The Great Escape

It has been longer than expected for me to write forth this little blog of mine. The reason is simple - I have been deprived from internet access at home ever since I moved to my new home in southern Germany. Of course I have submitted a subscription with a provider company; however, as it turned out, they have to rely on the bandwidth they receive from the former state-owned, former monopolist, Deutsche Telekom (or just Telekom). Naturally Telekom will cling to any advantage they have in this competitive business, so they won't easily give up bandwidth to their competitors, hoping potential new customers will eventually get annoyed with them, and return to the save haven of Mother Telekom ... Alas, but not me! Unfortunately I am forced to buy a landline phone connection through Telekom, but then I will have internet through their competitor, 1&1; and the latter will check recurringly for available phone bandwidth of their own in my area, so that in the long run I can transfer to 1&1 entirely. This is part one of the Great Escape - escaping from the claws of a former monopolist with almost proverbially poor customer service.

Escaped I have, of course, also from the limbo of unemployment; this being the second leg of my Great Escape. Though I had to relocate once more (the number of moves I have had in my live seems to already approach double digits), and this time to the very rural Svabian Alb (quite unlike the urban giants, Chicago and Berlin), I am happy beyond being able to tell you that I have secured this job! It is essentially how I have always imagined my first industry job to be - an exhilaratingly motivated, yet totally welcoming crew of colleagues, a super-exciting product of great impact on the high tech community, an adequate level of remuneration - all in all a very satisfaying package. Yes, there are disadvantages, too, but they are far outweighed by the pros (and of course I'm not allowed to talk bad about my employer ... but seriously, it's a great job!).

However, there is even a third part to my Great Escape, and that is escaping from the occasional dullness that arises on weekends in places like Oberkochen, population < 8,000, number of traffic lights: zero. Thus, in the first weeks at my new place it was literally every weekend that I drove south to a city called Ulm, which has the nearest IKEA. To those who are unfamiliar with the concept: IKEA sells furniture of decent (yet not great) quality for little (yet not very little) money. The trick is that they can rely heavily on mass production - IKEA is somewhat of the McDonald's of furniture, in terms of world-wide representation, even though they like to think of themselves as very green. Also, the furniture is assembled by the buyer; you only get the parts in a few boxes, and you have to demonstrate your crafty skills at home. Well, despite occasional breakdowns that are rumored to occur over the latter, finding a space to park your car at IKEA on a Saturday may well be a greater test of your patience ... Anyways, I think I have done quite okay in setting up all my furniture, and after a while you got it figured out that most IKEA pieces are built in similar ways. By the way, it's not that I moved into a totally blank apartment - I had a basic set to make me feel at home right away; but then I needed more shelves for the living room, and then I discovered that I could transport an entire dining table for 4-6 persons in my tiny Peugeot 107 (which is about the size of the trunk of a full fledged American SUV ...)., and then I decided I didn't like the old study room furniture I was given by my parents. In total I may have spent at least twice as much money in extra tours to Ulm than I did on the original pieces I moved in with. But buying and assembling furniture isn't the only escape from rural Oberkochen I allowed myself. Slightly further to the west from Oberkochen than Ulm is to the south, there is Stuttgart, the capital of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. That's where I have commuted about every week to spend time in places called Starbucks and Coffee Fellows. Even though I feel seriously apalled already by the smell of coffee, I do enjoy their free public internet - for customers, of course, so I resorted to a hot chocolate. I already drove almost 6,000 km with my new car - since I've got it in August, that is. Fortunately it is really not thirsty. According to the manufacturer it consumes about 4.5 L of gas over 100 km, which corresponds to about 60 miles per gallon. Given that gas is about twice as expensive in Germany as it is in the U.S., I do appreciate the low consumption. It's green, too, of course; and all of that makes up for the only 60 horsepower that force me to think twice before I take over a slow truck on a narrow road ...

But after a threefold escape, one might wonder whether I will actually settle down after all. Yes, despite the lack of entertainment, I feel like I have settled down in Oberkochen, and I could stay very well for quite a while. To explain why that is so, I am sharing with you some of the impressions I managed to capture - with my new camera, a Canon EOS 600D.
(a) me at the welcoming sign at the southern end of Oberkochen
(b) the train station of Oberkochen (it's really just an Asian restaurant with a beergarden, the actual station is a single platform)
(c) looking across the valley
(d) the southern tail of Oberkochen - I live now in the peculiarly peach-colored house in the center of the photo, just above the meadows
(e) a spiderweb outside my window that my camera was able to capture (I insist that there are no spiderwebs on the inside)
(f) the tower of the local church, at the center of Oberkochen
(g) an interesting fountain, also at the center, reminding me of far-far-away Alaska ("drill, baby, drill")
(h) a tree in the middle of the road near the train station
(i) southbound railroad tracks, leading to Ulm
(j) Oberkocheners like to wave their flag, too
(k) not so ugly ducklings
(l) an old building
(m) lots of light in that backyard
(n) the graveyard of Oberkochen - there is also an undertaker's business, so if I am destined to stay here for good, the essentials are taken care of ...
(o) a practice close-up of a leaf on the graveyard wall
(p) another practice shot, from above the bridge at the southern exit of Oberkochen
(q) a close up of the Rain Tree in Aalen, which is the seat of what Anglo-Saxons would call a county
(r) the old town of Aalen
(s) more of old Aalen
(t) a little ditch that drains water from the Rain Tree (along with my long afternoon shadow)
(u) a square at the center of the old town of Aalen
(v) Obviously the owner of this car doesn' know what (s)he is doing ... especially since the first group of (1-3) letters represents the county, but the subsequent 1-2 letters and 1-4 digits are random and can be picked according to personal taste, subject to availability ...

