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Calender Germar's Monthly Updater

April and May 2000: Travels to France, Germany, and Lake Isabella

End of April 2000, I was traveling to Europe to attend a conference in France and to visit my family and my friends. The conference was the "XXV General Assembly" of the European Geophysical Society and took place in Nice at the Cote Azur. I gave a talk entitled "Effect of albedo and total column ozone on long-term spectral UV measurements in Barrow, Alaska." The viewgraphs of the presentation can be downloaded here. After the meeting had finished, I enjoyed with some colleagues the evening in the center of Nice. The picture below shows the scenery next to Nice harbor shortly before sunset.


On the next day, a good friend - who was just spending his vacation in southern France - picked me up at the hotel. We drove to Hyères, a small town about 100 miles west of Nice where my friend had rented a holiday flat. It was not the first time that I had been to Hyères. I was windsurfing there many times. We were spending a couple of relaxed days together, talking about the "good old times" while enjoying the weather, the beach, and the great French food and vine. Below is a picture of a sunrise taken at the beach in front of our apartment.


On Tuesday May 2, I flew from Nice to Munich. It was a gorgeous flight over the alps and I saw many locations from above that I have visited many times before when I was still living in Germany. Below is just a small selection. First, the "Walchensee", one of my favored windsurfing spot in Bavaria.


Next, the facilities of the Technical University of Munich close to Garching. Here I have studied physics from the fifth semester onward. The Physics Department is in the middle of the upper right quarter of the campus. It's just above a nuclear research reactor looking like an oversized egg. A new reactor is currently under construction; it is the large building on the right side of the "egg". Most buildings in the bottom left corner have also been built in the last ten year after I had left university. The island of high-technology is in the middle of a rural landscape. The yellow color of the fields is from rape, which makes a beautiful sight.


The next picture shows a typical small village north of Munich. Note that the streets are not arranged on a reactangular grid, like in U.S. cities. The view makes me feel at home.


After I landed in Munich, I drove to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, my hometown. I stayed five days with my mother and my friends. I was also traveling around enjoying the lovely landscapes, which just awoke in fresh green colors after their hibernation during a long and strong winter. Below is a picture from Kochelsee, another scenic lake only few miles north of Walchensee.


Back in the U.S., I drove to Lake Isabella over Memorial Day weekend (that's end of May). Lake Isabella is about 300 miles (=480 km) north-east of San Diego. On the way I passed impressive landmarks, like the "Red Cliffs Natural Preserve" depicted on the shot below.


Below is Lake Isabella. The town next to it is separated by a dam from the lake and has the same name: Lake Isabella. The lake is the place with the best wind in Southern California and that's why I was driving there: for windsurfing! The wind is thermal, 35ºC hot, and starts around noon. So there is plenty of time to cruise around in the morning.


The next two shots show two windsurfers on Lake Isabella. As you can see it's really blowing (As so often, no pictures exist from me because I do not want to give my camera to someone unknown :-(



I was sleeping over night in my car directly at the water (which is allowed at Lake Isabella in contrast to typical standards in California). The next photo shows the place. Although I was at the lake during a major holiday, it was not crowded.


That's the view from my car when I woke up the other morning - quite idyllic...


Close-up of the flower seen in the foreground on the photograph above:


On Sunday morning, before I went windsurfing, I was driving up "Kern River," which is flowing into the lake. I traveled 150 miles in total. Everything looking close by on the map turned out to be far away. It really makes you feel how large California is! The last two pictures of this month's Updater give some impressions of my Sunday morning fun: a part of the river and flat land after I had passed the mountains.



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