Reflections

What is left to say? One month has passed since my return to Hamburg, but still I often think of my experiences in California. I enjoyed my stay over there a lot which was mostly due to the nice people I met, the beautiful nature I saw and also the interesting physics I learned about.
My time there would have been quite different without my awesome "WG" (shared apartment) with TJ, Carena and Tia. Thank you so much! Living with the "locals" is the best way of getting to know the life in a foreign country and of making friends. Also in the institute I met so kind and helpful people. I really hope that those who are planning to come to Germany for physics or travel reasons will make their plans true soon! Furthermore, I was lucky to have Howie as my supervisor who organized so much for me.

I came back after one month with better impressions of the United States than my expectations had been. I realized how manifold the various states are and how much the student life in California differs from the life in the prairie of the Mid-West... In addition I was impressed by the breath taking landscapes outside huge cities.
People are very friendly, open, talkative, willing to help, but therefore not each phrase/ greeting should be taken too serious (like "How was your day?" when paying at the supermarket). In total I prefer living in Europe rather than in the US, but after this short stay I could indeed imagine living there for a bit longer.

I have been reporting about my experiences in detail on this this blog, focussing on the freetime activities so that the readers might get the impression that I did not work at all ;-) But honestly I sometimes resisted the Californian sun and I did work on my master's thesis! I just thought that it is more interesting to read about trips than about calculations... This blog was intended to keep you posted while I was away, as a kind of public diary to remember everything for myself and in the end I hope that some students considering whether to go on exchange to Santa Cruz might find it useful. My advice: go :-)

I am concluding this blog for the moment, but I strongly hope that in the next years there will be more opportunities for physics and non-phyics experiences abroad! :-)

48 hours

Travelling back happened step by step and took hence rather long. On Friday morning I had a delicious goodbye breakfast from our food left-overs with Carena and TJ. Then I had to pack and clean my bedroom before Howie picked me up to go to SLAC once more. He had even promised to bring me to the airport in the evening. Before my departure he invited me to a Chicago-style pizza place where we were able to watch the final of the baseball world series. It was indeed very instructive to see it with him because he explained me the rules and pointed out what was important. In fact, he told me why he got interested in maths as a child when he was growing up in Brooklyn, NY. The reason was that he really wanted to understand the arithmetics of baseball statistics... It was so nice how he had been taking care of me during my stay.
Then checked in and flew to New York overnight. I was shocked about the low temperature and the ugly rain, but it got even worse: it started snowing heavily!! At least I was happy to meet Jukka there (a Finnish friend who is doing his PhD at Yale now). However, the unexpected snow storm destroyed all of our plans of walking through Central Park or going by ferry to the Statue of Liberty. Instead we wanted to visit the Museum of Modern Arts, but people were queuing outside for 2-3 hours in the snow, so we prefered to  spend the day inside. Back at the airport I heard that all domestic flights had been cancelled and that our flight was delayed by three hours because they had to wait for a permission and the airplane had to be deiced.
Finally I arrived tired at Hamburg airport on Sunday, October 30th, in the morning. What a fantastic month!!

Farewell and Thanksgiving

Thursday was my last day at SCIPP.  The best was a physics discussion with Stefano, who thinks that the effects I presented might also be relevant to his calculations. With 8 people from the institute we had a last lunch picknick outside. I was happy to meet most institute members again at the faculty colloquium so that I had a chance to say goodbye.
Back home, I noticed once more what awesome flatmates I had! Carena and TJ had invited lots of friends for a farewell party and they had asked them to bring typical thanksgiving food. They made mashed potatoes, rice crisps with melted marshmallows and I made a pumpkin pie from a huuuge pumpkin. Other people brought mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing (usually inside a turkey, but this time the vegetarian version just without the turkey), muffins,... very delicious food :-) Later on, we moved to a bar downtown.
A very nice, but sad goodbye. At least many of them would like to travel through Europe, so let's hope some of them will make their plans true.

Surfing!!

Thursday morning was my very last chance to go surfing and Eddie was so kind to organize me a surfboard and a wetsuit and to pick me up at 6:30am at my place. Then we arrived at the peaceful beach of Rio Del Mar around 7, even half an hour before sunrise. Dawn by the sea was so beautiful! Eddie taught me how to paddle lying on the surfboard and how to jump onto it. When we went into the water, it felt less cold than I would have expected. The waves were a bit too gentle for real surfing, but it was amazing enough to enjoy the light of the early morning.
Suddenly this idyll was interrupted when a triangular fin sticked out of the water, awfully close to Eddie! We were shocked because we knew that sharks do live at the northern Californian coast, but less in Monterey Bay, though.
Even more surprised were we when this fin turned out to belong to a cute dolphin! And it was not alone, but there were ten of them, swimming around us and even jumping out of the water! I was so fascinated!

