Last Day, Astrobio 2010
Mood:  hungry
Topic: Chile

Owing to the conference party last night up at the La Parva ski resort the meeting began a little later today, at 10am.  I had decided not to join the party owing to some work I needed to get done, so I slept in a bit.  The walk over to the UN site in Vitacura is about 50 minutes from here, much of it along the Presidente Riesco avenue along which autos race in that direction in the morning (it reverses in the afternoons).  After one passes the golf course, there are some shops, then the densely built area close to the river begins. I cut through on a small street, Luz, then down Costanera.  By the end of the walk, the blisters had begun to make themselves known. 

The UN compound consists of low buildings surrounded by gardens; the meetings were in the midst of them.  Across the street from the entrance is ESO, on whose grounds the new ALMA building is reaching its second story.  The meeting hall was

darkly paneled, with a crescent of national flags at the back and a large circular table with microphones, and additional seating at the back and along the sides.   It was an excellent venue.  At breaks we congregated in the breezeways where the posters were enjoying coffee and cookies.  In the image at right, Tom Wilson is unloading his talk I think.

I had to tend to a telecon midway into the last session and so missed Tom's talk, but Cecile gave an excellent one, as did Bill Dent also.  The conference ended with a talk on evolution, noting that Darwin had spent two years in Chile on his epochal voyage.  I shared a taxi with Tom back to the apartment to spare my ballooned feet and after washing up a bit headed off to find the grocery store.  That was about a ten minute walk--it became clear where it was==I just followed the density gradient of folks carrying bags of food.  Alas, I cut wine and beer off my list and determined to carry only lighter items, of which I still ended up with a borderline manageable three bags.  Back at the apartment, I decided just to have Edam cheese, the last of my bottle of wine, and the cocktail mix of meats I had bought for dinner.  The wine knocked me out for the night.

Santiago Entry
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Chile

I arrived in Santiago last night over the Andes for a three month stay.  Breezy and summery and cool, the contrast to freezing Virginia was welcome.  We traveled down newly built highways bypassing rush hour traffic to my apartment hotel in Las Condes, a five minute walk from my office.  It is also a neighborhood I have come to know well on many previous stays, though none of them had exceeded three weeks.

On the way my guide Alina told me that the Xian terra cotta warriors are also in Santiago until the end of April, downtown at La Moneda. We had just seen a collection at the National Geographic Society in DC; the contrast will be interesting.  With about ten at each exhibit, we only have 350 exhibits to go to see them all.

The apartment is nice, but is within earshot of the busy Presidente Riesco thoroughfare.  Small houses, remnant of the neighborhood a decade or so ago, alternate with skyscrapers, such as the one my apartment is in, on the eighth of 18 floors. 

 

I am next to the elevators, but the sound doesn't seem to compete with traffic.  On the right as one comes in is the aisle kitchen.  Gas cooktop--good.  Oven, microwave, pretty well outfitted though the place settings for four show some missing pieces so one could only seat three.  Breakfast items prestocked in the fridge--nice touch--yogurt, bread, juice, water, candy and a bottle of Syrah on the sideboard.  Very nice.  Living room has a table for four, well-cushioned couch, chair, stereo and a generous balcony running the length of the unit with a pair of wicker chairs and table.  A view toward the Andes through neighboring skyscrapers gives way to the pool below, a long dive down. Double bed and TV in the bedroom, where the internet cable is, though there is no desk and no outlet there for my laptop.  Onbed computing I guess, or on the floor, or on the balcony. Walkin closet with ironing board and iron, and laundry basket, seven shirts, underwear, undershirts washed once a week but not pants (?).  No safe.  Bathroom small but whirlpool tub and nicely outfitted with hair dryer and mirrors.  No washcloths or nasal tissues.  All in all, quite nice though not quite the Boulevard Suites, where I have stayed before (but it is a 40 minute walk away--though the metro has now been extended so that it is not that far now).

 I know well the restaurants here, though there are always changes.  I walked down Isadora Goeyenechea to a cluster of restaurants.  It is always a great walk, past the nicely lit church at El Golf.  I passed by TGIFriday's and went to the place next door, where I was one of two tables and three diners.  Had 'Ecuadorian shrimp risotto', which was fairly tasty, and cheap enough at $13.  In bed shortly after ten. 

