4th of July Weekend

Wow! I knew I wouldn't have much time time to blog this summer, but I expected to get around to it more than I have been. Time just gets away from me, and here we are half way through 2009. This feels like the first weekend that I haven't been busy since sometime in May. Although I'm somewhat impressed that I managed not to be busy on July 4th weekend.

Things are pretty slow around here right now though. The temperatures every day the last week or so have been in the 100's, and my water bill is going to be astronomical. It's a tough decision every summer. High water bills or a totally withered and dead lawn. Plus the peach tree needs water.

The peach tree ended up having a fair number of peaches, but they were small and the birds and insects got most of them. I ate a couple but mostly I still spend time every evening picking up half eaten and rotting ones from the ground under the tree. That won't be for much longer though. They're mostly gone from the tree now.

I'm happy to say that in retrospect, I totally enjoyed my trip to Innsbruck. I haven't had time to think about it much, but it was really fun, and everything went smoothly. The whole travel experience, the talk, the congress, sightseeing, shopping, everything. I've got a trip coming up in a couple of weeks to Chicago whch I hope goes as smoothly. Of course that one's a piece of cake in comparison .... a single hop with no connections and a relatively short flight. My only concern will be the weight of my checked luggage since I'll be there almost a week and need clothes for semi-formal functions. I got a nice check-in agent coming back from Innsbruck who let me slide with my luggage weighing almost 24 kilos, which I'm pretty sure is over the 50 lb weight limit.

Anyway, this blog will have no pics today because I'm blogging from a laptop and all my pics are on my other computers. After dragging my really heavy laptop to Austria I decided that if I'm going to be traveling so much in 2009-2010 and I need to have a computer with me, I was going to get a lighter one. So I did. This little one is still a full computer but it's close to the size of those little toys you can get for a few hundred dollars that essentially let you surf the internet and email people. It's nice. Sony of course. I'm partial to Sony electronics, but then I've had really good luck with them, or they're made really well. Whatever the reason, they seem to last.

So here's a short blog, and hopefully I'll get back in the habit of blogging. Later.

Home from Innsbruck

Home again. Much as I love to travel, it's always nice to be home. I may be doing an occasional random Innsbruck post or two in the future to try to post more pictures of the MANY I took while I was over there. This picture was taken from the Imperial Garden, the Hofgarten, which was basically outside the back door of my hotel. Because it was so close, I got a chance to wander in it several times. The garden was huge, well-kept and gorgeous and contained an immense variety of trees and shrubbery, probably from all over. This massive tree was completely in bloom, and like most of the varieties in the garden, I have no idea what it was. It was beautiful.

I have so many pictures from this trip that it's difficult to decide which ones to include in this blog. I have more pictures from the church, but given that I've already posted some from there, I should post other pictures. I have quite a few from this garden also, as well as quite a few that I took when we went up the mountain. None of the pictures really do justice to the scenery, but maybe they give an idea of how beautiful it all was.

One afternoon two of my colleagues and I took off for some sightseeing. We rode the cable cars up to the top of one of the mountains which surround Innsbruck. From there you have a pretty spectacular view of the Alps, as well as a great view down at Innsbruck. The day we went it had rained in the morning, and there were still quite a few clouds between us and Innsbruck. You could get occasional peeks down, and it was cool to see the cable for the cable cars disappear into the clouds and then to travel through them. This picture to the left shows that. The clouds would hide us and then pass by, or we would climb out of them. The trip began at the Congress Center and a tram takes you through four stations to where the cable car starts. The tram rail rises very steeply and so the cars are set up to pretty much stay level. Unlike a train, the tram cars are apparently hooked to the track so that on the steep sections if you're in the first car, you're looking out over the top of the cars behind you since they're lower on the track. At Hungerburg you get off the tram and walk to the cable car station. There are restaurants and houses there ( a small town?) and on the way down we stopped for strudel and drinks. Going up, we just wanted to get to the top.

There are two cable cars to go to the top. The first one is large and takes you from Hungerburg to Seegrube. There are two cars for this section, one going up while the other one comes down. The next section runs between Seegrube and Hafelekar and has only one cable car running up and back. At the top there is a short hike up to the summit where there is a cross with the words, "Bergsohne Innsbruck 2007" on it . This picture gives you an idea of the hike up to the summit although the picture is probably too small to let you see cross. One of my friends and I hiked up to the summit, took pictures at the cross and looking down to try to get a good shot of Innsbruck through the clouds. We never did get a great view of Innsbruck from the top because the clouds kept passing by. We had good views of it from the cable cars once we got below the clouds, but couldn't get good pictures from the cable cars. This shot is through/around the clouds from the top.

