Honours students visit Geneva

06.04.2023

I am Harini Keerthana and I am student of the Honours program. I would like to report on a trip to Switzerland that I took with other Honours students.

Invitation to Geneva

One day we received an email regarding a visit to WHO, it was planned to be a guided tour. The email mentioned that the trip was to Switzerland, Geneva, gave me chills. As an Indian girl, since my childhood I dreamt of having trip to Switzerland as most of the movies has a song in the Alpes. The email immediately got me saying yesss. Few months later, we again received an email saying that the guided tour cannot take place as there was construction and renovation going on, but the trip was not cancelled. This kept me wondering why, what we will be doing there. Luckily, I decided not to quit. We all worked together and brought in a lot of ideas and made this trip to come alive.

We all booked our train tickets and reserved our rooms and packed our mantel and beret. We hopped on our train together, after few hours we started hearing bonjour. We all got to the hotel (Nash airport hotel) and discussed about our plan for the next day. We experienced a throw back in times as we will not be having an internet connection once we get out of the hotel’s Wi-Fi, so we got a huge map from the hotel tourist information and started marking the places. I personally loved this experience.

Visiting CERN

Day one, Morning, started with a perfect French breakfast at the hotel. The plan was to visit the astonishing CERN. It not only interests physicist but also anyone who wants to know the origin of the universe, we don’t need to be a Sheldon. To book the guided tour, we should be one hour before the session which can be found on their website. The tour was so amazing that he made me to recall all my physics knowledge from my high school. In the CERN museum, one could witness the paper submitted for the Higgs boson and many miniature of the project. One could also be able to visit the first constructed super collider.

Our next stop was to grab our lunch in one of the cafés from the locals. I wanted to get something authenticated Swiss and I got Viande Séchées (Swiss) which means Dried meat. My opinion on the dish will be not so bad, haha. Then we decided to go on a boat trip and cross the lake and site the large fountain Jet d’Eau.

Visiting WHO and UN

Now we had to execute the actual plan made for the trip, visit to WHO and UN. We were so desperate to look at the building from outside and get cool pictures. We made it, we managed to get cool photos. Since we went to WHO the exact time when the employee’s logout the building. We got luckily, we spoke with one of their employees about their job and more. Trust me, for a person from science this is really huge deal. Finally, we were all exhausted and got back to our rooms.

Day two, we planned to visit Red cross. We got our guided tour, we got to know how the organization formed and we understood their moto. They have done and doing a good job in helping the people who are in need, this involves people suffering from war, natural disaster and more. We all left the building heavy hearted, knowing that the world is going through a lot and we need to stand together. We also had some activities to do there like wall of creativity, save the island and more.

Visiting Botancial Gardens and St. Pierre Cathedral

Our second stop to get mesmerized by visiting our mother nature, the botanical garden. It was still winter, we didn’t find a lot of flowers but some were there blooming and they were so cute. We could also visit the tropical garden and many more.

We again took the boat (public transport) to cross the lake, we planned to visit the St. Pierre Cathedral. This was so huge; we visited the underground museum with the recorded audio guide. It was so big and so stunning to view the place they used for baptizing, tombs and more.

It was the time to grab some Swiss chocolates, I will never miss that. We were all so tired and returned back to our rooms to get some energy to travel back to Jena the next day.

On the whole, the trip was so amazing that I got to meet many people from different departments and studies. I got to know more about their work and the interactions between us were so effective. We created good bond with each other. This was great trip and I will never miss another trip if there is one.

Author: Harini Keerthana Suresh Kumar