Traveling is not always fun

Recently I have traveled a lot, and to be specific by what I mean a lot. It is by the standard of a person who has not traveled much in the last few years. And from a point of view of a particle physics graduate student. We usually travel for a conference or a workshop, and one summer school per year. But the last 45 days I have traveled to 4 different countries in 3 different continents. And I have to say that traveling is not always fun, and it can be stressful and exhausting.

I’m now based at CERN (Switzerland), and I cross the border to France every day. This is not a problem because unlike Egypt or the US (The two countries I have lived in), the border between France and Switzerland is not a big deal. You can cross it without any checks, and you can even use the same public transport to cross it. But this is not the case for all borders of course. Being in the EU makes me really appreciate the Schengen agreement, and how easy it is to travel between the countries that are part of it.

So I started my travels by visiting Netherlands for a workshop, then went to Hamburg, Germany for a personal visit, then to Paris, France because my return flight just got delayed by a day. This was about 8 days in general. I visited Paris, Hamburg, and Amsterdam. I have to say that I really enjoyed the time I spent in these cities, and I would love to visit them again.

Then I went back for a week to CERN, and then I traveled to Egypt for a family visit. I spent about 15 days in Egypt, and I have to say that it was really nice to see my family again after a long time. But I tried Easyjet for the first time, and I have to say that it was not a good experience. While the price was really cheap, the service was not good at all. The quality of travel I got used to in US domestic flights is much better than what I got from EasyJet. These low-cost airlines are optimized for extract money for each service they provide, and they don’t care about the quality of the service. I had to pay for everything, even for a bottle of water. And the seats were really uncomfortable, and the legroom was really tight. I don’t think I will use EasyJet again in the future.

Now the flight back to Geneva was through a new airport in Egypt, it is in the middle of the desert and while it was easy road trip to get there (Because it was very early Friday morning), the airport was not good at all. It was tiny, and it was not well organized. The security checks were really slow, and they will check you twice (one before and one after the passport control). The airport was not crowded, the flight was not delayed, and the staff were friendly. But the airport itself was not good at all. But I’m not going to complain because it is a new airport, and it will get better with time. But also because it is $40 airfare from Cairo to Geneva, and I can’t complain about that.

Then I went back to CERN, and I have to travel to the US for some work at my university. It is for a week and I will be back to CERN after that. But this is the longest trip in this journey and crossing the Atlantic Ocean is not something I enjoy. I just hate how long it takes and how tiring it is. I maybe just forgot how it feels to travel for 12+ hours in a plane. But that’s part of the career in particle physics, and I have to get used to it. Part of my new experience would be that I reserved a campervan for the first time, and it will be a new experience I always wanted to try. So let’s see how it goes.

I have to say that traveling is not always fun, and it can be stressful and exhausting. But it is also a great opportunity to see new places, meet new people, and try different food. I like actually trying restaurants and this is the only thing that makes me tolerate the stress of traveling.