When we heard that we were accepted to CERN's summer students programme we decide to ride on our bikes to Geneva. The trip from Sweden has been a long one since we had to cover around 2000km but luckily the weather was nice for most part of the road! Not everything went smoothly. In fact we had five flat tires in the first day of our journey. We should have seen that coming since we took our bikes from a scrap yard. The only thing that we bought was an extra pair of clothes, tent, sleeping bags, repair kit and some other small usefull gadgets. 

We needed ten days to get to CERN and during these days we learnt a lot. We thought to share some of the most insights with you:

First of all people are nice, so ask for help if you need it. We got a hitchhike with a truck driver through Germany that insisted on taking us with him even though it was illegal to have two extra persons in his truck. But he risked and here we go...

Secondly worry less and live more. To be honest we planned way to little, as usual, but everything always turns out okay in the end. We had not planned a route in advance and hadn't check whether it was possible to bike all the way to CERN. Just do it and the worst thing that can happen is that you have to ask for someone to help you.

The third and most important insight is that you do not need much. We slept in a tent everynight and ate only oatmeal for a whole week but we were happy. It turned out that this was the most important thing we had on our trip. It is not the stuff you have that is important it is who you are with and what you do.​

To be honest a lot of the time was just us pedaling our bikes. But our experiences and the adventure are on our blog: http://simpleengineers.blogspot.ch/

Waking up at 4.30 in Linköping...the journey to CERN had just started.

and the journey continues...