Paris, SPEC CEA Saclay

On the last Thursday (11th January), I visited SPEC (Service de Physique de l’Etat Condensé), CEA Saclay in Paris to meet my colleagues. Before the departure on the 10th, I was a bit worried due to the nationwide strike from the conductors in Deutschebahn in Germany. Fortunately, my train was from Eurostar, not from Deutschebahn, and it ran very smoothly during the entire journey. At the station in Aachen, I felt very strange in that there was no German train, but only my Eurostar train arrived at the platform. Anyway, in slightly more than 2 hours, I was able to reach the center of Paris.

Because my hotel was in Paris this time, I took a chance to look around. Although I have been to Paris many times, I always find things to discover. Before strating anything, I had a very nice meal for lunch from a market near Port Royal before I start a serious tour of the day. Then I decided to go to visit “Catacombes de Paris”, which I have not visited so far although I wanted to. It’s quite deep under the cave, which was constructed long time ago, and there are so many skulls! I am usually not scared by any kind of ghost stuffs, but I came to think that everyone, whether one is famous or rich, are all humans at the end. Well, I think what matters at the end is just to have good time by doing what you really like and by spending time with your family and friends…

After the Catacombes, I walked along the streets in the area for a while, and I decided to go to the island at the center of Paris (Île de la Cité) because I wanted to see how the recovery of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. It was really sad a few years ago that it caught a fire… But I was gald to see that now the main part was almost recovered. I hope to see it again soon. In the evening, I ate light and slept early as soon as I finished preparing for my presentation on the next day.

On the next day, I met my colleagues in the early morning from my hotel, and I went to the laboratory together with them. I immediately noticed that everything is much busier in Paris, and there were so many people on the road, in metro, and everywhere! I just noticed that it was so long time ago (during my high school study) that when I lived in a big city (it was Busan).

Once we arrived at the lab, I drank a nice coffee in the kitchen and had nice casual conversations. Then after having one hour of meeting on my research proposal, I gave a seminar talk that everyone from the entire laboratory joined. The title of my talk was “Orbitronics: State-of-the-art, challenges, and future”. I think the talk went quite well, according to my sixth sense (when you give a lecture, you can sense whether the audience understands or not). There were many questions afterwards, and the discussion continued. I really enjoyed!

Then we had lunch in the cafeteria. I always find that cafeterias in France are pretty nice. Well, French people might disagree, but when I comapre with what I have in Jülich, I can say that the quality of food is inded very good. There were options for starters, main dish (meat/fish/vegeterian), and deserts. I love to have all starter-main dish-desert! After the meal, we again had relaxed moment with a shot of coffee in the laboratory.

The afternoon was quite busy for discussing with several people, but the discussions themselves were quite relaxed. It was particularly helpful for me to know research projects in France, especially activities in the area of Saclay, where there are so many laboratories.

After the long day, we went to a restaurant in Paris to have dinner with a few colleagues in the group. Of course, we started with an aperitif to cool down while waiting for the food. It was really funny that we barely discussed physics/science during dinner. In fact, we discussed a lot about food (a typical and serious discussion topic in France): a recipe for an Escargot stew with red wine, Carbonnade (Belgian beef stew) with beer, Escargot from Dijon, and Jambon Persille (Burgundy ham)… All super-interesting topic to learn! By the way, my colleagues also got a bit surprised when I chose Andouillette for my main course menu, which is a French sausage from the intestine of pork. Well, I Iike Andouillette. I also shared that Koreans eat intestines, and they are specialties.

Overall, the evening was very pleasant. It was also very nice to hang out with colleagues out of the laboratory and discuss other topics than science (we all love science though!). I really thanks my colleagues at SPEC for inviting me and spending good time with me. The return trip was also very smooth on a Eurostar train, and I arrived on time.