Back from Berlin!

The Fulbright Academy for Science & Technology conference and the Fulbright mid-year meeting in Berlin have come and gone in an (appropriately wintery) flurry, and I'm back safely in Göttingen... which has suddenly decided that spring is at long last sprung.

What a cool experience! It was great to see Kiel folks again and catch up, not to mention the Regensburg language course crew from the Frankfurt orientation eons ago in August... and in one wholly surreal turn of events, a member of my SMMA graduating class whom I haven't seen since eighth grade, currently spending the year as a teaching assistant in Leipzig! Then there were folks currently "stationed" all over Europe, including Finland, Norway, Sweden, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, France, Spain, Italy... and those are just countries with whose representatives I personally spoke!

Hopefully some of the connections I made during the last week will prove significant... I definitely caught a bit of a travel bug hearing stories of everyone's experiences, and it would be nice to be able to see Rome and the Vatican again, for example, with a friend who speaks Italian. Speaking of which, shout out to Adam, an architectural engineer in Pavia, Italy who, in addition to being a really cool guy, is running a nice photoblog including pictures from the winter Olympics in Torino! Also Heather, who is researching international education in Hamar, Norway, and continues the trend of blogging Fulbrighters. Both of these fine folks have been added to the list on the right. (Yup, apparently the ability to distinguish right from left is not a prerequisite for this program. Thanks Steve...)

So, on to the rundown! I got up at 5am Saturday morning to catch a 7am train, which arrived in Berlin at around 9:30... too late to join any of the first day tours for the FAST conference, but I got to settle into my swanky room in the Park Inn am Alexanderplatz:

Pretty snazzy room, although it had a few interesing features, such as the glass-encased shower and the frosted glass wall between said shower and the bathroom "stall," which was the only part of the bath area that almost qualified as a "room." Maybe Americans are kind of weird about nudity compared to Europeans, but when one is sharing a hotel room for a week with a perfect stranger I don't think walls are too much to ask for. At least the provided curtain was mostly opaque...

The view out the window was pretty neat, though. Sitting at the table I could see the TV tower really well.

Saturday afternoon and evening was filled with talks and panels associated with the FAST conference, including a really awesome talk about polar ice and climate change (with some Mad Powerpoint Skillz... I was very envious) and a very interesting presentation regarding population trends.

On Sunday I definitely made time in the morning for an excursion... in fact, I pretty much skipped out on the conference and spent the day at the Berlin zoo and aquarium with Kelly, a Biology student in Regensburg whom I first met in Frankfurt. It was totally worth it.

Look, it's my boar-friend! Har har har... Okay, I guess you had to be there. Seriously, we got sort of half lost a couple of times and kept finding this guy again, so he was a very helpful pig, and deserved plenty of affection.

This next guy just reminded me so much of my geriatrics somehow. Maybe it's the bald head and the hunched posture... We could actually see the poor stork shivering! Sooo cute!

We also caught the polar bears at feeding time, which was exciting, especially when the big one stood on its hind legs and caught a chunk of meat in midair.

And here, of course is the Berlin zoo's treasured Panda Bear. He was asleep in this position both when we first saw him and 30 minutes later when we came out of the big cats house. Not exactly the most engaging zoo denizen, your average panda bear...


The primate house, on the other hand, was full of interesting behaviors and residents who seemed just as interesed in spectators as we were in them. This young Orang had a security blanket/cape that looked like it was made of an old sweater.


The aquarium, of course, also contained the herp/bug house so I was in heaven. Here is Kelly getting up close to take a picture of the ginormous amazonian Arrowhana fish. These guys were a solid 4-plus feet, and even though I've seen bigger specimens (last year at Shedd Aquarium during the Midwest Psychological Association conference) they're still impressive!


The building itself was amazingly decorated. In one of the stairways we saw this fabulous stained-glass window. I literally felt like I had just walked into the First United Church of Marine Natural History.


But of course I had to get back to business eventually... the last item on docket for the FAST conference was the poster presentations. Here I am with my pretty contribution. The audience here was technically more "science"-oriented than at the regular Fulbright conference, so I was surprised to get questions like "What is a peptide?" and found myself rather struggling to control the jargon and find a way to explain myself in plain English. It was a good exercise, though, and a timely reminder that no matter how familiar this stuff is to me, to a regular audience it's still pretty obscure. Keeps me humble, I guess.

The mid-year meeting officially kicked off with a dinner that evening, but I had Monday morning free, so I took a little side trip to Checkpoint Charlie and the still-standing section of the Wall (pictured) at the "Topography of Terror" open-air museum.

My research panel presentation was Monday afternoon. Although I had initially worried that I was putting too much on my plate when I signed up for a poster and a presentation, it worked out really well. I had to ditch my prepared spiel after realizing that it was absolutely too technical, but I had worked out a clearer and more concise explanation at the poster session which served me in good stead. The only question I got from the audience was a hum-dinger, though. If chickens don't get Alzheimers, why don't we just give people chicken genes? (My response: chicken memory possibly isn't that good to begin with... hey, at least I got a laugh!)

Tuesday started off with an interesting panel on "elite" universities in Germany, which is kind of a new concept. There's quite a bit of reform going on to the completely public German higher education system, between introducing actual tuition for the first time, fitting programs to the European standards laid out in the Bologna process, and trying to (in some ways, artificially) up the competitiveness of certain schools by naming so-called "Universities of Excellence." Some folks are optimistic about the changes, and some think it's total hogwash. I guess we'll see in a few years...