After surfing so early, I still arrived on campus in the later morning.

Last days in Santa Cruz

My departure approached way too fast, but the last days were really nice. On Wednesday, we went again to SLAC to attend even two seminars. Walking through a corridor, Howie explained me that the old man who had just gone into his office was a Nobel laureate: Perl, who had discovered the tau. Amazing what people you see at SLAC...
Back at Santa Cruz, the team "Re-Entry" had another softball game which they won of course. At the end I was also allowed to try it, but I was terribly bad at hitting the ball! Yet, it was fun and I got to know another aspect of American culture ;-)

The Big Day

On Tuesday, October 25th, I finally gave my talk in the theory seminar after only few hours of sleep because -as always- there was so much to do in the last minute. I must really learn to finish my work some more time in advance. However, at the end everything went so amazingly well! During the preparation I had been quite nervous because my talk had been announced officially on the seminar homepage http://scipp.ucsc.edu/seminars/index.html, with a notice on the pin board and by email. Luckily I knew that this seminar has a very friendly atmosphere.
I was surprised how many people had come and I felt honored that also the experimentalists from the ATLAS group showed up so that additional chairs had to be squeezed into the seminar room. Stefano helped me with the beamer and Howie gave a very nice introduction and explained how this exchange had started. Then I talked 30min about physics and the audience asked quite many questions during and after the talk so that we had interesting discussions. In addition to my physics part, I spoke about the opportunity of an exchange, trying to advertise Göttingen and Hamburg. Not only students, but also professors seemed indeed interested.
After the talk I was really relieved and tired. But the big day was not over yet since I had a meeting with one professor from the media department who had been in Göttingen as the exchange program coordinator for a while. Unfortunately, this program between Göttingen and the University of California had been canceled due to the financial crisis. So we discussed new more or less formal exchange options. Regarding the stay abroad during my master thesis, I was extremlely lucky because I did not need to pay tuition fees since I did not take any classes or exams. Thus, my exchange was rather uncomplicated. Such a short-term visit for research purposes should be extendable in both exchange directions.

In the afternoon I was so exhausted that I decided not to work but to go mountainbiking on Upper Campus, in the woods where mountain lions live. It is really idyllic there, especially considering that it is in fact on campus. However, the signs about the mountain lion habitat worried me a bit...

Weekend: Work, Walk, Water

Last weekend I had to work a lot because I had not finished the results for my talk on Tuesday (today) yet. (However, I was lucky that my talk had been postponed to this date instead of my second week.) But I also went running to the beach and along West Cliff and I was invited to a nice house-warming party of friends of TJ and Carena. The night was so warm that we could stay outside on the balcony all the time in summer cloths!! Usually it gets rather chilly at night, maybe 15°C. Despite all the work, I definitely also want to enjoy some freetime here.
On Sunday, we went on a fantastic day trip with all our flatmates while it was 26°C and even much warmer in the sun. First, we went hiking (or let's say, we did a little walk because you can hardly call it a proper hike) in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, to a place called "Garden of Eden".

 On the path, we had the pleasure to make the acquaintance with friendly banana slugs. They are even the official mascots of UCSC! :-) Howie had told me the story how this happened: While the former rector wanted to have a mascot representing strength, speed or wisdom as other universities have, UCSC students, in their alternative spirit, demonstrated for a more individual choice: the local banana slugs. The rector, however, kept refusing. But ultimately, as his last action before resigning from office, he officially accepted the banana slugs which have thereby become famous.

After the little hike, we drove along highway one, saw the beautiful coast and arrived at Swanton berry farm where I had already gone by bike with the trip organized by the recreation center. For me it is still amazing that agriculture is possible throughout the year so that we were able to pick fresh and delicious strawberries from the fields.

At the end, we spent some nice time at one of the many gorgeous beaches. However, I was the only one who went swimming. I figured it would be my last opportunity this year...
After this fantastic flatmate-trip, we all had to work in the evening.

ATLAS

The world is so small and the ATLAS* collaboration so huge! Prof. Quadt, my supervisor from Göttingen, had asked me to send his regards to his ATLAS colleagues at the Santa Cruz Institute of Particle Physics. I said hello to them last week and they already knew that I would come. We discussed some interesting physics questions between theory and experiment, and two days later, they invited me for lunch!

*sorry to the non-physicist-readers of my blog, there was a bit of physics in the last entries. ATLAS is the largest detector the LHC and many institutes on the world are involved there, e.g. Gö and SC.

