After visiting the Air Force Museum last weekend, Steve wanted to take me (and his son Matthew) out again this Saturday. His first idea was to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, to indulge our mutual love for baseball. We quickly agreed that, unfortunately, Cooperstown really is too far from Granville (over nine hours if we’d drive non-stop) to do this. Some of the more feasible suggestions included Cleveland and Pittsburgh. For reasons that will become apparent in a moment, I opted for Pittsburgh.

Steve and Matt picked me up around 8.15am for the three-hour drive to the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA. We split up after getting our tickets, because I wanted to see BODIES… The Exhibition: one of several exhibitions around the world of preserved human bodies dissected to show the interior workings. BODIES… was nicely set up and certainly interesting, but not quite as spectacular as it’s been said to be. It was very crowded, making it impossible to study all the displays and read all the descriptions. Besides, the descriptions didn’t mention anything you can’t find in a high-school biology book. In fact, the entire exhibition contained very little I haven’t seen elsewhere.

To continue on that negative note, the rest of the Science Center was a bit disappointing, too. (Steve agrees with me there.) It’s not a bad place, but it’s much more targeted at kids than we thought it was, and even then, it was more of a small theme park than a science museum. (For the Dutch readers: think NEMO, but with less science.) It was fun, but it wasn’t what you’d expect of a place called the Carnegie Science Center.

Still, our visit to Pittsburgh was worth every minute of the six hours we spent on the road that day. Right next to the Science Center stands Heinz Field, the American Football stadium for the Steelers (NFL) and the Panthers (college). A few hundred meters further east stands PNC Park, the baseball stadium for the Pirates. Now, as far as Major League teams go, you can’t get much worse than the Pirates. The last season where they won more games than they lost is 1992. Nevertheless, they have a beautiful ballpark, which actually was rated the best MLB park last year by ESPN.

The waterfront promenade behind the stadium was freely accessible that day (I suppose it usually is when there’s nothing going on inside), so we could get pretty close to the outfield wall. At one point, the only thing between us and the field was the bullpen. Even if the Pirates continue to play poorly, they’ll always be special to me for their ballpark being my first American baseball stadium to visit.

The Pirates’ field seen from almost dead center. Separating the snow-covered warning track from one of the bullpens is the outfield fence.

The scoreboard in left field keeps everyone informed of what goes in in the Pirates’ games and in other games throughout MLB.

Crossing the Allegheny River behind PNC Park is the Roberto Clemente Bridge, leading into Downtown Pittsburgh.

Part of Pittsburgh’s Downtown business district as seen from the promenade behind PNC Park.

But wait, there’s more! Take another look at the picture above. The tall glass building in the center, with the spires on top, houses the headquarters of PPG Industries, a worldwide manufacturer of glass and chemical products. They recently acquired the SigmaKalon Group, a paints and coatings producer based in Uithoorn, the Netherlands. This is the company my father has been working for for more than 25 years. When its acquisition by PPG was completed on January 2nd, SigmaKalon ceased to exist and PPG is now my father’s employer. The proximity of PPG’s headquarters to the Carenegie Science Center provided an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

PPG’s headquarters are located at PPG Place, a set of seven office buildings of the same glass design. The main tower was completed in 1984, has forty floors, and rises 194 meters (635 feet) high.

PPG’s headquarters as seen from the base of the building.

We got back to Granville around 6pm, right on time for Steve and his wife Sandy to treat me to great T-bone steak (grilled by Steve) and side dishes (cooked by Sandy). We rounded off the day with a game of Scrabble–the first time I’ve played that in English. Steve beat Sandy and me by a good margin, but he clearly got better letters than we did. Besides, he had Matt to help him.

