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...