Dom St. Jakob

I wanted to post a few more pictures of the church where the organ concert took place. The internet connection that I have has been less than cooperative, so we'll see if I can manage to do it. This is a picture facing the altar of St. Jakob. The church is very beautiful, but very overly ornate in the Baroque style. It was built between 1717 -1724, heavily damaged in WWII, and restored.

The ceiling is completely painted, just like the area over the alter. Although I also have pictures of the ceiling, they'll have to wait. It was all I could do to get these two pictures to post this afternoon.

The whole church is very ornate, with small sculptures and paintings throughout, as well as bigger figures. Most of the decorative pieces that are found in this church, I have no idea what their significance is, like this gold and silver structure which juts out from the wall above the height of a person's head. And of course, as can be seen from the last post, the organ fits the style of the rest of the church. The pictures don't really do any of this justice, but especially the organ. The biggest pipes are bigger aound than a man's head, and the sound that can be produced by it is terrific. The lowest sounds seem to shake the building and set up an answering vibration in your chest.

Today we took the cable cars to the top of the mountain. Waaaaay fun. And of course I have pictures. I'll post them later since every time I try loading a picture it tends to make me lose my internet connection. I seem to be a day behind in my posts.

Time to go meet folks again, so more later.

Organ Concert

This will be quick today because I've gotta meet some people. Just thought you might like to see the organ that the concert last night was performed on. Pretty awesome, huh? It was huge and gorgeous and could create a massive amount of sound. The concert was . . . 'unique'. 'Experimental' would be the best description, I think. It sounded more like 'noise' to me, but quite obviously I'm not an expert. The church was gorgeous though. Dom St. Jakob. I'll post more pictures later.

More news from Europe

Here's another image of the Helblinghaus. Pretty, isn't it? Today I've been at the Congress most of the day and tomorrow I will be also since I'm speaking tomorrow. This will be short and I may not get one in tomorrow. We'll see.


Yesterday evening was the Opening Ceremony of the Congress, followed by much eating and drinking. Once again I staggered back to my hotel about midnight. Honestly, I've now drunk nearly more in two days than I drank in the last year put together. So much fun, but I'm too old to be carousing this much. Tabun. That being said, the official Speaker's Dinner is tonight, so I have at least one more late night of carousing. I have to try to be somewhat responsible because I'm speaking first thing in the morning. Luckily for me, 'first thing in the morning' for this Congress is a very civilized 9:30 am.

There are some things that are so different at European conferences of this sort compared to US-based conferences that even if you were dropped into one without knowing where you were, you would know by the differences. The civilized 9:30 am start is one of those differences. 7:00 am is the start for many things at US conferences. And 7:00 am is brutal after a late night. Another difference is that all sorts of beverages, including alcoholic ones, are served on the trade show floor in Europe, which is something you never see in the US. A third difference is the timing of meals. The Speaker's Dinner this evening starts at 9:00 pm. When I'm at home, I'm often asleep by 9:00 pm because I'm such an early morning person. So not only does jet lag mess with my sense of time, but the timing of meals and events changes my normal routine into something unrecognizable. It challenges my ability to adapt. So far I can say that I've made the adaptation without too much difficulty but getting up this morning was hard. Hopefully tomorrow will be better and not worse.

This picture is a structure in the Swarovski Crystal Store. The top layer is penguins, next one down is bighorn sheep and penguins, next is deer, next is elk and bears and the bottom (which I unfortunately cut off in this image) is swans. All made out of glittering crystal. It was quite a sight.

Anyway, gotta go get changed to go to an Organ Recital in Dom St. Jakob, followed by the Speaker's Dinner. Tomorrow evening is a concert by the Haydn Orchestra Bozen-Trient. This orchestra played at the Opening Ceremony, so I'm looking forward to hearing them again.

Innsbruck pics - as promised

It's Sunday afternoon and I'm much more lively today after sleeping 10+ hours. Yesterday evening I went out to eat with some old friends and new friends, and we had a great meal and lots of great beer. I staggered back about 11:00 pm Innsbruck time and became unconscious as soon as my head hit the pillow. This morning I got up about 9:15, cleaned up and then went sightseeing. My colleagues all had early morning meetings, but I came in a day early for two reasons. One, so that I could be a little less jet-lagged when things got going. And second, because I haven't been here before and don't know when I'll get back. I want to have some time to explore and just see stuff. So I've been wandering around Innsbruck today. This first picture is the Golden Roof which is found in the Old Town in Innsbruck. It was originally a royal residence built in 1420 by Frederick IV, with the guilt tiles added in 1500 by Maximilian I. There was a band playing from the top balcony this morning. You can't see them all that well in this picture but there were six or seven people playing brass instruments. The square in front of the building was full of people sightseeing and listening.