Carl Zeiss Syn-"op"-sis

Good news! After almost one entire year of frustration (post-graduation unemployment is very much like "post-production hell" in the movie industry) I can proudly report that as of September 1, 2011, I am employed by Carl Zeiss AG, respectively a subsidiary, Carl Zeiss Laser Optics GmbH. (AG and GmbH denote the type of legal entity company belongs to, such as the American Ltd., Inc., Corp., etc.) I received the phone call on the birthday of a good friend of mine from college times, and apparently I will join the work force just two days after my own 35th birthday ...
Carl Zeiss has been around for more than one century, and made a name for itself as a world-renowned optics supplier. The founder, Mr. Carl Zeiss, started out as a workshop employee at the university of Jena (Thuringia, Germany), where he would, in collaboration with Physics faculty member Dr. Ernst Abbe, for the first time develop optical microscopes in accordance with physical theory. Prior to this, microscopes had been built in an inefficient trial-and-error fashion, but from then onward it was possible to reliably manufacture them in larger quantities. The duo was later joined by chemist Dr. Otto Schott, who did seminal work on improving the quality of the glass that was used for the microscopes' lenses. This fruitful collaboration became a successful business, when Zeiss and Schott started their own companies, Carl Zeiss AG and SCHOTT AG, which till the present day continue the original shared work of making glass at the latter and shaping it into optical devices at the former. - Abbe did not have a company of his own, but later became the head of Carl Zeiss AG, and an as prominent as important figure for the Carl Zeiss foundation, which is still the owner of both aforementioned businesses.
With time Carl Zeiss AG has started to occupy other fields of optical applications, including the proximate manufacturing of glasses, but also of instrumentation for medical applications, electron microscopes (which employ electrons instead of light for higher resolution), photo cameras and related accessories, and of lasers for special applications. This last activity is carried out by a subsidiary called Carl Zeiss Laser Optics GmbH, which I am joining now.
However, today the headquarters of Carl Zeiss AG are no longer in Jena, due to (very unfortunate) historical events. As it is widely known, Germany started, and lost, World War II, leaving it occupied by the allied forces: France, the United Kingdom and the United States in the western part, and the Soviet Union in the eastern part. The American-British-French "trizone" eventually evolved into the western "Federal Republic of Germany" (FRG). A not-so-well-known fact is that a part of what would later become the Eastern "German Democratic Republic" (GDR), namely Thuringia (German: Thüringen), was originally occupied by the Americans, but was traded in for one sector of each of the three western allies in Berlin. Thus, the Soviets withdrew from West-Berlin (where I pursued my doctorate!), which prior to 1990, when Germany was reunified, belonged to the FRG, but gained control over Thuringia. In anticipation of the emerging Cold War, the U.S. dismantled many, if not all, Thuringian high-tech sites, including those of Carl Zeiss in Jena, which were relocated to the state of Baden-Württemberg, which was in their part of the FRG. From the onward, Carl Zeiss AG has been headquartered in Oberkochen, near Aalen, 70 km east of Baden-Württemberg's capital Stuttgart, and 50 km north of Ulm. The new site is very close to the German state of Bavaria, which is adjacent to Baden-Württemberg to the east. (Funny enough, the surface area of Bavaria is about as large as that of Lake Michigan, and Oberkochen / Aalen are almost as close to the inter-state border as Chicago is to the lakefront ...)
As mentioned at the outset of this post, Carl Zeiss AG is an optics supplier. Their photography division used to be renowned for the Zeiss Ikon model, which became defunct, but was revived in 2005. My mother had once been presented such a camera as a gift from her father, and she passed it on to me on the occasion of my being hired. Please join me in marveling at this beautiful piece of vintage technology, encased in a no less beautiful leather hull, as depicted in the left photograph. (The inset shows the Zeiss Ikon logo.) - Coincidentally, my current camera was produced by Jenoptik, another pre-WWII subsidiary Carl Zeiss AG subsidiary. It is depicted to the right, photographed with the camera of my father. (I bought the Jenoptik in 2006, when I was visiting Glasgow, which had been my home for 3.5 months in 2002, and at the time of the visit was where my sister was doing one semester abroad, just like myself. - If you click on the image and then enhance it to its actual size, you can see a reflection of me taking the picture on the tiny metal knob between the flash and the objective.) Since I am thinking about buying a more sophisticated D-SLR camera, now that I am about to earn good money, I will probably give the Jenoptik to my mother, who currently doesn't own any camera at all.
So much for a synopsis on my new employer and the related history; a term that is of course etymologically related to optics, the Carl Zeiss AG's core business.

FIFA 2011 Women's World Cup

As I have previously mentioned in the post on my trip to Berlin, Germany was the host of the FIFA 2011 Women's World Cup, which has ended less than two hours ago. Much was written in the run-up to this event about gender equality, as in Germany women were banned from playing soccer until the 1970s. I would like to refrain from adding any more this this debate, while also drawing your attention to another earlier post, on women in science.
Nevertheless, since I would prefer my significant other to be female, and since I have also been an avid lover of soccer for virtually all of my life, I confess that the combination of two concepts that appeal to me leaves me no less than enthusiastic. When I was a boy, children's birthdays were a little complicated because the boys wanted to play soccer, and the girls preferred Blind Man's Buff (or so I remember). Nowadays, it seems, gender stereotypes have eroded, and the ladies are into physical games just the same. Well, you can tell that this is definitely in my good books! In other words, if you are a thirtysomething female soccer player, with decent guitar skills and a progressive mindset - I fear I would drop dead at the mere sight of you ...
To dissociate myself from any hint of male chauvinism, I would like to congratulate all contestants of the FIFA 2011 World Cup on their performance. Especially, thank you for the most thrilling final (including extra time and penalty shootout) I have seen in a long time. Team USA was a worthy opponent, but over the course of the whole match, and the entire tournament, Japan has earned the title of World Champion most convincingly.
Then again, it's not a crime if I find some (many) of the players pretty, is it? (At least not as big a crime as stealing the photo from somewhere in the depths of the Internet, I guess.)
Update, July 19, 2011: Last night, while in line for a movie ticket, I overheard a conversation about the final. A person stated that the performance of the US team in the penalty shootout (three misses in the first three shots) was so bad, it were a reason not to watch women's soccer in general. The person was a young woman, age 20+.

