The weather has been glorious here at the workshop in Bad Honnef, so I went for a short walk this lunchtime, down to the Rhine.
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| close to the Rhine |
As you can see in the above photo on the right, there is a spit poking out into nearly the middle of the river. Walking out on the spit gave me this beautiful view down river:
On my way back to the venue, I passed several other workshop attendees with the same idea.
I arrived in Bad Honnef, near Bonn in Germany, yesterday evening, after a flight to Cologne airport followed by a 30 minute local train ride. I'm attending the New Opportunities in Physics‐based Computing workshop at the Physikzentrum there.
The view from my window in the Physikzentrum is down to the Rhine:
The venue itself is very impressive, both outside:
and inside:
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| from the top of the stairs on the second floor, leading to accommodation wings to the left and right |
The workshop itself is being held in a modern lecture theatre attached to the back of the building in a very symapthetic extension.
There have already been some very interesting talks. I'm looking forward to the rest!
The NNPC conference was a delight: great invited speakers, great contributed talks, great poster discussions (and I'm not just saying that because I was one of the organisers: all the contributors did a fantastic job). I learned a lot. I'm looking forward to the next one; hopefully it will be sooner than 5 years next time!
The conference catering was good, too. A constant flow of tea and coffee, accompanied by fantastic little hazelnut biscuits (each small biscuit had four or five whole hazelnuts!), and rhubarb fruit juice. Many of us tentatively tried the latter, then agreed we rather liked it: not overly sweetened, but sweet enough to be a refreshing drink.
The lunches and dinners were all vegetarian, as provided by the sponsors. This was all very flavoursome, but lacked a certain something. After the conference finished yesterday afternoon, a colleague and I went out for a steak dinner.
This morning I rolled up to the train station to catch the 7am train to the airport. On the departure board, in the space reserved for the platform number, were three surprisingly short German words. I typed these in to Google translate. "Train is cancelled". Oh dear, but I had allowed enough time to be able to get the next train if necessary. I went to the information desk. The woman there tapped at a keyboard, then told me the next train to the airport was in half an hour. I don't know what made me check further, but I asked if that one was running. More keyboard tapping. A lot more keyboard tapping. Then she said, oh, the next train that is running is the 8am one. That would have left very little time before boarding, which I wasn't willing to risk. I asked if there was another way to the airport. Yes, I could catch a different train, change to a bus, then change to a further train. I looked at her, she looked at me, and then she said, but a taxi would probably be easier. I agreed. Fortunately, I was travelling with another colleague from the conference, so we shared a taxi, and ended up at the airport earlier than we would have got there by the original 7am train. Time for a leisurely breakfast of coffee and warm cinnamon bun.
The flight was fine. The train journey from Heathrow to home metamorphosed into a bus journey for part of the way, due to weekend engineering works, which made the trip a little longer than it should have been: about eight and a half hours door-to-door, for an approximately 560 mile journey. Considerably better progress than the seven hours for what should have been a 180 mile journey last Saturday.
I flew in to Hanover today, for NNPC 2023, the second international conference on Neuromorphic, Natural and Physical Computing. The first conference, which had a different name but the same concept and venue, was back in December 2018. (There wasn't supposed to be a five-year gap between them, but the one initially planned for 2020 never happened; I wonder why?)
This time I am in a more central hotel, directly opposite the rail station.
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| all the windows have boxes of these little pink flowers; I think they are Calluna |
What's with the small duvets? I've seen this style before.
I asked colleagues about this at the welcome social event this evening. Apparently, in Germany each person gets their own single duvet, even with a double bed. And if there's only one of you, you still get a single duvet. Warm and fluffy, with icy draughts round the edges.
The conference starts tomorrow at 9am, and I'm looking forward to it. But first, to bed. I've anchored one side of the duvet with the large pillows. Let's see if it stays put.
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| all the trees are decked with lights |
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| every open area has a little marketplace |
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| just up the street from the Brauhaus |
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| on my way back to the hotel |
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| If only the view over all car parks looked like this one |
