Germany and Switzerland

The last week of the conference went pretty well. There were some interesting talks, and I learned a lot. I gave my own talk on Tuesday and it went well.

Wednesday was a half day, and we took a trip to Switzerland to visit Rhine Falls. It was about a 2 hour bus ride. We stopped in Schaffhausen, the nearest town to the falls and went on a walking tour of the city. The city thrived back in the day as a result of the falls because people shipping goods, etc. down the river were required to take things out at Schaffhausen and move them on land until they'd passed the falls. Today it's a fairly quiet, small town.

A few random pictures:

A fancily painted house, one of the few left in the town.

A cool astronomical dial that shows you a bunch of stuff, including the phase of the moon, the time, etc.

I thought these sheep statues were funny.

From there we went over to the Rhine Falls. Here's our first look.

Taken from a closer, slightly less obscured view.

Me and the falls.

The Rhine Falls were pretty cool. We got to take a boat over to that island in the middle, and in this picture you can see the stairs we climbed to get a better view. With all the astronomers that were there and the small space at the top, we couldn't stay up there long, unfortunately!

Getting closer to the falls.

Me at the top.

Also, I heard people figuring out that the amount of water flowing over the falls is the same amount of metals that is infalling on this particular white dwarf star with a debris disk around it with material falling on it. What nerds! ;)

Back in Tubingen, toward the end of the week, the sun finally came out!

A picture of me and the flowers and river in downtown Tubingen.

I really like this necklack and I wear it a lot, but....well, has anyone ever seen Thoroughly Modern Millie? Ha!!