In Transit: Energy, Cities, and the Turning Season

Cheers from London.
Or perhaps from the space between places, that liminal rhythm of trains and tunnels and changing light. I began the journey in Zurich, where the morning felt like metal and mist. At 7:34 sharp, our train slipped from the platform and set off across the continent, a quiet hum beneath our seats. Fields blurred into forests, languages shifted, and the day stretched out like a single line drawn westward.

By the time we reached London, the sky was soft with drizzle and the air smelled faintly of rain on brick. A new cadence: buses, sirens, laughter, and the first dinner with the Power Systems Lab, all of us jet-lagged but bright-eyed, hungry for curry and conversation.

London: Energy in Motion

The next morning, we boarded another train, this one south to Brighton. It was the kind of British morning that makes tea feel essential: low clouds, cool air, the promise of wind. From the harbor, a small boat waited to take us out to sea, toward the white silhouettes of turbines on the horizon.

As we drew closer, the offshore wind farm unfolded like an industrial cathedral, pale towers rising from gray water, each rotation deliberate and serene. Standing on the deck, I felt a strange mixture of awe and quiet, the kind that comes when technology and nature momentarily agree. The sea was cold and the air electric with salt; seagulls followed, their cries lost in the hum of blades.

Later, at the Wind Farm Visitors Centre, we traced data and diagrams on screens, our fingers still numb from the cold. Offshore generation, maintenance cycles, grid integration, all the words of my daily work, now anchored in salt and sound.

The next day returned us to London’s concrete pulse. We visited Octopus Energy’s Centre for Net Zero, where models of the future buzzed with optimism, algorithms simulating millions of households, each curve and variable a small act of imagination. Then Piclo Energy, with its vision of transparent markets and smarter grids. Innovation, it turns out, has its own geography, tucked inside modest offices, glowing quietly behind screens.

In the afternoon, I wandered the Science Museum, where the story of energy unfolded in brass and steam and static. It struck me that the entire narrative of human progress could be told through the pursuit of power: how to capture it, store it, share it. And there I was, one small researcher among many, trying to understand the next chapter.

Saturday came early. London faded behind glass and track, and the train began the long glide back toward Zurich. Somewhere under the Channel, time folded; by evening, the Alps returned, peaks flickering in the last light. The same rails that had carried me outward now stitched the journey home.

Traveling by train always reminds me that energy is motion, and motion, at its core, is hope, that things will continue, that there is still something ahead worth reaching.

Paris: A City of One

A few days later, I caught another train, this time from Paris, alone. Where London had been collaboration and conversation, Paris was quiet exploration. I had arrived under a pale sky, the city breathing in gold and exhaust, and checked into a small room near the Latin Quarter, its balcony crooked and charming.

For three days I wandered: to the Eiffel Tower, where tourists craned upward in a thousand languages, and later at night, when the lights glittered like tiny constellations, the tower became a pulse in the city, a heartbeat against the dark sky. To the Louvre, where time itself seemed curated; to Montmartre, where painters huddled against the chill; and to Notre Dame, its facade still marked by fire but resilient in stone.

I walked along the Seine at dusk, when the bridges glow and the world feels suspended between day and night. Street musicians played along the quays, accordions and violins weaving melodies into the autumn air, drifting across the water and mingling with the scent of roasting chestnuts. I sipped coffee that tasted of smoke and wrote in my notebook until the ink began to blur.

There was a loneliness to it, but a beautiful one, the kind that comes from being completely untethered. Without schedules or meetings, I noticed small things: a boy feeding pigeons by the river, the hum of a metro beneath my feet, the way Parisians say bonjour like an invitation.

Cities, I’ve learned, are networks too, not of wires but of moments. Energy hums here as surely as it does in power lines: a current of art, movement, and memory. Even as a mountain soul, Paris evoked a deep sense of wonder in me.

Geneva: Sharing Research

After Paris, I traveled to Geneva, a city of diplomacy and quiet lakes, to give a research talk. Standing before an audience, I felt a different kind of current, one of ideas moving between people, across languages, across disciplines.

The lake outside reflected pale autumn light, and the streets smelled faintly of early frost and coffee. Sharing my work here reminded me that motion isn’t only physical. Ideas move, ripple, and sometimes settle, like leaves on a lake, or energy through a grid.

Even as I answered questions and traced diagrams on slides, I kept noticing the city: the calm rhythm of trams, the wind skimming the water, the way Geneva balances seriousness with grace. It was a small pause, but one that grounded the season, tying my academic path to the landscapes I had been tracing on foot and by train.

Engadin: The Season Turns

By October, Switzerland was deep in its transformation. I returned to the mountains, to Engadin, where the air felt sharpened by altitude and autumn. I went there to run, but also to breathe, to find silence again after the cities.

The trail began in forest, damp and fragrant, then opened suddenly onto a ridge. Below, lakes shimmered in glacier light; above, the larches had turned gold, catching the last sunlight of the season. I ran through it all, breath turning visible, footsteps crunching on frost, the world dissolving into motion.

Running in the Alps has always been my way of listening, to my body, to the weather, to the quiet systems beneath the surface. The rhythm feels almost like the grid: dynamic, adaptive, fragile yet strong.

Somewhere on that ridge, I thought of the turbines again, their blades still spinning over the Channel. The same wind that turned them once must have crossed these peaks eventually, reshaping snow and cloud. Everything connected, energy, geography, the small pulse of being alive.

Reflections: Motion and Meaning

This season has carried me through so many kinds of movement, trains, boats, cities, summits, and yet the thread through all of it is stillness. The stillness that lives inside motion, when you stop long enough to notice what’s changing.

In London, I saw the future turning on its axis. In Paris, I remembered what it means to wander. In Geneva, I felt ideas flowing between people. In Engadin, I learned again that stillness is not the absence of motion, but its balance.

As autumn deepens, I carry these places with me, their light, their sound, their quiet lessons about renewal. And somewhere between the hum of turbines, the cobblestones of Paris, and the whisper of wind in alpine trees, I’m reminded why I began this work in the first place, to understand how we keep the world alive.

With all of the magic and newness I’ve experienced, I have also been feeling a longing for Colorado fall—my favorite time of the year in my favorite state. The familiarity of the landscape, the crisp mountain air, the scent of pine and woodsmoke drifting across valleys, and the golden aspens shimmering against the deep green of evergreens call to me even from across the continent. There is a quiet rhythm there, a slow unfolding of color and light, where each day feels both constant and fleeting. Running along trails that I know by heart, seeing the sunlight filter through branches, hearing the faint rustle of leaves and distant bird calls, reminds me of home in a way that is grounding and invigorating at the same time. Even amid all the excitement of my travels, I feel a gentle tug back to those familiar mountains, to the patterns of Colorado’s fall, and the small, vivid moments that make the season feel almost sacred.

Signing off from an airport headed to the Mediterranean - for conference talks and cliff escapes. Until next time,
Jasmine