CERN: where science feels like science fiction

It's a little past 6pm and I'm sitting in a café near my hotel, nursing a well-deserved coffee and trying to process everything I saw today at CERN. My mind is still buzzing with information overload – in the best possible way.

I arrived at the CERN reception center 15 minutes before my scheduled 2pm tour (naturally), joining a small group of equally eager visitors. Our guide, Dr. Elise Müller, introduced herself as a physicist who'd been working at CERN for over a decade. She had that wonderful ability to explain incredibly complex concepts in ways that even non-physicists like me could grasp.

"CERN isn't just a laboratory," she explained as we began our tour, "it's where the internet as we know it was born." I knew this fact already, but hearing it while actually standing there gave me goosebumps. The World Wide Web was invented here in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee, originally as a way for scientists to share information. As someone who's spent his entire career working with technology that evolved from that invention, standing in its birthplace felt momentous.

The highlight of the tour was definitely the visit to the ATLAS experiment control room, where we could see screens monitoring the massive particle detector buried deep underground. Dr. Müller explained that the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, runs in a circular tunnel with a circumference of 27 kilometers (16.5 miles). The scale of this operation is almost impossible to comprehend.

"The particles travel at 99.9999991% the speed of light," she said, and I noticed several people's jaws literally drop. Mine included.

What struck me most was the international collaboration happening here. Dr. Müller mentioned that CERN employs scientists from over 100 countries, all working together toward common goals of understanding the fundamental structure of the universe. In our divided world, there's something profoundly hopeful about that.

After the tour, I spent some time in the "Universe of Particles" exhibition, which features a spectacular 360° projection inside a dome. Standing there watching visualizations of particle collisions, I felt simultaneously tiny and connected to something immense.

I left CERN around 5pm with my head full of questions about the nature of reality, time, and existence – the kind of questions that make you feel wonderfully small in the grand scheme of things. The crisp autumn air (13°C according to my phone) helped clear my head a bit as I took the tram back to the city center.

Now, as I sit here watching evening settle over Geneva, I'm thinking about how this city keeps surprising me. The precision and order I've observed everywhere – from the punctual trams to the immaculate streets – extends even to how they approach the greatest mysteries of the universe: methodically, collaboratively, precisely.

Tomorrow I'll visit the Patek Philippe Museum as planned before I have to check out of my hotel. I've heard their collection of timepieces is extraordinary, which seems fitting in a country known for its precision. Then it's onward to my next destination.

51 days into this journey, with 449 still ahead, I'm noticing how these experiences are gradually changing me. I find myself more curious, more willing to ask questions, more comfortable with not knowing all the answers. Maybe that's what this journey is really about – not finding definitive answers, but learning to live with better questions.

Note to self: Remember to set alarm for 7am to pack before museum visit. Hotel checkout is at noon.