From Fregenal, a small village located in Extremadura (Spain), Mercedes swapped the small hills and ravines of Sierra Morena for a place nearby the highest mountain range in Europe. She also changed the short walking distances of Seville for the daily bike rides from Ferney-Voltaire, where she used to live, to CERN.

On her way to CERN, where Mercedes has been working until August 2019, she had to cross large fields that most of the time were full of Milka cows. But, without a doubt, it is another kind of animal, the one that she misses the most from that time. Those Aristotelian zoon politikón that surrounded her. Mercedes had the chance to work with a very nice team, to know lots of women leaders and to learn from the people she met. But she also misses those individuals that she met outside the CERN bubble.

It was around September 2017, at the beginning of her days as a CERNie, when Mercedes and some friends of her decided to set up a woman football team. By that time, just a rugby female team existed, so they shaped a football one, which today is called Scrambleg Leggs.

Besides football, she plays the keyboard. Mercedes decided to buy one so that she could keep practicing and her piano notions did not get oxidized. This engineer never stopped being in touch with arts and humanities. Reading Carlos Ruiz Zafón and fantastic literature, painting, writing and playing music have always come along with her.

CERN changed Mercedes at many levels. Becoming a CERNie is a very nice time to leave shyness and prejudices behind. She worked there as a Quality Assurance and Asset Management Engineer, and she was a one-woman band CERNie. A multitask professional. To her, CERN was her first experience abroad. It was also the first time she got in touch with other languages. Now, she is able to dream in Spanish, English, French and Italian.

It is in life after CERN, when you realize all the big changes that you experimented there. It happens once you come back to your place. Her experience at CERN made her think that she is able to do more things than she thought before. You get more ambitious, but in the good sense of the word.

With 27 years, Mercedes is studying her second master. The first one was a Masters in Industrial Engineering, in Sevilla, where she moved in 2011 to study her university degree. The current one is a Masters in “Energy efficiency industry, audit and building certification” because, in the short-term future, she would like to be part of projects related to the energy efficiency and environment protection.

Last Christmas, Mercedes went into an entrepreneurship adventure together with three friends. She is a restless woman. She does not stop.

In The shadow of wind, Zafón wrote that: “El destino no hace visitas a domicilio, hay que ir a por él”. And, for sure, Mercedes is constantly heading for it.

During her last year of high school, Bea went to Durham (England) to improve her English during the summer. That experience completely changed her aspirations, and with them, the course of her life. Bea, who was born in Plasencia and grew up between that “Perla del Valle del Jerte” in the north of Extremadura and Malpica del Tajo in Toledo, realized that she wanted to live abroad.

She kept this in mind, and in her heart, for many years. After high school, she moved to Madrid to study aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, and during her last course, she did an Erasmus at TU Delft, in the Netherlands, the country where Beatriz’s internship mutated from a six-month chance to a five-year work experience. Her much-desired life abroad had begun.

After working at Moog Bradford and at Huisman Equipment, Bea arrived to CERN, but it was not linearly planned: together with her boyfriend, who is from Mexico, they wanted to try their luck in another country, France, but due to visa issues, they ended up in Switzerland. Bea got a fellowship in 2016, and she was a CERNie for three years, the person responsible for managing and executing a project that irradiated insulation materials at low temperature to characterize them to be used in superconducting magnets.

Her colleagues are what she misses most. Also her Friday zumba teacher, Rachel, and the people from the Women in Technology Mentoring Programme, where she met her mentor, who is now a close friend. Bea was always surrounded by good vibes. She was also going to a drama course at the Université Populaire of Geneva Canton, and she loved reading in the tram on her way there.

CERN gave her the opportunity to meet people from other countries, with very different cultures and ways of thinking, something that expands anyone’s. Besides a problem-solver, Bea is a cheerful and curious woman, always looking for new things, which is why she enjoyed her stay at CERN, a place that she thinks is unique for what is done in it, for the people who daily shape it.

