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Colombian Knuckles: LHC-Steemstem meet up
Recently I got lost in France/Switzerland (several times).
When I said I was attending a meeting in Europe, my family and friends got worried about my well being, the reason for it being my sense of direction is terrible. It sucks.
I get lost easily even in my own city. Without anyone around, with deficient french and barely acceptable English skills, it was bound to be a disaster.
It kind of was but not really.
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Life is hard, harder when you are dumb
While I was getting ready for the trip back in Colombia (I'm writing this from Mannheim, Germany and Tarragona, Spain) I took a terrible decision. I didn't buy a SIM Card and activated it immediately.
Aldi prepaid SIM card
Why? hubris. I thought it would be easier to do in the airport station in Geneva.
Bad decisions pile on and synergize. So my next bad decision was getting only Euros. While I was gonna stay on the French side, most of my asks of liquidity were in Switzerland.
Nobody was accepting euros, they wanted Swiss Francs. Since my train arrived at Geneva with a 25 minutes delay, I didn't remain in the station long. I was in a hurry to meet my Airbnb host.
I arrived easily at the CERN station but once there I had no means to easily contact anyone (no-SIM) although there was free Wifi somewhere around I wasn't able to find it.
The people
My biggest sadness from this trip was definitely not having business cards. I always deemed them as a nuisance and pretentious. Not anymore.
While I was lost the first person to help me, was a young Indian physicist (judging by his features and English accent) in front of the Sphere of the CERN. Coincidentally he lived in the same Street of my AirBNB in France. He gave me directions about the bus line. I was really grateful (100 Aime-Cesaire). I Said thanks and left.
After I got down from the bus, things got a lot more difficult. My French was a lot worse than I thought and people could not understand me well and that frustrated them. Using English was an even worse idea. After walking in circles for Hours a couple of men did the best they could to give me directions and pointed me to the next bus station. While there, another angel appeared.
His name I can't remember. While he told me later since the pronunciation was not something I was used to I forgot quickly, despite me repeating it out loud a couple times (The cold and jet lag had made a mess out of my mind) He was from Lebanon, also a Physicists. Since France is Cheaper than Switzerland and with the CERN close by is not weird for me to have found a couple physicists on the way from there, also since France is cheaper than Switzerland some of them live there. He not only waited with me for the bus. Gave me in English detailed instructions and even took the bus with me.
After I got Down from the bus I was really sad of not being able to thank him more or not being able to share my contact data if he ever needs any help so I can give back.
Later that night, after having a warm bath. I got ready for dinner with the other Steem users at a restaurant. Since I didn't have European plug adapters for my phone, my battery was dying. It was like holding my breath every time I turned it on. It had to last me at least until the next day.
I got the name of the restaurant and since no uber was close by I had to walk. This time I took a peek at the localization in the map and made the leap into the streets...got lost again.
This time Pedro, a Portuguese mechanical engineer and his friends helped me. I found them while walking down the road at night. He made sure I arrived safely, accompanied me all the way on his bicycle. We talked about how similar Romance languages like Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are since we could understand almost perfectly what the other was telling in our respective native tongue. (same thing we talked about with 
The Dinner
When I arrived at Le Casanova, everyone was already there.
WOW, these people do really exist! bots hypothesis less likely now
Suesa had my little tag (which I keep fondly) ready and we ordered our food. I was seated in front of Fredrikaa who is truly passionate and is a firm believer of Steem at many levels. He made great points about Steem as an investment (after all it has outperformed Bitcoin at many moments and is of the altcoins maybe the most promising one) Who shared information about taxes, Norway, and many more things. Most of the conversation was with an American couple -Edited: @Kerriknox and her husband- and his friend (really great guy, I hope I can find him or his wife here) who were here in this side of the table, I will have to find them here in Steemit. They had been to my country and were interested in maybe buying some property in Medellin, to that I recognized was a good idea (despite not being my city I recognize is a great city).
Ordered some wine and a pizza which was pretty good.
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Later we said goodbye, and I was driven by car by Ben and
As is only natural from me, I gave wrong directions and we got slightly lost for a couple minutes. They were very understanding and helped me avoid walking alone in the dark and cold at night. For that, I'm very grateful and I hope to return the favor in the future.
The LHC and CMS
I arrived late since my problems remained. I even made Suesa a little bit curious for... Where the HELL was I.
Lost
The problem was I didn't know either.
I was running there. Now with a little bit of experience arriving took longer than expected. It was easier but not easy.
I arrived late. With almost no battery left on my cell phone, camera or laptop (Damn you European electric plugs)
I arrived late at the death dome of science. My favorite thing about it was this:
At lunch, we went to an Indian restaurant. Delicious. It was a bomb for my stomach. The alkaline tide almost drowned me. I had the opportunity of sharing a small but nice conversation with many members of the steemstem community. Is a shame it was not a long and more varied interaction.
Later, after we went down staying with the group at the LHC, I was broken. I was so sleepy I was sure me falling asleep in the middle of the road and freezing was a given. Thanks to Black beard Ben and JustTryMe90 I arrived at my AirBnB safely. Unfortunately, I didn't spend that night with the people that were at a close pub or the next day as I spent the next 12 hours in a small coma. Just to wake up and run again to catch my train to Germany.
I had never run so much so meaninglessly. One of my trains had a malfunction (only common with the ICE during winter I was told) so I had to run and lost my train in Biel. Bought a train at almost 10:00 pm to Basel, just to find
The most expensive word of the German Language: Hauptbahnhof
While buying the ticket at the machine, the menu in English suddenly went all in German. It was just one of the menus. I asked for help and a Swiss guy helped me pass the menu. He explained nothing about the tickets just bought it and went away I was super grateful until I ran and lost that train again. He bought me a ticket for the whole day, but since I didn't know I bought another of the same tickets. 150 Euros lighter, cold, sleepy and hungry I spent the night in a Tramway station.
By the way, there I met the coolest 14-year-olds I had ever seen in my life. Probably some of these boarding school kids in Switzerland. They explained to me like I was five. Even stayed 3 minutes with me to make sure I didn't get lost.😭 Probably they are gonna become world leaders or something. Bless them.
There they explained to me that Banhof meant station in German and the flashbacks came and everything made sense and was clear. I was blind but now I could see.
(later in Germany, a marvelous guy helped me recover that money. German people are by far the best people I met. Super cool, kind and funny)
While I traveled through Europe I realized just how easy it all became once I had internet again. Yet linguistic barriers appeared everywhere even in Spain and Spanish is my goddamn native language.
I'm really grateful to steem, steemstem, the people who attended and to all the people that work hard at CERN to discover the secrets of the universe. Thanks.
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