maxwells_daemon: (Dr Bunsen)
maxwells_daemon ([personal profile] maxwells_daemon) wrote2010-05-27 07:11 pm

Hamburg

I don't travel much, except to the usual places (and not much of even that of late), Geneva and San Francisco. But today I'm at DESY in Hamburg, so here are a few trivial observations.

Hamburg has lots of trees. This was obvious even from the plane.

DESY is like CERN on a weekend, but with German instead of French. And lots of trees. (Until recently, DESY had one of the major world accelerators, HERA. I imagine that when HERA was operational DESY was much busier.) The style of buildings, rooms, streets, etc is very like CERN. (One of my RAL colleagues told me that DESY was "like RAL, only more run-down", but I really don't see that.) I guess that won't mean much to anyone without a familiarity with particle physics labs, but maybe with some google-streetviewing, I could demonstrate - a project for later, perhaps.

In Germany, people rap on the table instead of clapping at the end of a talk. I vaguely remember this from a meeting I organised in Karslruhe, many years ago, but it came as a surprise. I think I like it.
frith_in_thorns: (Amy - forest roots)

[personal profile] frith_in_thorns 2010-05-27 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
...but what do they do if they're not sitting at a table?

[identity profile] e-pepys.livejournal.com 2010-05-28 07:36 pm (UTC)(link)
A good question that I have yet to have experimental evidence on.