I gave a presentation to NCC about ESS the other day. NCC is one of the leading construction and property development companies in the Nordic region.
After lunch I had the pleasure of joining the NCC crew on a guided tour down the Malmö City Tunnel.
The City Tunnel project is a project where almost everything happens in large numbers. This includes the amount of concrete used – in total about 400,000 m3 along the 17 kilometres of railway path with a 6 kilometre long tunnel running under the city of Malmö.
We went some 25 meters below ground to visit a 250 meters long and 14.5 meters wide railway platform beneath the really centre of Malmö called Triangeln. This train station will become the second largest in Sweden when it comes to the amount of daily passing travellers.
Neutron scattering does not only enable important research to be carried out, which helps us to understand materials and life a bit more, but also brings people to nice countries. Being part of the ESS Scandinavia team, I'm based at ILL in Grenoble, the capital of the French Alps. I'm preparing for the future, working with world-class leading scientists from all over Europe in the fields of materials science and neutron instrumentation.
Today was an "Analyzing data day" at ILL. Numbercrunching you might say. Digging too much into data made my senses continue analysing even on my way home to our place in the outskirts of Grenoble. I, as always, had first to face the stochastic motions - the origin of quasielastic scattering for a neutron freak - in French traffic. By this I mean a more or less "amorphous" behaviour in car-driving here, where red lights and parking spots appear to serve only as guides for strangers like me. However, the opposite (the ordered structure) exists as well - here in France you need to fill in loads of papers and they may even ask you about your shoe size if you, for example, are about to buy a radio. These are just some of my observations of everyday life in France - and I like to make the comparison to Sweden, where you probably can buy a castle without signing a single paper and without telling the seller who you are.
Passing by the grocery store on my way home, I purchased the essentials for this weekend's activity, walking. My skis were stolen a few weeks ago, but the scenery is nevertheless magnificent on foot! So what did I buy? - Baguettes, cheese, wine and yoghurt of course!!! I'm still amazed about the thousands of different kinds of yoghurt you find here!. But then again a foreigner in Sweden would marvel at the hundreds of different kinds of milk we seem to need to survive. Does anyone know what "långfil" is for example...
Our hotel is very convenient for the huge Knoxville Convention Centre, a purpose-built affair with a capacity of perhaps 4000 people, and my room is on the 10th floor. The lifts are nice and quick however. Well, there is a freeway running in front of the hotel and the serious traffic starts up at about 6 a.m.. I have noticed an interesting "courtesy" behaviour from lorry-drivers. As police cars head down the freeway with their sirens at full-blast, lorries in the vicinity start honking their horns. In sympathy ? Well, I now realise that this is a road safety issue to warn traffic downstream (appropriate word !) of the oncoming police car and to take appropriate evasive action. I suppose you eventually get to filter this out during the night.
Thursday, on my way to Berlin. I was being checked through the gate at Copenhagen airport by a rather nice-looking dark-haired young lady. My eye was caught by her name-badge. “Carina Gaugin”, it read ! Could it be, I wondered… ? No, surely. Only one way to find out. “Are you related to the great man” said I ? She blushed (was I the first one to notice and ask this question.) “Yes !”, she said with a big beaming smile, which repaid handsomely my curiosity, “he was my great-grandfather.” “He married a Danish woman, you know” she continued, “I’ve been to see his grave twice.” She became so animated. I felt somehow elevated by this encounter, and life was suddenly that bit lighter. Not for her the naming of some exotic perfume, or using her famous name in some spurious way. She had chosen a genuine use of her talents; part of the team which would get me, and others, to Berlin; part of the team, unwittingly, which would contribute to bringing the ESS to Lund. Teamwork values all members of the team whether they are called Smith or Gaugin, whether they are heavy hitters or they have a lighter touch. Everyone can make a difference.
And Copenhagen airport was confirmed with me once again as so people-friendly; look out for a painter’s great-grand-daughter next time you pass through. But remember, I’ve already asked her the question…
Somewhat drifting in thought on a recent journey from the windy south to the windy north, I leafed through the “duty-free” magazine. “Pensive, though not in thought” was the way Robert Southey expressed it. (I hasten to add he wasn’t on the same flight !) Anyway my eye was caught by the poetic description of the richnesses to be discovered in a particularly costly bottle of cognac. “Its flavour combines a mixture of oak, floral and fruity notes, predominantly vanilla, with a hint of liquorice, the roundness of summer fruits, especially ripe apricots and peaches and the impertinence of wild flowers, particularly violets.” “…the impertinence of wild flowers…” How true I thought ! I have myself been startled this year, so close to the spring equinox, by an impertinent primrose or two, even a sneering snowdrop, poking their noses cheekily out of the grass in Lundagård park. And soon we’ll have to run the gauntlet of the daffodils… Are the wild flowers getting more disrespectful nowadays or is age beginning to tell on me ?
But perhaps there is a message for us to learn here. Shouldn’t we enthusiasts for the ESS be less prosaic and allow ourselves to be more poetic in our messages ? Not to misrepresent, but simply to appeal. After all it’s human beings who decide whether they need the cognac, and it is human beings who will decide on the ESS. Whether we like to admit it or not, the same psychological forces are at play.
