Gus's Trip to Germany, South Africa, London Fall 2008

To meet with some collaborators, I visited Erlangen and Stuttgart in Germany, and Cape Town South Africa. On the way home, I stopped to see my brother- and sister-in-law in London.

This is the Rokoko Hotel in Erlangen Germany where I stay sometimes. If you know anything about the history of mathematics (or physics), you'll be interested to know you can walk a few minutes from this spot and see where Emmy Noether grew up. I just happened across it by accident when I was visiting a couple of years ago.

While in Erlangen, I spent an evening at a Spanish restaurant eating tapas. This is Aliyah, my friends' (Daniel and Kathrin) little girl. Fortunately she had Old McDonald's Farm in English.

In Stuttgart, I spent a couple of days at the Max-Planck-Institut for Metals Research to work with my friend Alejandro Diaz-Ortiz (who is from Mexico but whom I met in Montreal but now lives in Germany). We're working on a number of projects together. This is a photo of the guesthouse at the institute.

It's a huge lab with a dedicated guest house with probably 45 rooms for visitors. They pay all my expenses when I come---so I invite myself often ;-). The institute is out in the country side. The village, Busnau, where it is located probably only has 1000 people. There's only one store, one restaurant, and one bar. It's about 20 minutes from downtown Stuttgart. On this trip, I attended church in Stuttgart (usually I go to church in Erlangen). It was an international ward (there's a big US base nearby).

I left Stuttgart for Cape Town. In the Stuttgart airport, hanging in the lobby were several antique airplanes and this really cool "glider". They had a sign up about it...but it was all in German.

I arrived in Cape Town after an overnight flight. My host was excited to get right to work...so I had a shower and went straight to...see penguins.

On the way, a whale waved at me.

I stayed in a really nice bed-and-breakfast near the university.

We had a busy couple of days at the office. On the day I was heading to London, my hosts had to leave before me for a wedding in Zimbabwe. So I spent a couple of hours on the famous Table Mountain in Cape Town. The cable car was really neat. The floor rotated as the cable car moved so that you got a view from every angle. A newly graduated masters student took me around. His name was Osei. He had been a high school teacher for many years and then had come back to school to become a materials scientist.

On my way home I stopped in London to see Cindy's brother and his wife, Micah and Tat. I have lots of cool pictures from that part of the trip, but this blogger interface stinks, frankly, and it's taken me days to try to get the layout decent and I'm just going to give up or this post will never see the light of day. So instead let me just say that in London I squeezed 2 weeks worth of sightseeing into two days. Here's a partial list (without pictures) of the cool things we did or saw.

• Dropped off my luggage at the flat after flying all night from Cape Town. Went to Burroughs Market. Ate some yummy food.
• Saw Southwark Cathedral, walked across the London Bridge.
• Went to St. Paul's Cathedral (lots of really famous people buried here) and climbed all the way to the top of the dome, looked out over London.
• Went to a fancy French pastry shop for pistachio macaroons and hot chocolate.
• Walked to the famous Temple Church which was rude enough to be closed.
• Walked through Covent Garden where Eliza Dolittle meets Henry Higgins outside the opera theater.
• Walked down Drury lane (you know, the muffin man...)
• Saw the outside of the Royal Courts of Justice (UK's supreme court)
• Saw a really big Masonic temple
• Walked down Charings Cross road but (because we are muggles, I guess) couldn't see the Leaky Cauldron.
• Ate at a hip Japanese restaurant called Wagamama (means "spoiled one")
• Saw much of the British museum. Among many other cool things saw the real, live (OK, it's not alive) Rosetta Stone.
• Ate ice cream from a cool shop called Scoop
• Ate Indian food at a place called Masala Zone
• Ate chocolate with Micah and Tat that I brought from Germany.
• Saw General Priesthood meeting at the UK church headquarters...but on Sunday morning because of the time difference.
• Drove past Buckingham Palace in a taxi (taxi drivers in London are amazing...story for another day)
• Went to the Victoria & Albert museum.
• Ate great steak and french fries at a French restaurant (wow, best fries ever)
• Attended evensong services at Westminster Abbey (we sat in the choir seats!). This was incredible. On the way out, Micah noticed that we walked right past Isaac Newton's crypt in the abbey.
• Saw the National Gallery (Monet, da Vinci, Picasso, van Gogh...you name the artist, we saw their work).
• Saw the map that changed the world in person.
• Picadilly Circus, statue of Horatio Nelson, some other famous church, monument to Ghandi...