Leaving Copenhagen, gone to Germany

On my last day in Copenhagen, I woke up a bit early to clean a little more and get out early. I hadn't timed things properly to get one last load of laundry in the day before, but I didn't have that much that needed washing, anyway.

Here's a look into my bedroom, denuded of stuff, with a characteristic IKEA lamp and bookshelf-thinger, as well as the washing machine (which was really fantastic to have). Those black curtains were incredibly effective, and only as thick as a few sheets of paper. The thing the lamp by the window is standing on is attached to the wall. Era--70's? Unsure.

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

The apartment rental people said they'd be happy to watch my stuff while I went to campus, so I hauled everything down my stairs, up the very slight incline to the Strøget (about 2 blocks or so) and up about 2 more flights of stairs, which impressed them. When I came back, they helped me carry my stuff down, so that I only needed to lug the backpack down myself, which I was okay with.

I went to the university to see a friend give a talk in the seminar that the grad students have been holding on the kind of stuff I work on (Goodwillie Calculus) and to eat lunch.  Said a few goodbyes. Returned the bike and turned in keys.

I feel I should say something about the magical world that is Copenhagen's topology group. Their center is flush with funding, which is an amazing thing to be around, but that's not what drives their approach (as far as I can tell), it just greases the machine, as it were.

1. Plenty of professors around/different viewpoint: the topology group includes something like 9 professors (~4 of whom more homotopy-theoretic among topologists), and is an interesting blend of group theory, topology and some analysis-like topics. This is definitely an advantage for the students, as there is a good variety of people to work with, and their view of what topology is is more broad/inter-disciplinary. 
2. Monthly meetings:  Once a month, the group meets over lunch (hooray for department-provided lunches) for sandwiches and discussion/presentation. I attended the one last month, which started with Jesper Grodal running through some of the papers that the students had posted on the arxiv that month and what they were about. It wrapped up with a discussion of the courses to be held the next few academic units (blocks/n-mesters (where n=tri or quad or something)). This was interesting, as the students put in a request for a subject that they wanted to be taught (stable homotopy theory/spectra) and asked to have a class with as many hours as possible (that is, they were quite serious about wanting to learn this). Clearly, the department cares about it's students; that's the message being sent, at least in my eyes. 
3. Required external work: If you're Danish you must (and if you're foreign, it's optional) go study at another university with another professor for something like 2-6 months of your time as a Ph.D. student, which the department pays for. This is a great idea -- you learn new things, you make new contacts, and you also get a bit of a 'break' from the sprint towards graduation, which might otherwise be a bit monotonous or overwhelming. 
4. External committee members: From what I gathered, it's (effectively?) required for your dissertation defense to have at least one external committee member, who reads your document and flies in for your dissertation. Again, great way to make external contacts, get an external letter writer, make it more likely for you to be able to get a job afterwards. 
5. Dissertation defense party: I think that the defense is totally finalized and approved (including deposit) *before* the defense. This makes the defense more of a formality (or party), which is kind of nice, actually, although weird as well, as you aren't really 'defending' your work. I'm not sure if this is uniformly true, but was true for at least one of the two defenses I saw.
6. Guests, Guest seminars/courses: The department hosts guest professors/postdocs and workshops (''Master Classes''). E.g. Søren Galatius is giving a course with Oscar Randall-Williams over their current work. Bruno Vallette will come from France next month to help run a week-long ''Master Class''. There's hope that Lars Hesselholt will run the Stable Homotopy Theory course that was requested. 
7. Ph.D. position interviews: I think this is a Europe-specific thing. There are a small number of new Ph.D. student slots, and they're interviewed for. More of a personal touch than in the States.
8. Coffee: The department has a nice coffee machine (although I agree with a friend that there's something off about the coffee, despite being fresh-ground and brewed -- not complaining, just observing :) ) that produces coffee/espresso/cappucinos/hot chocolate, located in a nice common area that's on the top floor of the institute, with lots of windows.
9. Food: The department regularly sponsors speaker dinners, paying for a handful of students/guests/professors/postdocs to go to dinner after a seminar talk. There was a similar dinner when prospective Ph.D. students visited.  The ''grown-ups'' (postdocs, profs and seminar speakers or guests) meet for lunch every day and the grad students get together for the same as well, all trekking in their groups across the muddy field to the other building's canteen/cafeteria, which is a nice sense of community. The food at the canteen is government-subsidized, so quite affordable, which is why everyone just eats there every day.  