Ingobertusfest

This is actually an ancillary post to the announcement of Heinrich's successful defense. The same night, after returning to St. Ingbertby train, I walked home from the train station, which is located on the far end of the town. That weekend the Ingobertsfest (St. Ingbert's equivalent to Saarbrücken's Altstadtfest) of 2011 was taking place. To my benefit I could buy a Schwenker steak, and spend a few minutes in front of a musical stage before eventually heading home. To demonstrate the skill level of some local bands, I recorded a short video clip - but beware! These guys rock!

Another successful PhD defense!

The weekend after my most recent Berlin trip was marked by the upcoming doctoral examination (colloquially known as the PhD defense) of my college friend Heinrich (english "Henry"). Heinrich was the last of my friends at my college, TU Kaiserslautern, to finish his PhD there. While originally being a student of a combined chemistry/business program, he later decided to fully immerse himself in scientific research, and obtain the degree of Dr. rer. nat. (english "doctor in natural sciences"), which I am holding myself. He was working in the same group where I pursued my Diplomarbeit (roughly equivalent to the thesis work of a Master's degree in the U.S.) to become a Diplomchemiker (abbrev. Dipl.-Chem., the only pre-doctoral degree conferred upon completion of a chemistry curriculum, until the advent of the tripartite Anglosaxon Bachelor's / Master's / Doctor's degree system in the European Union. In that respect, returning to Kaiserslautern was like yet another "blast from the past", considering I was in Berlin just one week earlier ...
I seized the day to take a few pictures: (a) the building of the Department of Electrical Engineering, where I was enrolled in 1997-1998 before switching to Chemistry, (b) a few old friends in the auditorium of Heinrich's presentation, (c) the main entrance to the Department of Chemistry, (d) Heinrich being "hatted" by his labmates
The tradition of "cap and gown", as conferred in an Academic Commencement ceremony in the United States, has been abandonned in Germany's public universities in the aftermath of the 1968 student rebellion, and thus in the science departments the labmates craft a hat for the graduate-to-be, decorated with items and pictures alluding to the candidate's personality, and to anecdotes associated with him. In Heinrich's case, at the core of his research was the design of a cooling device for a measurement apparatus, which he nicknamed "Tweety" due to the sound it produces - hence the Tweety insigniae all over his hat!
The absence of an official graduation day leads to the somewhat undue situation that the certificate that legally enables the graduate to hold his or her newly obtained degree will be sent by mail, or at best be handed over by a representative of the university's administration. Also, for this to happen it is required that the candidate "publishes" the thesis with one year's time; i.e., makes it available to the university library after all editing has been finalized. (In the case of my own doctorate I at least got congratulated by a quite friendly lady who was in charge of all PhD affairs of the university.) In other words, after a (presumably) successful defense there are still some formalities standing between the candidate and his becoming a graduate, which may take up to one month!
Nevertheless, friends and family are allowed to praise the performance at the defense, and offer congratulations, and even call the candidate a doctor without legal implications. It is also customary to celebrate the success on the day of the defense, usually paid for by the candidate (or someone close). We did honor that tradition and celebrated Heinrich until nightfall and beyond, but I had to leave to catch a train back home at 10 pm. Still, it was great to meet with some old friends again, some of whom I hadn't seen in almost a decade ... making me aware of the fact that my departure from Kaiserslautern is now longer ago than the duration of the time I spent there. And with the graduation of Heinrich I feel I have no immediate reason left to visit this school, other than pure sentimentality.
Thus, all that's left for me to say here is: Congratulations Dr. Heinrich! Well done!

"Du bist so wunderbar, Berlin!"

"Berlin! Du bist so wunderbar, Berlin!" This is the chorus of the 2003 song by a band called Kaiserbase, which translates to "Berlin! You are you wonderful, Berlin!" It was popularized nationwide in Germany through its use in a television commercial for Berliner Pilsener beer. This period coincides roughly with my time as a graduate student at the Fritz Haber Institute, and hence it has become my unofficial anthem of this indeed wonderful city.
I haven't found the time to visit Berlin since my return from the US of A, even though thinking about it did make me quite homesick. Finally, my friends Heather and Jon, who are avid Berlin lovers just as much as I am, came back for a visit, or actually in the case of Jon for a (short) work-related stint. With my good friends back on "home-away-from-home turf" I had a good reason to kick my rear and hop on the next train to our capital.
In a way it felt different, but many things have remained the same. The difference is that this time I strolled around the city with a sense of accomplishment, which replaced the previous feeling of belonging. While being a student I often pictured my first return, imagining it must feel great, if not triumphant, to enjoy Berlin without the ever-pending pressure to succeed in the pursuit of my doctorate ... In fact this wasn't entirely untrue, but the former connection, arising from a lengthy task that required my day-to-day attention, has diminished. It also plays a role that many of my former colleagues are no longer there. The student who took over my office space told me that she is now one of the most senior students in the department.
Nevertheless, it was a great experience to come back, even for just half a week. (I arrived on thursday afternoon, and left on monday after lunch.) No doubt the seven hours one-way train ride was totally worth it! Of course the main reason for me was to reunite with Heather and Jon, but I was also taking advantage of the location, trying to revive as many memories as possible. By a pleasant coincidence my hotel was on the same subway line I had to take when I first interviewed for the position as a graduate student, so the route itself already brought about some forgotten memories. One particular sensation was recalled at the Spichernstraße subway station, where the air is moved heftily by the trains on the platform of the U9 line, but is notably cooler and less turbulent at the top end of the escalator to the U3 line that intersects there with the U9. Another significant "reenactment" was having an Italian gelato at the Potsdamer Platz Arcaden shopping mall, which is so highly reputated that during daytime the waiting time is at least 15 min! (And yes, I definitely got a sweet tooth!) Since my arrival in Berlin was on a short notice Heather and I would not meet until the second night, so I engaged in my favorite passtime: watching a movie at the Cinestar Original movie theater; "original" referring to the fact that the movies aren't dubbed, but feature the original English audio.
I revisited a number of sites, as depicted in the phtot collection, including (a) my old house (I used to live on the third floor to the left of the entrance that is to the left of the big window), (b-c) the Hauptbahnhof (central train station) ((b) a view from the platform for east/west-bound trains on the top floor, all the way down to the platform for north/south-bound trains on the bottom floor, the two being a solid 25 m (82 ft) apart, (c) a sign announcing an inbound over-night train from Berlin to Paris, which has its only stop en route in Saarbrücken, my birth place), (d) a meadow just across the street from the Fritz Haber Institute, where I used to play pick-up soccer (with real goals that we would bring along, built in the institute's own workshop), (e) the fountain at the famous Alexanderplatz (Alexander plaza, named in honor of a visit of Russian tsar Alexander I.), sporting the nickname "hooker's brooch" (Berliners have a reputation for their potty mouths!), (f) the Reichstag building (home of the Bundestag, the "national" chamber / "lower house" of the German parliament, the other being the Bundesrat, or "federal" chamber / "upper house"), (g) a night out with (from left to right): Wiebke, another Fritz Haber alumna (and also one of my former office mates), Tia (originally a friend of Heather's, now also of Wiebke's), and Heather, along with their respective significant others, (h) a placard advertising the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup, in which Germany is the host nation (the slogan translates to "Guys, we will avenge you", a reference to the men's competition hosted by Germany in 2006, where the German team came out third, while everyone had hoped for the championship - unfortunately the German women's team got kicked out as early as in the quarterfinals), (i) the façade of KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens, english Department Store of the West, the second-biggest department store in Europe after Harrods in London (which of course leaves KaDeWe the biggest department store in continental Europe)).
To sum up, this short getaway did quench my homesickness for Berlin for a while (and it also remined me of the less pleasant aspects, such as the very long commutes across the city that are additionally impeded by the many urban rail stations under constructions). Yet a part of my heart will always be in Berlin (just like in Chicago!), and I will always need to return every once in a while ...

