My street

Since my family asked for more pictures of the place where I live I'll just add a few pictures of my street. First a view out of my window and following a view to the west from the east end of the street.

New flatmate

Yesterday I went to the local WalMart. After passing by tons of Halloween products and Lindt chocolate Golden Reindeers I found some bread and cheese. Food!
Well when I sat in the kitchen and was eating I heard some little noise next to me and when I looked I found this little guy. They supposedly are good at keeping the Mosquito count low.

Some more about Colima

This is a picture of one of the main streets here in Colima. Offroad trucks are pretty dominant but not completely useless when you consider the state of the streets. Another advantage is that you can transport almost any number of people in the back. It may not be strictly legal but is definitely accepted.
The traffic lights in Mexico are only for the cars. When you want to cross a streets it's a question of good timing and being fast.When you walk this street to the west (left) you get to my temporary home where I will stay for the next three weeks. At the moment I'm pretty much the only person living there so I basically stay there for sleeping and spend my free time with the other internees at their house where I will move in when Jemile leaves. Sorry, I don't have any picture of it at hand. Maybe later. Going home takes about half an hour walking or some $12-15 (~1E) when taking the taxi. Well a bit of physical activity can't be too unhealthy.

At the center I am starting to work on seismic data. The data is anything but convincing (4 SP Seismometers, no transfer functions and 180° completely open, not really continuous data... well ok, at the site of one SP there also is a BB station) but Klaus seems to have done quite a job on that data and I will try to continue his work as good as I can. In the beginning it will be a lot of reading and try and error. For most of the time all the data we have are gif images of the seismograms that were created from real raw data... :|
Colima itself can be considered quite safe. It doesn't happen that often that people get shot on the street (Klaus can only remember two cases in seven Months) and you usually can walk the streets in the evenings without getting into trouble.
Among the living creatures I found here were several mosquitos, one roach, a scorpion (5cm) (non-lethal version, hidden under a stone), and this lovely caterpillar (8cm) that I definitely do not want to touch and a whatever it is called (bottom right, 3-4cm) that is supposed to have a pretty nasty bite.
Well apart from the mosquitos that are inevitable I had no problems with nature yet.

Visiting La Primavera

We spent the weekend in the caldera of La Primavera which is slightly west of Guadalajara. It was created by some major volcanic eruption some 140 000 years ago and in which the last events occured about 27000 years ago.
The crater is several kilometers wide. Everything you see on the picture is part of the caldera.
After spending one day hiking around inside the caldera and looking at deposits we went to some hot springs in the area where we took water samples and had a look at ignimbrite (?) deposits that belong to one of the main eruption phases.
At the bottom of the cut you can see a person standing for size comparison. You might have to zoom in to find him. All the material you can see on the following picture originates from one event and we saw neither the upper nor the lower end of the deposits. In some areas it is more than 100m thick. All or at least a lot of that probably came down in a few days. Imagine it like sand falling on you...

En ruta para Colima (18.10.06)

It is 22:15 Mexican time so 29:15 CEST which means I got up today 23 hours ago.
Let's see. Yesterday I went to my grandaunt Irene who leves near Frankfurt where I said hello and goodbye to my grandmother. Today at 7:30 Irene
brought me to the train station from where I went to the airport where I arrived at quarter to nine at Terminal one. After wandering around for a while I arrived at terminal 2 via Skylift (bus on rails) and did a pretty random walk to the BA checkin.
When they had returned their computers to working mode I was sent from the first desk to the second one where I was told that my plane to London Heathrow was late and I was rebooked to a Lufthansa flight leaving at 14:10.
So back to terminal 1. :)
After checking in my hold luggage I had no seat assigned but was told that I would get one at the bording that opened at 13:10.
While killing time I found a free Internet terminal where I met Olivier and Laure-Anne from Toulouse. We were on the same plane so we waited together.
22.27 this sheet is full and the lights in the bus are switched off. That's it for now.

