In a lost corner of the world, between mountains, is where Marta’s most peaceful place lies. A place of back to the reality, back to the basis, where she charges her batteries.
She was born in Gheorgheni (Romania), a small city located in eastern Transylvania, around 175 km from “Dracula’s Castle”. She spent her first 20 years in Romania, where many of her relatives still live, but she is also linked to Hungary because of her nationality and her culture. During four years, Marta studied mechanical engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and, shortly after, she became a CERNie.
Marta is the Section Leader of the TE-MSC-TF section at CERN. She started to work here as a research engineer, in charge of the superconducting magnet design, the fabrication and the contract follow up for the LHC dipoles. For 24 years, she has been at CERN, where she has developed her whole professional career.
She likes and enjoys what she does. Maybe that is why she finds beauty even in a piece of iron. At the entrance of building SM-18, where visitors await, there is a magnet that Marta recovered from one of the old storage areas. They turned it into a table. She likes that kind of object, those engineering pieces of art.
She has always loved the mountains. Although Marta’s blue eyes were already used to nature, she feels that this particular area, near the Alps, is quite amazing, in terms of landscapes, greenery and peaks. From time to time, Marta fantasizes about climbing Mont Blanc sometime. She still has doubts about it. This may always be one of her pipe dream, her voeu pieux, as the French would say.
Her mom always told her: help yourself and God will help you. A teaching that highlights the importance of self-initiative, and willingness. Marta comes from a quite religious community. She does not believe as they do, but she respects their beliefs. She is always down to earth. Still, this is a lesson that Marta would pass on to her daughter.
In one of his novels, Panait Istrati, a Romanian working class writer, stands up for goodness, saying that the goodness of one single man is much stronger than the evil of a thousand, because evil ends when it, metaphorically, dies, but good is transmitted to others and remains even after it dies. Marta completely agrees with him. She thinks that everything is relative and that if you insist on trying to change everything in a positive way, there is always a positive side in everything. It is a question of trying to see it.
One day, Marta will return to spend more time at those lands that saw her grow, where she used to play without a care in the world. That very lost place with no electricity, water or network. A special corner that is quite difficult, but very satisfying, to reach.
To go back to the roots, one day, because as it is said in one of Roberto Benigni’s movies, “life is not perfect, it is not coherent, it is not easy, it is not eternal, but in spite of everything, life is beautiful”.