 Sunny again this am. I moved into my cubicle at the office and settled in to a day of reading proposals and attending telecons, ended by a great colloquium in Charlottesville, brought to us realtime by the internet--we could even question the speaker!

 

 

The museums here go in for big time.  The Peragmon Museum has a full scale, but only ~1/3 of the whole, temple which they had transported here from Turkey in the 20's.  The Pergamon Altar, as it is called, was a ~football field sized temple in which priests offered sacrifices (animal innards) to the Gods in 165 B. C. Then around the corner from that they had an entire entrance to the market in Miletus, a Roman port of a few years later.  Go through that gate and turn around and they have the monumental Ishtar gate, which Nebuchadnezzar built in Babylon ca 580 BC.  Although the museum concentrated on ancient Greece, Turkey and the Near East, it made the Louvre look like an underachiever in those areas.  All with earphones playing English commentaries too.  Only bad spot was that you had to leave the museum to go find toiletten.

Went to Der Rosenkavlier tonight.  The State Opera theatre, which has
been on the main drag here (great name--Under the Lindentrees--for main street) since 1742 or so though rebuilt after the war.  It was as great as 4 hours 35 minutes of wonderful music can be; I enjoyed it.  Der Rosenkavalier (The Cavalier of the Rose) is a comedy, bordering on farce, so it was witty and funny though a lot of those jokes in German made little sense to me.  I downloaded a synopsis from the web and read along on my Palm Pilot, which helped a fair amount.

 UVa won a game 47-7 and Chile beat Colombia to get into the World Cup.

Meeting begins...
I had to give the opening talk; Leonardo got to the airport to find his travel agency had cancelled his ticket with no warning.  Luckily I had my usual presentation ready to go.  Had to pay 4 euros to read the email telling me about it, then another 4 euros to read his reply.  Arrgh.  Anyway the talk went fine and the cloudy rainy cool day wore on.  We had a big discussion on how to get spectroscopists to measure line frequencies when many people never refer to their measurements, making their citation counts low and tenure a distant dream.  The conference dinner followed, another ten minute walk in the rain.  It was fine, at a northern Italian restaurant.  Ten more minutes in the rain and I collapsed into bed.

 On Sunday, Went to get on the Tram and found out why there was such a ruckus outside the window--a Marathon had shut down the subway and roads, and crowds were cheering along the blocked off streets.  We walked to the next open subway station and went down town.  Gary and I went down and visited the Roman ruins.  Sun came out just long enough for lunch along the Rhine, then we looked around some more.  Every time we got to the Cathedral, they were having a service and we could not go in further than the vestibule.  Gary needs a hip replacement so didn't want to walk too much; we arrived back to the hotel to meet Crystal, Susanna, Brian and others.  They had had a time finding the hotel, as the cabbie could not drive them there owing to the marathon, but there we were.  Went off for a gigantic pile of pork and potatoes again and small beers--seems to be the norm for this region.

Strasbourg to Cologne
Next morning the sun peeked through the shutters on the window and sounds of activity aroused me at a little past seven.  Breakfast was the usual buffet of canned fruit, sliced meat and cheese, pastries, juice but this time there were runny scrambled eggs or part-boiled eggs.  I chose the former, a croissant and fruit then headed to the room to check out.  The TGV to Stuttgart, which I was to take to Karlsruhe, was a moment or two late but soon the cathedral spire appeared again, then shrunk in the distance, then passed behind buildings as we headed for the Rhine.  There were some delays in Germany and we entered the station a few minutes late.  I walked across to track 3 for the ICE to Koln, which was late.  It arrived as ICE503; I thought I would have to wait but then the numbers changed to ICE 600.  The cars were all in the wrong place too, not following the organization posted at all and I had to hasten to the far end of the train, where I jumped onto my car just as the door began to close.  But I made it, and was on the way to Cologne.

Gary arrived 7ish Sat night and we went around the corner to find something to eat--a place around the corner seemed convivial so we went in. Some local Soccer fans were partying there bigtime in their red and white team colors.  We thought we read that the team was the Cologne Clowns but I think that might have been the name of the fanclub instead.  Anyway we ordered and a huge pile of potatoes, sausage and sauerkraut soon arrived.  Couldn't possibly eat it all.  Beer and food are certainly cheaper here.  The beer all comes in little tiny 20cl glasses and is very light and unsubstantive in flavor.

