Tonight I am reliving my student days, ensconsed in a little bare room with a single bed and limited lighting. There’s no tea and coffee, although there is a vending machine in the next block.
I’m at the ESRF, the European synchrotron in Grenoble. I’m here for a meeting of user office staff to discuss a virtual user office system for all the European synchrotrons (there are about 10). Whilst other delegates went to a local hotel, I’m here in the ESRF guesthouse, going for the genuine user experience.
It’s not bad, a perfectly functional and clean room, there is a tv room somewhere, and I guess if you need a place to crash after long hours on the beamline it’s all you need. But otherwise it just reminds me of being an undergrad, without the New Order posters or Doc Martens. Next time I think enviously of our scientists going off to do experiments at foreign synchrotrons I’ll remember the downsides…
Yes the rooms are a bit spartan but comfortable and with free WiFi…! Data collection trips o synchrotrons are never easy – I can’t relax until we’ve got at least one dataset under out belts. Will you have a chance to visit the Alps or the Vercors near Grenoble – it’s a beautiful spot!
I’m disappointed that we probably won’t get to see much outside the ESRF campus,I’m hoping to have a go on the cable car tomorrow afternoon but it depends if the meeting runs on time tomorrow.
The food and wine are good here though, hic :)
Bon app!
The ILL is better value than ESRF. The experiments need to run for hours so you can spend a longer time over lunch.
We did have a four course lunch, which was nice, and not what I’m used to at Diamond!
My husband had been there the previous week doing experiments on his problematically obtained and not that great fish and frog muscles – he left the day you arrived. Maybe you passed each other in the airport!
The accommodation sounds a bit better than the time I went to DESY, when I had to sleep on a camp bed in a room with someone else.