks on every wall and whiteboards that one day might just be sold as contemporary art in a Sotheby’s auction with colorful circles and arrows, a
bunch of Greek characters punched up with some Roman numbers. I briefly thought about doing some Jay Walking through the halls and ask a random stranger, “What are the quarks and their names?” as a kind of test that this place was not a Hollywood set. The odds are pretty high that not only could the random stranger name the quarks but they would also be happy to explain the math behind them too. I may have even found that I had tapped the shoulder of a former Nobel Prize winner, I can’t recognize them but others can and it was pointed out to me on several occasions. For example I passed Jack Steinberger while viewing this plaque – “The Halls where the Web was born.”


Yes, the web was born at CERN and there are T-shirts for sale and posters too with this claim to fame. The technology to develop this experiment has been applied to many other fields like medical imaging and the computer industry too. I learned that CERN is in the Guinness Book of World Record for transferring 6GB of data in 1 second from Geneva to Southern, CA.


The more impressive and colorful structures at CERN are underground and these are the detectors. I was very fortunate to arrive the last week they were giving tours of the detectors and able to join one. Some folks will where these little blue radiation monitors the ensure a person is not exposed to too much radition. The tour begins in the detector’s control room. A very impressive space and looks a bit like a newsroom. The inside of the building that had the door to enter the detector is painted in wonderful colors of green and red and orange and blue. Our tour guide entered through a green framed door so that a blue light could scan her iris. She let us in blue door and we had to put on red hard hats. We entered a yellow elevator filled with photos of putting the experiment together. The day we toured the detector they were testing the alarm system which is a bit alarming after learning about the radiation level badges but we were assured it was only a test. Upon exiting the elevator we went through a blue door and entered a very long straight concrete hallway with a green door at the end and then into the detector area. I have to say that I have seen a Discover program about the Atlas detector and numerous other videos but none of those are like experiencing the thing up close and personal. You walk into this gigantic cavity with an enormous metal circular thing that I may have thought to be something to use to travel to the center of the earth. The place is painted in blue, yellow, green and red and there are coils of copper wires, silver wires, black cords, pipes that are in some organized chaos. The thing must be a couple of stories tall and it would not fit in my camera frame. There was a long spider like vehicle at the bottom. Unforgettable!



I asked the tour guide if the painted colors meant anything. She looked a bit puzzled and said she did not think so. I am not sure she gets this question all that often but the colors were impressive to me. I am not sure if that was b/c everything above ground is mostly white or if I had been influenced by visiting the Pompidou Center in Paris. The Pompidou in Paris has a similar color scheme and the colors on the pipes actually indicate their purpose. No one I talked too seems to know why they chose the colors they did. But I am still searching for that person who does know.



Another mystery I am trying to solve is why a large observation tour was built. It marks the border between France and Switzerland within CERN grounds. In fact you can dine in either France or Switzerland depending one which cafeteria you choose. The cafeteria in France is surrounded by vineyards of course. The CERN cafeterias are almost talked about as much as the detector. They both serve a great lunch and dinner which includes sushi, homemade pasta and a desert table that reminds me of the Italian wedding sweets table. I got to try Swiss wine that is not sold outside of Switzerland. However, I believe the most famous thing about the cafeterias is the espresso and the espresso machines they have available. Whenever someone talks about the CERN cafeteria they always mention the espresso. They get a gleam of joy in their eyes. The availability of coffee and espresso at CERN is a significant part of the culture and has been replicated at Fermi Lab in Batavia, IL with the Espresso Café and folks often will chip in to buy a fancy espresso machine within the physics department. The coffee vending machines located through-out the CERN have about 20 different options.



The food is good at CERN cafeterias but the company is even better. We ran into so many old good friends from Fermi lab there was hardly a night we didn’t have a dinner invitation. After a good meal everything looks more beautiful than it already is. CERN is wonderful place to be.




P.S. View from hotel room overlooking Geneva and CERN.

Pekin, 2008 - What Olympic Sports are you watching in the U.S?