After leaving the university, I walked around a little bit and took a picture near the Strøget:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

On the way to Germany,  I waited quite a while at the Copenhagen main train station to board the train, and then still managed to board the wrong half. That is, our ICE (InterCityExpress, i.e. fastest) train was comprised of two trains linked together, and I'd gotten on the part that would not go all the way to Hamburg. Thankfully, the train would stop once or twice before disconnecting and give me the chance to switch parts. I had the delightfully odd experience (while waiting for the train attendant, who then told me to switch trains at the next stop) of being asked if I speak English, by a nice German girl who was from ~1hr south of Munich (München).  

Following the train switch, I found good seating and room to store my large amount of luggage, which people were thankfully very patient about. During the trip, I went to the back of the cabin where the cafe/food stand was, and asked to buy some water (in German).  There was a Danish guy there already who was chatting up the cafe employee. The Dane also tried to speak with me in German, but I had some trouble understanding him (some combination of accent and vocabulary) and the switch to English was surprisingly disastrous. I *think* he was saying that he has a daughter who movied to Mississippi and accidentally violated curfew...but there were some phrases in there that didn't make much sense (house arrest,..but, Church,...strong!,...now we know). 

The scenery started bright and lovely and descended into low-lying fog as we approached the ferry and moved into Germany. It was dark when we boarded, so I didn't take any pictures. [This is the same train-on-a-ferry transition as before :)]  I got into Hamburg and to the apartment I'm subletting without incident, although the stairs in the stairwell are the narrowest I've ever seen. I would hate to move any furniture in to or out of the place. 

Yesterday there was some walking back and forth between the apartment and math department and other things in the university area.  Here was a neat building mural I saw:

From Germany 2012-2013

And a view out the stairwell of the building that holds the math department(tinted a bit blue because, well, white on white is a bit drear):

From Germany 2012-2013

The day was quite successful, having lunch with the two students of the professor I'll be working with, and also managing to get my contract signed (which involved me returning to the apartment to fetch some documents and then trekking halfway to the hauptbahnhof).

I never wrote up my travels in August, so here's a little pictoral run through Hamburg for you guys (incomplete, though. I'll throw in some more of my pictures in a later post perhaps):

Two neat buildings along the Reeperbahn (ala the red light district), the first called the dancing towers:

From Hamburg August 2011

From Hamburg August 2011

I went to the museum of erotica there, which was actually really interesting and included a lot of Hamburgish history. The German text was more colorful (and complete) than the English text; there was a comment that when the French took over Hamburg, they brought their 'loose morals' with them, e.g.  They also had a crazy bathroom covered in weird wallpaper. Here's part of the sink: 

From Hamburg August 2011

Here's my rough translation: "Man is a biological catastrophe. The Y-chromosome is an incomplete X-chromosome, meaning that it has an incomplete chromosome-structure. In other words,  Man is an incomplete woman, a mutated miscarriage(?), which is already in (its) Genetic stage(?) shriveled/withered.  Man is to be called broken (?); Mankind is a disease of deficiency, and men are psychological cripples (or maybe 'crippled souls'). ''

The infamous redlight district street. I forget the name:

From Hamburg August 2011

The opera house that is way over budget and never to be finished, maybe: 

From Hamburg August 2011

And maybe a nice summary of Hamburg--- Industry, shipping, new buildings, trains, construction: 

From Hamburg August 2011

Oh, yes, and bleakness. I'm told it's pretty constantly overcast, which you can believe from these photos form August, and I can verify is still true now. Ah, well. 

Some trivia related to Hamburg: The Beatles got their start in Hamburg. Also, the only foreign language songs they ever released were in German. ''Kom gib mir deine Hand''(I wanna hold your hand) and ''Sie liebt dich''(she loves you, yeah yeah).  Speaking some German, I find these songs hilarious and awesome. :) Here's the story behind these recordings.