Altstadtfest Saarbrücken 2011

In the Saarland, my home state within Germany, it is a long-standing tradition (and also a reflection of the people's approach to life) to have weekend festivals throughout the summer. Each and every city, town and village has its own festival at a given weekend in summer, so during that time you have a lot of choice where to celebrate your weekend.
This weekend (June 17-19, 2011) it was Saarbrücken's turn. Frequent readers of my blog may remember that Saarbrücken is both the capital of the Saarland and my place of birth. It may not be as glamorous as Chicago or Berlin, or even other cities that are closer to Saarbrücken populationwise, but it is the Saarland's central hub for pretty much everything, and I do enjoy a little shopping spree at the pedestrian zone, not only for sentimental reasons.
Saarbrücken is actually quite pretty, in certain areas at least. Among them is the Old City, which has its roots in times long bygone. Hence the idea to celebrate there; "Alt / stadt / fest" literally means "Old City Festival". - Since I like etymological topics, I would like to stress that Saarbrücken appears to translate as "Saar Bridges" (the Saar being the main river), but according to the German Wikipedia page "Brücken" is related to "Briga" (rock), or less likely to "Broich" (swamp). The river Saar has its name from the Celtic word "Sara", meaning "flowing water". Finally, please note that, defying standard German grammar, the demonym is not "Saarbrückener", but "Saarbrücker".
The historical area of Saarbrücken features an original palace, which once was the home of the counts of Nassau-Saarbücken. It is located on a little hill from where the river Saar can be watched. The top left photo shows the courtyard as seen from the open side of the U-shaped complex. (If you look closely you may discover a couple of newly weds that apparently came there for a photoshoot.) The photo in the center shows the view from the garden across the river. (The garden is to the left of the palace in the first photo.)
The pompous building to the right is the Staatstheater, an important witness to the Saarland's turbulent past. As a result to Germany's defeat in World War I, the Saarland (then an industrial powerhouse with numerous steel factories and coal mines) was seized by the French as a means of compensation, and also protection against retaliation. Politically, the Saarland was under direct administration of the League of Nations, the predecessor of today's United Nations. However, a referendum among its population returned the Saarland to Germany, which by that time was already the infamous Nazi state. Hitler was so pleased by the outcome of the referendum that he granted the Staatstheater to the Saarland's capital. In fact, the theater is built in the neo-classical style the Nazis were enamoured by ... Despite the dark history, the Staatstheater is the main site in Saarbrücken for performing arts, such as plays, operas and classical concerts.
The bottom left photo gives a glimpse on the A620, the city highway that passes right along the banks of the Saar. The close proximity allows for a nice view while driving on this road, but since the Saar's sources are in the (French) Vosges Mountains, the A620 is always flooded in spring time ...
After this history lesson I would like to pass on to the culinary specialties of our region. The influence of our French neighbors is omnipresent, and while the French language isn't exactly popular among school kids, I haven't met a single Saarländer who didn't like the French cuisine. Therefore, I made good use of this opportunity to eat some really good food. In chronological order I had: a merguez sausage (which looked infinitely better than on Wikipedia), a Schwenker steak (which wasn't real as it came from an ordinary grill), an onion-bacon quiche type flatbread (actually from the Baden region - the vendors apparently travel to many such festivals throughout the summer season; it was very yummy regardless), one 0.3L beer, a crêpe filled with Nutella (the consistency of which is very much like peanut butter), a seafood pot with rice (similar to the Spanish paella; Spain is a southern neighbor of France) along with a glass of white wine called "Entre Deux Mers" ("In Between Two Seas"), and lastly another 0.3L beer (which is the one on the large photo on the right).
Home sweet home!