Berkeley

On Friday, I went to Berkeley with Howie and TJ because there was an interesting workshop on supersymmetry and Higgs physics. Both the experimental and theoretical talks were really good. I learned especially a lot from Howie's talk.
I was surprised to meet some people I knew: Prof. Klute who had given the "introduction to particle physics" in Göttingen before leaving to MIT, and Mike who coordinated the photon cross section measurement at ATLAS last year when I was a summer student at CERN.
However, one of the best aspects there was definitely the location! Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (or short, LBNL) is located on a very steep hill which offers a magnificent view on the bay area including Berkeley campus (the bell tower imitates a bit il campanile di Siena), Oakland, San Francisco skyline, bay bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge!

I even met students from Göttingen on campus. We watched this beautiful sunset together and had dinner and a beer in town before I went back with TJ.

Earthquake!!

Right now, there was an earthquake!! Only a very little one, though. The couch I am sitting on was shaking for maybe 5 seconds. Nothing more. Tia, who was standing, did not even notice it. But TJ did. He said that such a minor earthquake happens roughly twice per year.
The last very severe earthquake was in 1989 when even buildings fell down. That's why the buildings on campus are now supported by steel constructions.

Relaxed weekend

The last weekend was quite relaxed. On Saturday, Tia and I worked a bit, but outside in the sun on our terrace. Later we went to a party of a phyisicist and to a bar. But bars close way earlier here than in Hamburg, often already around 1am. So we went to the beach with some more people. The highlight was to go swimming in the Pacific at night! It was not cold, only "refreshing"... When Tia and I came home, we had to drink a hot chocolate ;-)
On Sunday, Carena, TJ and I had brunch in a café with a live jazz band, quite nice! Afterwards I visited the museum of arts and history of Santa Cruz, about the native Californians, the Spanish discovery, Sequoias, the Californian railway (which has not improved so much since its construction, I think), the beach life and the major earthquakes of 1906 and 1989 due to the moving Pacific and North American Plate along San Andreas Fault.

Then I went by bike along East Cliff. You can see how peaceful the beach of hippie-Santa-Cruz is decorated.

Surfers at Pleasure Point, the italian-spanish-imitated beach town Capitola and East Cliff Lighthouse shortly before sunset:

Climate

The climate is quite mediterranean, although a bit colder than southern Sicily which has the same degree of northern latitude as Santa Cruz. This is because Europe is warmed by the gulf stream whereas the west coast is cooled down by the Alaska stream. Now in October it is rather fresh in the morning and evening, but usually 25°C during the day so that I work often outside on campus! Strange to have sunset already around 6:45pm while I would normally associate such temperatures with ~midsummer.

Due to the friendly climate, the vegetation is really different from central Europe. We are supplied with fresh lemons by a lemon tree in front of our house. Typical vegetables are eggplant, avocado, artichokes - quite Sicilian, actually ;-) But there are also e.g. Brussels sprouts (native to Belgium...) which I saw for the first time on their branch.

Also bambus, Eucalyptus and cactuses can be found here although they may be native to other countries!

Colors of Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz mainly consists of colorful wooden houses - as if there had been some Scandinavian influence. All over the town, there are many trees which are changing their colors now although the temperatures are still as in the German summer. Besides, there are cactuses, palm trees,...

Please take notice of the VW T2 ;-)

Biking downhill from campus is a pleasure! Especially at sunset.

Dear readers of my blog

Writing a blog is like a one-way street. It is communication in one direction. I have to admit that primarily I am writing this blog for myself, as a documentation and memory of my experiences here. Not quite a diary because it is public. And of course, I write the blog to keep you posted without attaching photos to dozens of emails.
However, feel free to interrupt the one-way communication by writing comments or emails :-) I am also curious to hear what is going on at home or at your places.
Furthermore, I would like to know who reads my blog. The statistics showed that there are not only readers from Germany, Finland, the US,... but also from Russia, Latvia, India, Indonesia and Brazil. It would be nice if you could write a comment or an email!

Summer

Instead of night frost in Germany, it seems that I will be enjoying summer till the end of my stay here :-)

Softball

My supervisor Howie (in the black t-shirt and with a cap - who does not look at all like a stereotype professor) is absolutely enthusiastic about softball! His PhD student Eddie and my flatmate Carena are also on the team. So I went to watch their first match of this quarter on Wednesday. Of course, they won! In addition, the view from the UCSC sports center on Monterey Bay is great.
Howie uploaded my pictures on the team's webpage http://scipp.ucsc.edu/~haber/softball/coed.html. I feel honored to be called the "team photographer" there :-)