(Btw, it appears that "Emily Erdbeere" is the same as "Strawberry Shortcake". Makes sense. "Erdbeere" is strawberry.)
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August 6th
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I had an excellent morning: Jerry and Stephanie's conference was at IPP for the day, for talks and tours, so I joined them. The director of this IPP gave an introductory talk on plasmas, fusion, the history of and difference between tokamaks and stellarators, and then focused on W7-X. Then, a graduate student gave us a tour!
[The pink animal (salamander? maybe?) is now dressed up as a witch living in a gingerbread house, and the purple wolf is playing the big, bad one, and they are both chasing the poor moose, who is nur die Zeitungsjunge trying to deliver morning papers. Now there is a giant blue bird.]
I've seen many tokamaks and a couple of stellarators (the running HSX in Wisconsin, and the partially-constructed-and-canceled NCSX in Princeton), and I must say, I was highly impressed by the W7-X assembly room and torus hall! This thing is going to be HUGE.
It's composed of five sections of superconducting magnetic coils. Two are still in the assembly room:
These two are welded together, complete in the Torus Hall!
(Note the person. It's a big machine!)
And this one is hanging out, ready to be set in its cryostat vessel and welded to the completed two:
They hope to have first plasma by 2014, but we know how these things go. In any case, it's exciting to see so much progress and hope it works!
That evening, I attempted to take the bus into downtown. However, I got a bit lost, then found the bus station right after the bus left. So I took a cab. :) I had DÖNER for dinner (Turkish gyro, basically), which I ate in the beautiful main square in front of 800 year old buildings. Then I wandered around for an hour, taking pictures, which I will post after I upload them. :) I met Karla, American Youshan, Taiwanese Marko, German Oliver, Syrian Amro, French Julia, and German Gabi at a classy little bar called Mitt 'n Drin. Jerry, Stephanie, and about ten people from their school also joined us, and shockingly enough, we all fit. Mitt 'n Drin had a menu with almost 300 different cocktails! I went with the safe Weissebier: my first German beer this trip. :) I really enjoyed the group! Sadly, while it's awesome that their social circle is so international, it being that means they speak English together...so I'm going to have to be rather proactive about getting German practice!
[OMG! I found a site which will let me watch Project Runway over here!!]
Later, I'll post those pictures of adorable Greifswald (I have many more I need to take) and a summary my day trip to BERLIN yesterday! :D This evening, I'm walking with Youshan about 45 minutes to meet the gang at the beach. :) We are the bike-less, car-less ones. I hear someone might be able to drive us hooome...
Tschüss!
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