Bridge of Spies

Yes this is the real one -- the Bridge of Spies.


But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Since our meeting began in the afternoon on Monday, we took a small local walk  in the morning in the area which is called Dahlem. This is really was the heart of scientific intellectualism in Germany.  Check out the street signs.


Just around the corner is this building.  Read the sign. Nuclear fission was discovered in this building by Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn.  Meitner worked for a year unpaid in this institute and later became the first female physics professor in Germany.






To go to a German astronomical meeting, you need to have a lot of stamina.  Example.  Get up at 7 a.m.  Go to breakfast with the other astronomers around 8.  Start the meetings at 9.  Have the usual breaks and continue the meetings until about 6:30 p.m.  Then dinner with the astronomers and then start a special session (if there is one -- not every day) until perhaps 10 or so, depending on the day.  It doesn't help that Germans seem to be incapable of manufacturing a comfortable chair.  We quickly learned to carry down the cushions from the room (in the same building) into the lecture hall.  This theme of suffering for science seems to be rather general.  Two weeks ago at the previous meeting in Bochum, these stairs had to be scaled in order to get to one of the lecture rooms which, by the way, had uncushioned wood benches.


But the Berlin meeting was great and we met many wonderful people, some who previously had just been names on papers, some old friends, even Theresa's supervisor Cathy from Sweden.  The hotel/conference centre was very modern and comfortable, the food was excellent.  Judith ran a Women in Astronomy session Tuesday night at Rainer's request, Richard gave his talk about magnetic spiral arms on Wed. and Judith gave her talk about the CHANG-ES project on Thursday.  Everything concluded Friday with happy farewells to Rainer who is retiring and about to head out on vacation, and to Uli who will retire within the year.  Retirement is mandatory here at 65.  We felt pretty lucky.

The meeting was broken up by an excursion on Wednesday afternoon.  Off we went on a double-decker bus to the palace "Sanssouci" in Potsdam.  We started at the Dutch windmill.  Here is a sampling of our group.


Sanssouci (no worries) was the palace of Frederick the Great (Frederick II, see painting) who built it in Rococo style.  Here are some views.



















It cost 3 euros for the privilege of taking indoor pictures, so you can see that we wanted to get our money's worth!  We also saw the chair on which Frederick the Great died.  Apparently his doctor was at his side and when Frederick was dying.  Frederick said to his doctor, "You've helped many people into the afterlife."  to which the doctor replied to Frederick (who was a great general) "Not as many as you, sire."  Frederick is a character worth reading about but this blog would be too long if we were to start.   Here is his gravestone (on the left).  The ones on the right are of his dogs.


Here are a few exterior views.



After this  the group took a boat tour where we had dinner and took us onto the lake where Einstein once sailed.  This is where we saw the Bridge of Spies (yes just like the movie).  But it is getting dark early now so most of the boat trip was in the dark.  A few scenes.






And so to bed.

The House of Hanover and the Herrenhausen Gardens

It was tempting to call this blog "Meetings, Meetings, and More Meetings (M^4)", but I think that such a mundane title would not have been all that attractive.  Nevertheless, that is what life has been, and continues to be, here.  The week of Sept. 12 was the German Astronomical Society meeting in Bochum.  Then last week was the inaugural meeting of the Ruhr Astroparticle and Plasma Physics Centre, also in Bochum, with an opening reception at the Bochum planetarium which, by the way, looked just like the planetarium in Winnipeg and about the same vintage.  In the same week, Judith ran a special session for the graduate students (with pizza) on women in astronomy in preparation for an upcoming similar session in Berlin (but that is another story).  Now this coming week is the  Berlin meeting, "Magnetic Fields in Interstellar and Intergalactic Media".  This meeting is highly appropriate to our research so we are looking forward to being enlightened, and hopefully enlightening too.

But first things first. Today is Sunday and we set out early for Berlin.


It's amazing how casual you get about what might be worth visiting along the way.  Hanover is approximately half-way between Bochum and Berlin and seemed like a good place to stop for lunch. Pulling out our Germany guide, we read about the close connection between the House of Hanover and the British monarchy. For a time, both the UK and Saxony were ruled by the same monarch.  But to save time and for fear of screwing up some important history, here is a link instead.

Hanover held other treasures, the main one being the Herrenhausen Gardens. So this was our destination and we duly programmed Serena to take us there.  Nothing is small here.  The grounds are magnificent and reminiscent of Versailles (well aren't we well-travelled?!).   But rather than spending a lot of time on description, how about some pictures instead?









Associated with the gardens was a small museum which we also toured.  The main draw?  Unexpectedly: Leibniz.  This brilliant mathematician lived in Hanover and, in fact, consulted on the design of the gardens.  Here are some museum photos.  Watch especially for Richard next to the bust of Leibniz.







Departing from Hanover, it was back to the highway.  Note that the Anglicized version of "Braunschweig" is "Brunswick", the 'New' version being Richard's place of origin.


A long day of driving finally got us to Harnack  House of the Max-Planck Society at 4 p.m.
 Now the real work begins...