A life-changing experience

(Please bear with me – this will probably be a very long entry.)

I know, I know - I exaggerate frequently. I’m sure that most of my close friends and family rolled their eyes at the title of this post and perhaps not without reason. I am acutely aware of my not-so-sparingly-used ability to categorize nearly every excellent meal, trip, photograph, piece of chocolate, knitting project, whatever as being “in the top five in my life.”

However, I feel that, at least with regard to this conference I attended, this superlative cataloging is called-for.

I spent the last week (Sunday-Saturday) attending the 59th Conference of Nobel Laureates at Lindau, a tiny Bavarian town on the Bodensee. (A cute little anecdote: many German-speaking conference presenters translated Bodensee into “The Lake of Constancy” as opposed to Lake Constance, the correct English name – a literal translation, by the way, is Floor Sea - which I thought was a pretty cute Übersetzungfehler.) I don’t think that Shane and I completely knew what we were getting ourselves into – Fulbright presented the Fulbright chemists with the opportunity to attend this conference back in January, we applied, and Shane and I were accepted and enthusiastically accepted the Fulbright Commission’s sponsorship.

Upon arriving in Lindau after a weekend in Munich, Shane and I were greeted at the meeting venue by an entourage of reporters, security personnel, and various high-tech conference miscellanea. The opening ceremony was headed up [why is the first word that comes to mind here führen?] by a German countess and guests of honor in attendance included the president of the EU (José Barroso), the Princess of Thailand, and a bunch of Indian dignitaries (many of whom spoke incredible German).

Oh, and some two dozen Nobel Laureates in chemistry and medicine. ;)

The meeting took the same format over the course of the week. The 600 or so “young researcher” participants from 67 different countries crammed onto the Lindau city buses to get to the conference venue every morning to hear six laureates give short talks for about 35 minutes or so. In the afternoon, every laureate who spoke during the morning sessions gave smaller two-hour-long individual lectures/question-and-answer sessions in the afternoon that we had the opportunity to attend.

The themes of the morning and afternoon talks seemed to be completely up to the laureate who was giving them – for example, Dr. Richard Ernst (the inventor of NMR, the organic characterization technique that was the precursor to MRI) talked about his passion for Asian art collection and Dr. Sir Harry Kroto stirred up some controversy by addressing his concerns with religious fundamentalism in the world bearing a grave threat to science and humanity. Dr. Kurt Wüthrich took of his belt to demonstrate folding of the genome. All three of the fresh-faced 2008 chemical Laureates gave talks - considering my heavy undergraduate study of green fluorescent protein (GFP), hearing them speak one after another was pretty amazing.

The meeting itself was incredible. It was incredibly well-funded, and all of the materials and extras were top-notch. We got free business cards to exchange with one another, and they gave all of us a (7 kg) book with portraits of Nobel Laureates (someday when I actually have a coffee table and am not dragging it on and off of DeutscheBahn, I will appreciate this gift a lot more, I’m sure). Continuing: super high-tech, reporters and cameramen everywhere (we all received a CD of images that were taken during the conference – some are included below)...

...and lots of really cool people. Shane and I made friends with a lovely pair of Australian journalists and, among other interesting people, a German PhD student in physical chemistry named Alex. The most memorable night of the conference for me was Wednesday, when Alex, Shane and I randomly ran into the Aussies at a streetside café on the harbor and ended up having a somewhat heated (partially-recorded) discussion/interview with five Pakistani Muslims about some of Dr. Harry Kroto’s Dawkins-esque comments regarding the mutual exclusivity of science and religion. I ended up quoting John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper over beer and Apfelstrudel...I think that I’ll be contemplating that conversation for many weeks to come.

Shane, me and Alex.

There was also lots of opportunity for walking, ice cream, taking pictures of the pretty town, and drinking Weißbier at streetside pubs.

Herr Parker + Lindaustadtbus.

Alex, Shane, beer.


