Astronomy in Garching
I just got back from a five-day trip to the town of Garching, north of Munich, in Germany, where I was visiting my thesis advisor. Couldn’t I have visited her in Leiden, where her office is two doors down the hall from mine? Yes and no. Her husband, who was also a professor of astronomy in Leiden, moved to Garching a few months ago to become the new director general of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). (ESO is the organization that develops and runs major telescopes such as the VLT [images or text] and ALMA [images or text].) In order to still spend some time together, my advisor took up a part-time professorship at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), literally across the street from the ESO headquarters. The reason for my visit was that she had much more time for me this week than in any other week when we’re both in Leiden. In Garching, there simply aren’t any other students or faculty to demand her attention. (Actually, there was one: I travelled to Garching with another student from Leiden.)
The visit was scientifically successful. We pretty much got around to doing everything that we wanted to. There was also plenty of time to enjoy being in a new place and meet new people. Garching itself isn’t much of a tourist attraction, but had enough to keep us going for five days. I went to Munich itself on Thursday with my fellow traveller, and spent a couple of nice hours there.
Some further random observations:
- Travelling to Garching took some more time than expected. We were scheduled to depart Amsterdam at 11:20am on Monday, but the airplane had a delay coming in from Brussels, so we had to wait until 1:00pm. From there on, the journey went fast and smoothly.
- Travelling back from Garching took even more time. The scheduled departure time was 8:45pm, but fog and cold weather caused delays on almost all flights from Munich airport. In fact, many flights were cancelled. We took off with another 90-minute delay and landed in Amsterdam at half past midnight. The luggage came slowly, so we missed the 1:00am train to Leiden and had to wait for the next one at 2:00am. Of course, when we got to Leiden at 2:20, there were no buses anymore, so I had to walk for another fifteen minutes to get home. In hindsight, we should have just taken a taxi from the airport and reclaimed the fare from the Observatory as travel expenses. Oh well… it was a lovely night for a walk.
- The VLT is located in Chili’s Atacama desert, a very dry and barren place all year around. In winter, the surroundings of the ESO headquarters are almost as barren. The difference is in colour: Atacama has red sand, Garching has brownish grey farmlands.
- The ticket machines for the Munich subway don’t accept credit cards or 50-euro notes. On Thursday, that made for some difficulty in getting from the MPE into Munich. I only had two 50-euro notes and some coins, but not enough to pay the 11.80 euro two-way, two-person fare. My fellow traveller was almost out of cash. Of course, there were no ATMs near the MPE, or anyone to change a 50-euro note into smaller units. We ended up walking back to Garching proper to get smaller change at a supermarket. Our advisor just happened to be there as well, and she was very surprised to still see us in Garching.
- It never got above freezing while we were in Garching, marking the longest period of sub-zero weather I’ve been in in quite a few years. It was nice to endure some real winter weather again.
- I’ve heard from a reliable source where the finale of the next James Bond film will be shot. It’s supposed to be a secret, though, so I’ll not divulge any details. Okay, just this one: it’s not Garching!
- A seagull just came swimming backwards through the canal in front of my appartment. It looked very odd, but I’m sure it had a good reason for doing it.