Many students travel to Europe over the summer to see the sights and sounds of the Old World. However, very few students get to visit the high-tech particle physics lab in Switzerland known as CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), the very top of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre’s collection. Junior Patrick Wang spent his summer visiting Switzerland and France with his family, seeing many of the famous landmarks in those countries, including these three.
“Talking to people in Switzerland was easy since many knew English, but there was a divide between the French and Germans there. I got to learn a bit about both,” he said. “We got to see an entire city from the top of a building on a hill… it looked like an elaborate maze.”
When he went to CERN, Wang got to see some of the earliest models of the particle accelerator there, the biggest in the world, and said that the control room for the modern one looked like something out of a movie.
“In Paris, we got to the top of the Eiffel Tower; it took two elevator rides to get to the top. The view was both dizzying and astounding due to its height. My brother and I raced all the way to the bottom.” On his final leg of the trip, Wang took a tour bus around Paris and saw the Arc De Triomphe and the Notre Dame cathedral. Wang said that his trip week and a half trip was remarkable.