Later in the morning, I finally got to go into the Reichstag, or German parliament building. The dome is really nifty, although snow and general winter haziness obstructed the view from the top. I'm going to fiddle around with the composite-building program Adam used on his blog and I'll try to post something later this weekend. Otherwise, there are a whole bunch more photos on the Shutterfly page.

In the afternoon, I was supposed to take a tour of the Museuminsel, but instead I left the Reichstag and tagged along with a group to the Brandenburg gate, new Holocaust memorial (technically dedicated to "the murdered Jews of Europe,") and the Sony center, followed by a short excursion to the Pergamon museum. The last history class I've taken was Miss Mason's Western Civ at Rosati, and the Pergamon's amazing displays reminded me of that class and of course my senior trip to Italy and Greece... It was the first time in my life that I ever felt truly fascinated by history, in some kind of mystical combination of Mary Jo's wry storytelling abilities and the unequivocable proximity of Very Old Things. It was nice to explore that feeling again. If you're ever in Berlin, you must see the Pergamon altar (pictured) and the Ishtar gate!

I think the Berliner Dom is soooo pretty in a gray twilight... most of the snow in Berlin melted pretty soon after it came down, but it could've been worse. While we were at the conference southern Germany got a solid couple of feet and had to declare a state of emergency!

Dinner on Tuesday night was very interesting... it was essentially held in a nightclub in the Kulturbrauerei, complete with light shows, loud thumping music, and a rather unfortunately small number of tables that made the half-hour wait in the buffet line almost not worth it... I suppose I just didn't expect that style of venue, especially with a crowd that also included lots of professorial types and families with small children. Dancing after dinner was fun, though, and I made sure to finally get a couple of pictures with people! The first is Kelly, my zoo-buddy.

Then of course we have the GÖ-TEAM! Well, Laura and I decided that it was the perfect name for the three Göttingen grantees, so I guess Pat will just have to go along with it... Aren't we ever an attractive crew, though, if I do say so myself? Yeah! Gö-team!!

Wednesday morning involved a trip to the Rotes Rathaus for a panel on other (non-German) European Fulbright experiences, followed by a speech from the Mayor of Berlin. After lunch I went on a tour of Mitte that ran from the hotel all the way back to the Sony Center and Potsdamer Platz... mostly stuff I had seen already, but it was nice to hear more about the history of things we passed. That evening, however, was the event I had been waiting for... the Music Gala. With two of the performers from the Kiel group I knew it would be really really good, but it turned out to be the high point of my entire week.

There were performers from all over the place, and the program was varied but still flowed cohesively from one thing to the next... We heard Mozart's Sonata in E minor KV 304 for piano and violin with a British violinist and a pianist studying in Budhapest, followed by my Kiel buddy Jen Porto's stunningly vibrant perfomance of Georg Göhler's Fünf Sesenheimer Lieder Goethes, then a very experimental tuba solo by Krzysztof Penderecki called Capriccio that at times made me think that Berlin grantee Owen Molloy was actually beatboxing into the tuba. Paul Sánchez, who went to Laura's high school and is currently studying piano in Spain, played Isaac Albéniz' El Corpus Christi en Sevilla from Iberia, Cauderno I. The first half concluded with a couple of professors playing Debussy's Sonate pour Violoncelle et Piano, Opus L 135.

After the intermission we heard a Harp student in France play Sonate pour Harpe by Germaine Tailleferre. I found it hard to believe that Megan only had ten fingers! Next, Hubert Ho, a composition student working in Prague, accompanied the world premiere of a piece entitled A Dangerous Game of Hide and Seek with an oboeist and trumpet studying in Germany (another Kiel friend, Amanda Pepping, on trumpet) and a percussionist working in Stockholm, Sweden. There was a little bit of acting involved, and it was lots of fun to watch! Then we heard Two Fantasy Pieces, Op. 2, for oboe and piano, by Carl Nielsen, followed by Amanda playing her own arrangements of Cyril Scott's Lotus Land and Ernesto Lecuona's Maleguena. Swoon worthy! Go to her website and buy her CD right now! I mean it!! Then we heard an electronic piece called ...and, believing in... by a performance artist studying in Berlin. Finally, we heard Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23. Whew! The whole evening was a tour de force, and the music was really and truly world-class.

Here's a photo of some of the above-mentioned amazing musicians. Left to right (and I double checked my directions this time!): Jen Porto (Soprano and wonder woman!), James Smith (Oboe), Hubert Ho (piano and composer), Amanda Pepping (Trumpet and superdiva!), and N. Cameron Britt (percussion).

Lots of people were trying to organize social events after the conference, but I was kind of tired by the time we got back to the hotel. A small group of us started walking to find a nearby cafe or bar and got a little turned around, so I ended up going home and sleeping. Thursday morning Gö-team reunited for our train ride home, and then I went shopping since I ate all my food before I left. Today I checked in at lab, and I'm meeting with Hermann and Dr. Hüther on Monday morning to work through logistics of the project and decide if there's a way I can be involved next semester. I would like that. Otherwise, I need to check out courses in the next month before the second semester starts, get my new ID (sigh... hopefully it won't be so complicated this time!), possibly negotiate with a second lab, and write my mid-year report to Fulbright before the end of the month. It would be nice if I had an idea of what the semester is likely to bring before it actually starts...

Wow, that was a huge post! Thanks for reading!