Day 11 - Zugspitze

Today, we set out for the top of Germany, the Zugspitze!  We caught the U-bahn train to the S-bahn train to a regional DB train to a cog wheel train to a bus around rail construction to another cog wheel train to a gondala to the top of Germany!  We had a chance to play in the snow near the glacier on the mountain.  The Germans snow ski here all summer.  The very top was a bit windy, and the Austrian side was completely closed for some reason.  But the views were terrific!  Very clear, a bit hazy at spots.  A long day.  One minor disaster, I left our backpack at a train stop on the way down, but the train officials were able to find it and get it back to us.  I blame the bus without climate control.  In the valley, it was around 80 or 85 and even in the snow at altitude it was still pretty warm.

Day 10 - TUM IPP

On Wednesday, we went out in the morning to the Technical University of Munich to visit the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.  We met our physics graduate student Alex who gave us a very nice lecture on the basic issues related to fusion power generation.  We then went over to see the flywheels, control room, and fusion reactor.  Since it is not radioactive, we were able to stand 30 feet from the reactor in the same room.  Alex talked a bit about the ITER tokamak reactor they are building in France.  The IPP just completed a "stellarator" design on the Baltic sea.  But still, fusion power is at least 20 years away, as it has been for 50 years... 

After the IPP, we had lunch at the TUM cafeteria and tried to use the slides at the TUM Math building, but they were locked up.  Their math building has slides from the fourth floor to the ground floor, usually open to anyone.  After TUM, some students went to the soccer stadium and some went to the Chinese Tower in the English Garden.