Martin um die Welt: Boston Indian Summer

Montag, 9. November 2015

Boston Indian Summer

After I returned to Boston (11.10.), I got busy preparing a talk for the inofficial "colrain meeting 2015". Founded by four professors from Harvard and MIT, it became an annual meeting bringing together the offspring of their labs - Boston's (and the world's) who is who in molecular cancer research. I was extremeley nervous about giving a talk on my project in front of all these big names - mostly Harvard and MIT professors including Robert Weinberg and Tyler Jacks. After stressing out myself, my wife, and my family, it was a great meeting in the small town named Harvard and the people liked my talk (26.10). Other than that, the meeting offered some great and inspiring talks. Also, Harvard town displayed some great Indian Summer colors and we went on a small hike through the nearby forest to enjoy the colors of autumn foliage.

Hiking in Harvard's woods during colrain meeting

Back in Boston, I attended the annual German-American-Conference at Harvard, which was quite a lot of fun. Good talks/discussions and the best exhibitions I have seen at a conference yet. Particularly a cute little robot with quite a nice AI. The greatest highlight was sureley Thomas Gottschalk's talk. Later we had a small halloween drinking party :)

Indian Summer at Harvard Campus

The next day (01.11.), I finally went on an Indian Summer trip to see Boston's autumn foliage. I went on a 30km biking trip along the Charles river, passing Newton townhall and Chestnut hill reservoir before going to work :) Typically, Indian Summer kicks in a little earlier in Boston, but this year it was slow due to a warm fall season. The views were great during my bike trip, I enjoyed it a lot.

View from Boston University Bridge

Indian Summer at its prime time

Newton townhall

Pond infront of Newton townhall

Sunset at Chestnut hill reservoir

heading back from the trip to work

Also my night walks back home from work or gym looked great these days.

Harvard Latin School at Longwood Campus

Harvard Medical School main building

The next weekend (08.11.) we went on a wine and hike trip to nearby blue hills. I took us longer to get there than expected because the metro had repairs running during weekend and provided busses instead. Also, public transport in Boston is less available on Sundays. We arrived at Blue Hills at noon and started our hike. We were not well organized - as usually for big groups when everyone thinks someone else will surely take care of it^^ But after some time we found the trail we were looking for. It was a nice sunny day, perfect for hiking. However, the Blue Hills solely offer easy hikes anyways. But the booze (beer, whine, whiskey) together with the sun during the hiking led to some sweating though^^ The hills offered nice views of Boston skyline in the distance. Many Americans we met on the way were surprised about us drinking booze in public on the way. They felt that was a bad example for the kids... well, maybe they should have told there kids we were having juice, not whine, in our cups. Most of the autumn foliage was fallen by this time, but the few remnants looked nice. We had a picnic on a hill overlooking Boston and at pond enjoying the sun. At the end of the hike we were all a little tipsy and two to three of us were literally drunk^^ A nice trip :)