Just a Perfect Day #5 - The steemSTEM Meetup at CERN

Long expected steemSTEM meetup at CERN has finally took place!!!

I was very excited that I'm going to see CMS detector and because I will finally get to meet all those amazing people that give their contribution every day to the steemSTEM section, and of course the one and only - steemSTEM Team!

The Globe of Science Exhibition - just like the inside of a spaceship!

I have to admit - I was very nervous, thinking - all those smart people, probably no one is going to talk to me at all, I'll never fit in there!

Of course, they proved me wrong the very first evening 😊

8th of February - Le Casanova

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We met for dinner at nice Italian restaurant Le Casanova, which did not get very good reviews on TripAdvisor, and in my opinion there is no reason for that.

The restaurant had a very nicely decorated interior, my dinner (Entrecôte aux trois sauces, Steak with three sauces - my recommendations!) was delicious (and I think the rest of the people liked their dinner as well), and the stuff was amazing, managing to accommodate 19 people, making sure that each one of us got their food on time.

So thumbs up for Le Casanova!

During the dinner I had the opportunity to chat with @suesa, @howo, @dber and @alexs1320.

After only couple of sentences, I realized that my fears were not justified and that I had the honor of speaking with incredible smart, funny and charismatic people! Despite we all felt very tired because of the long trip (for some very very long trip, with time zone switching, my huge respect for that!), the evening went by pretty quickly, as we had so many interesting topics to discuss about, like we know each other for years!

After dinner we all went to our accommodations to get some proper rest and gather energy for the big day of CERN visit!

9th of February - The Globe of Science, Microcosm and CMS

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In the morning we visited the amazing exhibition at The Globe of Science, where we watched the short movie about Big Bang (not the TV show, the real one!) and the mission of scientists at CERN, curiously touched almost about everything that could be touched and asked at least a million questions to @lemouth, who patiently answered each one of them with great amount of details, so that even a biologist who is a complete anti-talent for physics (like myself) could understand.

But that didn't stop me from posing of course! 😊

For only 5 STEEM I will foretell your destiny from this crystal ball!

After seeing The Globe of Science exhibition we proceeded to Microcosm exhibition, where more stuff about CERN I knew nothing about were waiting for me, like this one:

The lights are cool, though

@fredrikaa and I tried not to look as we are uncomfortable by the real-size guy on the screen staring at us (at least @fredrikaa succeeded in that):

Can he see us?

At the end of the exhibition, @suesa and I decided to have some fun with the posing:

We have more charm than Charm quark!

After having great lunch at Indian restaurant Shalimar, we proceeded to long expected visit to CMS!

There we met the amazing and incredible charismatic scientist who was our guide for the CMS, and her famous sentence will remain the highlight of the visit:

"Stay with the group, if you don't see me, you're doing it wrong!"

She seemed like she was not joking, so we took her words pretty seriously!

Then @lemouth gave us the best particle physics lecture ever - actually I haven't attended many particle physics lectures, but still - it was great, because I found out many interesting facts about particles, CERN and particle accelerator/detector.

It seemed like we're ready to see what we came for!

First came THE RIDE - huge elevator that can take up to 24 persons and takes you straight down, 100 meters underground, like everything else wasn't impressive enough!

After couple of iris detector doors (not impressed at all!), there it was - the CMS!!!

Play it cool, don't look excited...

One of the most exciting days of my life ended with evening food and drinks at the Charly's Pub in Saint-Genis-Pouilly - it was time to say goodbye! 😢

I would like to send one big THANKS! to whole steemSTEM Team for amazing organization of this visit, especially to @lemouth who gave his 100% for everything to run smoothly - so much that he didn't got the chance to take a single photo for himself!

I sincerely hope that we will have the chance to repeat this again, and that other Steemians who couldn't made it to this meetup will join us as well!

Until the next meetup, relax and keep steemSTEM! ;)

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Image credits: Jason Brooks and Prof. Sharona Even-Ram