Which country are you from?

Its time to go and be horribly stereotypical! In the best of British xenophobic traditions I give you my own insight into the common traits of the worlds nationalities. Starting from the most northerly.

Russians - Ah, what a wonderful folk. Surprisingly, not amongst the biggest booze drinkers but really, really like a good party. Despite seemingly never being in the bloody office, manage to do their work with seemingly little effort. Likely suspected to not sleep at all and programme using reliable text to speech engines. Strange abundance of skinheads.

Norwegians - Ah the Norwegians, the teddy bears of the world. Seriously, these guys are amongst the friendliest, laughiest, generally happiest folks in the world. Imagine the West Country, but easier to understand and not smelling of farm. You almost want to take one home with you to keep in a cupboard as an instant pick-me-up.

Finns - Oh the Finns... the Finns. I have to sub-divide the Finns really into the stereotypical and the other. The stereotypical were... shy? Quiet? Reclusive. I'm told there were 7/8 Finns at CERN in the summer student programme. I met 2. One due to being one of only 30 other students there at the time, the other because of a damn near total cross over of interests (250 people and only three like poi? Fucking criminal I tell you). The former was quiet, like mouse quiet. And loved coffee. By the gallon. The later liked to talk, for hours. See, strange contradictions. I blame an insufficient sample size. More Finns needed for sampling, report to the station for summary examination. On the otherside, when observed the others drunk obscene quantities of vodka. Like water. May have explained the lack of contact. And the fire alarms.

Swedish - Riding the British anologies, travel north from Cornwall off into Wales. Those quiet but friendly guys that sit around in groups chatting, but looking a bit lost and confused when outside familiar surroundings. That said they have 3 modes. Working, sleeping and hiking, with most seemingly spent in the later mode.

Lithuanians - Mental, that is all.

Polish - An interesting group of folks the Poles. I'm starting to realise why they get jobs everywhere else in the EU. I don't think they sleep. Take one fine fellow named Piotr. Seem at 7am having breakfast. Being his usual bubbly self he was eating bread and jam (as everyone seems to. Buggers need a good bacon sarney. Atleast they would if you could buy bacon). 30 minutes later he was at work. At lunch he was having a good traditional wine and frogs legs (seriously hardcore was this man). Next seen at about 10pm, having dinner. "Where've ye been?" I inquired. "At work." was the response. Damn man, do you have no fun? 2 hours of discussion and much listening to Dimmu Borgir later and that was corrected and explained magnificantly. Likewise, the guy liked running up and down mountains. Frequently. Also had a good taste for fine wine and good vodka. And good soup.

Quebequois - Seperate from the rest of those freaky Canadians. Ok, this is going off of a sample size of one but it was a cool sample. Introduced to the funny world of the francophonie, with weird punk and a somewhat excessive quantity of pasta and fish consumption. And best sense of humour so far - "There's something inherently camp about the French. Even they're manly men just sound... gay."

Americans - Loud... very loud. Also like to express their opinions on anything and everything, great for a laugh, but possibly don't realise that sometimes they are the fun, not part of it. Ok, maybe that's a bit harsh, but ultimately felt very accurate. Something about them seems to shift from confidence in speaking to a conviction that every bugger in the world needs to hear about how awesome they are, which annoys my British-ness. And they haven't learnt why tea is better than coffee.

Germans - Ah, the Krauts, Huns, Germans whatever else you want to call them. Now I reckon if anyone's misunderstood its the Germans. The UK has this image of them being steely emotionless automatons, working away to outproduce the rest of world to oblivion with well made cars and other bits of machinery. Most experiences have pointed to this being mostly bollocks. For a start, all attempts at passing strong magnets near them produced no strange behaviour at all, not even near working electromagnets. Now they might occasionally move in a somewhat static, disjointed manner akin to something in need of oiling, but other than that they're quite nice folk, friendly, chatty (although the speaking in binary gets a bit much after a while) and with a fine knowledge of card games (although not much to match blunt gaming skill). I dare say the underestimated titan of the international world.

Chinese - These folk like partying, drinking and ever so often working. Ok, interactions may have been restricted to talking at parties, but that's as good a sample as any.

Ukrainians - See Russia but with a lot more vodka.

Dutch - They didn't get called the 'Social Backbone of Summer' for no reason. I don't think there was a single one of these guys that wasn't drinking beer by 7pm every night of the summer, apart from Organ lover. But he drank whilst playing the organ, so it still counts. The sheer quantity of beer consumed was immense, as were the practical jokes played after the consumption of said beverage. If I still had a copy of the photo of the table pyramid, I'd still be laughing.

