Quasi-travel-blog-post!

So, thought that this blog was done being a travelogue? WRONG! The following is somewhat long and somewhat less touristy, but it's a brief and heavily abridged chronicle of my recent adventure to Switzerland to attend the optETH Winter School. Lots of physics...but despite (or because?) of that, lots of fun!

We flew to Zurich with SAS -- it was something on the order of $400 or $500 cheaper...however, it necessitated a transfer through its hub in Copenhagen. Normally it isn't a problem, but just our luck -- on our way there, a freak storm hits the airport, and forces the cancellation of none other but our flight to Zurich! Stranded in a foreign country, not speaking the language, not knowing what to do next -- kind of reminded me of arriving in Frankfurt for the first time last summer...luckily, the weather cleared up enough to take a later flight in, so no biggie.

Our hotel was situated in a suburb some 20 minutes away from Zurich proper, called Winterthur. It's a pretty nice little town, got the usual small-town European feel. Felt somewhat jaded as we walked past several-centuries old churches and shrugging, "Ehh, been there done that."

Not too much time to relax, though! In addition to a packed schedule, we brought a few reams of homework to do while we were there. This is me sniffing my laptop, after Shannon remarked that it "smelled like burning". She was right.

This is the building where most of the activities (ie lectures, etc.) took place -- note the mostly metallic and concrete construction, dreary weather, and location on top of a hill. One delegate remarked, "It kinda feels like SFU." It really does. (It turns out that the small-world phenomenon is out in full-force for this conference -- this guy is from Victoria, graduated from Eng Phys at SFU, and works with a group at Stanford that worked closely with my previous group in Wuerzburg. It's really weird when the 'introductions' go like "So you're Matt? Stephan says hi."

The Hoenggerberg campus of ETH Zurich is pretty cool though, despite being depressingly similar to SFU. Here's a scale model of the campus...notice how clean and spiffy it is! I would bet money that if we put something like that up on campus here, it would be plastered with graffiti and bills after a week.

Ahh, coffee time. So very vital for those of us who were jetlagged and sleep-deprived. Of course, it's historically been the lifeblood of physics and mathematics -- hence a coffee break after every lecture!

We got to visit some labs too. Check out this optics table! I think it defines the term "density"...it is actually really cool work that this group does. Ask me if interested!

More coffee...I had been pretty good about not consuming ridiculous amounts of caffeine so far in the term. Then this trip hit. I'm hooked again now. ...it's probably not healthy.

After four days of lectures, we were pretty much burned out on physics (those of us who were undergrads, that is). So we skipped the last lab tour, and played foosball instead. I actually know (kind of) how to play now!

Here's a pic of (most) of the North Americans (we're only missing Dave). Four of us from Fizz, and Gopal is from Caltech. (Sybil has her eyes closed in literally every picture that anyone took of her. Weird...)

Saw this on campus, thought it was pretty funny. How does one even go about 'pimping' a 'studylife'???