In January I had the opportunity to visit CERN in Geneva, Switzerland for the first time to see the Large Hadron Collider and many other things. For anyone interested visiting you should know that you can visit the microcosm at CERN for free any time that it is open. It is also possible to book guided tours that allow you to walk around CERN to see different experiments and learn about the history of CERN and the work that is being done today.

I remember watching the Higgs boson discovery being announced, I think that is what got me really interested in CERN and what they do there. Today I can say that I have been there. I stood in the very lecture hall where the announcement was made, even approaching the hall I recognised the hallways where I had seen reporters waiting to go inside. This moment was really special to me and was probably even more important to me than seeing the actual colliders or control rooms.

My day started with a guided tour where I got shown around the facilities at CERN. One of the best things of this tour was that I got to see the control room for ATLAS.

I also got to see some history, such as the first collider at CERN called the Synchrocyclotron.

I also got some memorable moments but not a lot of pictures walking around CERN. I was allowed to enjoy lunch at the CERN cafeteria which felt really special as I felt like (and probably was) surrounded by a lot of people interested in physics and figuring out how things work at the deepest level. At the end of the day I also got to visit IdeaSquare and found their London bus that they use as a workspace quiet interesting.

That sums up the most exciting parts of my visit. The next day I went to see the microcosm and here are a few videos and pictures from that.