Harvey Scholar Travels - Dani in Austria

In the spare months before my semester in NZ started (see other blog post) I worked with the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center in Jackson Hole WY. We put together a cool little project (https://inl.gov/article/can-data-analysis-predict-avalanches/) that was accepted for presentation at the International Snow Science Workshop (ISSW). Thus began my second international trip of 2018.

My journey began in Munich, Germany where the cheapest flights landed. We (I had met up with my Mom’s best friend, who was visiting her friends in Germany--more on them later) spent the afternoon walking around Munich hitting up all the touristy downtown areas.

There were many, many people dressed in Lederhosen (see the man in the right background in the pic above) because the closing night of OKTOBERFEST was that evening! Although I did not get the chance to wear any traditional German clothing we had a grand time at Oktoberfest eating bratwurst (delicious), whole fish on sticks (slightly less delicious but still good) and much fine German beer.

*Take note: the beer only comes in litres at Oktoberfest. Brace yourself. I was a bit alarmed when a full-litre stein was slammed down in front of me.

The morning after, I got on a train to Innsbruck, Austria where my conference was going to be held for the next week. It was an absolutely gorgeous town straight out of a touristy postcard:

I stayed in a hotel down on the waterfront within walking distance to the conference venue. The conference itself was absolutely amazing. There was such a diversity of people there: avalanche forecasters, geologists, engineers, ski patrolers, GIS experts...most other conferences I had been to were pretty limited to mathematicians or engineers so it was very cool to get to talk to all sorts of different snow professionals from all sorts of different countries. Every night there would be social events: banquets, field trips, Austria cultural night, etc. and everyone from the conference would hang out afterwards. Definitely the most fun academic conference I have ever been to.

An avalanche diversion structure that protects the town of Innsbruck. We toured these on one of the field trips.

The view from the Nordkette ridge, where the avalanches originate.

Happily my presentation seemed to be a big hit, but that could have been because I was situated right next to the beer bucket. Post presentation I had a free day to just wander around, half of which I spent sleeping (the week of full-on socializing had worn me out) and the other half which I spent doing homework on the college campus by the side of the river (Innsbruck has a really nice university, would recommend looking into study abroad there I think it’d be really cool). I had skipped a week and a half of school to go on this 14 day trip so there was much to catch up on!

Post conference I went back to Germany to stay with my mom’s friend and her German friends in the small town of Pforzheim. This was the most amazing part of the trip. Ingrid had lived her whole life in Pforzheim, and she and her son Patrick gave us the grand tour. They made sure we didn’t miss out on anything. We hiked in the Black Forest, went and had lunch at their sporting club (Germany is full of fun little community clubs based around different sports: soccer, hiking, etc.) and ate loads of German food. Halfway through the trip, I found out Patrick was also a statistician who worked with spatial stats and machine learning and we had a great time chatting about the math he was doing at the Mercades Benz factory. Turns out statistics terms carry over pretty well in different languages.

With that, it was time to head back to Golden. It was a whirlwind of a trip in the middle of the school year but incredibly worth missing that much school for.