Wandering the darkened tunnels

For those that don't know, CERN is huge. I don't mean building huge, but HUGE. Think large town huge. On a good day there are some 20,000 people there. Well, I say people, 20,000 physicists, so a close approximation. As with all large places with people, you have to have the essentials of modern life; electricity, water, heating and network connections. This means tunnels to connect them... many many tunnels. Let me reiterate just quite how many tunnels there are here; alongside the 27km of the LHC tunnel, there are the tunnels for the SPS, PS and PSB accelerators, connective tunnels to every goddamn building in the Meyrin site, and a couple of random ones to old building sites. There're miles of them, and best of all, you can walk through most of them.

Now, students being students everywhere in the world decided to have fun with this and hide something in the tunnels one year. And then decided to tell the sucessive years about it. Taking a wild guess, this caused masses of us young whipper snappers to rummage around dark, wet (torrential rain has to go somewhere. Did I mention these tunnels house part of the drainage system too?) and none to fine smelling places to try and find a bottle of beer. A couple of bashed heads later, we found something. A scrap of paper (barely) stuffed in a plastic wallet. With a riddle, as always. Scribed on it with vaguely the following:

"Down the darkened winding passage, Beneath the humming ring,

Under the electric guard, The Holy Grail lies."

"Yay!" we could all think, "Another trek through the dark." So of course off we went hunting for... something, somewhere. We went down a dark winding passage (although of them are dark and winding...), went beneath a humming ring (you don't know stupidity until you see a sign pointing to a particle accelerator, a "Danger Radiation!" sign and then start wondering if you have to go past it), and found something electric (electrical supplies to the SPS, underground and with a tiny key lock to guard it) and..... no bottle of beer! Yeah, good times guys, good times. We managed to dig our way out of the tunnel, finding a not so suitably contained ladder.

Obviously some bastard had stolen our beer! But we'll come back to that. Now you might notice something from this tale, no mention of security. That would be because there was none. That's right folks, you can walk right next to some of the biggest pieces of machinery on the planet without having to pass security apart from the front gate! This would be one of the awesome things about CERN. Once you get past the front door with an ID (proof that you're smart enough I suppose), you can get just about anywhere that isn't an office. Want to see an ion source and the attached LINAC? Sure, just through that door. Climb to the top of water cooling tower? Sure, just 20m of stairs to ascend. Quite an amount of trust to put in a group of 250 students that regularly got trolleyed. Their assumption that we wouldn't break anything was astounding, and look what it got them ;).

Back to the tunnels. They contained many things, including a wonderful variety of shortcuts. If you knew the right path it was possible to jump out of people that thought they'd just passed you. This extending to security guards too until they started voicing their displeasure. Best of all was that there were entrances everywhere. If you knew where to look. Small bunkers by the road? All contain an entrance. Those little drainage covers? Entrances. Flights of stairs going in a building below the ground floor? Entrances. Best of all was the entrance right next to the main entrance. Walk down it, then run like a bugger to another exit, and then walk back towards the entrance with everyone very confused.

But anyway, that wonderful bottle of beer? Did we find it? Yes! On my final night there, on one final venture through the rambling tunnels with a couple of chums we found the goddamn thing! Wet (filled with run off from a thunderstorm, lovely), with a glass and completely drunk. Kind of a downer for the end, but eh, can't win 'em all.