It's Just Different over Here

This is where I have stayed for the past 4 nights, while staying at CERN.

It is called the Hotel Sofia. It is cheap by local standards -- 55 euros a night (about 70 bucks a night). It has old world charm, but it is a dump by American standards. For example, the quality of the rooms, the pillows, the soft water -- I expect that from a $40 dollar a night place in the US (like the Wosrt Western that used to be located near Fermilab before even Best Western kicked them out of the franchise). On the other hands, this is a family run hotel, and it shows. My room is picked up during the day, and things put away -- as if my mother had come through and cleaned it. Ok, so my mother would make me clean my own room, but you get the idea. The lawn and shrubs are perfect. There are little homey touches through out the atrium area, and it looks like people live here.

The building I have been working in at CERN is Building 40. It is a pretty neat building:

Isn't that cool? The central part of the building is a hollowed out hole, and the top is effectively a huge sky-light. Even the signage in the building to help you navagate is pleasing and inviting. So unlike most buildings in the US. At the bottom you can just see the top of another European tradition:

It happens at 10am and at 4pm. The common knowledge around here is that all the important decisions are made over coffee. Every one gets it. Everyone hangs out outside, or in the center of the building and talks. It gets pretty loud, actually, if you are trying to get work done. The same thing happens late in the afternoon (5 or 6) outside the cafeteria here: many people drop by for a beer. That is where you hear all the interesting stuff that goes on (the things that are going wrong).

This building, btw, would never have been built in the US. It has no air conditioning -- which can be brutal (at least for me, who is used to working while cold!). The sun bakes the place through that nice skylight. It got so bad on the top floors that both experiments decided to spend some money and retrofit those floors with AC. There is a huge amount of wasted space in the middle of the building: both ATLAS and CMS are in this building; but I don't really tihnk it is big enough for a single experiment, even. UW has 1/8 of a 2 person office. :-) The center cut-out and all the open offices around it mean that about 50% of the office space is very noisy when conversations are going on. Music players and headphones are mandatory to getting any work done.

I'm off to Marseille in a few hours. I have no idea what my conectivity will be until next Tuesday. I'm of half a mind to not connect unless I have wireless and take a break and just think and read!

Comments

[aalu paneer]

noticed the natraj statue in dark. i love the two shadows it creates on side walls of Building 40 and one next to it (Building 39?)>

[neil]

Hi Gordon
What is soft water? Is it bad?
Neil

[Gordon T Watts]

Soft water isn't bad, but is sucks! It is slimy -- you never feel like you've gotten the soap off you no matter how much you rinse, and your hair feels sticky too. Ugh. As a long hair guy...

Yeah -- that statue is great. I have some excellent night shots of it... lost to that @*#&&@ hard disk crash.