(français) 2016 mars: Paris, le louvre

[si on voudrait voir seulement les photos, ces sont ici]
[en anglais, ici] 

Au debut mars, j'ai visité Paris pour quelques jours afin de donner un exposé sur ma recherche.  Je suis restée un jour supplémentaire et je revis le Louvre.

Notre Dame

L'hôtel a un plus petit ascenseur. Il est tout à fait normal pour Paris d'avoir un plus petit ascenseur. La premiere fois ou j'étais à Paris, j'ai passé quelques nuits chez un ami ou il y avait un ascenseur qu'était presque la moitié aussi grand.   La chose drôle n'est pas (seulement) la taille. C'est qu'on croit que 
6 personnes rentrent à l'intérieur! Je sais que les Parisiennes sont petites, mais quand même.

Cet ascenseur est aussi large que mes épaules. Chaussure incluse pour l'échelle:

Aussi certains choix étranges dans le tapis sur l'escalier:

Ma chambre avait une salle de bains un peu comme une discothéque -- en ouvrant la porte, je riais.

Je n'ai pas bien dormi et je me suis réveillée trés tôt. Je me suis réveillé tous les deux heures, à cause du stress avant mon exposé. Mon hotel était trés proche du Jardin du Luxembourg, ~ 6e arrondissement.  La vue de ma chambre au lever du soleil:

Paris 13 est dans une autre ville, Villetaneuse.  Je crois que le trajet durait environ 20 minutes de la Gare du Nord. Ces trains à l'université étaient très colorés:

Sur le chemin de l'arrêt de bus à l'université, je me suis souvenue où je devrais tourner avec l'aide des moutons. Il y a un troupeau des moutons qui se promène sur le terrain de l'université est mangent l'herbe et aussi une hutte où peut-être ils habitent. C'est dommage, mais je n'ais pas de photo de ça. Mais d'ici est le chemin vers le département de mathématiques, après on a tourné à droite au mouton.

J'avais plusiers bons repas à Paris. 

Le premier soir, je mangeais avec deux autres personnes. Nous mangions à Le Coup de Torchon, c'était proche a l'hôtel.  Le menu avec plat et un entrée (ou dessert) était un ou deux euro plus que un plat seul, alors je prenais le menu avec le veau et quelque chose. Le veau était parfaitement préparé.
Le prochaine soir, ce vendredi, je mangais avec une ami pour son anniversaire à Bangkok Thailand. Sur notre repas, nous obtenions le riz, qu'il a été préparé traditionalément à la vapeur dans de petits paniers en bambou.

Le samedi je revis le Louvre. 

Cette fois, je m'ai acheté le billet en ligne et j'ai utilisé le tour pour les gens qui ça avaient fait cela.

La premiere fois ou j'était au Louvre, j'ai visité les scuptures romaines et étrusques et j'étais presque seul avec les sculptures. Cette fois, j'ai commencé dans la fausse direction (les peintures italiennes médiévales?!).

Il y a aussi quelque sculptures en bois, comme ça. C'est, soi-disant, maria magdalena. L'histoire était que elle a passé la fin de sa vie comme un ascète avec ses cheveux comme ses vêtements. Elle a été lever chaque nuit par des anges au ciel pour entendre la musique:

Cette fois, je remarquais les plafonds du musée et comment qui avait les sculptures aussi.

Il y avait un théme. Un théme des enfants ennuyeaux :) Les figures suivantes étaient sur la même plafond:

"J'ai un mal de tête monstrueuse"

"Moi aussi"

je compris

En 2012, ils ont ouvert une nouvelle exposition sur l'arte islamique. Je trouvais ça peu accidentellement.

Je comprenais que environ 1500, les Chinois etaient les seules personnes qui savaient comment on fait porcelain. L'autre gens avaient faire l'imitations savec leurs propres méthodes, comme ça:

Je trouvais aussi quelques statuettes dans le panthéon égyptien gréco-romaine. C'était un peu drôle -- les dieux égyptiens mais portant des vêtements romains.

Après l'arte islamique et égyptienne, je trouvais les jardins des sculptures. J'aime les sculptures. C'est plus facile pour prendre une photo d'une sculpture qu'une personne, et l'angle est important. Il y avait beaucoup des sculptures qui étaient intéressant pour moi.

Pour exemple. Un sanglier heureux, "jouant" avec un chien ...

ou dans le processus d'être tué.


Un homme qui n'a pas saigné beaucoup:

aie!

Certaines filles admirant les peintures:

Une fille qui dort

L'artist:

avant

derrière

Après des sculptures blancs, c'était choquant:

Je trouvais les sculptures et l'arte mésopotamien. Et j'ai appris que le louvre a le code d'Hammourabi (à droit)!

Je trouve que c'est trés triste comment le louvre n'avait pas toujours assez sécurité pour protéger ses sculptures. 

Avez-vous été au louvre? Parle-moi de ça.

2016 Zaferna Ski-Seminar

[If you just want to flip through pictures without labels/context, here's the whole album]

I've just finished up a week in the Austrian Alps (although almost Germany; the only road into Kleinwalsertal comes from Germany), in a "Chalet" (Hütte) with 40 people from Uni Muenster, mostly undergrads, many just about to start their Master's. The students could get some credit for this as an actual seminar; they prepared a talk (there were 14) and we had a rather swift pace.

[Getting from Münster to Kleinwalsertal and cooking for 40]
It started with the bus leaving Münster at 23:30 a week ago, Friday night. It began with a group effort to load all the rented ski-equipment, luggage and food into the bus, which was fuller than usual (normally the group is kept closer to 30 than 40).

I might've gotten 4 or 6 hrs of sleep, and ended up eating a sandwich for breakfast when we stopped in Allgäu (still in Germany).