This map shows the countries I’ve visited over the years (click the image for a larger version), colour-coded according to the reason I went there. Gold stands for business, blue for pleasure, and purple for both. In case a country consists of disconnected pieces of land, I only painted the area or areas I actually went. The list currently stands as follows:

Austria
Belgium
Chile
Czech Republic
Denmark
France
Germany
Italy
Luxembourg
Mauritius
Netherlands (yes, really!)
Norway
Portugal
South Africa
Spain
Swaziland
Switzerland
Sweden
Turkey
United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland)
United States

It’s remarkable how many people were cleaning the snow off the sidewalk in front of their home this morning. For whom? Outside of the immediate surroundings of the university, the supermarket and some coffee shops, I’ve only seen four pedestrians since I got here. Judging by the foot steps in the snow on my way back this evening, the sidewalks really do get used very little. So why do so many people go through the trouble of removing the snow?

My computer is running two models and while I wait for the results to roll out, I’ll grant myself a moment to write about the weekend.

On Saturday, my host, Steve, took me to the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, about two hours from Granville. Along for the ride was Steve’s son Matt, who knows an astonishing amount about military aircraft for someone who just turned five.

The museum hosts about 400 vehicles, ranging from the earliest World War I open-cockpit propeller planes through modern-day stealth fighters. The collection includes several aircraft that played a key role in history, such as the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki to end World War II. There are also a number of prototypes, including several X-planes.

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress “Bockscar” that ended World War II by dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

The Consolidated B-24D Liberator “Strawberry Bitch”. An American heavy bomber, the B-24 was produced in greater numbers than any other type of aircraft used in World War II.

Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawk at the United States Air Force Museum. This American fighter was used extensively in World War II, by the Americans and their allies alike.

Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk at the United States Air Force Museum. This American ground attack aircraft from the end of the Cold War was the first plane initially designed around stealth technology.

Steve and his wife invited me to a concert by Scott Ainslie in Granville that night. Ainslie is a blues and folk musician, a musical historian and a great story-teller. I’ll admit that blues and folk are not high on my list of favourite musical genres, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the concert. In fact, it wasn’t just a concert, and that’s what made it so much fun. Ainslie told as much stories as he played songs, and he spoke with a passion that made it impossible not to appreciate his tales.

I spent Sunday evening watching part of the first NFL semi-final and the entire second semi-final. Yes, that’s American football: a sport I never understood and never saw more than a few minutes of. (It’s easy to go without American football in the Netherlands, because there are only a handful of clubs and it’s hardly ever shown on tv.) It turns out that the rules are quite simple and once I knew what they were doing, I actually enjoyed watching the games.

The NFL regular season runs from September to early January, followed by a series of play-off games and the big finale, better known as the Superbowl. The Sunday games were effectively the semi-finals, and the winners will play in the Superbowl on February 3rd, the second-to-last night of my visit to the US.

A great fuss was created by the media over the cold weather in which the second semi-final was played. At -1 °F (-18 °C), it was the third coldest game ever in NFL history. However, the only people that were affected by the low temperatures were the FOX Sports reporters. Many of the players only had short sleeves and some didn’t even have gloves. Except for a few instances of cramps, they were doing just fine. The spectators were doing fine, too. I mean, do these women look like it was actually that cold?

• One prejudice about the US seems be true, at least in Granville: everyone has a car. During my 90-minute walk yesterday morning, I encountered a grand total of two other pedestrians. Both were elderly people.
• Cars here are less noisy than in Europe. Could it be the automatic transmission?
• I underpaid at the supermarket Thursday night! Not on purpose, obviously, and I only noticed it when I was back at the B&B. I had to pay $15.50, so I gave the lady a $10 bill, a $5 bill and what I believed to be a 50-cent coin. However, I later realized the coin was a quarter.
• Winter weather comes everywhere I go. In November, early snow showers hit Heidelberg during my visit. The temperature never got above freezing while I was in Garching in December. It’s the same in Granville so far: sub-zero (or sub-32 on that other scale) since I got here. It’s -7 °C (20 °F) at the moment and the temperature for tonight is expected to drop down to as low as -18 ° C (0 °F).

Shortly after yesterday’s post, the owner of the B&B came in to cook breakfast. I’m the only guest at the moment and it felt a bit weird to have someone come in just to serve me breakfast, but it was a good meal and we had a nice chat. Of course, it was a rather different breakfast than what I’m used to. At home, I typically have two sandwiches and a glass of milk. Yesterday’s breakfast consisted of tea, some fresh fruit, an omelet, crispy bacon, baked potatoes, some tomato and two pieces of toast. Not something to start every day with, but I definitely enjoyed it yesterday.

