Geneva Switzerland Tour Compliments of Geneva Spirit September 2012

On the last week-end of September I was kindly invited on a Familiarisation Trip (When a Host of a City eg Tourism board invites you to view the sites & venues of their great City) by Geneva Spirit for  3 days/ 2 nights site visit carousel ride.

The Geneva Spirit team headed by Anja Loetscher from the Tourism Board is also made up of a team of Hotel, Venues, Airlines & Travel Partners. Picked up from the airport by the kind Head of Sales of Crowne Plaza Hotels Max Vanbeurden we were whisked along passed the famous Geneva Fountain
(The Jet d'Eau Five hundred litres (132 gallons) of water per second are jetted to an altitude of 140 metres (459 feet) by two 500 KW pumps, operating at 2,400 V, consuming over one megawatt of electricity. The water leaves the nozzle at a speed of 200 km/h (124 mph). When it is in operation, at any given moment there are about 7,000 litres (1849 gallons) of water in the air. Unsuspecting visitors to the fountain—which can be reached via a stone jetty from the left bank of the lake—may be surprised to find themselves drenched after a slight change in wind direction) to the luxurious Inter Continental Hotel Geneva compliments of Director of Sales Angel Gonzalez.

Geneva was a border town, fortified against the Celtic tribe Helvetti, when the Romans took it in 121 BC. It became Christian under the Late Roman Empire, and acquired its first bishop at this time. In the Middle Ages Geneva was ruled by a count under the Holy Roman Empire until the late 14th century, when it was granted a charter giving it a high degree of self-governance. Around this time the House of Savoy came to (at least nominally) dominate the city. In the 15th century, an oligarch republic government emerged with the creation of the Grand Council. In the first half of the 16th century, the Protestant Revolution reached the city, causing religious strife during which Savoy rule was thrown off and Geneva flirted with joining the Swiss Federation. In 1536, with Protestantism in the ascendancy, John Calvin the founder of Calvanism, became the spiritual leader of the city. By the 18th century, however, Geneva had come under the influence of Catholic France, which cultivated the city elite, who tended to be at odds with the ordinary townsfolk – to the point that an abortive revolution took place in 1782. In 1798, revolutionary France under the Directory annexed Geneva. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Geneva was admitted to the Swiss Confederation. In 1907, the separation of Church and State was adopted. Geneva flourished in the 19th and 20th centuries, becoming the seat of many international organizations.

Now I understand why the Swiss way of living is so disciplined & thrifty as the Calvinist doctrines embody their fibre & way of life.

The Wall is in the grounds of the University of Geneva, which was founded by John Calvin, and was built to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Calvin's birth and the 350th anniversary of the university's establishment. It is built into the old city walls of Geneva, and the monument's location there is designed to represent the fortifications', and therefore the city of Geneva's, integral importance to the Reformation.
At the centre of the monument, four 5 m-tall statues of Calvinism's main proponents are depicted:

• Theodore Beza (1519 – 1605)
• John Calvin (1509 – 1564)
• William Farel (1489 – 1565)
• John Knox (c.1513 – 1572)    

To learn the history of this great city was magnificent but there were many other splendid venues to come.
The 1st of these was starling hotel where the chefs taught us to cook desserts & scallops, eat mussels & enjoy the spectacular process of making salt baked seabass..... Merci beaucoup Chef Pierre:

And of course Chef Betrand:

 We had a most entertaining time with these culinary delighters that will stay in my fond memories for very long time.


We also had the pleasure of visiting Chocolatier to almost everybody Philippe Pascoët
http://www.philippe-pascoet.ch where we learned where chocolate comes from (countries around the equator) & how it gets Switerland to be transformed into a brand marketeers delight:

which ever flavour tickles your fancy it can be found at "Le monde tout chocolat de Philippe Pascoët"

Next we visited  Domaine de la Clé de Sol just 10 minutes outside Geneva centre. The Domaine vineyard offers a wide range of red, rosé and white wines to discover with your
friends, family, colleagues or business partners. Run by Winemaster Daniel Sulliger www.cledesol.ch I truly recommend it as a destination for purveyors of fine wines. i didn't even know Switzerland had such great vineyards.

But for me the highlight of this trip was my visit to the CERN INSTITUTE -

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.
The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States. 

At the top of the Globe is a great place to have your conference or meeting - 27 metres high and 40 metres in diameter, it’s about the size of the dome of Saint Peter’s in Rome! A unique visual landmark by day and by night, the Globe of Science and Innovation is a symbol of Planet Earth. It is CERN’s new outreach tool for its work in the fields of science, particle physics, leading-edge technologies and their applications in everyday life.

I am still reeling in excitement from the little I learned there about Science & the Hydro Collider
http://www.lhc.ac.uk/  so as I am honestly lost for words I shall illustrate what I saw in pictures & leave the rest for you to research in your own time:

Searching for God's Particle ain't easy -

The Higgs Boson is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. The Higgs Boson is predicted to exist for theoretical reasons, and may have been detected by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. If confirmed, this detection would further support the existence of the hypothetical Higgs field—the simplest of several proposed mechanisms for the breaking of electroweak symmetry, and the means by which elementary particles acquire mass.The leading explanation is that a field exists that has non-zero strength everywhere—even in otherwise empty space—and that particles acquire mass when interacting with this so-called Higgs field. If this theory is true, a matching particle—the smallest possible excitation of the Higgs field—should also exist and be detectable, providing a crucial test of the theory. Consequently, it has been the target of a long search in particle physics.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.Two beams of subatomic particles called "hadrons" – either protons or lead ions – travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world then analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions. For decades, the Standard Model of particle physics has served physicists well as a means of understanding the fundamental laws of Nature, but it does not tell the whole story. Only experimental data using the high energies reached by the LHC can push knowledge forward, challenging those who seek confirmation of established  knowledge, and those who dare to dream beyond the paradigm. 

 The Hadron Collider

 

Thank you GENEVA SPIRIT for a wonderful trip & I do hope we can work together in the near future!