Shane and David, one half of the aforementioned Australian journalist duo.

The best part, however, about this conference, by far was the intimate contact that we were allowed with the Laureates. There were very few times where the conference organizers whisked off the guests of honor to a separate VIP room during coffee breaks and we pretty much ran into them everywhere. They were gracious, happily and enthusiastically answered our questions, and posed for photos and gave out autographs. Above all, however, they were cool. Nearly every scientist I heard speak accepted a great deal of personal responsibility for outreach and education (not just for scientists but for everyone) and a sense of detachment from the prestige of the Nobel Prize. Despite the far-reaching impact of their scientific work, all of these guys stressed (in one way or another) that they were hard-working, successful and good at what they do...but in no way extraordinary. That in itself is extraordinary.

The Countess and President Barroso.



Group shot of Laureates with the Countess.



The conference venue, bustling.







The room where the lectures were held, which also doubled as ball/dining room.
See if you can find me front and center in a purple blouse, sharing a waltz with an Indian fellow. Below's a closer look, from the Lindau Blog (yes, this was as awkward as it sounds/looks):




Shane, Prof. Robert Grubbs, and I.



Dr. Richard Ernst.
Sympathisch, oder?



Dr. Ernst, from the evening where I had dinner with him.
Shortly after this photo was taken, I took Alex's seat at the table, directly next to Dr. Ernst. In response to the sudden change of his tablemate, he looked at me, and said, "Oh! You had a sex change?!" While I was blushing and stuttering and struggling to come up with a response, this Swiss sassy-pants gave me his business card.


Dr. Kurt Wüthrich, demonstrating genome folding.



Panel on global warming/sustainable energy.
The two men closest to the right are Drs. Molina and Rowland who won the prize for elaborating the human contribution to ozone depletion in the atmosphere.


Dr. Aaron Ciechanover.


Dr. Peter Agre.


Dr. Sir Harry Kroto.
The rest of the quote says:
"If you make people think they are thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you."


Friday afternoon.
Taking a little break in the gardens of the Count/Countess on the Isle of Mainau.

One of the downsides of attending such a well-funded conference is that you're bound to have some propaganda thrown at you. This goes without saying. What I wasn't expecting, however, is that the propaganda would be from two German states. One night we had to listen to the Bavarian government talk about the Elite Network of Bavaria (that is the actual name of the organization...I wish I was kidding), which, as far as I can tell, is the state's attempt to create some kind of specialized network of research universities on par with U.S. institutions like Harvard and MIT. The second batch of propaganda was from Baden-Württemberg which force-fed us more of the same stuff on our boat ride across the Bodensee to the Isle of Mainau, where the closing ceremonies took place.

The upside of all of this silly advertizing is that there were some pretty interesting and funny consequences. The Bavarians gave us free beer and traditional Bayerisches Essen (pretzels and wurst, pretty much), but Baden-Württemberg greeted the boat-goers with Disney-like mascots of the symbol animals of the State.

Ja, komisch.

Nothing says good science like guys in costumes. The outfits were so bulky and heavy that they had to have someone walk behind these guys to make sure they didn't fall over. The current cutely self-deprecating slogan for BW is: "Wir können alles. Außer Hochdeutsch." However, these guys seemed to imply something more along the lines of: "Wir können alles. Außer Selbst-stehen."

[Translations: 1). We can do everything. Except speak proper German. 2). ... Except stand up by ourselves.]

And, just for fun - two pictures of the Bavarian countryside from the train ride down there.

...

I said goodbye to a handful of the other Fulbrighters last night in Heidelberg, and my eyes are still puffy from crying, the first emotional outburst I've had about leaving Germany thus far. I'm sure there will be more to come before I fly home on the 16th. Regardless, this conference was an amazing experience and a pretty fitting way to end my time here....

Time to rest my swollen eyelids for a bit and enjoy my last few moments with the people I love in Mainz.