Day 2: Massive snowstorm but I'll ski anyways
On day 2, I woke up, peered out the window and saw white. No sun, just white. The light snow the night before had turned into a mini-blizzard. The conference started at 8:45am that day, which meant that we had to leave the farmhouse by 8:30am. We quickly scarf down the fresh bread and homemade jam and load into the car. The driveway up to the road is on a slight incline so we carefully try to drive the car on top of the 5 inches of freshly fallen snow. It turns out that a rear wheel drive car won't actually climb a hill with 5 inches of fresh and 4 inches of old snow. We tried 10 times to get up the hill, at one point coming within 3 meters of the road, only to slide back to the parking area. Finally, after 15 minutes, the owner of the house walks out and tells us to take the hill backwards. We look at him like he's crazy but try anyways. It works! So for the next three days, the only way to get out of the house was to drive backwards. Weird.
We arrive at the conference 15 minutes late and grab seats in the back. If you remember from my last post, I wasn't really registered for this conference, I was just supposed to sit in the back and stay quiet. Our late arrival ensured my spot. However, I should not that because we arrived late, we ended up sitting next to this professor from Berlin. I found out later that he was married to the Chancellor of Germany, so I met the first man of Germany. However, you should never EVER call him that unless you want to be placed on his blacklist. Don't even mention politics unless you want to see an angry German. I really enjoyed hearing about his research on materials chemistry so hope I can run into him again someday. ....Anyways....
The conference schedule for the week looked like this.
07:00 -Wake up, pack for day
07:45am- Breakfast
8:15am - Leave for Conference
8:45am - 10:15am: Conference talk (yes, one speaker, not multiple speakers)
10:15am-10:45am: Coffee break
10:45am- 12:00am: 2nd Conference talk
12:15am- Departure of ski bus
17:00 - "Afternoon" session begins (I love how the afternoon session is really an evening session)
18:00 - Second afternoon session begins (no coffee break)
19:00 - Break for dinner
22:00- Finish dinner, return to farmhouse
22:30- Snacks and Schnapps with labmates
11:30 or 12:30 - Fall into bed
Repeat
That leaves a little more than 6 hours for sleeping at night. I could have taken the option to skip skiing and return to the farmhouse for an afternoon nap, but that would have been crazy. Instead, I decided to "dig in" and go skiing everyday. This meant that I usually dozed off for a few minutes during the 'afternoon' sessions. However, I was shocked to discover that my body could actually keep up with this marathon, in fact, I felt more alive than I had in a long time! It turns out that the body can deal with a lot as long as you pump it full of caffeine and balance it with fruits and protein.
I won't bore you with the details of the talks other than to say that I learned a lot and feel much wiser for having listened. All the presenter slides were included in a book so it was pretty easy to follow along. I will however share a great deal of information about skiing.
On the first ski break, I joined up with some chemists from Uni-Würzburg that I met at the last Austrian conference. My labmates decided to return to the farmhouse to sleep, but I wanted to stay out and enjoy the snow, even if it was pretty nasty outside. So Uni-Würzbergers and I headed to a local eatery to check out the local cuisine (overpriced but filling) and then headed to a ski rental place to rent some skis. After much deliberation, we decided it was too dangerous to downhill ski and instead decided to try Skilaufen, or cross country skiing. After getting fitted and receiving an amazing deal on ski rentals, (7 Euros for skiis and boots per half day!), we headed to the local trail. After spending 20 minutes figuring out how to attire ourselves properly, we finally figured out how to move and set across the lovely expanse of skiland.
Despite the falling snow, the scenary was amazing! The hour long ski run took us through snow covered forests, snow filled bowls, wide open fields, and next to a few quaint Austrian homes. I apologize for the lack of photos. I thought I took dozen of photos on this portion of the trail but I can not find them on my camera. Thus I conclude that I actually didn't take the photos. This photo of the village at the start of the path is the only one I can find. You can see the snow clouds hanging over us. The effect was actually quite nice.
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| From Austria-Mariapfarr |
I learned a lesson the first day of skiing that I should have remembered later. Cross-country skiing in exhausting! It really takes a lot of energy to slide across snow and not fall over. After this first day of skiing, I was ready to collapse. However, I perserved and made it to dinner that night where I dined with current and former students of my boss in Marburg.
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| From Austria-Mariapfarr |
It was really great to connect with former group members and learned how somethings (like the awesomeness of people in the group) never change.
After enjoying our dinner and sampling the local beers (the driver tried non-alcoholic ones), my group then headed back to the farmhouse for Schnapps and snacks. I finally fell asleep sometime around 1:30 in the morning.....and now I will leave for my next post.
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