After my return from the east coast to San Francisco, I had about three weeks left, and these were filled with a lot of experiences, science related and not. There was e.g. a street food festival, which went along Valencia for about 15 blocks and was packed with mouthwatering specialties from all over the world. The music was great and the weather good. An exposition of JP Gaultier's creations was at the deYoung museum, which was beautiful.
On my last sunday, a friend and me rented a car, and we drove to Tahoe lake, a huge lake in the mountains not too far from Yosemite park. The landscape was beautiful and we hiked to one smaller lake which had such a clean water that we could taste from it, it was delicious.
Then came the day of good bye from the lab, and I was very much moved at the 'pot' after my summary presentation. We had a lovely chat and shared a really good moment. I am wondering whether and when I will see those lovely folks again. Sigh...
The flight back to Berlin was ok, but unfortunately with United Airlines (i.e. extra luggage was more expensive, and one had to pay for alcoholic beverages...buh!). Arriving in Berlin, I was so happy to see my parents again, but I did not have a lot of time. The following day, I was already in a train to the north of Germany (Plön, close to Kiel) to join the wedding celebrations of a very good friend. And it was worth it, I passed an awesome weekend which did not give me any chance to think about the jet lag that one should normally have coming from the US to Europe.
Anyhow, on Sunday evening, I took a regional train to arrive in Hamburg, where I visited a friend from high school and a Chinese riend who worked also at NCBS before. Besides seeing mz friends, I had some time to enjoy German's port to the world, a nice place.
In the following days, I could finally enjoy to be for a few days together with my parents. And even so, I did not plan it in advance, I managed t see a good amount of friends. I went for one day to Leipzig,
Traveling continued with a trip to Paris fr four days. Many of my friends where about to finish their PhD, so that I used a long weekend to visit all of them before they spread out to work in different places all over the world. As expected, Paris did not change over the last years, but nevertheless, it was great to walk around and refresh my memories . And not everything was unchanged, a large amount of Metro stations were renovated and were not anymore filthy and stinky. My first day in Paris was a friday, and after visiting Curie Institute, I went over to the Pasteur institute, to enjoy their beer hour which we continued in a close by bar. As a nice end for that day, I went to a birthday party of another friend. At the end of the day, I was happy about all the positive feelings of the day.
The next station of my trip was Göttingen, where I was supposed to visit the laboratory of Prof. C. Schmidt. I got there with the night train from Paris. On this train, it happened that I shared the sleeping cabinet with another German physicist, and he was also on a "home trip" combined with a visit of conferences, because he as a permanent position in an institute in Brazil! What a coincidence! We had a great discussion about the "pro an con" of choosing to leave the first world and to continue with its research career in a BRIC state. The train arrived very early in Göttingen, which gave me the opportunity to explore the city while it was waking up. The visit of the lab was great, and I could also meet a very good friend who did his PhD in Göttingen.
The next morning I took the train to Regensburg, where I attended a research conference for three days. Fortunately, the schedule gave the opportunity to make some walks to explore the city center of this cute medieval town. Another nice surprise was, that I met many known faces at the conference, ad that we had a great closing evening with a dancing crowd until 3 AM! As a result of that, I missed my reserved train in the early morning back to Berlin, but it was fortunately no problem transfer the tickets to a later train, so that I had a very relaxed train trip back. After my arrival in Berlin, I had another two days to get ready for India, and they were two very nice and intense days with my parents. The time passed by much too fast, and hops, I sad suddenly in a plane heading for Bangalore, my new and not so new hometown...to be continued
