A Visit From Father

Hello all!

Had a lovely time this weekend. My father managed to maneuver his way into being sent to Rome, Barcelona and Madrid for business with the main purpose of visiting me at CERN. He finished up business in Rome, which from what I could tell required walking all over the city sampling the best restaurants, and flew to Geneva where I met him. We took pictures, but I wasn't able to get them from him. Hopefully he will be kind enough to email them to me and I can post them.

He had booked a hotel that Yiota recommended to us a little ways up into the Jura mountains but still a very easy drive to Saint Genis (and Geneva). She described it as a nice mountain hotel in Crozet, near the ski resort. She described it as having a Swiss Alpine theme. She did not mention that it appears to be run by ghosts.

When Dad and I arrived, we parked in the completely empty parking lot and got out to head into the hotel. All of the outside lights were on and none of those inside. The reception was through a smallish door (rather than the main entrance one would expect of a hotel) and, though it wasn't yet 8 pm, there was no sign of any people at all. We looked around for someone, even walking all the way around the hotel itself to see if there was some other entrance, but there was no one about. It was all rather eerie. There were no instructions on how to check in, no cards with out name on it telling us where to go, and both phone numbers given in case of problems not only had no answer, they did not connect!

There were two keys left out on a board with pegs so, not knowing what else to do, we took both of them and went to explore the rooms. One of them had a set of bags already in it, but the other one did not. We had booked a room with two beds, but these both had only one bed. We decided to go get dinner to see if there was anyone present when we got back. Dinner was delicious and I'll get to it in a moment. We even stopped at Yiota's to ask what exactly we were supposed to do in the hotel. When we returned there was still the nice closed reception box with two keys hanging on pegs. Regardless or whether or not it WAS ours, we decided that if we took the apparently empty room and the owners returned or the police showed up to kick us out then someone could tell us which room is ours.

We spent a rather uncomfortable night (for me at least, my father is an expert at taking up all the space in a bed) but managed to make it until morning without being interrupted by the room's occupants or their deceased reanimated remains so we assumed this must have been the room meant for us.

Upon going downstairs, we discovered the parking lot to be full of cars, people everywhere, and breakfast well underway. We gave up trying to make sense of it all, and went down to eat.

Now, I mentioned dinner. Actually the main planning I had done for my father's visit to CERN involved what we would be eating. The night he arrived we went to a restaurant right at the Crozet ski area, attached to another hotel that specializes in duck, approximately a 5 minute walk from our hotel. Both Dad and I love duck. It did not disappoint. We kicked our french-meal-athon off to a good start with amazing duck in an incredible sauce accompanied by what may now be my favorite white wine (a pinot blanc from Alsace).

We loved it so much (I had been there once previously with Bjorn and Yiota) that we returned the next night to have another dinner option involving roast duck leg that was even better than the duck in the sauce. Both of our favorite part of thanksgiving is turkey skin, we looove it no matter how bad it is for us. Duck skin is one of the few things that must have accidentally made its way from heaven to descend into the pallet of mortals. Especially when prepared by the French.

In addition to the delicious duck, I had planned two other meals: Mont d'Or cheese and raclette. Saturday morning we went to the market in Ferney Voltaire that I have bragged about often enough in this blog and bought some of that delectable wrinkled moldy cheese that I gave detailed instructions for preparing. This was a great batch and we had it with Yiota and Katerina for lunch. The raclette we had the following evening (Sunday) with my friend Laurel at her apartment. We borrowed Yiota's raclette set and enjoyed it immensely. Dad had never had it before, and I think he approved as much as I did having it for the fifth time since coming here. It is delicious. For those who do not know, raclette involves taking cheese, melting it (often with thin sliced meat), and pouring it on potatoes. Often small, tangy pickles and bread are involved. It is delectable.

Our only other meal, aside from breakfast in the on again off again hotel, involved some wonderful swiss sausage and hash browns (I didn't know the swiss made hash browns, but these were great) with nice spicy mustard in the German style at a cafe in the old town of Geneva. With beer.

Activity wise, we pretty much went strait to dinner from the air port on Friday so we had the enjoyment of figuring out the hotel (and duck) for that evening. The next day was the market which I had been wanting to show to someone who reads this blog for a while now. It did not disappoint. We also swung by Voltaire's Chateau which is right next to the market (Ferney is not a huge town). It is only open later in the year, but it looks nice from the outside.

Following the Mont d'Or lunch, I showed him around CERN. Dad was very reminded of numerous research places that he has worked in: they all are big warehouses with random tools left lying around large expensive looking equipment. Sadly we weren't able to go down into the ALICE pit since the beam was on and we would have died a horrible melting death had we tried. Or more likely been kicked off the premises. However, the control room at ALICE as well as numerous detector expert stations and the like made for what I hope was a good tour. I even took him to the touristy bit where it explains a bit about quark gluon plasma and some of the various detectors at ALICE.

We then walked to the main site in Meryin and I showed him around there, introducing him to Dhevan and Matt in my office who were in on Saturday because postdocs and PhD students have no free time. Sadly I don't know as much about the CERN main site as Bjorn does so I wasn't able to give as insightful a tour as he, but we still got plenty of exercise and may have wound up one or two places we shouldn't have been, but purely by accident I assure you. We had fun. After that we didn't do much beyond vegetate since we had walked rather a long way that day.

Sunday we spent most of the day in Geneva, enjoying the warm spring weather and bright sunshine. I got sunburned of course... I had tried to buy a hat at the Ferney-Voltaire market but they had none my size that weren't bonnet shaped or things that even Audrey Hepburn wouldn't be caught in. Oh well. We had a good time, visiting several places that those of you who followed Andy and I in our Europe trip may have heard written of in our Geneva post. Dad and I wandered through many of the same areas of the old town, including past the giant chess set in the park. We also wound up at the Rolex corporate headquarters which looked wealthy enough to be the Rolex corporate headquarters. Some great landscaping going on there.

Monday the only thing we had time for was checking out and informing the hotel that no we had not stayed for seven nights nor did we leave charge several large dinners at the restaurant to our room. We got payment straightened out and Dad dropped me at CERN on the way to the airport. It was quite good to see him and I REALLY don't feel like working today so I'm posting in this blog instead. Then I'm going to go do some work. Sigh.

Ciao!