Melbourne Spring 2010

Flowering bushes at 97 broadway.

Eyang depart to Algiers

Eyang leaving Switzerland after 3 weeks in Lausanne, to visit dik Nindya in Algiers.

Lausanne Cathedral

On Sunday we went for service to Lausanne Cathedral. It was built between 1170 and 1240 (!) in the gothic style, with the western portal completed later in the flamboyant style.










Taking bus 6-Maladiere we stopped at Bessieres. The Service started at 10:30. There were not too many people attending the service and mostly are elders.










The pipe organ was massive. It is the only one of its kind in the world by virtue of its design (American manufacture by Fisk, Italian design by Giugiaro), its musical characteristics (French classical and symphonic styles, German baroque and romantic) and its dimensions (nearly 7,000 pipes, 40 tonnes, 150,000 hours of work to complete)

Dad and Eyang cycling to Lutry

It was a nice day so after taking Andrew and Ariel to Geneva airport, Dad went cycling with Eyang.










From home we went to Pully, stopping at Ouchy. From Pully we took bus 47 until "terminus". Then cycled downhil to Lutry.










The views of ripening grapes are amazing. From Lutry we went back home by bus 9-Lutry to St. Francois.

Ariel and Andrew returning to Melbourne

Ariel and Andrew returned to Melbourne today. They've had really great time in Switzerland and had great fun adventures while Eyang were around.










The flight depart from Geneva at 11:40, so we had to take the train there leaving Mont d'Or at 6am!










How lucky it was Andrew's favourite double-deck train!

Ariel and Andrew's last day in Lausanne

This is the last day for Ariel, Andrew, and Mum to Melbourne as on Saturday they head back to Melbourne.



















Had fun taking pictures in Ouchy.










Ariel and Andrew's favourite Pedalo !




















Then to the "Frog park" at Georgette and heading home for dinner.










Dinner at Figuire about 100m from home. It's Ariel and Andrew's most favourite restaurant. We ordered the 5-cheese Pizza, the Pizza du Mont d'Or and had ice cream afterwards. Yum.

CERN Large Hadron Collider

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire), known as CERN, is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border and most well-known for its LHC (Large Hadron Collider) particle accelerator.

Dad arranged this free tour a month in advance!










We were greeted nicely by the staff and Michell was the Physicist who guided us. The tour consisted of 1hr presentation and after that a visit to the Superconductor construction facility and ATLAS detector.

The presentation was very serious and talked about CERN history and technical matters like quarks, muons, particles etc. Dad and Eyang enjoyed it while Andrew and Ariel were ready to fall asleep!










What CERN do basically is to look for new particles which do not exist in nature anymore (after the Big Bang). To do this they need to accelerate and smash particles at near the speed of light. So they built this massive superconductor 'pipes' which are supercooled with liquid Helium (-273°C). The length? ... 30 kilometers! And it's 100m below the ground.

It cost the European countries 10 Billion Swiss Francs.










These ones are the accelerators which "speeds up" particles. They are simply huge and mind boggling.










Then we went to see the exhibition which are open for the public. Very nice 3D presentation and very futuristic. Basically CERN tried to explain on the way to find out how the universe exist.










The ATLAS is particle detector which is really huge. You can see a picture below. It is in operation so no one could come in due to the radiations. It's job basically is to detect newly-created particles which exist after the smashing of the protons.

Currently it is being tested at 3.5TeV (Terra Electron-Volts) and already detected new particles. When running in full capacity in a few years (7TeV) they will be able to produce tiny black-holes.

United Nations in Geneva and Red Cross

The Palais des Nations (English: Palace of Nations) in Geneva, Switzerland, was built between 1929 and 1936 as the headquarters of the League of Nations. It has served as the home of the United Nations Office at Geneva since 1946 when the Secretary General of the UN signed a Headquarters Agreement with the Swiss authorities, although Switzerland did not become a member of the UN until 2002. Dad almost worked here.










Views of the flags representing the members of the United Nations.










Very big fountain across the road, and even bigger replica of a 3-legged chair representing the fragile nature of peace in our world.










Too bad the tour did not start until 2pm so we just looked around.










Across the road we visited the International Red Cross and Red Crescent museum. They close on Tuesdays.