We spent time in two different parts of Switzerland. Our first week we
were in the French speaking southwest, around the lake from Geneva in Blonay
visiting friends in La Tour-de-Peilz. The second week we stayed in
Lauterbrunner, which is in the German-speaking Berner Oberland, just south of
(and up the hill from) Interlaken.
We had a lovely apartment in Blonay, we even lucked into internet access
once again, even if it was a little spotty. This time, however, we did not have
the benefit of an internet chair - the laptop had to be at a height that
precluded sitting anywhere but on the floor of the balcony. It was
particularly temperamental about being moved about, so Tasha lined up the
"internet table" for us this time around!
The "internet table"
Anika in glasses, while Tasha
hides behind the cereal!
Sunday in Blonay is steam train
day - it was like a journey back in time.
isn't this a perfect mushroom that Anika captured? It's like one of
those we read about in fairy tales as kids.
La Tour-de-Peilz
Isn't this "tree" amazing! Newenka had never seen a tree with such
multicolored blooms, so she had to have a peek.
Anika and Tasha
join Lydia, Alfred, Laura, Leo and Hugo (missing from photo) in a crazy game
of Pizza!
Vevey
The alphorns playing on market day!
The game museum was a fun
excursion!
Montreaux area
We were too late for the jazz festival, but the scenery is spectacular.
Leysin
A hike in the mountains, or rather a hike down the mountain with our
friends! We drove up a series of very windy roads to the town of
Leysin, where we then took a cable car up to the top of a mountain. It
was beautiful at the top, where we enjoyed a wonderful panoramic view and
Yannis was tempted by the parasailers. Then we hiked halfway down the
hill to find an Alpage, where we ate lunch.
The fromager showed us how he made various varieties of cheese, many of
which we consumed for lunch. With all this downhill walking we all had
sore gluteus's the next day!
"That way"
Swiss Independence Day -
August 1
An interesting aspect was that
all the little towns in the area seemed to have fireworks going - so, you
could watch a beautiful fireworks display in almost any direction. In
addition to the fireworks, our town lit the traditional (and pretty
impressive) bon fire that burned well into the wee hours of the morning (and
was still a smoldering heap in the rain the next morning).
The Labyrinth Park
You aren't even seeing the whole thing here!
This year's puzzle involved going around the world!
CERN
Tasha would have us put this at
the top of the page and it is definitely one of the top highlights of the
trip for her! A humongous "thank you" to Dr. Spiegel for hosting our visit
and letting us see some of the cool things going on at CERN. The size and scale of what they are doing at CERN
is amazing! That one needs something so large to detect something so
small!
Whoa - where are we? Oh yeah, CERN. This section is from
Fermilab.
The CERN accelerator forms a 27km ring that runs beneath Switzerland and
France (here, we're in a tunnel 100m underground in France). In the
photo above, you can barely start to make out the curve in the accelerator
(way off in the distance) - that's one big accelerator!
To detect something very very small, you need something very very large -
notice children bottom left!
This is one of the detector sections
- we think there were 6 of these, along with 2 endcaps - that will be used
to detect muons and other subatomic particles resulting from the collision
of the proton beams.
Clean room visit - assembly area
for some of the detection equipment. Anika loves the matching shoes
:-)
Around
the World With the ArvaMonts
