It’s vacation! Where do physicists go on vacation? Well, some go to exotic locations with lots of people. I pack up and head to my wife’s experiment. She’s currently 2600 feet below the earth, about a mile from here. I’m sitting in our room in the “Simmons House”, one of several houses that the CDMS collaboration rents in Soudan, MN. I have the place pretty much to myself, and it’s a cool, quiet day. This is a small town, no traffic or noise. I am in heaven.
This is the perfect opportunity to relate more tales from Moscow.
July 26, 2006 7:42 am (Moscow Time)
I’ve managed two periods of sleep in the last 24 hours, one of five and one of about three hours. Having hit my target of eight, I seem unable to sleep anymore and so I find myself awake and ready to pass the time. I’ve already polished off one book – “Bringing Down the House”, the story of the MIT blackjack team – and an issue of Scientific American. I’ve also filled out my customs form for Russia, but we don’t land for several more hours. Meanwhile, I am craving breakfast.
We passed over Bergen a little while ago, ironically home to one of the many institutions on the BaBar collaboration. Shouldn’t be more than another hour or two before we start to descend into Moscow.
1:33 pm (Moscow Time)
Well, we have arrived at the “Hotel Salut”:http://steve.cooleysekula.net/photos/Moscow/img002.jpeg.html. I must say, it’s a bit of a hole, even by Motel 6 standards. Thankfully, there was a person here from the conference who is helping us non-Russians with hotel passport control, check-in, etc. I’ve already committed one apparent faux pax – I don’t have Rubles in small enough denominations, which drew some snickers. And the change window is closed. Not clear what to do at this point.It would be nice to send Jodi and my family an e-mail…
9:36 pm (Moscow Time)
What a long, awful day. The commute from Hotel Salut to the RAS (Russian Academy of Science) was over an hour, each way. I don’t have cash to pay the registration fee, so I have to wait to pay until that money is available. Dinner was okay – we ate at a restaurant called “Avacado” that served a nice, hot borscht – but service was SLOW. Now I have jet lag with a vengeance. Sleep will do me good.
