Another weekend gone and more blisters. I don’t think my feet will like me ever again. We travelled down on Friday night to Geneva. A nice 3 hour train journey we managed to amuse ourselves with a game of cards, chocolate and drinks. After checking into the hostel, we headed to a pub somewhere in Geneva called Mr Pickwicks. Who is Mr Pickwicks? After sitting and watching people drinking due to a pint costing 8.80SFr, we went back to the hostel and went to bed, as one does.
It was an early morning. 6am to be precise. Nga had a tour of CERN booked for 9am, and we had to get up, shower, eat and get to CERN. There was just 13 of us for the tour, since that’s all they had space for. CERN was sort of a “must visit” for me. IAESTE had organised a biking weekend, where you basically cycle around for 150km, which I was really looking forward to. But when Nga announced that she had booked a tour of CERN, I kinda had to go. I mean, I am a “physics student at Imperial College London”…
CERN is the world’s largest particle physics centre, with a giant particle accelerator under part of Switzerland and France. We had a tour by an old guy who had worked there for 28 years. It started with a presentation about CERN, which seemed more like a standard lecture, since everyone lost concentration after about 40 minutes. We then hopped onto a mini-bus and were taken to some place where they had equipment and laboratories. I can’t really remember what everything was, but it looked cool, and the guide told us quite a lot about everything, even though I couldn’t really hear him. I might end up working at CERN one day, that would be nice.
After the tour we headed back to the train station to grab our stuff and go to Lausanne. Leaving our stuff at the guesthouse, we went towards the lake to head for Evian, France! That’s now my 3rd time I’ve been in France. Yay! Just need to visit Germany and Litchenstein and I’ll have been to all the countries surrounding Switzerland.
Evian should sound familiar. If not, you need to drink more water. Evian is a small town in France where all the Evian bottled water comes from. We went up to the fountain where Evian water first came from and we all filled our bottles and drank from it. After a nice walk around the town we headed back across Lake Geneva to Lausanne to spend the rest of the evening relaxing.
Since I didn’t buy any food for dinner, I decided to go out and eat at some restaurant. I’m not too sure what I ordered, but the beef was almost raw but it was pretty nice. Came with a nice serving of fries and salad. Filled me up, but it was pretty expensive, and the service wasn’t that great either. After a quick tour of the old part of Lausanne at night we went back and I managed to get a good nights sleep. It’s been a while since I could sleep without having to set my alarm. I got up at 9am eventually, only to realise that everyone was waiting for me downstairs ready to go.
From Lausanne, we all set off to Montreux. There were two options. An easy hike along Lake Geneva, or a harder hike up Rochers-de-Naye. Since I like pain, I chose Rochers-de-Naye, and said goodbye to being able to walk properly for the next few days. Only Martha, Kasia, Salom? and myself (all Emponians) went on this hike. The rest just stayed in Montreux and visited Chateux de Chillon. We started the hike from the very bottom, i.e. by the lake and started walking up. The tourist office said it would take 5 hours to walk up to the top so it wouldn’t be too easy.
The actual hike was fairly steady, only with a few bits that were somewhat steep, but we kept a fairly fast pace. Except for moments when my muscles gave up! At one point, a tree collapsed behind us. I was under it about a minute before, and it was a good thing that I didn’t stop there. We managed to get to the top in good time, 4.5 hours. Had a quick lunch and then took the train down. We were planning on hiking down also, but we had to meet the rest at 6:45pm and we didn’t have much time left. I think the actual elevation difference we hiked was something like 1600m. Which is quite an achievement, for me anyway. I was out of breath, sweating like mad, and simply tired.
But on the way down it was really nice. Salomé and Martha even jumped in the lake for a quick swim before the meeting point. Wish I bought my swimming shorts so I could join them. It would have been nice. The weather was perfect on Sunday, just the way I like it.
A great weekend. Thanks to Nga for CERN and Martha for Evian and hiking! Apologies to my feet, but just 5 more weeks and you’ll be back home 
