Pablo Picasso

So I had planned on having my group, PICASSO, over for dinner... The number of PICASSOans and ex-PICASSOans are growing, so I decided to do a tapas thing...

The next day my professor reminds me the 25th of October is Pablo Picasso's birthday...

Is it eerily co-incidental that I had a get together and served nothing but tapas for the PICASSO people on the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso's birthday? I, nor anyone else, had not the slightest idea that it was his birthday...

Skiing in Fall!!!

Officially it is still Fall, so we go to take some Fall pictures. It is cold and I am miserable, but... Not these Quebecois - they artificially snowed Mt St Sauveur, the largest Night Ski Resort in North America and started skiing already....

One and half years later, these people still surprise me!!!

Borderless Europe

It really is very exhilarating to cross country borders in the EU, without any stopping or check point or whatever. Even though Switzerland is not part of the EU, their borders with France were wide open like this... Old check points standing as ghostly reminders only, of an era bygone, of a time when people were not as smart as they are today...

My Money and Theirs

My Swiss Francs and Euros... The first time I exchanged money, it was in Milan - so I gave them 100 of my Canadian dollars and they gave me like 50 of their Euros... Agggg... I gave 100 of mine, and I want 100 of yours!!!!!

Home Sick!!!

this is My Home, people of Geneva!

Saint-Genis-Pouilly

This window pattern was common in may homes in Saint-Genis-Pouilly. I have seen this pattern in some houses in Minneapolis too.

Depanneaur with super helpful owner... France, at least Saint-Genis-Pouilly, dies on Monday... everything, well almost everything was closed on Monday. Espèces de paresseux!!

Geneva, Switzerland

Geneva, I was really surprised at how big this city is; ok, not nearly as big as Montreal, but I somehow thought it was smaller than it actually was. With all its watchmakers and bankers Geneva is really a pretentious town, but if you take the time to find your way through, you can find nice little nooks and corners...
Jet d eau, in Lake Geneva, situated where Lake Geneva empties in to the Rhone river.





The United Nations office in Europe.




























My lonely planet guide book mentioned Switzerland railways are famous for their graffiti stations. I am not entirely sure why this sets apart Switzerland from any other station anywhere in the world, which in general is also graffiti-fied.

Sinhalese in Italy

So there is the Lord's Prayer in about 20 diffrent languages in this little town of Como's Duomo (Cathedral). So I am seeing Ukrainian, Russian, German and then, guess what, I saw the Sinhalese one too... whoa!!!!

Beautiful Alps

The Alps were amazing... I got a ride from Como to Geneva from this professor; the trip that was to take 4-5 hours took like 8-9 hours. The Scottish professor got lost in the Alps - all to my amusement. I was already enjoying the magnificent views as he was trying to figure out the way and fight his embarrassment - he need not have been embarrassed, I really was happy that we got lost. During the journey, we traversed an altitude of 2100m - probably the highest I have ever been to!!

I crossed the Swiss-Italian border with this professor - we were stopped at the border like everyone else was they asked him if he was French (he was driving a French car) he said no, he was Canadian (he holds dual citizenship), and they just sent us away - I was pretty sure they were gonna check my documents, but they just took one look at me and let me go... I love this lax attitude...

The professor by himself was a wonder - other than being a great physicist, he was also very fluent in Japanese I am being told. And everywhere we stopped he switched with ease between French, Italian and German all the while talking to me in English. He claims his French, Italian and German are not the best - he just knows enough to get by... but that's still very cool... And then he was telling me stories of his younger days as a postdoc at Fermilab, sabbatical in Germany, etc etc... sort of reminded me of Keith, ok not as cool as Keith... But when the border patrol asked him and he replied Je suis Canadien, he "put the icing on the cake"... I asked him "what made you say Canadian and not British - we are after all closer to Britain", he said "oh well, it's because my Canadian passport is in my pocket and my British one is in the bag"... Talk about a cosmopolitan person... Cool cool cool...

Confession

The blessed sacrament of confession...

When we were little we had to go for confession every month - normal adult humans do not sin all that much, so what's to be said about a kid? I remember being dreadful about confession because I was so afraid one day the priest is gonna see through my making up of sins and throw a public fit and denounce me - everyone would point their fingers at me and say "she made up sins", because this is what I did - I'd say "I probably lied to my parents, so I'll say so", "I probably fought with my siblings, so I'll say so"... What kind of crazy people make little kids confess every once a month?

Disdainful as I am sights like these, still give me a sense of nostalgia about a past that I was very much like them...

Lago di Como

The rich touristy village, Como, we had our conference. See those cool hydro planes?



Funicular to the Village of Brunate.













View of Como from Brunate.













Apparently these huuuuuuuge keys are commonplace in hotels in Europe - the first time I saw them... You have to give them to the front desk when you leave, so when you come back you have to actually go to the desk and get your key. One night when I returned, I could not help but feel shameful - sort of reminded me of my time at the Convent - what was I going to tell the Mother Superior about being drunk and this guy?




View from the window of my hotel - yes I know... but let's just call it quaint, shall we?

























Lake Como and the town of Como...

Eating in Italy

Does it get any fancier than this? Probably yes... but this itself made me break a bank... And we didn't even order wine from that shelf...

Como, Italy, where I met some really nice people (ahem...) from ATLAS... and so I was not eating alone the rest of the conference... :)

Physicist Shoes

Can you tell which one is the physicist's shoe? And they walk those cobble-stone streets without batting an eyelid!!

These nice people I met while I was having my dinner alone in Como on the first day of arrival - they were super friendly... they invited me to go bar hopping with them and I had such great fun. They were a little frustrated that I didn't speak Italian or Spanish... Mmmmhhh... I speak Sinahlases, English and some French, should I be frustrated they don't speak none of those? One of the girls understood some French, albeit very little, so we did communicate... Anyway through the night other friends joined them and we were able to communicate a little better...

As a photographer I have learned that women really do hold up half the sky; that languge isn’t always necessary, but touch usually is; that all people are not alike, but they do mostly have the same hopes and fears; that judging others does great harm but listening to them enriches; that it is impossible to hate a group of people once you get to know one of them as an individual.
- Annie Griffiths Belt, photographer National Geographic

Milano

So I went to Europe thinking "hey how bad is it going to be... I survived China where no one spoke my languages and I didn't theirs", so I didn't take a phrase book with me... Man was I wrong... While it was not as bad as I have made it to sound, the discomfort was still non-zero... Between the language and the system, I did not know how to find my seat in the train - the ticket are not in English and the seat numbers are not that straight forward... Does North America do things in a more intuitive manner or am I just used to the North American system?? Hey but the seat numbers in Sri Lankan trains are pretty straight forward too... Despite their many shortcomings, train seat numbering is not one of them in SL...

Paying Toilets

These paying toilets from none other than the Geneva airport... I'd think with the price of the airline they could easily allow their customers to go for free...!!! And am I not told over and over again how rich the Swiss are!!?

But people won't allow this scam... People coming out of the toilet will hold the door open for the next one so they don't have to pay to go... I don't know how long this had been going on, by the time I walked in... but I am guessing the Geneva airport lost a million amazing Swiss Frank because of the kind tourists!!! heh heh... take that Geneva!