Last week was somewhat packed with action at the ITk Strips workshop in DESY, Hamburg. It was my first visit to DESY, Hamburg, and the North Sea shores in general. I left positively impressed with all three.
ITk is a future tracking sub-detector of charged particles of the ATLAS detector in CERN. And the workshop was about the preparations to start assembling one of its Endcaps. (The other Endcap will be assembled in Nikhef. And the central part, the Barrel, is assembled in CERN.) I helped to set up the software for the monitoring and control system that powers up and configures the detector for safe operations. It did not go easily, but we actually did finish the program maximum for the week.
The campus is quite cool and sort of cozy. Not too big — no need for a car to get around. It is well organized, despite the massive construction works.
In fact, it looks like there are massive construction works all around Germany now. And they seem to progress rapidly. In the campus, it took like three German guys to rebuild a road, and you could see clear progress each day.
More of German charm included: an “edible campus” movement in the campus of one of the main nuclear physics research institutions, a small car repairs shop inside the excavation for the experiments (where the clean rooms are) — there is always room for a car shop in Germany ☝️, craft beer literature next to “Electroweak Interactions”:
Hamburg itself is a beautiful city.
I got to Geneva Airport while it was still daytime, but the plane arrived in Hamburg at night. So, the trip to DESY went under a deep dark sky. Which felt like everything was happening in some chilly vast indoors setting: from the airport the S-Bahn was traveling indoors, the large central train station Hauptbahnhof and the rest of the trip — everything was going on indoors. I am not sure why, but that was my impression. It couldn’t be a jet lag.
Somehow, I never gave a thought how massive Hamburg is in maritime. But sea turns out to be well integrated there:
It was a productive and intense week with a bunch of useful follow up points. All the best to DESY and Hamburg. And I hope to visit more in future.