Chocolate for One: Hot Chocolate

Happy Halloween, everyone!

I love Halloween. I love the chance to dress up in costumes that I would never wear the rest of the year, I love the chance to eat chocolate candies, and I love pumpkins and pumpkin cookies. In years past, I would celebrate by attempting to make a pumkin cake shaped like a ghost, which I would try to cover with a fondant sheet, which would fall apart under its own weight and leave fondant and frosting and crumbs plastered across my kitchen floor, and then I would give up and head out to a Halloween party to dance the night away.

Now, while France is aware of Halloween, it isn't really celebrated around here, and those of us who do want to celebrate the holiday need to make it work as best we can and just ignore the funny looks if we end up wearing our costumes on the trams. I found a Halloween party to attend, but this party lacked both chocolate and pumpkin baked goods. The lack of pumpkin I can almost forgive, but not the lack of chocolate. Not in Switzerland. Unforgivable. So I woke up today needing to right this wrong and seriously craving chocolate.

And this is why this post is headed by a picture that has nothing to do with Halloween. Allow me to introduce my favorite way to address chocolate cravings for most of the year: hot chocolate.

The Swiss Bank Account

"Swiss Bank Account" . . . the phrase evokes spy stories with a 1950s flavor for me, with crime lords and intricate plots and crazy scientific gadgets. There is a bit of a mystique about them and the people who have them, shadowy figures with rich lifestyles and fortunes that no one is quite sure the size of.

That is, shadowy rich figures and everyone at CERN, though no one really cares about the size of our "fortunes". CERN's administration operates through Switzerland, and so we the CERN users all have to open a Swiss bank account (which is actually a bit tricky, as the IRS has been at odds with at least one Swiss bank lately, and so they don't care to work with Americans right now). The accounts lose much of their mystique when you actually have one yourself. Whatever the appeal may have been for all those mega-rich, shadowy figures in the 50s, I'm not seeing it on my end. Take, for example, the necessary procedure for me to check my account balance online, as I have an account intended for online access:

1. Go to my financial institution's website. Easy enough--it does have an English version.
2. Enter an account number (for my computing account with them, not my bank account) and a password, which is another number.
3. The website will produce another, ten digit number.
4. Insert debit card into the little card reader (shown above). Punch in number from website.
5. Enter pin number into little card reader. Press OK.
*Note: you need to do all this fairly quickly, before either website or card reader times out and makes you start over again.
6. Card reader will produce another number, which you then type into the website so you can finally access your account information.

Yup, that would be a total of five numbers to move around. The Swiss take their banking privacy and security very seriously, on behalf of their customers.

A Curseless Cake

I love to make cakes, and will spend time perusing cookbooks for ideas and planning out how I would assemble some of those intricate constructs myself. However, I know from much sad experience that in making a fancy cake something always goes wrong. The caramel burns, using up the last of your sugar. The whipped cream refuses to set up. The layers slide during transit, leaving you with the smashed ruins of a cake upon arrival. The top of the cake bumps the shelf in your fridge, and all your carefully piped decorations stay behind when you take the cake out. You inhale half a pound of powdered sugar in the process of making frosting and give yourself a sugar migraine for the rest of the day.

In particular, I attempted to make a cake at the beginning of September that gave me more than half of the above issues. My kitchen looked like someone had detonated a bomb filled with chocolate shavings in it. It took me forever to get my refrigerator clean again.

FAQ: How do I take a tour of CERN?

If you should chance to be wandering through the area and want to do a little sight-seeing, I recommend coming to CERN. To be blunt, there aren't that many other things I can recommend in Geneva, but CERN is still worth it and not just for the lack of competition. There are three ways to come:

1. Just show up at Entrance B. There is a reception building open from about 9 to 5 six days a week, which houses a free museum. You can learn about the history of CERN, the basics of particle physics, what puzzles remain and how CERN is working on them, how the LHC works, what experiments and detectors are involved, and about the phenomenal effort involved in gathering enough computing resources to handle all the data (the internet was to some extent invented here, and CERN is proud of it). You can also walk across the street to the Globe, which houses traveling exhibitions and other special events, and is also free.

2. You can book a tour. There are tours open for individuals on Wednesdays and Fridays, and groups can book tours in advance, although CERN recommends booking a group tour approximately two months in advance, more during peak tourist season. I have never actually taken such a tour; when I first arrived, I was given a much more practical introduction ("this is the cafeteria, and this is the users' office where you'll get your ID badge, and this is the building where you will work and attend most meetings, except for the ones clear on the other side of campus, and this is your desk"). Still, I know the tours visit a bit more of CERN than just the microcosm and the globe, and will include visits to experiments and accelerators depending on availability. I know because there are always groups peering through the windows at the back of the control room and trying to take pictures through the glass while I'm on shift.

3. You can try to find someone who works there to get you a day-pass and take you around the site. This is going to give you a very different picture, because like I said, we get a very practical
introduction to the lab.

Alternate title for post: What is that funny, Death-Star-esque globe thing? Is that the accelerator?

Nope, that's the globe of science and innovation, and a pretty convenient land-mark for the Meyrin - St. Genis-Pouilly area.