"The Owl's Nest"

I have to make a confession. Although I am a scientist, which implies (in a zero-order approximation) that I should be a no-nonsense person with utmost dedication to my profession (in other words, a textbook stereotypical German), I love to play around. I like many different computer games, and in particular I have been for years a fan of the games created by Pastel Games. The name of this company is a reference to its founder, Mateusz Skutnik, who not only holds a degree in architecture, but is also a very gifted artist, photographer, narrator, and game designer. His signature game series is Submachine, which I am truly addicted to. The games fall into the point-and-click category, where the player shares the first-person view with his in-game character (see attached image). Navigation and interaction with the in-game environment is done by mouse-over and click, provided the selected item or adjacent location are available for that. One makes progress in the game by picking up items (maybe combining some in the inventory) and solving riddles. For instance, in some of the Submachine games new locations can be reached by teleporting, which in some cases is done by entering a three-digit code. However, only a few out of the potential 1,000 combinations will actually activate the teleporter, so tasks must be carried out to learn the coordinates that work. Also, sometimes a door must be opened to access the teleporter itself, which may be done by cooking up a corrosive chemical from inventory items and then spilling the fluid into the door locking mechanism. Some of the riddles are hard, which is probably why the games have such a loyal fan base. The often dystopic ambient (demonstrating the artistic talent of Mr. Skutnik) adds an extra thrill (for me, that is).
A recent release from Pastel Games, and here comes the punchline, has been named The Owl's Nest. I think the identity of the names is purely coincidental, since this blog has been around since long before the inception of the game, and I have a hard time believing that the Pastel Games crew actually reads my blog (although I would be quite flattered, of course). This particular game takes you inside a Nazi German bunker that must be explored, in order to find out what happened there. (Don't worry, the Nazi aspect is only for extra creeps, as they are the antagonists, much like in the Indiana Jones movies #1 and 3.)
If you would like to give The Owl's Nest a try, please click here. Oh, and don't be depressed if you get stuck - that happens to the best of us, frequently! There is also a walkthrough ... I never finished any of their games without peeking at least once ...

Women in Science (xkcd)

This cartoon is hotlinked from cartoonist xkcd's web site. It struck a chord with me, because it made me think (again) about the abundance (or the lack thereof) of female scientists. I would like to share just a few facts from my own scientific career.
First of all, we must define a starting point for my becoming a scientist. I suggest we pick the time when I entered the final two years in secondary school (Gymnasium), because that was the first time I was allowed to choose a slant in my class schedule toward science and mathematics.
Specifically I picked Physics and Chemistry as two topics in which I took the written Abitur exam. There was only one female student in the Physics class, but I would say that in Chemistry it was almost even. In fact, there was another Chemistry class at other times of the week, so as to ensure all students get their favorite combinations of classes, and thus we should look at both Chemistry classes combined. I don't remember everyone after 15 years, especially since the second class took place at our partner school, but my feeling is that the percentage of female students in the combined classes ranked between 30 and 50%.
Then I went on to do my civilian service, a military service substitute, which I did in a kindergarten. There, the staff consisted of four female full-time employees, a female trainee, and myself. The principal was also female, but since she was in charge of multiple institutions, she had her office somewhere else, and she showed up only once a week.
College was next, which I started as an Electrical Engineering major. Slightly more than 50 people started with me, of which only 3 were women. One actually quit after the first term, but another one, who is from an Arabic country, later went all the way to her PhD, and in the process she kicked everyone's behind whenever it came to do math.
In fact, I also quit doing EE, to pursue a Chemistry degree instead. Again, the gender distribution was about balanced, actually with a slight excess of women (due to that fraction of students who specialized in Food Chemistry). Eventually I graduated, after a year-long final research project, and when I left for Berlin, the three graduate students who were in that group at that time for their own doctorates were all female.
I don't have comprehensive information on the gender composition of the CP department of the FHI Berlin, because not only was the group too big to assess something like this in retrospect only - there was also a significant fluctuation of staff, so this variation makes it impossible for me to correctly remember everyone. Yet I can offer a survey on the people who worked directly with me: four females and two males.
In Chicago I was in charge of providing training to the students who were assigned to work on the same equipment: three females and one male (even though the male student overlapped with me only for a few weeks, after which he went to Berlin, where he worked on "my" old experiment, and he actually taught me more about the Chicago chamber than I taught him about science in general).
To sum up, there is much female talent in science, and the fact that that there are only few female professors is most likely due to the "glass ceiling" effect. - Other explanations are welcome, especially from female scientists!

First Things First, or What?

