Freising, Cassie, Tantalum... Beer...?

Hello Hello,

I have new pictures and stories to share that I've been just sitting on so I wanted have an accompanying update. So... here it is...

And as a general notice, I've become absolutely obsessed with war memorials here... I'm really fascinated with how people view their past in general, even more so in Germany, so every time I came across a monument I would usually stand there and pull out my dictionary to translate the whole thing... until my friend here Robert suggested I just take a picture and translate it at home... so because of that I've got more pictures of monuments than anything else and I've translated as best as I can into the captions. I don't particularly go searching for these things either, I just run into them and go trigger happy.


- Freising -

A couple weekends ago my Portuguese friend Robert and I took a little day trip to this city just north of Munich, Freising. I feel like we did so little there but it was a really fun day. Our first order of business was finding the tourist information and there they suggested that we eat at this restaurant that was about 200 feet away from the Weihenstephan brewery. Weihenstephan is a separate little sub-section of the city there, and it's also the oldest brewery in the world, it was started in 1040. There's a picture of our meal... but I have no idea what it actually was... except that it was good. And the beer was incredible. I think it is the best I've had since I've been here and I'd be hard pressed to think of any time I had something better.

As an aside, I feel as though I'm starting to grasp the thing about beer here compared to say Gainesville. I think in Gainesville we could find most of the stuff I find here or something of almost similar quality... but you'd have to search, and that's the main difference. You can go to practically any restaurant in Munich (with the possible exception of McDonald's) and ask for a "helles Bier" and it will just about always be better than what you drive 30 minutes to find a specialty store in a weird part of town for in Gainesville. It'd be like being able to walk into a place like Applebee's and literally saying "normal beer" and getting something really really good... and for about the same relative price that they charge for crap like Bud back home too. I think I'm getting spoiled.

Okay, so after eating, Robert and I wandered around the city, trying to see some sights on a map we were given, but getting sidetracked a lot. We walked into some exhibit of a Freising window maker or something like that... but the man running it didn't speak any English and the exhibit was entirely in German so the details were lost on me besides "please come in, have a look around, it's free." We did make our way to this really neat church on a hilltop where a lot of pictures came from. It had some really neat statues inside and some candle lit plaques in the basement. I really liked it in that city though... I would definitely go back.

- Munich -

This past weekend Cassie's family was passing through Munich so she spent the weekend here and I got to be a tourist with her and her family. I haven't really had many chances to be a tourist here so it worked out great. As far as my pictures go though, the Munich album is my repository for all the pictures I've taken in the city since I got here... most are from this weekend of tourism, but some are from just wandering the city with a friend or by myself... and I'll be continually adding to it since I'll be continually taking pictures in Munich.

Saturday I met up with Cassie, and we went to Sergey's place first, dropped off Cassie's bag, had a short rest, and then went to the city center to meet her family. Sergey guided us to a nice Bavarian Restaurant in Munich where I had some Bavarian meat dumpling type dish which was quite nice. We headed towards the English Gardens where Robert met up with us and towards the Chinese Tower for BEER by the liter (that's how Bavarians like it). In the water under some bridge we saw a bunch of people in full wetsuits surfing... I had always heard about that but never been sure if it were true... surfing in Munich... who would have thought. The night ended with Sergey, Cassie, Robert, Jandy, and Nick having a couple beers at a little pub/restaurant type deal and then Cassie and I heading back towards Garching.

Sunday we visited die alte Pinakothek which is an art gallery in the city. After leaving there we stumbled upon some big festival celebrating immigration or something like that we're guessing... there was Bavarian dancing and what seemed to be Turkish food but it was really neat. i recorded video of the Bavarian dancing but I'm currently having technical difficulties getting it online... so that will have to wait. We met with Robert again at that point and later we continued on to the Deutsches Museum since it was free for the last hour it is open. That's a gigantic science museum and it's pretty awesome. I need to spend about an entire day there at some point since in one hour Robert and I barely finished looking through a single exhibit on Mining.

- Tantalum -

So if any of you are having trouble sleeping lately, this was written with you in mind. I guarantee you that by reading through what I'm writing next, you will be on the verge of falling asleep. You can thank me later.

I've been asked now and then about what my research entails and now that I'm starting to make a little progress I can (somewhat) answer that question. I'm currently studying small systems containing the metallic element Tantalum, to try and compare it to other theoretical work done or experimental results found. I'm trying to fine tune our method and basis sets so we can have reasonable accuracy and also be computationally efficient. The basis set is just the collection of functions you use to describe a system... the more you use the closer you get to reality but the more the computations cost. Most people normally don't spend as much time on the basis sets as I have to, but I'm the first person in this group to do calculations on Tantalum so I have to start from the beginning. The end goal is to study the catalytic properties of silica supported Tantalum complexes although I'm not sure I'll ever get to that point before I leave. My next step is to just calculate tons of different molecules for the sake of comparison. Tantalum is named after the Greek Myth about Tantalus. That's also where the word tantalizing comes from. So, do deal with Tantalum, is equivalent to suffering... that's the moral of the story.

Well now I'm being beckoned to lunch and I've avoided working long enough anyways... hope you enjoy.

Shane