Bea was clear that she wanted to continue in this region because she loves nature. So, after CERN, she started looking for a job around here, and it was in the middle of the Coronavirus lockdown that she got it: she works now as a quality engineer in a space company in Nyon, 35 km from Geneva, also bathed by the Lemán.

She does not want to know anything about the future. Life has shown her that no matter how much you dream, there are other trains that will pass in front of you. As John Lennon said, and his father always reminded her, “life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans”. Bea simply prefers to go with the flow.

Almost for two years, Paula, a restless and curious woman from Gijón, worked at CERN, that laboratory that keeps beauty hidden tens of meters underground. It was one the primal incorporations of Hilumi, and she was part of its technical project management department.

This was Paula’s first work experience. She had studied a degree in Engineering of Industrial Technologies at the University of Oviedo (Spain), studying the last year in Berlin (Germany), with an Erasmus scholarship. It was also where she began to find her path because, for her, CERN is a fantastic place to create your own adventure. Now, from Boston (USA), where she has been almost a couple of years, Paula remembers with special affection the two hobbies that accompanied her in Geneva: basketball and classical music.

As during her childhood and adolescence she lived with the court and baggy equipment, as soon as she arrived to CERN, she joined a basketball team, the Meyrin Basket, where she spent the first trainings and games lost in translation. Along with this sport, classical music. Paula, who played viola at a professional level since she was a little girl, joined l’Orchestre des Nations, where different nationalities and families of instruments were mixed.

Basketball gave her, in addition to triples and DOMS, a formidable level of French. Music, in addition to concerts and harmony, brought her a rhythmic love. In the orchestra, Paula met Matt, her current fiancé, who at that time was also doing her PhD at CERN.

In such a special place, where she believes that there are amazing opportunities to look for and to pursue, Paula realized that she wanted to direct her career towards management. Along with her mentor, a great friend and ally, she set her future plans and professional goals.

That is why, after her time at CERN, Paula flew to Madrid, where she worked for two years at McKinsey & Company, an American consultancy firm, of which, at the end of this summer, she will again be part. This time, from across the pond. To join her more technical profile with the field of management, Paula did a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Harvard, which she has just successfully completed.

From that shore of the Atlantic, Paula dreams of dedicating her training, time and effort to sustainability. She believes that the great problem in our society is that we are taking over the world we live in, so she would love to reverse the situation by taking advantage of emerging technologies. This summer, before rejoining as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company, she is collaborating with Peace of Meat, a Belgian startup that, like Paula, is committed to feed the world differently, while protecting the environment.

Paula will continue to contribute grains and grains of sand, so that we have a healthier world. She will keep shaping her career and composing her life with sheet music for violin and viola. And she will not forget her experience as a CERNie, which will always sound like Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

Aparty corridor is an elongated and special place where there is always a good mood. A place in which, from Monday to Friday, the coffee machine does not rest. It is also where Miran’s best memories at CERN are based.

Miran is currently living in Ljubljana (Slovenia), where Brane Mozetič, a poet and the director of the Slovenian Literature Centre of the city, was born in 1958. He wrote a poem entitled, There are things you can’t say, and that is what happens to Miran when it is time to talk about future dreams.

“An astronaut” is what a friend of his would say, but there is no answer for what he would like to be when he grows up. Not yet. As John Lennon used to sing, let it be. Miran prefers to stay down here. He is now working as a development engineer at RLS, a Slovenian company specializing in the design and manufacture of magnetic encoders.

Before this, he was a CERNie because in September 2019 he started an internship. He was part of the Configuration, Quality, Risk and Sourcing team of the HL-LHC Project, and he also belonged to the party corridor. He remembers fondly to walk down that corridor and to see the faces of the people thinking on the other side of the open doors.

