Visiting CERN and the Museum of Reformation in Geneva

Oh the irony.  March and early April was so sunny and great but the weather turned badly in the 2nd week of April. Right when we arrived in Geneva, we were treated on 2 days of strong continuous rain.  Locals had said not to trust the pessimistic forecast too much because in an mountain area they often get it wrong and I had hoped for showers with some dry breaks in it.  But nope.... code red in the Alpine mountains where they got dumped with over a meter snow overnight and just plain boring continuous grey rain in the Geneva valley. 

So instead of strolling in the parks along the lake, we had to adjust our plans and look for museums.  And we picked some that are very specific to Geneva. 


CERN
The prestigious international scientific center of CERN finds itself at the edge of the city of Geneva and the French border.  It is easily accessible through a 20' tramride.  And its visitor's center is for free!

The reception sent us upstairs to a long hallway with side halls across the street on each side. It was buzzing with school groups visiting. First we could go and watch different movies about CERN's history but also about the big scientific theory's from eg Einstein etc that explain space but also micro chemistry that are at the base of the work here at CERN.   The movies were in English/ French and quite hard so they bored the children quickly. Too bad because I wouldn't have mind watched half an hour more of them to get a bit of base before visiting the exhibitions. 

In the exhibitions we learned about the particle accellerator tunnels under the ground of Geneva and how they function. But little boards mentioning electrons and protons flying around, colliding, creating new mass etc and how that mass is "tracked" in the accelerators...well at high level as I write it here, I could understand but all of the details were Chinese to me.   It was hard enough to try to explain the children that cells are composed of electrons, protons and neutrons but I couldn't tell them how the collisions make mass that disappears again etc.   Really this top notch scientific center was pure magic to us.   
But it was fun and impressive to stare at all this proof of "magic".  

The first internet computer. 

We played with the interactive displays to see magnetism, mechanism and lots of concepts without being able to plug it all together in the bigger picture of CERN. That's ok, we had fun. 

I love the humour!! Scientists can be fun too

We were playing apparently a quantum physics particle that has 2 forms at the same time unless there's an other part in sight or so....euhm...what? 

Smiley faces outside after our visit. We had fun and I can recommend it but I wish I understood a tiny bit more. It was a bit like listening to Sheldon Cooper's mumble jumble discussions in the Big Bang Theory. I expected him to show up at Cern at any moment and start drawing an equation on a flip chart. Haha, they really should record an exhibition movie with him working on something....

The museum of Reformation

Next to the Geneva cathedral downtown is the museum of Reformation. Since Geneva is the town of Calvin and its city growth has expanded through the impulse of the reformation, it was interesting to visit the museum.  At least here I felt familiar about the topic and could explain the children a bit more, when needed. 

They did a tour with an iPad that scanned some art pieces interactively, which they enjoyed.  In the meantime, I enjoyed reading all the info and exploring more at my pace in quiet. 
 

It was sort of interesting to see the entire history seemingly described a bit "from the other side" with my catholic roots.   And as Kabouter stated "the arguments of the protestants" made so much sense. Of course they did and do! 

The only thing that made my eyes roll was a room with "protestant" contributions to the world.  Jeans, the saxophone, ... everything got claimed if they were used by populations that are merely protestant.  Yes workers in the USA have made jeans great but I don't see why reformation has anything to do with it apart from a pure population correlation?  The Saxophone is a Belgian invention (does that make it catholic? surely not) but because it is mostly used in Jazz in African-American populations it was listed there. Huh?? Come on.  Shall we call fries or paella than a catholic contribution to the world? Tsss.