My Lame-o Pictures from CERN

Last week, I traveled to CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), near Geneva, Switzerland, for work. I took a camera, but returned home with a whopping three pictures. The only place I went that was really photo-worthy, a French farmer’s market, was the one place I forgot to take the camera. But you’ve seen pictures of those before… miles and miles of vegetables that look almost comically perfect. And I can tell you, those pictures are accurate. The French are really serious about their farmer’s market.  Seriously, it made Ithaca’s fabulous farmer’s market seem like a road-side fruit stand.

The trip was really frenzied. Continental continued its spree brilliant customer service by denying me boarding on the flight out of Ithaca due to the plane being overweight.   So the trip got delayed by 24 hours and I ended up giving a talk basically right after I got off the trans-Atlantic flight. I don’t remember it very well — it was probably amusing, if not very informative.

I’d been to CERN as a summer student 9 years ago, but had forgotten just what a weird place it is. Building 40, where my workshop was, is about as nice as it gets:

And being there feels a bit like your hanging out inside R2-D2.  It is sort of the main building where a lot of meetings happen, and on the bottom floor are four doors labeled  A,B,C and D, each leading to conference rooms.  After my talk, I left our meeting for a few minutes and then realized that I didn’t remember which room I’d walked out of.  So I tried them all, but all of the conference rooms were occupied by particle physicists, who are a very homogeneous bunch.  Every room was occupied by a bunch of old white dudes, and I could not for the life of me remember which ones were “my” old white dudes.  Eventually I had to get help from a friend to find the right room again!

I’d also forgotten how very male CERN is too.  Particle physics definitely doesn’t have many women, and most of the people I work with are guys, but here at Cornell, when I walk outside my building, there are other girls wandering around.  Not so much at CERN.  Everwhere I went, a lot of people did double-takes when I saw me.  Maybe it was because I looked so deranged and sleep-deprived, but I think it was more like “OMG it’s a girl!”

The bathroom labels  at CERN (or possibly elsewhere in France/Swizerland?) are pretty amusing:

You have to look hard to tell the difference, no?  But we wouldn’t want the bathroom labels to be behind the times fashion-wise.  I’m kind of surprised the girl isn’t wearing kinky boots too.

Overall, it was a nice trip. I got to catch up with some good friends from grad school, ate lots and lots of good food, and hopefully convinced a couple particle physicists that the high-pitched voice they’ve been hearing at teleconferences is attached to a person who does occasionally know what she’s talking about.  It was also very exhausting, and I’ve just got a few days to recover before flying out to San Diego on Monday for a conference.  But, I’ve heard rumors that they speak English and accept dollars out there, and even have this weird thing called a beach!