Discovering France and Switzerland in autumn

I did a similar post about summer (check it out here). This time I want to show autumn marvels of the area we live in now. Although this fall is a special one for us and we weren’t able to visit as many places as we would like to, still even with those few we did, we came up with some nice autumn photo shots.

Divonne-les-bains

Jura mountains

Concourge – pumpkin festival in Vernier (those evil pumpkins were carved by children) – a bit scary, huh?

Vineyards in Challex:

Le Tiocan:

Park in Prevessin:

Welcome to the world Wojtek

This was a very special day to us – by no means the most important one in our lives. Today we welcomed to this world our little son – Wojtek. It’s just amazing how parenthood influences the way we see the world and our role in it. I’ve never thought this moment would be so special, filled with utter joy and happiness, making everything else less important. I hope that our son will have a happy life and will grow to a good man, respecting the values that we will teach him.

Pumpkin bun cake with plum marmalade

I was defending myself from posting food photos, but in the end it is so much fun to take those pictures that I need to give in. So here it goes… Our first cake on the blog!
This one is called (cuddling) Pumpkin bun cake with plum marmalade and I took the recipe from this page.
The actual cake (and photos) were done by Radek – I cannot take credit for that. I was really surprised by the taste of this yummie masterpiece – never thought it would be soooo good!

Ingredients:
  • 2,5 glass of wheat flour
  • 10 g of dry yeast or 20 g of fresh yeast
  • 0,5 glass of milk
  • 3/4 glass of pumpkin puree
  • 3 spoons of melted butter
  • 1 tea spoon of cinnamon
  • peeled rind of 1 orange
  • 4 spoons of sugar
  • 1/4 tea spoon of salt
All ingredients should be at room temperature.
Wheat flour mix with the yeast, add the rest of the ingredients and make a dough. Leave the dough covered by a cloth to double its size (around 1.5h). Then drop the dough from height and knead again.
Mould (25 cm) cover with baking paper (only bottom). Divide the dough into 10-11 pieces and form balls. Flatten them at hand and put plum marmalade (as much as possible, normally 1 big spoon), then stick together the edges covering marmalade inside. Put those balls on the mould close to each other (but leave space between them – they will grow and „cuddle”). Sprinkle the balls with crumble, put a cloth over the mould and leave for 30 min to double its size.

Bake in temperature of 190ºC for 35 minutes.

Filling:
  • 1 glass of plum marmalade

Crumble:

  • 60 g of melted butter
  • 100 g of wheat flour
  • 50 g of vanilla sugar

Mix all ingredients and make up the crumble.

The taste of this cake is really irresistible. Combination of plums, orange, pumpkin, cinammon and vanilla sugar is just perfect for autumn evenings. I served it with cup of orange-cinammon tea and chillout music in the background. Watch out – this cake has a tendency to disappear quickly 🙂

Lac de Divonne

With a remarkably beautiful weather today, we decided to go out to catch some sun. We went to Divonne-les-bains which we had visited a week earlier for Gourmandiv’ Festival. This time we went straight to the lake side (we hadn’t seen it earlier). We were planning to make a tour round water, but I was too tired, so we sat on a bench instead and relaxed in the calm atmosphere of warm sunbeams and surrounding nature.

Gourmandiv’ festival

Today we went to a Gourmandiv’ festival in a neighbouring village – Divonne-les-Bains. It was a second edition of what I would call festival of tastes and flavours. Except for a couple of tasting-stalls,  there was also a contest for amateur chefs (audience could taste their cooking and vote for the best cook) and some other animations like vegetables carving.
Well, it wouldn’t be entirely honest from my part if I said it was a fantastic event, but in the end I enjoyed getting out from home.

Except from seeing tge gormandiv’ attractions, we also had a tour round the villgae. The weather was just perfect so we strolled through the streets, headed up to a castle hill and back to the venue. Nice and neat – as every village in the neighbourhood.

Cascades de France

 

What to do when weather is rainy and „on foot” mobility is reduced? I asked myself that question on the gloomy weekend and decided to have a „waterfall excursion”. There are just so many of them in the neighbourhood – easily accessible by car. Not discouraged by the rain (which later turned into actually nice and warm weather), we set off to discover the beauties of French nature.

We started with Pain de Sucre cascade. I need to say, it was pretty awesome. It felt a bit like we were in a fairy-tale forest full of magic. Dark colours, soft drizzle and a waterfall you basically can walk around and hide yourself at its back. The only thing missing was a cave with a treasure 🙂 We really enjoyed the view as well as the humming sound of water.

Next stop: Cascade de Cerveyrieu. The water of river Seran falls down for around 60m to meet rocks on the ground and splash with great rumble. We watched it happen from the top, with a nice view on the valley.

Waterfall number 3 – Cascade de Claire Fontaine – was situated well in woods, but we managed to reach it by car and needed just a few steps up to see this beauty. I imagine it must be even prettier in spring or late autumn, when there is more water falling. Anyway, there is something ethereal about the waterfalls, is it the levitating mist? Perhaps gentle or aggressive roar of water? Crudity of rocks? Softness of moss? I don’t know, but for me they are enchanting.

Lastly, we saw Cascade de Glandieu, situated in the centre of a small French village. Although it was the biggest of all we had seen, it didn’t make such an impression on me. Perhaps the proximity of agglomeration stripped the waterfall from its charm? Other possibility, we had had enough of cascades for one day. I mean, don’t get me wrong – it was really nice, it’s just that we liked the other three better. Anyway, we stayed for a while in the village to have a meal in a restaurant and went back home.

 

LHCb and LHC point 6

Last weekend CERN organised open-days. Over 70 000 people visited CERN facilities and over 20 000 of them went underground  in one of six underground facilities. During this days 2 300 CERN volunteers cared about people’s safety and good time. I was one of them. I was an underground guide in LHC Point 6 which is responsible for LHC beam dumping system.

On Monday CERN opened these six underground facilities for members of personnel so I had occasion to see LHCb experiment and once again LHC Point 6 – this time with a camera.

Before LHC was created, CERN worked with LEP (Large Electron Positron) Collider. At those times LHCb cavern was the place of DELPHI experiment. Because disassembling and removing of DELPHI detector would be very time consuming and very expensive, it was decided to keep part of the detector underground and move LHCb a bit aside. Thanks to that I was able to see not one but two detectors.

Then we moved to LHC Point 6 where I was a guide during the weekend. LHC beam dumping system was created because you can’t leave circulated protons inside LHC after finishing a day of work. Protons have energy of moving train and if they hit any part of LHC they will destroy it. It is also not so easy to redirect them to some safe place because they travel with almost speed of light. So beam duping system contains three types of magnets that do this job.

First:

Kickers that extract very fast beam from LHC pipes and redirect it a bit up.

Second:

MSD that redirect beam a bit left.

Third:

MKB that spread beam from 1×1 mm (when it enters the magnet) to 30×30 cm (when beam hits block of 8 meters of graphite). Beam must be spread because even 8 meters of graphite can’t handle a moving train that hits 1×1 mm spot.

At the both end of LHC Point 6 you can see LHC circle curvature

I had lots of fun while guiding people through undergrounds of Point 6 and now I saw almost all of CERN underground facilities. Next stop: ALICE and LHC Point 4.