The Albino Squirrels: Würzburg: An Introduction

Grußa,

I apologize for taking a couple days to post on here (and for disappearing off social media). Getting internet access in Würzburg has been quite an issue. The past three days have made me realize my dependence on smartphone data and wifi. Being as directionally challenged as I am, getting around the city without Google Maps is a struggle. Yesterday, I attempted to walk to campus which should have been only a 15 minute walk from my flat. I left with directions and a map. After a good 40 minutes of walking and realizing how terribly lost I was, I gave up and took the bus. Clearly, I need Siri to give me directions. I’m also currently facing Snapchat withdrawals. I go through phases where I pick a social network and constantly use it (while abandoning the rest), and for the past two months, Snapchat has been my social network of choice. I finally managed to get wifi access at a restaurant today, and the 30-something new snaps made me so incredibly happy.

Oh well, moving along. I haven’t had much time to breathe since we left Austin. Despite not having slept much the night before, I couldn’t sleep at all during either flight (AUS to JFK, and then JFK to FRA), so I arrived in Würzburg (on Tuesday afternoon) exhausted and sleep deprived. There is quite a long list of things an international student needs to do to be able to study at Universität Würzburg ranging from opening a bank account to registering in the Town Hall. I spent the rest of Tuesday and part of Wednesday trying to accomplish some of these, and I will be so so happy to be done with this fairly long list tomorrow (fingers crossed!).

On Wednesday morning, I met with the professor I’m doing research with this summer. Dr. Martin Kamp is a Technical Physicist, and he speaks fluent English. I was told that language would not be an issue in Würzburg, but I’ve come across very few people who speak English fluently, and everything (no really, everything - signs, menus, etc.) is in German. So yes, I’d say it’s an issue. However, it gives me more incentive to pick up some German when I’m here. Going back to talking about some fun Physics: a major topic in my professor’s research group is the spectroscopy of semiconducting nano-structures, focusing on spectroscopy of single quantum dots (often in combination with optical cavities) and polaritons. The combination of single quantum dots is a fairly decent model for investigations of light-matter interactions at the nanometer scale, leading to applications involving single photon sources, quantum cryptography, and quantum information processing. Polaritons are quasi-particles formed by a coherent combination of excitons and photons in an optical cavity. Since they are bosons, they can undergo a phase transition into a Bose-Einstein condensate, with some similarities to superfluid helium or superconductivity. In particular, I will be working on the spectroscopy of large quantum dots. I have a bunch of papers to read and research to do before I officially start working in lab on Monday, so I will talk more about my specific research project later on. But in non-Physics terms, most of my research involves playing with a whole bunch of lasers in a dark room. If you know anything about my unconditional love for lasers, you can probably imagine my excitement about this research project.

Today was a national holiday in Germany. The Germans love holidays and they apparently have quite a few of them. My professor told me not to show up on Friday because everyone takes a four day weekend when holidays fall on a Thursday – I could get used to this. Holidays in Würzburg essentially mean that the entire city is shut down and buses only run every hour. However, there was a wine festival today in the city. I’ve been told that there are a lot of wineries/vineyards around Würzburg, so wine festivals are apparently a very frequent thing. Prost!b

At the wine festival

Random observations/scattered thoughts:

1. Würzburg is a tiny, tiny city and everything closes at or before 8 PM. Living in huge city like Houston, and going to school in Austin where nothing closes before 4 AM, this is odd. However, the architecture here is absolutely gorgeous and I’m waiting for a not rainy day (it has rained every single day I’ve been here so far) so I can go all around the city and take pictures of every single building.

2. Instead of mints, banks here have little gummy bear packets. There is supposedly a gummy bear store in the city that gives out free large gummy bears. I am determined to find it this weekend.

3. I recently discovered that I don’t actually live in Würzburg. I live in Gerbrunn, which is supposed to be another town, but really, it’s literally just a street. There is ONE restaurant.

4. There is a shower in my room. There is a bed, a desk, a closet, and…a shower. Does anyone think this is as weird as I do? I live on the top floor, so I also have a sunroof with a pretty sweet view and a decent sized balcony.

5. Can we take a moment to discuss just how delicious gelato is here? I’m legitimately considering getting gelato after every single meal.

6. The sun sets here around 10 PM and rises at 5 AM. Long days much?!

7. I have an office with my own desk and computer. I feel so fancy and official. I’ve been doing research at the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics at UT Austin for over a year now, and they have yet to give me my own desk and computer. CNLD, step it up.

8. We discovered “Robby Bubble.” It is a non-alcoholic sparkling drink aimed at children. In other words, it’s champagne for kids.