The original idea behind this little blog of mine was to keep all of my friends posted during my American adventure from 2008 - 2010. However, a fact I haven't addressed too often here is that Chicago wasn't the first foreign place I have lived in, and today I would like to report a little bit on that. The reason for this is that earlier on today I got word from my former advisor, Dr. David Lennon, (who is a "supervisor" in British English, actually an Englishman, and anyways someone I look up to as a scientist and a person alike) that the work I was involved in finally got accepted for publication. By a funny coincidence, some of the people I later worked with in Berlin are co-authors of this paper as well. So, Chicago didn't mark my first stay in an anglophonic country, even though the accents from Chicago and Glasgow couldn't probably be any more different from each other ... the latter being by far the thickest I have encountered so far. (But in a sense the two cities share being rooted in working class culture.)
I am particularly fond of my Glaswegian experience, because it was there that for the first time I was treated like a real researcher. Ten years back the Anglo-American and the German educational systems were distinctly different from each other, as only more recently Germany and the rest of the EU introduced the three-tier Bachelor / Master / Doctor degrees; formerly the German undergraduate level ended with a Diploma, a Magister, or a Federal Exam, all being almost peers to a Master's degree, and also taking respecively more time. As a student of Chemistry at the TU Kaiserslautern, I was required to do three six-week research projects, one in each of the principal topics of Inorganic, Organic, and Physical Chemistry. I was pleased to learn that my alma mater had signed collaboration treaties with various other universities across Europe to facilitate the mutual exchange of students. (Foreign experience is a much-cherished value over here.) In the Sciences this is particularly easy, as it isn't so important where the lab is located that the student is working in; and the core of the deal was that Kaiserslautern students could substitute one of their three domestic research projects with the one abroad. There were two major benefits for me: I got to gain for the first time some international work experience, and it was handed to me on a silver platter: while it is usually a bureaucratic mess to temporarily leave one's home university to attend another one, this agreement was specifically designed to encourage just that. Oh, and there was even a little bit of money involved to cover my travel expenses. A triple Hooray to the "Erasmus program"!
As a result of this wonderful invention I could go to Glasgow from early April to mid July 2002. As I have hinted above, people from where I completed my doctorate were also involved in the Glasgow project - it so happened that the day I introduced myself to David Lennon in his office, Hajo Freund from Berlin called him to talk about the results ... and since they were confidential, I, as the new guy, actually had to leave the room for the time of their conversation. Still, I added my little share to the progress, and at the end of the day I even earned the second spot on the authors' list. (The person in front of me is Alastair, Scottish for Alexander.) And due to the longer duration of this assignment I got involved more in the science than I could have ever been in the other two undergraduate projects in Germany, which gave me much satisfaction. (Sadly, the other two didn't give me much satisfaction at all, for different reasons.)
However, the highlight of this time clearly was a meeting of all research groups from Scotland that work in the field of heterogeneous catalysis. This meeting has a tradition and takes place every year in May, in a youth-hostel style cabin on the shores of Lake Tay in the Southern Highlands. I retrieved a representative photograph from the depths of the Internet to share with you the beauty of the place. The meeting consumed four days, of which only half were dedicated to science, and the other half to outdoor activities. So it came to pass that I engaged in the Scottish national sport called hillwalking, which is a euphemism for serious uphill hiking in the Highlands. My legs felt like jelly, but I did make it all the way to the peak of the hill, where I saw patches of snow as big as 10x10 m^2 even in late spring. I am a fan of eating, so to speak, but the little snack we had there was especially delicious! - The next day my legs were incredibly sore, but I went on a little bike ride with another student participant, and at night I managed to win the ping-pong tournament. (In the final game I beat David, my boss.) But I guess the fact that we had a ping-pong table in our garage when I was a kid probably gave me a head start ...
By the way, there are two reasons why I had to download someone else's picture to illustrate Lake Tay. Digital cameras were the exception rather than the rule, and hence way beyond my tiny student's budget. And I also relied on my then-girlfriend, a hobby photographer, to take the pictures for me when she came to visit me for two weeks; but we broke up shortly after my return to Germany, so all the pictures stayed with her. As sad as I was at the time, being single granted me the freedom to fully dedicate myself to science ever since. You might say, that ever since this break-up I have been in league, but not in bed, with science ...

Luck Be a Lady Tonight

... that's the title of a classic Frank Sinatra song, which appropriately describes my most recent night out. On Good Friday (yesterday) I received a call from an old friend of mine, Anne, to hang out the same night with herself and our common friends, Cornelia (Conny) and Nicole. It was some sort of a tiny class reunion, since the four of us all graduated in 1996. Nicole did not actually attend Albertus Magnus Gymnasium, but Leibniz Gymnasium, the other secondary school in St. Ingbert from which a graduation grants access to all university studies. However, it is typical that schools in the same town collaborate in the two final years, so as to provide all students their preferred selection of classes. Therefore, Nicole was in my French class, and we took the final written exam called Abitur together at AMG. The Abitur is anyways centralized in our home state, meaning all students in the entire Saarland who selected a specific class at the advanced level (of which each student must pick three) will take the exact same final at the exact same time.
It was a very nice opportunity to reunite with the three, whom I haven't seen in many years. Anne was the one I had seen last - at the wedding of Dominik and Simone, in August 2004. So we had a lot of catching up to do, since Anne (the valedictorian of Albertus Magnus Gymnasium's class of 1996, and now an employee of the local government) and Nicole (a pharmacist) have children, Conny (an MD) recently finished her specialization as a surgeon), and I spent much time on doing scientific research in Berlin and Chicago.
After a tasty dinner Nicole had to leave us, but I seized the day and got the picture that ornates this post. From left to right: Anne, Conny, Nicole. The former two and I went on to a bar to have one more drink, with some more chit-chat being done, until we called it a night.
Afterwards I was forced to admit that there is indeed life outside the science community ...

Celts Exhibition and Vapiano Restaurant ... with Children!

Yesterday I went on a long-planned excursion, together with my friends Simone and Dominik and their children Xavier and Noëlle. Simone, Dominik and I are members of the Albertus-Magnus-Gymnasium's "Class of 1996"; a Gymnasium being the type of secondary school that grants university admission. Since our friendship goes back such a long time, I was offered to become the godfather of their first child, an honor I gladly accepted (however, not without pointing out that, being a skeptic, I may not be the prime choice for this duty).
After being away in Berlin (2004-2008) and Chicago (2008-2010) I am quite happy that I am currently able to spend a lot more time with Xavier, and of course also with Noëlle. Often I just pass by their house when I go out, but this time we actually had an appointment - we had planned for a long time to see the Celts exhibition at the nearby town of Völklingen. The top left photo shows the four of them on the train. Taking the train was a prudent choice, since we could have a little walk in our hometown (St. Ingbert) to reach the station, and at Völklingen the exhibition site was right next to the station there. The top right photo shows the outside of the place, which is actually an UNESCO World Heritage in its own right. Decades ago, our region used to be an industrial hotspot, producing tons of charcoal and steel, but having found no worthwile replacement, we currently have significant problems with unemployment. (Ultimately, if there were more high technology companies, I might have found a job myself already.) So, this World Heritage site is a now-defunct steel factory, which you can see on the bottom left photo. Actually, this was a suitable idea, because the Celts were the Iron Age people of Europe. Yet, as I have learned, there was never a coherent Celtic culture, and they didn't perceive themselves as one people, but rather as independent tribes with significant differences among them; the main thing they had in common was actually the ability of making items from iron. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures inside the exhibition, because it didn't appear I was permitted to do so. Anyways, it was worth the money, and I am glad we went there.
Actually, we were accompanied by Maria and Wolfram (friends of Simone's and Dominik's), their son Jannis, and his friend Valeria. That means we were a group with four children, the oldest of which (Xavier) will turn 8 this summer. For the little ones the exhibition maybe wasn't the excitement of their lifetimes, but I don't think they were having an outspokenly bad time, either. Nevertheless, they obviously liked the next stop much better - the Vapiano restaurant at Saarbrücken, which is about half-way back to St. Ingbert. We had some Italian refreshments (pasta, pizza, salad), and even though I would translate Vapiano as "tread lightly", the kids had all the action there that they couldn't have at the Celts exhibition ... The bottom right photo shows everyone at the dinner table.
Anyways, it was a great day, and I would prefer to do more trips of this kind!

