The trip from Bern, Switzerland, to the high altitude laboratory on Jungfraujoch is two train rides, a gondola that rises more than 1,300 meters (almost 5,000 feet) to a tunnel railway and the place called "The Top of Europe" even in my weather app: 3,571 meters/11,782 feet of altitude.
On the trip up, I talked with Erwin Fluckiger, a physicist who studied cosmic radiation and high altitude atmospheric physics at the Junfraujoch for most of his scientific career.
As we talked, I learned that the only time he lived in another country for an extended period was one and a half years as a post-doctoral fellow. He lived in Bedford, Massachusetts, in the early 1980s, less than 20 miles from where I grew up in Stoneham.
Professor Emeritus Erwin Fluckiger
We made a couple of jokes about Bedford not being at a very high altitude, but he said he learned a lot while in America and liked living in the Boston area.
We talked about retirement. He is still working on some projects he is interested in and is listed as a part of the staff on the Jungfraujoch web site. Erwin was a director of the lab from 2000-2009 and President from 2010-2016.
Before and after his post-doc in America, Erwin spent nearly three years in the Swiss army. He was the officer in charge of a radar unit. He liked living outdoors training in Switzerland. As we talked the trains we were riding in were winding past alpine lakes and forests between high peaks.
One area Erwin still is involved in is cosmic and solar radiation exposure for the crews of aircraft. In Europe everyone who flies for a living is monitored for radiation exposure. I had never heard of this and was interested to hear how it evolved. Which led to a discussion of the influence of unions on work environments.
We talked about language. He reminded me that Switzerland has four official languages, all represented on the currency: German, French, Italian and Romanish, but "Almost everyone speaks English."