Grenoble to Strasbourg
Topic: France

At breakfast I again met Andrey, who was heading to the laboratory at the University for tests of his KID detector, which he hoped would be mounted into a large array capable of imaging the millimeter sky at several wavelengths at once.  Another prototype KID device was also to be detected.  Andrey noted that the devices themselves weren't difficult to construct.  A challenge was to be able to deposit the necessary layers on the large surface area required for widefield imaging--typically today several thousand detectors might be fit on a 5 inch surface.  The technology was different for space than for earthbound telescopes, as on earth the atmosphere limited sensitivity so meeting the 10^-16 NEP noise figure was less daunting a task than meeting the 10^-19 figure required for deep space.  Andrey was involved in the Russian Millimetron radiowave space projects, a 12m telescope.  Although the full aperture would be used at 2 THz, the inner 3m or so were to probe up to 6 THz.  Of course, this was still only a concept, with a meeting next week in Paris to further develop the science case to push the design forward.  We discussed the plight of laboratories which produced the high tech but not very saleable devices needed for modern submillimeter astronomy.  The foundry at JPL was threatened by a lack of appropriate space missions (hence the interest in Millimetron), that at Virginia by inconstant funding from the government--what was the situation with the European foundry at Delft I asked.  Andrey shrugged and said that the problems were different of course--that group was centered on a professor whose retirement was only a few years away, and in the continental scheme would dissolve upon his retirement without a plan.  But the Dutch had such a plan, to make the group independent of the professor, and he was confident that their plan would succeed.

Time to check out so I returned to the room to gather my things and head via the tram to the gare.  The train was a minute late, but I soon found a seat (turned out that with a senior discount first class cost the same as coach for younger folks) in a private room and we headed to Lyon, an hour and a half journey.  In Lyon, the Strasbourg train was easy to find and I promptly located my seat and settled in for the five hour trip to Strabourg.  We passed through Bourg en Bresse, near a marvelous church in which rested Margaret of Austria and her family, who had spared no expense to build it, but there was no stop.  Further stops at Besancon and Mulhouse before arriving on time in Strasbourg. 

From my train seat to the hotel was only seven minutes' walk across a broad semicircular tree-graced plaza.  I noted a few families on the grass, then saw a grizzled guy taking a whiz in the shrubs--I was to see a fair number of down on their luck types in Strasbourg.  In the room, I checked the map and found I was only a short walk from the Cathedral; I tidied up and headed out.  The city was beautiful--in two blocks I crossed the river Ill which encircles the old town and was on the Grand Rue to town center.  Although there were nice shops, the street was torn up for utility work and not such a good choice for walking. 

Before long, the stunning verticality of the sandstone cathedral spire, ascending to 142m, portruded above the half-timbered shops.  The Alsatian architecture was a delight; clearly I had arrived in a different place.  In a moment, the marvelous half-timbered Kammerzell house, a hotel and recommended restaurant on the Cathedral square, was before me.  I headed straight for the cathedral and read that it closed at 7pm just as the clock struck.  Ah well, I wandered the nearby streets another hour before heading for the Kammerzell, recommended by my friend Fred.  They had a table and I was taken to a marvelous vaulted room, painted all over with ancient scenes, including one of Tantalus on the wall across from me.  Great wrought iron chandeliers hung above.  The dinner crowd was just arriving, the waiter brought a bouche amusee, a tiny little rectangle of pizzalike character.  Fred had recommended the Choucouterie trois poissons and although my eye dwelt for a moment on the choucouterie de canard confit I ordered the fish.  For the entree, I chose the salade aux poireaux, and the wine, a half bottle of Alsatian reisling, 2007 Mosbach reserve particulere.  The salad was fine, a green and white cylinder of leeks in dressing with three tomato eighths and three lemon slices encircling it.  The fish was absolutely wonderful, an oval mound of salmon on one side and a white fish (flounder) on my side sprinkled with dill and bits of tomato.  On the side like ears were two halves of a mussel; all swimming in a butter sauce.  I dug in...mmm some of the salmon was smoked.  Beneath the mound was a pile of sauerkraut.  It was all just wonderful.  As I was pondering the final bites a violinist entered the room, serenading us with tunes from the nutcracker, Air on a G String, the march from Mozart's K331, a medley from Carmen and other crowd pleasers.  The crowd was indeed pleased, and I think his hat was filled as he left.  As for me, I had to decide on dessert.  I chose a Sable Choco-crunch avec poires, always choosing the pear dessert especially when it involves chocolate.  It arrived a small round tart with a few pear chunks, mounted by vanilla ice cream (from Madagascar, the menu gushed) and a trio of nut-embedded chocolate bark shards arranged to resemble the spire of a cathedral.  Around it a sauce lapped the plate's edges.  I shouldn't have, of course, particularly after all that butter but it was very good. 