Belgians - They're... Belgian I think is the best description.

French - Oh the French. They're an interesting mix is they. I think possible because CERN has French as one of their two official working languages but because 90% of the people speak English this causes a bit of a friction between populations. And by that I mean they rarely talk to anyone who doesn't speak good French. Ergo, zero sample size. Therefore determined mostly as likeable but odd.

Slovaks - Oh god the vodka. Oh god the beer.

Austrians - These would be my vote for teddy bear of the international community. To a manimal they were lovely folk, with an excellent taste in greasy deserts (fried potato pastries, not a dish to be missed). Even better than that they share a strikingly similar sense of humour to British people and likewise consume tea by the gallon.

Japanese - Like dancing (classical dancing, not crazy body wobble known from the dancefloors), and throwing people. Also somewhat creepily fast to latch onto anyone resembling a teacher of somekind. But always up for crazy adventure which is a plus.

Hungarians - To give a short summary - Mountaintop, vodka/whiskey and camp fires. In Winter.

Italians - Fun loving crew. Well more specifically, love their brand of fun and balls be it if your way is different. This is great when you match phases and then party for literally hours and hours on end. And then die, but still party. Not so much fun when they do a lot of whining about how you party but offer no better idea. That said, they know their shit about just about anything they do (fun fact, Italy has the second biggest group of people as CERN after the US), from cooking to techno/electro (and damn do they like electro). But this can be forgiven as they tend to hate Berlusconni as much as any right thinking person does.

Serbians - These are a very interesting group. Ok, so I only met one, but it was quite an eye opener as to what growing up in a war zone does to you. Speak to one if you get the chance.

Spanish - See the Italians, but more on the fun side and less of the whiney. Also strangely like folk music a lot.

Portugese - See Spanish but drink more wine than should be humanly possible. Best summed by a short three line skit:
"Can I have wine?"
"Here you go." Hands bottle of wine.
Lady walks away whilst turning bottle upside down and letting it run out without noticing. Drunks are funny.

Greeks - Industrious little beavers that party hearty. I think possibly the southern European equivalent of the Polish.

South Koreans - Possibly more computer obsessed than healthy. All the same, good party animals.

Ok so most socialising was done over either dinner or with a bit too much booze involved, but that makes this all totally accurate!

Let me show you my lab...

Time for a sneek peak at the dark bowels of CERN here. Situated in the darkest depths of building 9, Meyrin site lie two dark and dusky rooms. Filled with cruel machinations and horrible lairs. They are, my office and the AB-ABP-HSL lab! Oh yeah, even the acronym leaves you... confused?

A momentary aside here. CERN loves acronyms. You name it, they've got it. Want to see the LHC? Well you can follow the beam from the H- IS, down LINAC2, up to the PSB, with splits to the PS and LEIR, PS leading to the SPS, which flings shit off to HI-ISOLDE, Gran Sasso, LEAR and the LHC. Around the LHC you have ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, LHCf and TOTEM. That not enough? You have you AB, ITC, HR and others. Within the AB you have ABP, PO, RF, ATB. CC3, HSL, BBQ. Enough acronyms to kill a buffalo, or just require a permenant glossary. All the funnier when you realise about 90% of the staff work in the AB group.

But anyway, office and lab. The office first. Now you'd imagine CERN, place of wonder and sparkly stuff, to be filled to the eye balls with shiney new equipment and futuristic layouts right? Well, for a part you'd be right. The areas which the general public might see are filled with space-age designs, extravagant chairs and quite few nice paintings. Likewise, the computer centre is very shiney (for anyone curious it houses the Tier 0 LHC grid), and sounds like a 747 due to all the cooling. The rest of us poor plebs are situated in the dark beating bowels of 60s' era offices and work desks. There's more muddy brown coloured desks in this place than the rest of the world combined.

To give you a quick overview, CERN is not a science lab. Its engineering works. The scientists rarely live here, the engineers that build the machines do. Its all practicality, big machines and loud tools here, with the occasional building given over to visiting scientists (fun fact, of CERN's ~ 3500 permanent staff, probably less than 200 are physicists per se, most build shit).

To this background, it adds its own oddities. For instance, the lab I was working in, normal dry lab, with racks, electrical meters, giant bog rolls, a palm tree (!). Don't believe me? Here *will* be a picture (blasted bluetooth connectivity).

Like I said, somewhat strange. Even better, when I did experiments I did it by propping this tiny thing on top of a toilet roll about 2 ft wide. Epic!

CERN, it is quite a silly place.