Bonjour!

As I only have access to French T.V. I am experiencing the Olypmpics from the French point of view. There was a French broadcaster who was wearing a T-shirt with the UK flag on it and every so often the screen would flash with a scoreboard of the gold medal count with "The Queen's Loyal Subjects" versus the "Froggies". I am not exactly sure why there is this English guy. The Olypmic coverage is especially focused on fencing or judo. Paris has a large judo complex and it's a very popular sport. Other sports that have been shown but not as much are swimming, bandminton, woman's bike racing, hand ball, long boat racing and a few seconds of gymnanistics. In fencing, it seems that you must constantly tell the judges you are the best and that you should get the point b/c they touch each other with the long pointy sword at the same time. Or so J. tells me as he does a little translating. I understand only a few words here and there but not enough to follow the entire broadcast. So what is being covered in America? If you have a moment drop me line and let me know!

Somewhere over the rainbow!

During dinner yesterday we looked out the window to see this! Thankfully the thunderstorms have cooled the city down and we can catch up on some much needed sleep. It's been too hot to sleep some nights.

Driving Along in My Automobile

More Photos here

Our journey from Paris to Genève was truly wonderful. Lucky for us we had an air conditioned car at times b/c it did get hot and that might be why it used diesel gas. The countryside is made of rolling hills and such a lush green similar to PA or parts of Virginia in the summer. There are fields of wheat, sunflowers, vineyards and fields of white cows. A chateau often sits on the hilltops off in the distance. We stopped off at Chablis and admired the wine chateaus. We traveled through the Valley of Ouchy and then decided to stop off at Bourg en Bress, a famous region known for their chicken with white sauce. Just a little trivia fact that J’s knows. This town’s brown roadside historical marker had a picture of a chicken on it. It seems all the towns we passed had their own claim to fame they advertised on these historical brown signs. So we got of the auto route and picked the first restaurant we came to as J. was running late for a meeting in Genève. J. noticed a little sign for an auberge, Auberge des Rippes, across the street from the sunflower field. He has an eye for these things. As we walked in you could tell they were not used to travelers actually stopping in. At first we were nervous about getting the menu de jour expecting that the cost might be more cash than we had on hand. But it was so much cheaper than Paris we thought there must have been a mistake! The chicken was so tasty I think they must have marinated it but they say that’s just the chicken. The table had blue table clothes that sat in a lodge like room decorated with puzzles of local landscapes like Mt Blanc, or some castle I can’t remember the name of now. On our adventures home we also made time to stop off and sample some bubbly and Veuve Abul! We visited the floor and saw where they bottled the wines, riddled the wines. I had not realized they fast freeze the top to collect all the sediment and push it out. It was very reasonably priced and is not currently sold in the US.

The rest stops which are called Aire, were very nice as well and very frequent. Some of the Aires had hotels as could drive for hours and have no place to exit the auto route. All of them had clean bathrooms and among your toilet choices was a room with just a hole in the ground and squat. The majority of the stalls were all little individual rooms with toilettes. Most of the stalls in France are little rooms all their own but often the sink area is unisex which can be a little disconcerting at times. When I visited Paris in 1993 you had to pay for the privilege to use the toilets but this custom seems to be a distant memory for everyone. As you exit there is large red line through the Aire sign.

In a French town called, Flies, we circled around J’s old 1700 farmhouse where he used to live while working in Switzerland. It looked exactly like he had described so many times. Despite the fact that it did not have heat in the winter and he used a sickle to mow the lawn he has very fond memories of the place.

After the day's journey we landed at a hotel called The Bois Joly, the beautiful forest, nestled in an itty bitty alpine village at base of the Jura Mountains overlooking the valley and the Alps. It was more than I could have dreamed as our room had a stunning view of the Alps, overlooking the city lights of Geneva and it just so happened to be a full moon rising over the landscape that evening. I took a long moon bath and watched the twinkle of the city and the twinkle of the stars as I peacefully dozed off.