Nina's Birthday Party (Merzbach), Porta Nigra (Trier)

Yesterday I went on a day trip to visit my old friend Nina, her husband Jörg and their baby boy, Moritz. Much to my own shame I must confess that I did not attend Nina's and Jörg's wedding, because it took place while I was in Chicago. (Likewise, I skipped another friend's wedding for the same reason, and since she also had a baby boy recently, I may go on another trip soon(ish), and I will then report on that, too ... Ironically, my friend Homa from Chicago is getting married these days, and I was forced to turn down her invitation as well.)
Nina (to the left in the top left photo) and I became friends in college. We both were chemistry majors in Kaiserslautern (which you may find on the map of Germany that shows my travel route a bit to the east of the starting point near Saarbrücken), and so were in fact most people you see on the first photo. Not all of them were in our year, but Britta and Stephanie ("Steffi") were. Britta is the blonde holding Moritz (I apologize for using the wrong shutter setting for this shot), and Steffi is the brunette watching over the snoozing baby.
Nina, Steffi and Britta form an interesting triangle. Nina and Steffi go back a long way, having been even high school class mates. If I remember correctly, chemistry wasn't the first choice for either one, but that's what they ended up with. (In the first two years they were roommates.) Going with chemistry apparently didn't hurt them too much, I guess, since both met their husbands. Britta, on the other hand, was Nina's companion in Glasgow, Scotland, for one semester abroad; an adventure I was also a part of. Steffi and Britta later went on to do a PhD in physical chemistry with the same advisor (I left that group for Berlin after the final undergraduate thesis), while Nina did hers in organic chemistry.
Now, yesterday's journey of mine began as early as 6:30 am, when I left the house to walk to the train station. At around 7, I hopped on the first train, which took me as far as Saarbrücken ... only a 10 mile ride. After a ten minute layover, I hopped on another train to Trier, which took 90 minutes, and where I had a full hour wait until I could continue. From Trier I went on to Euskirchen. There I only had to cross the platform, where the last train to Rheinbach was already preparing for its departure. Since I was a little early for the party, I had a snack at that train station, until I took a bus to Merzbach, where Nina, Jörg and Moritz currently reside. Total duration, one way: seven hours. I stayed at the party for about three hours ... then I had to leave to be home without spending a night at a train station in the goonies. Jörg gave me a ride back to Rheinbach, and guess what? The train I was supposed to take from there was cancelled! That meant an extra 30 min wait before I could ride back to Euskirchen (only 15 min). There I found, much to my relief, that a train to Trier would leave soon, and be there at 8 pm. From there trains depart for Saarbrücken every hour until very late (and more than a few actually go as far as Homburg or Kaiserslautern for which they have to pass through my hometown, St. Ingbert).
In Trier, I was stalled for another hour, so I decided to do a quick sight seeing trip. Trier happens to be the oldest settlement in Germany, being founded more than 2,000 years ago by the Romans. The so-called Porta Nigra (or Black Gate), has been left by them and can be visited. It is located only a few minutes from the train station in Trier (which the Romans used to call Augusta Treverorum), so I decided to seize the day and take a few pictures. (I am sharing my favorite with you on the bottom left.) - Eventually, I rode to Saarbrücken, and since this train does go to Homburg, but not on Saturdays, I had another final layover there.
When you look at the map, you will find my traveling route indicated. I find it a bit ridiculous that was on the train(s) for five hours one way, when the net traveling time was actually only 3.5 hours. But there are two problems: first, I used the so-called Happy Weekend Ticket (39 €), by which you can use all short-distance trains on one weekend day (which must be designated prior to the trip). You may even bring a long a few others, but the ticket must be signed, so the holder must be present and cannot pass the ticket on to someone else when he doesn't need it anymore.
The second problem is that there weren't any long distance trains available that would go, say, from Saarbrücken to Cologne on my route, because (I think) those can't used the existing tracks. Taking long distance trains would have deviated me so much that the trip would have been only (much) more expensive, but not faster.
I wish they would introduce a fast connection from Saarbrücken to Cologne, or at least make the layovers significantly shorter, but another problem is that there are more hills than population between Trier and Euskirchen/Cologne, so this will probably remain wishful thinking in the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, I had an awesome day, and it was particularly nice to reunite with so many friends, even for just a short time. Additionally, the weather improved a lot throughout yesterday, from rainy-gray to spring-like. I think I have to see them again soon, also because it has just occurred to me that I didn't taste any of Nina's father's products yesterday - the man runs his own vineyard!

