Early morning start to get train at 4:30 to Geneva (1000km from Berlin). Using the Rail Planner app to validate my travel is simple - just validate the day and the QR code is accepted on all trains on the inter-rail network throughout Europe. No messing around with individual tickets and since I have my bike in a bag, it is considered luggage, so no extra ticket required for that... it takes approximately 30 minutes to pack up bike (front wheel off, saddle post removed, front wheel removed and front light), which I do on the platform.... I think this packing time will improve with practice.
The fast German trains (ICE) have limited bike carrying capacity - on mine, 8 bikes), so you need to book bikes in advance of travelling and pay 16€ for the privilege. I thought I might get some strange looks from the train conductors with too much "baggage", but, maybe because it is so early and train quite empty, it is no problem. I even get to keep my bike bagin the bike compartment so it doesn't get lonely.
Only one teain change in Bern, Switzerland and 8 minutes to change platform, but even laden down I make it easily. Anyway its Switzerland and there will be another punctual train to Geneva every hour. This time I don't even need to show my ticket/ QR code... I guess everyone in Switzerland is that honest.
As expected the train arrives on time and covering the 1000km has taken just over 10 hours, with no inconvenience so far.
It takes 30 minutes to reassemble my bike and explore Geneva.
First stop on the way to my warm showers host is the United Nations headquarters here in the city... Some grandiose-looking buildings and many flags, but not a mind-blowing experience. The ceramics museum in a nearby park is more impressive.
Soon it's time to find my host for the two nights I will stay in Geneva, Natacha. It has proven thus far easier to find WarmShower hosts than hosts on other platforms like Couchsurfing. Once again, I am welcomed into a host's home with a warm meal and feel at home right away. I thought I would have to air out my rusty french, but Natacha is far more fluent in english than I am in french. Talk meanders between biking adventures, Zen Buddhism, creativity and social activism... exactly my cup of tea.
I sleep in late the next day and have a lazy breakfast, before cycling to CERN - yes, the bloody Large Hadron Collider is also situated here. The visitor centre turns out to be more focussed on school children interactive games, with little technical details or over simplifications. The attempt at constucting a functional tesseract was also ambitious. Overheard conversation at CERN, which made me smile and shake my head in bafflement, "do you think we have different personalities because we are made of different stardust?".
However, the guided tour by an actual CERN physicist is definitely for the more technicalled minded. We get to see the ATLAS building (main detector here and where the Higg's boson was first detected) and I learn a lot more about the history of CERN - originally devised as a cool science toy in 1949 by deBroigle to attract the scientists who fled to the US during World War 2. I spend the rest of the day cycling about the city checking out JONCTION (reclaimed space for non commercial project) and Bain de Paquis (a jetty into Lake Geneva, where today only one brave swimmer can be seen in the cold water.
I buy some ingredients to prepare some tacos for dinner tonight. We have another evening of chatting and it's an early night as tomorrow is a full day's bike ride to my next host in Belley, France, along the Eurovelo 17.
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