The tables next to me left, and I decided to do the same, choosing a different path home through the Place Gutenburg and Place Kleber then down the rue du 22 Novembre by the St Pierre le Vieux church, across the Ill and back to my room.  Although I wished I had more time in Strasbourg and cursed my ill-considered decision to head to Cologne in the morning at 9:45, I decided to check the NPR newscast one more time, check out the TV and head to bed. 

 

 

Last day in Grenoble

As it was proposal deadline day I postponed my trip onward for a day and finished a proposal draft in the morning.  I had reserved my trip onward--Friday to Strasbourg and Saturday to Cologne online and headed to the station to pick up the tickets.  After several machines and many tries on each one, the process failed when I was asked to insert my card, which was not read.  I joined the ticket queue, where I secured the tickets without problem, in French.  I walked back to the hotel, stopping at Le Palais (formerly le Palais de Bieres) for lunch--I chose the plat du jour, a fish dish Nicoise accompanied by ratatouille and, of course, beer.  I headed for Credit Agricole in yet another attempt to free some money by cashing a check.  There were many ATMs and a few desks behind glass walls with papers on them but no people and no obvious place to cash a check.  After a short wait, I went to get my tram ticket for the journey onward the next morning.  At the hotel, I edited in the comments from my colleagues in Bordeaux and submitted the proposal.  I felt like a nature hike so decided to head for the teleferique up to the Bastille on a peak high above the city a few blocks away.  Once again I passed the bank but still there was no sign of bank personnel.  Jeff and I had sought some geocaches in the vicinity but not found them the night before; even in daylight I found I couldn't locate them.  It was only six euros and change to travel the teleferique to the fort and as I purchased my ticket the cars arrived, four six-person bubbles suspended from the cable.  I entered one and soon was whisked across the river Isere and above the houses to the fort.

The fort was of ancient vintage but had been redesigned in the mid-1800s.  In 1814, I learned, the Austrian army was repulsed here.  Although a fairly sheer cliff descended to the Isere, the approach from the mountains on the other side was an obvious approach for an enemy to take.  There were a number of cannon emplacements located to rake the approach, a level field.  On a cliff to the northwest, several caverns concealed further cannon emplacements so that anyone entering the field would be subject to a deadly cross-barrage. 

There were several levels, several of which had restaurants, and a museum, which appeared closed to me.  Apart from a few runners, there were few others around.  The geology of the region was the subject of a number of placards.  125 million years before, the area had been submerged beneath a vast sea; accumulated coral soon buried the granitic rock to a depth of ten km.  About 65 million years ago, Africa came knocking at Europe's door and the Alps began to rise.  The result was the tumultuous folded limestone rocks forming the Vercors region to the SW, a region still fairly wild, which had harbored resistance troops during the war.  The inhabitants were slaughtered in reprisal.  I wondered if that was the region I had heard my former astronomy professor, Gerard de Vaucouleurs (a nom de guerre), had fought in.  To the SE, the limestone had eroded and the granite base formed the high Alps, only dimly seen through clouds and the pollution which bedevils Grenoble.  At the heights of the fort was an 'Apiscope', a glass viewing box looking down upon the city which harbored a beehive; in the foreground one saw the industrious little insects returning from their searches or embarking anew.  I crossed the field of fire, intending to ascend to a memorial to the mountain troops who died but a glance at the sun reminded me that I would be coming down the steep stony trail after dark.  Too, I was a bit jealous of the runners, in that where they could flit from spot to spot I could only trudge clumsily.  Halfway up I enjoyed the view of the valley, but still no Alps, and headed back to town as the Sun began to set.

