German Buildings: How Chemistry sneaks in Again

I'm an architecture fan. Not so much a fanatic, but still, I can appreciate a column or window pane here and there. I was seriously considering going into Art History as a major while a junior in highschool. There is so much to be expressed just in the facade of a structure. Here are some highlights from the trip:

The island of LINDAU was awesome. Very laid back, relaxing, and filled of sugar (at least for me). While not conferencing I was walking narrow streets, visiting towers with princesses, and one day we did get to go to Mainau where the castle was. (Yes, I realize that it looks like something other than a castle, but I did not name it.) I even ran into the missionaries at Lindau! I have a german pass-along card to prove it!



I met up with Chalsea and got to visit more of Deutschland. Heidelberg builders seemed to draw from the same materials since the burnt orange color was seen everywhere. Also, the university of Heidelberg is a very renowned school (at least in chemistry) having a handful of nobel laureates who have come from there. Despite this, it seemed like a college town in Europe, which was unexpected to me. I decided I didn't want to live there, compared to, Stuttgart which I enjoyed immensely. (No pictures though, sorry.)


And then there was Salzburg, and Hellbrun, and really everything good and lovely in the world. My doppelganger hopefully visits Salzburg all the time and wanders around the city, in the gardens, museums and churches. I heart Salzburg, even if everyone else already does, and I don't like to do what everyone else does, I can't help it.


And finally, churches. We went and visited Fraulein Maria (although she has been dead for a while) walked up many many stairs, peeked into churches and admired the elegant domes.


I didn't know it at the time, but I was still somewhat preoccupied with chemistry. I took the picture of the Hotel not because it was pretty but because the name is associated in my mind with a PI at a prestigious university. At one point, I was going through the pictures on my camera and almost deleted it, but then remembered that I took it for some reason! Weird. Finally, a chemistry lab from the late 1800's I think...I don't quite remember but it was beautiful. I would have loved to do chemistry all the time if my lab looked like that. It was so sunny and cheerful and humane looking (which is ironic since without the modern safety precautions, I'm sure they were breathing in toxic fumes and handling carcinogenic materials all the time).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Moonshadows

Image
M: How does the moon cut his hair? K: I don't know. Sun scissors...something. M: Eclipse it. We bought sun binoculars for the occasion (not too expensive, but made us feel very luxurious). We passed these around to old and new friends and carefully taught people how to look for such a tiny object in a huge black sky. There were 3 sunspots visible, and if you squinted just right an extra one in the bottom left corner. It cooled about 12 degrees. We watched as the sun and moon aligned and we could see small circles where the sun peaked through the topography of the moon. Twilight hit and everyone cheered and got excited and took off their glasses and stared. The corona was visible and I've never seen anything in the sky so beautiful and breathtaking. There are words to describe it, but I likely don't know them or know how to line them up just right to explain. Everything went silent as everyone took pics with their iphones/cameras, or just pondered in how unlikely it ...
Read more

Banana Cream Pies are a Labor of Love

Image
Roast banana. Blend banana and combine with homemade pudding. Melt chocolate and cover bottom of a homemade pie crust cooked the day before. Chill three hours. Whip up cream and grate chocolate on top. There were no shortcuts. Everything was made from scratch. I mean, except the chocolate. I used Dove chocolates because that is what I had. (Also, that is not my picture above. That's the pic from pilsbury in which most things are storebought - look how pretty and how easy!) It ended up being very good. I had a baby in June of 2018. My first graduate student defended his thesis in January and is going to graduate in April. Literally, this week, I will participate in the hooding ceremony where I am the person who is doing the hooding. This feels so weird to me since it really doesn't seem that long ago that I graduated and did all of this in my own life. It's not been quite ten years, but it's so far that I can't round down. There are so many things that I am d...
Read more

Testing. Testing...Is this thing on?

It was Herman Melville that  said “All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by silence."  Right now, I am sitting near my front window and watching the most spectacular sunset as it changes the sky from a dusty orange, to dusty rose and now a brilliant neon pink. One cloud is low and back and from the top is flecked with blue and navy while it's underside is fascinatingly flamingo. The clouds are the perfect shape and have metallic linings and texture and there really isn't anything better than a sunset in the west. Couple that with a picture window framing all this splendor above aspens and juniper and I'm arguably in heaven.   I still love birthdays and make a big deal of them for others and for myself.   Of all the profound things and emotions of things that have been attended by silence one is  that I've gotten married.  Of all my years, apparently that birthday at the start of 32 was the beginning of a year that wo...
Read more