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.