After descending on the cablecar I decided to explore the old town.  A few ramparts which had originated with Roman defenses of about 300 AD formed the basis of the extant walls near the St. Andre church and the former palace of the counts of the Dauphiny.  Between the palace, which was beside the river, and the walls is the square of St. Andre, filling with the evening crowd.  I headed to the far side, where the view of palace and church could be taken in along with the statue at the center of the square, and ordered a 50 cl beer.  The square was a beehive of activity, at least five cafes occupying the sides which possessed neither church nor palace.  Most of the crowds were young, groups of a few, with some young families interspersed--I was the only single person I saw.  After amusing myself watching the two year old at the table next to me get lost exploring the 50 feet between his parents table and the statue several times, a small brass band entered the square and set up by the chateau to play.  They played several interesting jazzy tunes to scant applause before passing the hat and exiting stage right.  Unfortunately my beer ran dry while enjoying the music and, expecting more, I reordered.  Alas, the beer arrived after the band had left.  As it was getting dark I decided to head back to the hotel via Place Grenette and perhaps find a place to eat.  I again visited Le Privilege, attracted by the lamb on the menu.  Alas, that was gone and I chose the bavette with marchand de vin sauce though I would have preferred gratinois dauphinois to the frites which piled on my plate.  On my return from washing up I recognized the fellow at the table by mine as Andrey Baryshev, an instrument builder from the Netherlands.  Andrey isn't shy and we had a good conversation ranging from current ALMA technology to new instruments for the IRAM telescopes.  It turned out we were in the same hotel.  I decided to pack in the morning and quickly fell asleep.

The Edge of the Universe approaches
The meeting began this afternoon.  In the morning I kept up pushing my proposal idea toward realization, almost forgetting the meeting began at 2pm.  IRAM had decorated the Grenoble World Trade Center well, with many creative posters and hangings.  The conference talks centered on teh formation of IRAM, 30 years ago, the events which led up to it and the growth of the institute to world leadership.  I had known little of this material so it was of some interest--I guess I had been on the periphery somewhere getting occasional vibrations from the goings-on in the center. 
Sadly, one of the primary creators, Emil Blum, died the week before the meeting but many of the other primary players were present, especially Peter Metzger.  After the talks abated, all retired to the main hall, where a number of vaguely planetlike illuminated floating globes were brought in among the posters.  Soon (well maybe not enough) drinks were served and then along the upstairs balcony a jazz band began to emerge, much like those in New Orleans funeral processions.  The music was lively, and the band slowly made its way around the crowd on high and descended the stairs to wind among us before setting up to one side.  A lively beat encouraged many among us to dance as the party wore on into the night.  During a lull, the IRAM staff assembled and led us all in singing, to the tune of the beatles yellow submarind, "Nebuleuses, molecules interstellaires ...et metorites ... et meteorites, Etoiles, quasars et nuages de poussiere, glycolaldehyde, glycolaldehyde..." A great sing was had by all, especially to the final refrain of 'Levons notre verre, levons notre verre!"

 

 

Aux confins de l'Univers
Mood:  energetic
Topic: France

Arrived in Grenoble just after noon for the 'To the Edge of the Universe' meeting, in celebration of IRAM's 30th birthday.  I traveled with Jeff Mangum but while he headed out with friends I crashed in the hotel for a nap.  A few hours later, hunger prodded me awake so I thought I'd look up a nice restaurant.  No doing.  All the fine places are closed on Sunday it appears, at least the ones nearby (glad to read this news on the internet rather than by wearing out my shoes).

The front desk here at the Angleterre reminded me that there were always places open on Place Grenette only a block or so away.  She recommended 'Le Privilege' so when I saw a sandwich board for them I sat right down.  They had a nice pave saumon with grilled vegetables for an entree so I chowed down in the warm evening air.  Turned out it wasn't the restaurant I thought it was--the tables all run together--but it worked nicely nonetheless.  

Back at the hotel I was no longer tired.  As I tossed I realized the telescope proposal deadline was approaching and I began to form the germ of an idea.  I got more and more excited about it and went to the desk to work out the outlines.  Finally fell asleep long after midnight.