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Berlin remains fun
Aug. 3rd, 2006 01:34 pmI think Berlin is still my favorite city to visit; the new buildings feel as if they've only just been taken out of their boxes and many of the old ones as if they're freshly back from the dry-cleaners, massive green areas, superb public transport, bars that never close ...
The conference was quite hard work (nine to six Sunday through Wednesday meaning that I end up with a week feeling as if it contains two Fridays); met up with various people from my past, all of whom seemed to decide that I needed luring back into academia, or at least luring into long evenings spent sipping Pilzener, eating predominantly pig-based dishes, and discussing how much fun life as a post-doc is. I don't think it'll work, if only given quite how incomprehensible I found some of the talks; there's clearly some sort of taboo about mentioning actual equations or numbers in algebraic-geometry talks.
Aside from that, and walks through the Tiergarten and down the Spree, I've visited what's presumably going to be a travelling exhibition of artefacts from Alexandria harbour - granite colossi, a six-metre-high tablet describing in hieroglyphs the achievements of a minor Ptolemy, golden earrings, and more ceramic bowls of uncertain use than you could shake a stick at. Diorite survives immersion very well, though pink granite tends to lose its polish.
Charlottenburg and Potsdam tomorrow, and then on to Poland; but I seem to be spending the afternoon today buying sunscreen and waiting for washing-machines to finish, having spent the morning recovering from the last few evenings.
The conference was quite hard work (nine to six Sunday through Wednesday meaning that I end up with a week feeling as if it contains two Fridays); met up with various people from my past, all of whom seemed to decide that I needed luring back into academia, or at least luring into long evenings spent sipping Pilzener, eating predominantly pig-based dishes, and discussing how much fun life as a post-doc is. I don't think it'll work, if only given quite how incomprehensible I found some of the talks; there's clearly some sort of taboo about mentioning actual equations or numbers in algebraic-geometry talks.
Aside from that, and walks through the Tiergarten and down the Spree, I've visited what's presumably going to be a travelling exhibition of artefacts from Alexandria harbour - granite colossi, a six-metre-high tablet describing in hieroglyphs the achievements of a minor Ptolemy, golden earrings, and more ceramic bowls of uncertain use than you could shake a stick at. Diorite survives immersion very well, though pink granite tends to lose its polish.
Charlottenburg and Potsdam tomorrow, and then on to Poland; but I seem to be spending the afternoon today buying sunscreen and waiting for washing-machines to finish, having spent the morning recovering from the last few evenings.
