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 :-) 

Bike tour

On Sunday it was worth getting up early because I had registered for a 35miles bike trip organized by the UCSC recreation center. My flatmate Carena was so kind to lend me her racing bike for the day. I cycled through the morning fog to the starting point on campus where I met the other students. In total we were 7 persons. The group leader is an agriculture student because the tour went to the farms and gardens in and around Santa Cruz.


















First, we went to 2 community gardens in town where private people can grow their own vegetables - as a gardening hobby or in a neighbourhood of poorer citizens in fact meant as an oppurtunity for a cheap and healthy nutrition. These gardens are however not like German allotments ("Kleingartenkolonien"), but everyone has only one or few square meters. It's October and there are still so beautiful flowers:

The next place was the "Homeless Garden Project" where homeless people work 20h per week for organic agriculture. Of course, they also get healthy food there. The farmer/ manager showed us everything including the composts...
At the end, I asked if I could buy some fresh basil. So he harvested purple basil and lemon basil for me and even digged a whole plant out which is growing now in a pot on our window sill. He did not want to sell it for money, but he accepted a few dollars as a donation for the project which is to 70% based on donations. But they also regularly serve 4-course dinners with fresh organic vegetables as a fund-raising campaign.

Afterwards we biked quite a bit along highway one (the famous coastal highway) until we reached another small farm. The farmer told us about all challenges, e.g. how difficult it is to get certified organic and to enter the farmers' markets of Santa Cruz with regulations like there must not be more than xy strawberry vendors. Particular about this farm is that they deliver all goods by bicycle! Another striking detail is the hippie couple (or now even family with a baby) that lives directly at the fields in a little self-made hut. In return, they sell the vegetables on some markets. The baby in his mother's arm wore just a t-shirt but nothing else. This is the hippie life of Santa Cruz ;-)

The most important issue and also expense factor here is clearly the water supply especially in the dry summer months. On the other hand, I was amazed to learn that agriculture is in general possible here throughout the year (apart from some species)!
Now it's pumpkin time:

At our final destination, Swanton berry farm, I ate a huge piece of pumpkin pie - delicious :-)

Finally, cycling back was mainly downhill and relaxed. I got to talk longer to the second group leader, who is absolutely enthusiastic about biking and dreams of travelling to Europe which is famous for bike lanes and good networks of public transport.

In total, I spent a very pleasant day with nice people, a lot of biking and I learned a lot about the region here!