Steve was teaching until 10:30am, so I had about two hours to myself between breakfast and his picking me up. I grabbed my camera and went for a walk around Granville.

The B&B is called The Porch House, a description applicable to the majority of the houses in Granville. The first house on the left is where the owners live, the other one is for the guests. Both are from the early 1900s and were built in Victorian style.

Most of Granville looks like this: free-standing houses with front porches and lots of green.

Downtown Granville. This is the crossing of the main east-west and north-south streets. A church stands at each corner of the intersection. Granville was originally founded in 1805 by people from Massachusetts, who moved out of New England to have greater freedom in how they practised their religion.

The two churches at the other side of the intersection.

A memorial for the original settlers of Granville, located in a small park on a hill. The plaque reads, “In grateful remembrance of the members of the Licking Land Company who came from Granville, Massachusetts and founded this town ‘in the wilderness’ November 17, 1805. ‘They builded better than they knew. To God be the glory forever and ever.’”

It’s 6:15am Eastern Standard Time as I start typing this. Yesterday, at 6:15am Central European Time, 30 hours ago, I had just left my apartment in Leiden to get a bus to the train station, a train to Amsterdam Schiphol airport, an air plane to New York JFK airport, and an air plane to Columbus International Airport, where someone would pick me up and bring me to my final destination: Granville, Ohio.

All of that worked out, sort of.

The bus was on time and I got to the train station at 6:25am. I wanted to get the 6:30 train, so I’d be at Schiphol at 6:50: two and a half hours before my 9:20 flight. The airline actually recommends coming three hours before departure, but you never need more than two, so I figured a half-hour buffer would be enough.

I bought the train ticket and walked to the platform, where the 6:30 train was announced to have a 20-minute delay. Not a brilliant start for a long day of travelling, but if things at Schiphol weren’t extremely slow, this delay would be no problem. Besides, it was only a 13-minute delay, because the regular 6:43 train was on time. (Leiden-Schiphol has a very frequent train connection.)

At 7:00am sharp, I entered Schiphol’s main hall and looked up my flight on the monitors to see where I had to check in. There came a bigger problem: my flight was delayed by over four hours to 1:25pm. That wasn’t good! I had an almost five-hour stopover at JFK, of which about 40 minutes were now left. That wouldn’t be enough to get off the plane, go through immigration, get my luggage, go through customs, recheck the luggage, and board the plane. So, off to the Delta information desk to see how they might solve this.

Me: “Good morning. I was supposed to fly to Columbus through New York JFK, but with this four-hour delay, I’m going to miss my connection at JFK.”

Delta lady: “Don’t worry, sir. We’ve already changed you to the 10:10am flight to Atlanta, where you’ll have a connecting flight to Columbus. You’ll now arrive at 6:54pm EST instead of 6:50pm.”

Now that’s what I call excellent service! It did seem to be a bit of an odd move, though, because I also heard about people being changed from the Atlanta flight to the New York flight because of bad weather in Atlanta. (As it turned out, the weather wasn’t so bad there at all.) For a man standing next to me at the check-in desk, this meant he wouldn’t get to his final destination until the next day, instead of that evening.

After a rather lengthy check-in procedure (the computer had some difficulty with my new itinerary), I got to the gate in plenty of time. From there on, the journey was about as good as can be for a 10-hour flight, a three-hour stopover and another one-hour flight. The security check at Schiphol was no more stringent than previously, despite the new rules regarding batteries. In fact, no one ever even asked if I had spare batteries in my checked luggage (which I didn’t) or if any spare batteries in my carry-on bag were protected against short-circuiting (which they were).

The air plane was a Boeing 767, with a two-three-two seating arrangement. I had an isle seat in the centre section, sacrificing some view (it was cloudy anyway) for the chance to stretch at least one leg. And… the seat to my right stayed empty, so I had plenty of room for my other leg as well. Ten hours is still a long time to spend in a big tin can, but the good amount of leg space made it tolerable.

