Day 2 Continued: The Meeting Begins

Being an insomniac, I really appreciated the days you lie down and within minutes are magically transported to 6AM the following day. I knew when I woke up at 4AM local time and couldn’t get back to sleep it was going to be a long day, and nothing stretches days like talks about adenovirus penton structures and CAR binding debates. Actually, everything today was interesting; it was just that the jet-lag kicked in pretty hard towards the end. We’re on a grueling schedule that demands some stamina from the participants. I remember meetings like this, its just been a while. For instance in Korea, we had every afternoon off. I think I would prefer that here as well, as that gives you time to see a few things in the day, before back to bidness at the night sessions.

I met up with Dave and Liz and they had a great time on their hike to the top of a Swiss peak. Hopefully I can get some of Dave’s pictures up here as well. Dave’s talk got cut from 25 mins to 10. I can’t think of a worse person for that to happen to, at least as far as the organizers should be concerned. HA!
He should be OK, he's speaking in a block with collaborators Adriana Kajon and Don Seto, whom he can both use for introduction.

Fish on...

Day 2: I told you it looked like Ohio

Along the way to the Kunsthaus, I found this:

Surely some of you dear readers recognize these objects? No, I’m not going to make a nutsack joke. It’s a real live Buckeye tree, from whence my home state gets its name. I thought I saw some last year in Germany, but I didn’t get the chance to investigate. Today, I got to play the part of crazy-homeless/stupid-foreigner dude as I kicked around on the ground to find some fallen nuts. Sure enough, I cracked a few open and there was the familiar brown and white buckeye inside. I’m taking this as a good omen for Ohio State’s Football season.

If you look real close, you'll notice that Euro-buckeyes are spinier than Ohio buckeyes. I found that out when I tried to pry a few open with my hand. They are the real deal, as you can see below. The white one below wasn't done cooking when I opened it, but I wanted to try and give you a shot whilst the eye was still white, before it oxidizes to brown.
Anyway, I know ya'll want some proof that I'm not just slacking in Ohio, so here you go. Yes that's the camera cord:

Day 2: A Wanderer Wanders

My plan for the day was for some sightseeing before the meeting started at 2PM. The hotel receptionist suggested the Kunsthaus Art Museum. I walked through the old part of Zurich, past the shops selling everything from kitsch (swiss army knives) to erotica, with lots of fashion in between, and cafes, kabob shops and discos on the way there. A block or so from the river, you get into the university area, which looks more like a centuries old europeon city. The Kunsthaus wasn’t open yet, so I walked over to the campus. I found the Biological History Museum on the University Campus and took a quick tour to help kill some time. It was pretty impressive, lots of in situ dinosaur bones and a description of how they carefully expose them from the shale. Some of the pieces where massive, having entire 10 ft long swimming dinosaurs embedded within. Spiffy!

By this time the Kunsthaus was open and, lucky me, free for the day. I checked out the “The Expanded Eye” exhibit, which is basically a group of pieces from the 60’s with an optical illusion bent. You know they type; lots of black and white spirals and straight lines that move around when you try to focus your eye on them. There was also a Dali painting which always makes my day. The piece on the book cover is one of the more interesting pieces, from a certain distance you swear you can see a person’s face in there, but it fractilizes out as you approach. The self-portrait sculpture someone had done of their head was truly incredible and downright freaky. I kept expecting it to talk, it looked so lifelike, yet so odd, at the same time. This exhibit wins the Mars Award for Best Exhibit to See with Senses Amplified.

I also walked through the rest of the galleries they had at Kunsthaus. There were some darn good paintings, like the witches stuffing people in chimneys and the many of the Angel/Altar paintings on gilded-gold backgrounds, and they had a collection of modern art with everyone you could hope for: Lichtenstein, Rothko, Warhol and quite a few others. All of this was nice, but what really ‘impacted’ me as art was Alexandria Mir's feature exhibit called “Switzerland and other Islands”. This was a series of giant fantastical maps, usually of Switzerland as some sort of island (a political island, a topographical map) or fictional places like Treasure Island or Manhattan. The sense of humor and playfulness in the pieces really reached me and I found myself cracking up several times. Best of all, it was all done with the scientists best friend: The Sharpie. It turns our Sharpies are made by a Swiss company and they donated 2000 of them to help make the exhibit. Smashing.

Time for the meeting…

Day 1: Zurich Arrival
I thought the same thing flying into Switzerland as I did Germany: Looks like Ohio. The similarity disappears the second you step off the downtown train, as there's no mistaking a Europeon city central for an abandoned American one. That excitement created by the mix of hinted familiarity and something unknown hit me as I walked around in the train station. Zurich promises to be a beautiful city, with the swan-filled green river running down the middle past old Gothic Buildings.

It's a bit too organized here though. I got off the train at 8:30 and by 9:15 I had: Navigated my way to my hotel where I arranged to stay one day later; Bought a train ticket for Vienna and; Bought a power adaptor for the Mac. This presented a bit of problem since I couldn't check in til 2PM, time I was hoping to kill with some of the menial tasks. Thankfully, the hotel let me drop off my bags and told me something should be ready around 11AM.

Of course, there is always time to eat something in a wrap. I hunted around for somewhere that was selling a coke for less than 4 francs and eventually found a kebob place under the train station. Not bad, and the coke helped wake me up after the long day of traveling.

I slept a bit longer than I had hoped too after checking in. I blame that on the hotel being so thoughtful as to include large portable fan for the room. For someone that has had to have some sort of noise-maker for naps since I was 11 or so, this is normally a godsend, but I was hoping to get some sight seeing in today. It may not have mattered, as it rained to be the band all afternoon. Then again, that didn't matter to me, as it's been so long since I've been rained on, I couldn't resist hiking around for an hour or so after I did wake up. This led to Kabob #2 (still not as good as the German ones, but I'm hoping the university area will offer some improvements) and beer #1. I love Europe.

Tomorrow, I'll try to check out a few things before the meeting starts at 2Pm. Also, I 'll try to master my new digital camera and have a few shots up.

cheers,
mars