Coming back

I just flew back to the US and of course the soccer match France-Germany was probably the most viewed on-board entertainment program. The flight was a lot better than the game though ;-)

First impression after arriving in LA.

Not much has changed around here, but I am glad the bush fire near Santa Barbara seems to be gone. The weather's nice and "in the seventies" (Fahrenheit, which is around 21-25°C). The student town, Isla Vista, is surprisingly empty as most students don't have lectures during the summer term.

Graduate students do research during that time while undergraduates might work in labs as well or just work full-time for a different employee. Lectures will start again on September and the typical German "Semesterferien" do not really exist here (it's one week between the quarters).

Lindau 1.0

The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting is the largest yearly gathering of Nobel Laureates in the world - thus, I assumed the conference was going to be pretty cool, but it turned out to be a lot more than "just" that. To anticipate my thoughts at the ending of this meeting: I could have stayed for at least anther week to get to know all 400 young scientist and to talk more to all the ones I met, but everybody was so tired, that it was a good time to close the conference.

When I arrived on Lindau, my seatmate wished a "happy holiday" and I didn't really know what to reply. Indeed, most people go on vacation on Lindau - which makes sense as the Alps frame the Lake Constance which is great for swimming, surfing, SUPping, sailing, ... There's also a mainland part of Lindau where my host family lives.

After an opening ceremony on Sunday, the actual conference started on Monday morning with 30-min talks from the Nobel Laureates. There was a talk about soap bubbles, the climate change, LEDs, ... it was a huge, but very interesting variety. But the breaks inbetween were at least as important as the presentations themselves! I got to know many other enthusiastic young scientists from all career levels, backgrounds and countries. It was super inspiring to exchange ideas and future plans. I even met people with similar research projects and problems!

Prof. Stefan Hell talked about his motivation for experimental physics and he mentioned that he wanted to help is parents and not become a taxi-driver ;-)
As studies show, sleep is important for learning and memorizing, as Prof. Carl Wieman found out during his research on learning and education - after winning the Nobel Prize in 2001 for the Bose-Einstein-Condensate.

How to raise your blood pressure

In my next post I'll write about Lindau, but something just happened which saved my trip to the US: I finally got my visa after a two-week-fight! Yay!

After I had submitted my documents for my visa renewal 2.5 weeks ago, I got a message from the consulate that one of the most important documents got lost. Haha. Nobody knows what really happened because I am sure I sent it off, yet, I got a new one sent to Lindau where I signed it and forwarded it to the consulate in Frankfurt.
Then they couldn't find my DHL envelope I had sent off days before. It turned out that it takes about three days until anything in their mail box gets to the correct case within the consulate. After all, I got the e-mail that they had everything to issue my visa on Thursday. 

But that doesn't mean you get the visa right away, does it? So I tried to contact them again, but today's the 4th July, so nobody's working. And I am flying this Thursday!
My mind started spinning around re-booking the trip to Friday, traveling to Frankfurt and picking up my visa and so on.

But a wonderful miracle happened and the DHL Express envelope with my new visa just arrived today. I guess I'll become Catholic ;-)

It's just over

I just came back from one of the most amazing events I ever attended. Okay, to be honest, that might be a bit over rated, but I had a great time with about 400 other young enthusiastic scientists and 30 Nobel Laureates on the beautiful Island Lindau. We discussed lots of physics, but also education in science, politics, careers inside and outside academia, and it feels like everything else. I'll write more in the next few days, but I have to catch some sleep first - that's the only reason why I would argue we had to come to an end with this amazing conference. Here are some first impressions:

The "super easy" visa renewal via post

Think twice about sending your visa documents via post services, seriously! I wanted to renew my visa as it expires in June and I would like to stay in the US until the beginning of October. The post did a good job on delivering my documents on time, but I got an e-mail from the embassy that one of the very important documents (the DS2019) was missing! Yet, I am 200% sure I submitted it. Thus, nobody knows what happened, but the document is necessary to issue a new visa.

After half a heart attack, I called several people in the US if they could send the document again - it has several signatures of US people and it needs my signature as well. Fortunately, everything might work out, i.e. I get the document on time, send it to the embassy, they issue my visa and ship it home. Indeed, my flight is booked in about two weeks and I just cross my fingers that it's all working out.

BUT I learned that even if you could apply for a new visa via post and don't have to travel to an embassy, you still might want to do it to make sure you have control over all your docs.

Road trip

I thought I should visit some of the National Parks here, like Sequoia National Park, Death Valley, Joshua Tree Park, Redwoods, ... and as I started planning my route, I realized that I should have at least one day per park and that it takes about 5-6 hours to get from one park to another. Well, I have to do research at some point as well ;-) So I decided that I should reduce the list and I ended up with Sequoia, Joshua Tree Park, Big Sur & Mcway Falls and the Computer Science Museum in Silicon Valley.

Big Sur (wikipedia).

Asking google for the distances and drives resulted in balanced driving-sight-seeing days (5 hours driving, 5 hours Joshua Tree Park hiking). All destinations are still in California - it's only one state and it feels like we're traveling all over Germany. A friend told me she has been visiting Death Valley and it was like "drive 200 miles, get off the car, walk 0.5 miles, drive 5 miles again, hike 1 mile, drive 300 miles to the next park".

92 and 29

I'm back in Germany for some time to renew my visa: Since my last visa was categorized as J1 and I am applying for the exact same type, I could put my passport and all other documents just into an envelope and sent them off to the US embassy in Frankfurt. Usually, you have to visit the embassy for an interview, but if you re-apply and you're lucky, you don't have to travel there :-) At the same time, this is pretty scary because in case you forget anything, the passport travels back and you have to re-do the entire procedure - but I don't have time for that since my flight back is booked ;-)

Being back in Germany is nice! Suddenly, there are seasons again! The Californian coast is always kind of green-brown-ish. Yet, you notice, how weird the German language and culture is. The spelling of numbers is an example which made my day today: I was supposed to pay an amount of x Euro and 92 cents and I digged out x Euro and 29 cents. We say "two and ninety" in German instead of "ninety-two" and 29 is "nine and twenty" as in English "twenty-nine". As I have started counting in my mind in English recently as well, I guess I processed the 2 from "two and ninety" first and then the 9, making 29 in total. Mh, that might be confusing, but I thought it's kind of interesting that we first name the number of ones then the tens in German (or even more confusing: first hundreds, then ones and then tens!).