Photos

Olivier and Laure-Anne

The plane mirrored in FRA buildings
THE? Chemical factory close to the FRA airport

They call it food
Silvia
Mario

Clouds when landing in Mexico

Fuego and Nevado de Colima
The office from the inside (air conditioning is working)and the building from the outside (behind the trees)

The trip

October, 19th 3.25 AM
Right now I'm sitting in a very comfortable bus from Mexico D.F. to Colima. I had some four hours of sleep and my body thinks it's time to get up now. So with the display tuned to minimum brightness and grey letters on black background I should not be disturbing my seat neighbor too much. At least he is still asleep so it seems to be OK.

Let's go a bit in reverse order.

At ten PM the bus departed at the Bus Terminal Mexico de Norte. The Suitcase and the big backpack were put in the hold and I was able to convince the security guy that my daypack with the laptop in it went with me into the bus. My Leatherman tool made it through the screening probably because it was below two pullovers and a Jacket tied around my waist. Anyway they are probably more interested in Firearms than in small knives.


In the terminal I had some food and a cup of coffee (32P) and bought a bottle of coke (15P). 14P being one Euro (so take the prices times seven and cut away the last two digits). By the way the bus trip costs 525P with Omnibus de Mexico. Sorry, Mexico but I'm not going to fight my computer for accents now.

The way to the bus terminal is really easy and cheap if you take the metro although I was not really happy with my situation most of that trip. Well for two Pesos you can go from any place to any other place in D.F. The ticket is eaten by some machine at the entrance and so you can really travel the whole day as long as you don't leave the metro. It seems to be a good Idea to get a printout of the metro network in advance so you can check how many stations are left during the trip. They can easily be found on the Internet. All in all it is a
very smooth and convenient ride. I rejected the offer of some boy to carry my suitcase down the stairs of the metro station at the airport. I kind of stick to my luggage... Probably I'm completely overcautious but that's much better than no suitcase.

The airport...
The money vending machine of the Banca de Mexico (or whatever was their name) seems to be coming directly from hell. It displays screens full of writing for two seconds and if you don't hit Continue during that time, which will of course take you to the next screen, you can start over. I also was not able to withdraw money using my EC Card. The Master Card worked out well.

You need to fill in two forms on the plane. One for the migration and one for the customs. If that fails they are of course available at the airport. It just takes some unnecessary amount of time. All the luggage gets X-rayed at the customs. I myself did not get checked. They don't seem to be too hard on checking what you have but that might also just have been luck.
As can be expected the forms want some kind of address where you will stay so keep that at hand.

The flight went smoothly and sadly just passes by some hundreds of kilometers off the American east coast. You get some short view of Florida when crossing it but the rest was just clouds above water.
Window seats are nice during takeoff and landing. During the flight the best places to be are in front of the restrooms and the kitchen where you can stand and move a bit. Here I got to know Mario from Mexico. Thanks for the music advice!

*** Breaking News *** Breaking News *** Breaking News ***

4.57 AM
Our bus just had a flat tire which cost us one our somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Now everything seems to be fine again and we are heading on towards Colima.

*********************************************************

Let's see. Where was I? OK, the flight was not that spectacular in other respects. Food was let's say OK. We went over or close by Cardiff and Cologne but I was seated on the wrong side of the plane and there were some clouds. The Movies. Well let's forget about them. The only reasonable was some collection of old Disney cartoons. Of course no in-seat video but some old CRT-Screens spread out in the cabin. Well for the other ones you definitely don't need the headphones to get the story. A few glimpses from time to time and you know the plot pretty exactly...
The good part was that Laure-Anne and Olivier were also on the plane and that the crew didn't really mind you standing somewhere when there was not too much going on. So it was a lot of standing around because sitting in those small seats with no space for the legs is just no fun at all.

So now I'm basically back at the Airport of Frankfurt about this part of the trip I have written some notes on a sheet when the bus trip started. I will copy them later when I have some light.

That's it for now. Going by bus in Mexico is cool and the people I've met so far are very nice. I'm really looking forward to my time here.

Before I forget: Happy Birthday, Julian!

Highway in the middle of nowhere 5.07 AM October 19th, 2006 END FOR NOW

Highway between Guadalajara and Colima, 6.22AM 25 Degrees Celsius
(according to the display in the front of the bus)

I hope that was not to chaotic to understand it. If anybody needs a German or resorted version feel free to send me an e-mail.