Getting into the US went a fair bit faster than I had anticipated based on stories from others. Waiting included, I was through immigration in maybe 20 minutes. Rechecking my luggage and taking my carry-on bag through security didn’t pose any problems either. (Again, not a single question about spare batteries.) Of course, all of that left me with quite some time to kill at the gate. Fortunately, the chairs at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson are very comfortable.

The low clouds caused some delay in taking off, as the traffic tower had to wait each time until they could see the next incoming plane before outgoing planes were allowed to get on the runway. When it was our turn, there were still a dozen planes awaiting theirs behind us. I had an another isle seat on this Boeing 737, and again the chair next to me remained empty. In addition, I was at one of the emergency exits, so now I had more leg space than I could ever fill.

We landed at Columbus International at exactly 6:54pm. Steve Doty, the assistant professor I’m visiting at Denison University, and his son Matt were waiting for me exactly where Steve had said they would. They brought me to a lovely Bed & Breakfast in Granville, where I went to bed at 9pm EST (3am CET). What with the jetlag, I awoke at 5am and gave up trying to get more sleep at 5:30am. After a shower and a breakfast, I discovered that this place has a wireless connection, allowing me to type this. Steve will pick me up around 10:40 (he’s teaching until 10:30), so I’ll have a look around town until then. The weather looks nice, if a bit chilly.

I’ll be in Granville for the next two weeks and a bit. Steve has been a frequent visitor of Leiden Observatory, most recently for five months in 2006. We started collaborating on a few projects back then, and we’re at a point now where it was a good idea to get together again. I’m looking forward to doing that and to staying here for a while. If the first day is any indication, I’ll have a great time.

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.

It’s snowing!

Not in Leiden, obviously, but it is on the Königstuhl mountain next to the city of Heidelberg, Germany. Near the top of this 567-metre high mountain (1859 ft.) lies the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), where I’m visiting a colleague for a week.

We already got some snow yesterday morning, but at only half an inch, it wasn’t too exciting. The more interesting bit yesterday was the dense fog hovering over the upper part of the mountain. The clouds were hanging so low that they covered the MPIA, and much of the Königstuhl, like a thick grey blanket. With visibility down to about 50 metres (160 ft.), the bus driver must have had a hard time hauling his vehicle up the slopes. Making it even tougher is the fact that some of the roads are essentially single lane, and the bus can only pass oncoming traffic at specific passing places. That can be tricky already in clear weather. Fortunately, no accidents occurred.

This morning, as we started up the mountain, there was quite a bit of white visible amongst the greens and browns of the forest at the top. Ascending further, it turned out to be a lot more than yesterday. A good four inches had fallen overnight, making for a truly beautiful landscape. The road was still in good condition, as it had been well cleared and salted. The clouds are hanging higher than yesterday, so I have a great view from my office now. It’s a shame I have to work today.

I will be attending a conference on chemistry in space in Hong Kong next year. Yesterday I filled in the registration form and payed the conference fee online with my credit card. I also signed up for an optional tour of Hong Kong at the end of the conference, and payed that one as well. Within a few minutes, I got an email from the conference organizers confirming the receipt of my registration and payment.

Half an hour later, my cell phone rang. It was my credit card company! They wanted to know if I had just made two payments to an address in Hong Kong. Apparently, the transactions had set off their alarm bells. They quoted the sums and I told them everything was in order.

Now, on the one hand, I’m glad they keep an eye out for suspicious transactions. The world seems to be full nowadays of people robbing bank accounts and abusing credit cards through the internet. I’d rather not have that happen to me. On the other hand, it’s a weird feeling that my credit card company (though certainly well-intentioned) keeps such close tabs on what I’m using my credit card for. It’s a question that’s been asked many times: how much privacy are we willing to give up for extra security? Pretty much everything we do nowadays is recorded, or can be. Phone calls, email, travelling, shopping, browsing the internet, making payments: it’s difficult to do any of that without leaving a trace. It’s something most people take for granted. I know I do. And do I care? No, not really. Not enough to try and do something about it, anyway. I just hope the powers that be use all the data they’ve gathered about me wisely.