CERN Entrance E

To people driving by, CERN is primarily a loooooooooooooooooooooong, tall fence overgrown with all sorts of plants and trees, broken in about four places by gates. There isn't a whole lot of security to get on site, but CERN IDs are required to get in. I think this is partially to keep people with confused ideas of what we do on the outside and partially to make us students feel a little cooler about working in an international lab every hour that can be crammed into a day.

The experiments and all other interesting stuff have a lot more security. Like palm and retina scanners. I am not kidding.

Anyway, having only three ways (the other gates are for goods) to get into or out of CERN makes getting to one's office a little interesting. Entrance E, shown above, has the distinction of being the only gate on the French side of the border, and lies about a fifteen minute walk from my apartment. Entrance B, the main entrance that's open 24/7. is over a kilometer away. One would think this would make Entrance E incredibly convenient.

But Entrance E has magical properties not shared by the other, mundane gates. Entrance E is a one-way gate. It allows people to enter CERN between 7 and 9:30 a.m., and allows people to leave between 4:30 and 7 p.m. And that's all. This bears no relationship whatsoever to the hours actually worked by the physicists at CERN. Perhaps the personnel this personnel gate is referring to is some other group of people. Either way, this behavior is extremely annoying when you have a meeting in this corner of CERN. The meeting lasts until 7:10 p.m. Entrance E closes. The closest open gate is over a kilometer away. What should have been a fifteen minute walk is now a 30 minute hike over that darn hill smack in the middle of CERN.

At least, it's only 30 minutes of hiking assuming you catch the bus and don't just walk home, passing back by Entrance E on the outside an hour later.