Living in a village

It is the first time in my live that I live in a village and for this summer it is really nice. Thoiry has about 5000 inhabitants plus some cows. From our balcony, we can see Salève and Mont Blanc in the Alps! Every morning, cows walk from their barn down to the grassland and they return in the afternoon. Their bells are quite loud! We were sometimes even woken up by their sound.

Thoiry has a wonderful market on Sundays. Especially I liked the cheese :-)

A small village in the mountains

Because CERN is located directly at the Swiss-French border, many CERN people live on the French side of the border because it is much cheaper. Together with Matthias and 3 international flatmates I live in Thoiry, a small French village in the Jura mountains. From here, we cycle 8km per direction to CERN, without traffic lights, instead along fields of grain, corn and cows. In the beginning of June, I saw beautiful poppy flowers:

Summer at CERN!

The stories with "particle physics around the world" continue! Since the beginning of June, I have been enjoying the summer at CERN. Luckily it worked out that I can spend 4 months of my PhD at CERN. Obviously, physics is great here, but of course I am also happy to go on trips in the mountains and at the lake!

After TASI

Many activities happened after hiking to a forest lake in the Rocky Mountains. TASI ended, a road trip from Denver in Colorado to San Francisco in California started with fantastic hiking tours at Moab in the Arches and Canyonlands national parks, at Monument Valley, at the Grand Canyon and after a whole day of driving through the Mojave desert we finally arrived at the Californian coast, just in time for the sunset in Morro Bay. Highway 1 with stops at several natural parks, especially Point Lobos, then 2 days in the lovely Santa Cruz and finally 1 day at San Francisco.
Well, that was already 1 year ago. If I find time, I will upload some pictures. But in the meantime I have moved somewhere else and first of all, I will report from here...

Hiking IV - Alpine Forest Lake

On Sunday, June 16, a group of 10 PhD students went with Prof. Tom DeGrand to a mountain lake in 10000-11000 feet altitude, close to the Rocky Mountains National Park. We drove about an hour and started hiking on a clearly visible trail in shorts and t-shirts. However, since there was still a lot of snow, the trail disappeared and we got a bit lost in the woods. Not even our professor knew the correct way. But he instructed us to look for the trail somewhere uphill in the direction where he assumed the lake. We walked trough a little stream and sank knee-deep into the snow. Finally, we reached a beautiful, calm, still a bit frozen lake and had our picnic there.
After the lunch break, it didn't only rain, but there was also hail! Additionally, we saw and heard a thunderstorm (a bit away), which is typical for the mountains in the afternoon.
With wet feet and a bit cold, but happy, we all arrived safely. It was an adventurous trip!
On the way back, we had to stop for an incredibly long train with 50 waggons that transported coal. Our prof told us that most freight is transported on rails whereas railways are rare for travelling persons.

Hiking III - Bear Peak

On the very warm Saturday, June 15, we hiked up on Bear Peak, which can be seen from campus. The hike was beautiful, through the Skunk Creek Valley, then it was really, really steep. However, we were rewarded with a magnificent view! The forest on the peak burned one year ago.

Cactus blossoms

Our destination: Bear Peak

View from the summit

Deer

Boulder in front of the ridge

Campus location

From the campus we can directly see the Rocky Mountains, which start really suddenly west of Boulder whereas the area east of Boulder is very flat. The buildings on campus were built in a mediterranean style.

Forest fires

From the campus (in a safe distance), we saw and smelled forest fires in the mountains on 2 days this week. At first I thought the grey-blue colour was just because of clouds, but on the second day it even smelled smoky.
Last year, there were larger forest fires at some of the mountains. On the hike to Bear Peak today I could see the results. After 1 year, some flowers are already growing on the ashes.

Hiking - Part 2

One of our professors organized a hiking tour for the whole group. We walked up on the steep Green Mountain and enjoyed an amazing view. It was really warm (>35°C ~ 95F). While Boulder is located at an altitude of 1700m, we hiked up to 2500m. The air is very dry and already a bit thin here, so one has to drink a lot.

Animals

Hiking - Part 1

In a group of 5 people, we went on our first hike. After just 15min walk from our dorm on campus, we reached the mountains and hiked up to the 3 so-called "flatirons" (impressing rocks) in the really warm sun. The view was spectacular.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Boulder Campus

Boulder University is located on a large campus in a mediterranean style. The best is the view on the Rocky Mountains. I promise that pictures will follow soon! The freshly planted flowers on campus are sprinkled automatically, even on rainy days. During the summer school, we all live in a dorm directly on campus. We even get all our meals (also breakfast) as huge buffets in the canteen.
So it is really good to go running every second day. In the morning or in the evening it is not too warm any more. So far I have seen the campus (with geese at a little lake) and a river close by. Hiking up the mountains will follow at the weekend!

Flight

The flight on Sunday was very long: from Hamburg to London, Dallas (Texas) and Denver (Colorado) and the last part by bus from Denver to Boulder. Greenland was covered by clouds, but I saw the Hudson bay with a lot of ice floes. In the United States you can clearly see very long, very straight roads.

Hudson Bay

Straight roads

Particle physics in the Rocky Mountains

Particle physics around the world does not stop: I am spending this June at Boulder, Colorado, for the TASI PhD students summer school of particle physics. 4 weeks with interesting lectures, people from many countries and all this directly at the Rocky Mountains!

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...