Welcome to Meyrin, Mr. Ferreira
It’s split in two by the border between France and Switzerland: most of the land is French, but the official currency is the CHF. The Meyrin site, at CERN, is a gigantic complex of buildings, where 6000 people work, everyday, for the benefit of science. It starts in Meyrin, in the outskirts of Geneva, and ends in a small french village called Saint-Genis, where the “Charles de Gaulle gate” opens everyday, so that people do not have to cross the border in order to get to CERN. It is surprising the large amount of people which cross the gate by bicycle [have to buy one, urgently]. However, less than 30 minutes walking are enough to get from Saint-Genis to building 513, the home of the UDS unit from the IT department. There, I share an office with Piotr and David, from Poland and France, respectively, experienced developers of the InDiCo system, the information system which manages the events that take place at CERN, an open source project adopted worldwide (by Fermilab, for instance).
At circa 100 meters deep into the soil, a giant gallery holds what will be called the “Large Hadron Collider” (LHC). Initially scheduled for the end of this year, the completion of the greates science experiment ever made will be probably delayed until the spring of 2008.