Family Reunion

Recently it was my father's birthday. For an appropriate celebration of this event we went to a nice local restaurant. We, meaning my father, my mother, myself, and my sister Katharina (yes, "the Great", just like Alexander "the Great"). I don't get to see my sister very often, as she lives now in Hamburg, at the North Sea, which is about 500 miles north from our town. In fact, this was the first time I saw her in the flesh since I had returned from the United States. (Ironically, she is currently pursuing a degree in psychology, which has more to do with the mind than the flesh ...)
The restaurant we went to is called Die alte Brauerei, or The Old Brewery. I don't have a definitive proof, but it seems very obvious that the building used to house the facilities of the Becker brewery, our local beer brand, which later got merged with a larger competitor (from Homburg, the capital of our county, so it was still a local product) and was eventually discontinued. The newer facilities of the Becker brewery are located just across the main street, which is called Kaiserstraße, or Emperor's road, after Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte; note that the German Kaiser and the Latin Caesar are cognates. The Kaiserstraße is nowadays a second-tier highway (and as such is has a general speed limit of 100 km/h, unlike the German Autobahn), but already back in the 19th century it connected Paris, France, with Mainz, now a state capital in central Germany (next to Frankfurt).
The restaurant itself is above everyday lunch category, at least for my budget, and also my parents'. Nevertheless, the ambient gives it a distinct down-to-earth feel, while on the other hand the French owners and waiters add the right amount of out-of-the-ordinary. As you can see from the top picture, the part that faces Kaiserstraße has an archway through which the yard and the actual restaurant are reached. Note the timber framing (middle picture) - it really is an old building.
Finally (bottom picture), you can see the other three members of my immediate family sitting on one table, waiting for the feast to begin. - My mother suggested that we go there again once I found a new employment.

"Bratäpfel"

The original purpose of the Owl's Nest was to share my American experience with my friends in Europe and elsewhere. However, today I would like to talk a little about my European life; namely I would like to present my parents. The man with the hat and the the headphones is my father; he is having breakfast in the early morning of the second Advent sunday. He likes music a lot, and he was my initial guitar teacher, so he wears the headphones a lot, also when he cleans the house, for instance. The lady below is my mother, sitting on her desk. Note the little web cam on top of the monitor: it was used to chat with me over Skype while I was in the United States. Unfortunately my own web cam and also my headset recently broke, so I got to use theirs to chat with my friends back in Chicago. (This web cam has a built-in microphone, so I only need to use my own headphones in order to avoid feedback effects.)
Finally, the bottom picture displays a special treat my mother prepared for me a few weeks ago: Bratäpfel (fried apples). You know all very well that I like to stress on language topics, and here is another one: "braten" means "to fry", and "Apfel" means "apple". As I have mentioned before, all German nouns are capitalized, and we tend to agglutinate them; also if the second part in English is actually an adjectiv. There are virtually no limits for how many nouns can be glued together. One famous example (that is used to impress those who learn German as a foreign language) is Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitänsmütze ... Donau = the river Danube, Dampf = steam, Schifffahrt = ship navigation, Kapitän = captain, Mütze = hat. (Note the additional letter s before Kapitän - in some sense it works as the glue between the enclosing parts.)
Oh, but I got carried away a little, so back to the Bratäpfel. There are also two dots on the letter ä, which changes the pronunciation a bit; from close to the u in "but" to close to the a in "many". While the plural is always indicated by a final s in English, there are more than a handful ways to do it in German, not counting combinations. Adding a letter s works for some nouns, changing a vowel a/o/u to ä/ö/ü, respectively, for others. Unfortunately there are no clear rules, so anyone who dares learn German must memorize the plural forms of all the nouns. Really, I prefer eating Bratäpfel than studying their silly German grammar!

Happy New Year

Dear all,

I would like to wish you a Happy New Year 2011, with good health, good luck, and lots of happiness!

I did not really celebrate the beginning of this new year, but I certainly have great hopes in 2011. It be the year in which I find employment. So, I do not have any photos from the fireworks that welcomed the new year, but I took some on Christmas Eve. Complying with a request from a friend, I give you: our Christmas tree the moment all the candles were lit, the dinner table just before the feast, and the kitchen table with the starters. Our annual ceremony comprises the singing of a few Christmas carols, followed by the wishing well, and the gift giving. It only takes about 20 min, because the candles on the tree are real, so we do not want to let them set the tree on fire. (In fact, I had to ask to have a few of them re-lit, so I could take this picture properly.) I am afraid, though, that my camera was not expensive enough to fully capture the beauty of all the burning candles in an otherwise dark room.
As soon as the candles are extinguished (using a special spoon that only serves this purpose), we switch on the light and proceed to the dinner table (which is just to the right of the tree, but you cannot see it in the top picture). My mother is a very talented cook, and on Christmas Eve she usually outdoes herself! (Hail to the chef!) The shrimp puff pastries you see on the bottom picture, which we had as starters, were outstandingly awesome! (Okay, I just made that up, but it was so good that it does deserve a bit of linguistic creativity.) The ensuing main dish (Beef Stroganoff, Spätzle, and Rotkraut (shredded red cabbage)) did not fall short of it. - It may be a stereotype that Germans eat a lot of kraut, but I see Rotkraut as slightly more sophisticated than Sauerkraut, and it is served as a side dish to meat as fancy as game. (Sauerkraut goes well with simpler dishes such as a sausage.) Anyways, we used to have a different tradition until last year, but this one is healthier. Still, we had a final treat: plums cooked in plum spirit, served with vanilla ice cream. I did have nice Christmas celebrations the two antecedent years, but there ain't no place like home!
You see four chairs on the table - my father sat on the far end, and I was across the table from him. My mother sat to my right, and my only remaining grandparent, my paternal grandmother (who lives in a separate apartment in our house) , to my left.
On Boxing Day, as the British call it (Dec 26), I visited my godson Xavier and his sister Noëlle, whose parents Dominik and Simone invited me over. The parents are high school friends of mine and actually the only people I still keep in touch with on a regular basis from those times. (I exchange notes with other people more randomly, though.)
In total I am quite happy with my gifts. Among other things, I got a painting (hand made by seven-year old Xavier - amazing!), a pretty hefty puzzle cube, and an acoustic bass guitar. The latter has been my wish for some time, so I mentioned it when my mother asked me what I would like Santa to bring for me. I must have been a very good child this past year, or maybe I am just a totally spoiled brat! Either way, I love my new instrument, but it is more difficult than I thought to carry my (anyway rather mediocre) guitar skills over to playing the bass. But I only have it for a bit more than a week, so I need to be patient ... However, do not expect any demonstration before the year 2020!