As soon as we popped out, we had to unload the bus for the previous group to climb in, then carry everything to the lift and load the lift (after sending a few people up to unload on top). The Zaferna lift is astonishingly slow. Shown here at sunrise, not moving yet:

looking out the common-room window, at the Zaferna Lift

We then carried (with some help from some sleds) the drinks and luggage and food and skis to the Zaferna Hütte, which may or may not belong to the Uni Münster; it's at least run by the Uni, and Uni groups have "first dibs" on its use.

view that morning out one common-room window

The weather was gorgeous, the snow was deep, and the first thing we did after unpacking was to split into groups, some skiing and some learning to ski. More on that later.

The first two talks were that day, as was my "dienst"; I was "Chefköchin" (head cook) for the day. I made Szegedy goulash. It was a hit, and I was surprised at how quickly everyone inhaled 12kg of potatoes. Thankfully, I had 3-4 people helping out, so had them peeling potatoes, stirring onions (with a giant wooden paddle-spoon thing) and grabbing ingredients.

Something we had to be careful about was the "Pistenraupe" (Slope-caterpillar), an amazing machine that could come by the hut any time between 17:00 and 08:00 the next day, which kept us in the hut all night. Also, the lift we had to ride to get to our hut stopped running at 16:30; one day, a group had to hike up the whole hill in their ski boots (and someone ended up injuring her toe through this)

[Sunday and Thursday -- Hikes in the area]
Despite the snow on the first day, the weather started heating up -- the forecast was rain, and I decided to go for a gentle hike instead of going skiing. We walked up and over to Heuberg, the next Lift-area, and found a restaurant that had vegetarian schnitzel, for the vegetarian in the group.  On the walk back, we caught sight of some beavers (otters?) sporting scarves.

The hike on Thursday was during the snow, down the lift and down to and along the river.
The snow really dampened the noise; in the mornings and evenings, everything was quiet but the rushing of the river. It was nice to get a look at it. It was snowing, which I haven't yet figured out how to deal with taking pictures of.

[Learning to ski] 
There was someone to teach the beginners how to ski and someone to give lessons to the somewhat-experienced. I ended up with the beginners, having never done this before.  Turns out, trying to learn to ski as an adult is rough.

We had a very throw-in-the-deep-end-and-learn-to-swim kind of approach, with a steep hill on the first day. I fell down every single time I tried to turn and got a wicked giant bruise, and took a break after a few hours of falling to eat a proper meal and have some semi-alone-time.  The next day I took a break, and then was up for more lessons. Another person had had to sit out as well (she got her knee looked at by a doctor after feeling injured) , so we ended up splitting the beginner's group into the "very beginners" (her and myself) and the not-so-beginners (the rest), with plans to meet after lunch.

The weather was warm and sunny and beautiful (and the snow was melting :/).
The awesome snowman that greeted us had started to melt:

Skiing was terrible that day and full of me freaking out about falling off/down the mountain, but after about an hour of mucking around, something clicked and I made it down the hill without falling over.
This is the view from the beginner's hill (which apparently belongs to a ski school (or multiple ones)), which explained the constant flow of tiny children up and down the hill.

beginner-hill view

So, my learning-to-ski went:

• day 1, nothing but falling and bruises and being convinced I'd fall off the mountain 
• day 2 (after a day off): going down to the beginner's hill and freaking out the whole time, until the last 10 minutes, when I learned the "snow plow" and life got better. Although, my "plow" was me crouched way over (and leaning forwards) to "brake" as much as possible. 
• days 3 and 4 similar to day 2, but much more coming down the hill without falling over, after an hour of freaking out
• the last day, at hohe Ifen -- no fear, perfect (clearly beautifully designed and artificial) beginner's practice area, which I rocked for an hour and a half

Friday's weather was awesome

On Friday I made it out (finally; had tried and failed in Wednesday) to Hoher Ifen, which was a solid hour away from us.  They had an amazing beginner's area. There was a bumpy hill, a flat area, a way around a tree -- and everything was long and wide enough that even when I lost control, I could get it back.

View to the right from the top of the beginner hill (that's the tree you could opt to ski around):

That was great. The hill was perfect, I wasn't freaked out at all, I was practicing standing up like a normal person and skiing semi-normally. From this kind of thing to this, although I was moving the poles from one side of my body to the other to help initiate turns, so maybe like the ski-pole version of this.

viewing looking up the first big lift. Much more impressive IRL

After my awesomeness on the beginner hill area, I thought I'd take the lift up to the "Mittelstation"
and check out a blue route (for the first time). Sadly, it started off with a super steep hill, and my legs weren't up to it, so after crashing into some snow, I went back to the lift and called it a day.

The next lift from there you needed to be on skis for (looking up Ifen):

After giving up on the blue route, I went back to the lift area and took a bunch of pictures. The views were breath-taking. I thought about going all the way to the top, but some clouds or snow or fog were moving in and I figured I wouldn't get enough of a view before I'd have to come back down

[A little about the math/talks/common area:]

In case you thought I'd say nothing about the math, here's a little about the talks.
I appreciated how it started with things I knew,  (spaces, homology) and then went into what I didn't (Rips/Delauney/Alpha Complexes/Persistence diagrams). I don't know if it means I now really want to read the source books, but I'm open to perusing some papers.  Here's a run-down of topics and some over the source material.

The room between talks:

And a gratuitous out-of-context picture of some slides:

and, to end, a picture of an awesome moonrise. 

There was a beautiful moonrise during one of the talks. My camera made this look much earlier than it is; this was very late sunset/early evening:

sunset- looking towards Riezlern/Oberstdorf/Germany