Darmstadt

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Yesterday was another long day. I got up in Hannover and took a 4 hour long train ride to Darmstadt. I've included another countryside picture of a farm on a rolling green hill. We also stopped very briefly in Frankfurt (I didn't get off the train). It looked mostly industrial from what I could see (1 photo attached). Then finally I arrived in Darmstadt. It was pouring rain and I had quite a hard time finding the bus I was supposed to get on to get to the University. I asked a number of people and they either didn't speak english well or they actually didn't know where the buses were. Turns out the whole problem was construction, which was forcing the buses to take a different route than normal. Once I found what I thought was the right bus, I still needed to check with the driver by stringing together the longest German sentence I've had to say so far... "I'm going to Alexander street, will you tell me when we get there". I already forget how to say the 2nd half of the sentence, I was reading almost directly from my English-German dictionary 😊.
Finally I arrived at the University (TU Darmstadt), pretty wet and tired, and got checked into my hotel. Then immediately I had a number of demos to attend, given by some students here, and I had a long talk with one of the professors about how to choose a place to work after doing a PhD. After that, it was a really nice dinner out at a fancy restaurant with the professor I came here to see plus his wife and 2 students. Its apparently impossible to get a reservation at this restaurant, unless his secretary calls and uses his official title of Professor Doctor Goesele 😊. And then after dinner, when the bill came, he just pulled out his business card and left it with the waiter and told him to send him the bill to his office. I didn't know you could do something like that. It was pretty impressive.
My hotel is particularly nice (see photos). Its right on campus, next to a big park, brand new and modern. There's a couple more things I've never seen before:
1 - shower doors so modern that they only close about 30% of the way. You have to be careful not to get water all over the floor and also it feels really weird, like you're more exposed.
2 - they put on your bed pillow a wet tissue (wrapped like a regular wet napkin), which they called a "night tissue". I opened it up last night and was going to use it to clean my face before going to bed, but the perfumy/alcohol smell was SO strong, I stopped to read the packaging. Fortunately there was some english, since it said "Place this tissue near your bed and it will emit a sensuous aroma while you sleep. Proven to increase the quality of your sleep". So its a good thing I didn't wash with it 😊.
Finally, I've added some photos of different buildings on campus. Today I have to see some more demos from other people, and give my talk yet again. Tonight I'll probably try to see some of the city, if I'm not too tired. This week has been more tiring than I expected.

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Photos

More German countryside
Between Hannover and Darmstadt, there was lots of rolling hills, small streams, and farms like this.

Frankfurt
I only saw it from the train, but it was very gray outside and the city looked rather industrial.

My Hotel in Darmstadt
Pretty modern hotel, right on campus and next to a park. The best I've stayed in so far.

My shower
The shower wall is actually a cloudy window through to the bedroom. So with a light on in the bedroom and no lights in the bathroom it looks like this. Also, the shower door doesn't close any more than what you see.

TU Darmstadt building
One interesting building on the University Campus.

Computer Science building
One of the 2 buildings that house computer scientists.