I took several pictures from around the square and various place in Old Town because the buildings were so pretty. This picture on the left is taken from the square. I was standing facing the Golden Roof and then looking to the right. The decorated white building on the end is called the Helblinghaus. It's a Gothic townhouse built in the 15th century and decorated like this sometime around 1730. I'm always amazed to think that buildings in Europe are older than the United States is.

This next picture is taken standing almost directly below the Golden

Roof and looking to the right. Gorgeous buildings and there's a glimpse of the mountains that surround Innsbruck. The umbrella tops at the bottom of these pictures were covering outdoor tables for the various restaurants and bars that line the square. I had lunch at one. I also did some sightseeing-shopping which is my version of not really sightseeing nor really shopping. I guess it's essentially scoping out the places where I may do some shopping later. I went to the Swarovski Crystal store, and actually managed to get out without spending money. Proof that there are miracles in this world.

I also tried to get a good picture of this church, Dom St. Jakob, but it was difficult to get the perspective. If I get most of the church you can't see the details, and if I get the details you can't see what the church looks like. So this picture is most of the church without much detail. I have lots of pictures of the detail also. I just had to decide what general pictures to post today. I'll have time to post others some other time when I can sit and sort them out better.

I walked over to the river, Inn, and took this picture looking across the river. Inn is the name of the river, and the bridge right there, Inn-brucke, gives the city it's name. The river is rushing and silty. I suppose it's fed by snow-melt. You can see in this picture that the clouds were lifting enough to see some of the rocky crags around the area. There's almost no snow left in the high country now.

Last night when we went out to eat it was raining pretty hard (really glad I packed a rain coat), and this morning it was mostly cloudy with flashes of brief sunlight. This afternoon it's been mostly sunny, but there were brief periods of sun yesterday too. I think daily rain is the norm here for this time of year. The Congress registration bag includes an umbrella! It's a pretty bright red with the congress logo on it. Even with my rain coat, this umbrella will come in handy. It's small and easy to carry if I don't want to lug the raincoat.

Anyway the clouds tend to be low, so you often can't see that Innsbruck is surrounded by mountains. I did manage to get enough break in the clouds to see the tops of some of the mountains and this last picture shows some of that. I should have time this week to get many more pretty mountain pictures. I'll be sure and post the best ones.

Greetings from Innsbruck!

The next several blogs will probably be from Innsbruck, and after this one I'll try to have some pictures to share. I just arrived and got checked in to my hotel room. I'm so tired!!! I need to stay up until it's time to go to bed here in Austria, so I can start getting over the jet lag. I've been up just over 24 hours now though, so I'm not functioning all that well. I only slept an hour on the (9 1/2 hour) flight over. If I could ever sleep on planes, I've lost the ability. And the flight from Frankfurt to Innsbruck was too rough to sleep. I don't know whether that's standard (we were flying alongside the mountain whose top was in the clouds above us), or we just had a rough day. Several poor people on the plane were getting sick. It didn't bother me, but then I didn't eat the snack they served. Not because the plane ride was rough. Because it was 2:30 am Dallas time and my stomach was totally uninterested in having anything on it.

The trip went off without a hitch. All planes were on time. Not only did I make my connection in Frankfurt, but my luggage made it also. Pretty remarkable since I had less than an hour between flights and I went through Customs, etc, and my luggage made the transfer from American Airlines to Austrian/Tyrolean Airlines. It was raining in Frankfurt. I mention that because we rode a little bus out to where the connecting flight was parked and semi-dashed through the rain to board the plane. The woman sitting next to me on the leg to Innsbruck says that it's supposed to rain every day while we're here. I'm glad I brought a raincoat.

The trip to Innsbruck was in a twin prop plane and I think the whole plane was full of people coming here for EuroMedLab, which is why I'm here also. I actually met some people in my field whose names I've been familiar with for some time. This is going to be a fun and interesting meeting I think. I do have to remember that in this part of the world, especially Germany so Austria is probably the same, you are not called "doctor" unless you are a medical doctor. Us PhD types are referred to as "professor". I need to be sure I refer to my colleagues that way also. Which reminds me. I need to switch some units in my talk from American units to SI units.

More later.