Let's see what I forgot.

At first let's start at the beginning. When I took the train from Neunkirchen which is close to the town where my parents live to my grandaunt I missed the first train because I wasted two complete tries on the electronic cash ticket vending machine (yes twice all the menu and each time three tries mixed with my normal EC and my MasterCard). People from Germany will know...
So I had to go one hour later. In the meantime I was at the ticket counter and they said they knew that the card reader of that machine was in a very bad state and urgently needs replacement. I don't want to know for how long they know...
The next train then was late so I missed the connection in Mainz and had to wait for a while again but this time not that much.

Well it's still dark outside but at the moment there seem to be some clouds hiding the stars which matches pretty well with the front window of the bus
being wet. The roads are getting smaller and after some 24 hours since boarding the airplane I don't really feel like sitting and travelling any more. It would definitely be nice to be able to move freely again.

The bus system really seems to be the number one way of travel in Mexico. There are lots of buses going in all kinds of directions. Also when we hat the flat tire there immediately was a service car of Omnibus de Mexico present. The trucks here look like real trucks with a long nose. We obviously are in America although my bus is a Volvo which is very reassuring.

My Spanish is very poor but I can kind of get around with it because people really are very friendly and patient if one tries to speak Spanish. I often get the basic ideas but the shorter the things and especially questions are the more difficult it gets since it is almost impossible to guess a missing word.


Ok, by now I'm in the office at the University of Colima. My Laptop is connected to the Internet and the sun is shining. Pictures will follow soon.

Flo

How come?

OK, I'm still in the bus but this is going to be a somewhat different story. Time to recollect why I am here now. It all started off with the basic plan of going somewhere abroad. My wish was some country that speaks Spanish and so I started a first look around.
The options with Erasmus are not that great at our university since we are managed by the geographers who simply do something completely different and so have cooperations that don't really help a lot and the Professor in Charge at the Geography department seems to be rather rarely available. So one option is going to Paris and not going to the Sorbonne with which is our official cooperation but doing it like Tina and Luz and going to some other university there. That is what I had almost accepted as the best plan.

In southern America Erasmus doesn't work since it's an European programme. There I might have been able to find some place via some older cooperation partners of our institute or so but that would have involved quite some asking around and not really knowing how good those universities are. Especially since Paris has really good ones.

When we had our Seismology Field-trip to the Tuscany I met with Conny and Niko who were planning to visit Nick sometime soon and told me of the opportunity of being an intern with Nick. In the beginning I thought of staying for one or two months during spring break but that wouldn't have worked out on Nick's side. When I asked Prof. Hort what he thought of it, he had the idea of installing a Doppler radar system on the volcano. In this way a cooperation between Prof. Hort and Nick started and my new plan was to stay for half a year. When it was time to buy the tickets for the flight I talked about my plans a lot with several friends and saw that it was easily possible to get tickets for a stay of a whole year and so the planned time in Colima doubled again. This also is the maximum amount of time for which I can apply for extra funds from my scholarship.

The plan for the radar system is concrete by now and Prof. Hort is applying for funds from the German federal government (DFG/BMZ) for creating a permanent station and funding for a Ph. D. thesis for Lea who suffered my presence in her office during the last year while writing her diploma thesis. Thanks for the patience!

I think this is the basic Idea how it all happened.

Leaving Hamburg

Finally it was the time to leave Hamburg. All the stuff not going to
Colima went by postal service or is visiting friends for a year. Thank
you Daniel and Lisa, Mareike, Magali, Jan, Matthias, Irina and of course Lea. If I forgot someone it does not mean that I do not want my things back...
Also thanks a lot to everyone who responded to my goodbye mails and/or
said goodbye in some other way.

After working my way through half of my to do list and then hurrying to the
train station I was told that my train coming from just north of
Hamburg was 20 minutes late which became more during the trip and seemed to be pretty widespread in the german railway system for this day. If all trains are late at least the connections work out... ;)

Sorry if my English is completely screwed up. I badly need sleep.

Well that was yesterday. This morning the postal service delivered the boxes so I'm complete again.