He still remembers in detail a rainy day, one with the typical rain of the saddest scene of any drama film. Miran was walking down from building 112 to the main entrance, and a stranger’s car stopped next to him. “A long way to the main entrance, right?”, said the unknown CERNie. “Yes”, Miran replied. “Just jump in!”, the stranger offered him, and they drove together all the way down.

From those days as a CERNie, he also reminds how much he learnt at the professional level. In addition to his daily work tasks, he and his colleagues occasionally read and made presentations about books related to quality (in terms of engineering). It was an initiative of his supervisor to share fresh knowledge, and to keep it in constant motion.

Miran feels very lucky to have spent six months at CERN, where he was able to be very close to an impressive machinery that works thanks to the people. Those people who think and work hard in their offices, the CERNies that make incredible things happen, while having a good time in this international environment. It was six months full of great moments, nice conversations and good company.

So were the ski club and the violin encounters. Since Miran plays the violin in an Irish punk rock band, he decided to try an open jam session in Geneva. He only attended once and, now, he wishes that he went more times. But often we have to “be left to the wind”, as Mozetič wrote.

Miran had studied a bachelor’s degree in Materials Engineering at the University of Ljubljana, from 2014 to 2017, with two Erasmus experiences in between: the first one in Kraków (Poland), and the second one in Prague (Czech Republic). Then, he took a master’s degree in Mechatronics and Laser Technology at the University of Ljubljana.

Just as he enjoyed his internship at CERN, his two Erasmus, his time at university, his days in high school, and at primary school, Miran is enjoying his first days in what is now his new job. He just wishes to be happy.

As in the party corridor, all doors are open and life will take us anywhere. Even for the future dreams, “there will be an answer. Let it be”.

“On my feet I wear two shoes for dancing, dancing to be free”. To the beat of Ska Jazz, Jara, a 24-year-old globetrotter, turns up the volume of Two Shoes, the song that she would recommend to anyone. Also on her feet, there is a pair of shoes that keep dancing.

Jara is the eldest of three siblings. She grew up in La Fresneda, a residential complex close to Oviedo, the capital city of one of the greenest regions in Spain: Asturias, patria querida.

Her interests range from nature to robotics, from climate change to new technologies. Jara studied a Bachelor of Science in Electronics and Automation Engineering. The two first years in Gijón (Asturias), the third one in Kraków (Poland) and the fourth one in Tampa (Florida). Now, she lives in Geneva, surrounded by friends employed by banks and international organization such as UN and CERN.

Since October 2018, she is working at CERN, specifically in HiLumi LHC and, more specifically in QUACO, a research project focused on the development of very peculiar magnets. Although in her team, everyone does a bit of everything, Jara is in charge of monitoring the production of those magnets, which two companies, one from France and the other from Spain, are building.

In the “pool of missing”, Jara would mark 1 to her father’s and her grandmother’s food, and also to the sea, that same sea that Rosalía de Castro asked to see from her bed shortly before she died. The Galician poet, a neighbor of Jara’s terrina, wrote: “it is fortunate the one who dies dreaming. Unfortunate the one who lives without dreaming”.

Jara’s curls dream short term. If she closes her autumn eyes, she imagines herself being part of a multicultural company, working together with people from various geographies with the aim of improving the lives of many others. Now, she is studying a master’s degree in Innovation and Digital Transformation, which focuses on the economic side, on business. Little by little, without stopping her shoes’ dance.

Jara may not be very good at painting, but she is not a disaster either. She is an optimistic woman who, even in dark and nebulous situations, she is able to see the good side, the one that only shines for a few. She bathes in stoic rivers while she remembers that “no hay mal que por bien no venga”.

Perhaps, she will become a successful business woman or she will toast with sidrina, somewhere in Europe, to celebrate great future advances in climate change. Perhaps, she will end up in a sports company, collaborating in improving the equipment and, therefore, the athletic performance. Perhaps not.

Jara hugs short-term dreams because she prefers not to make plans in that distant tomorrow and to continue here, dancing free with her same shoes.