The International School of Cosmic Ray Astrophysics - Erice 2010

So, I can't remember if I'm mentioned this before, but this week I'm attending a summer school in Erice, Sicily. 

I flew out last night at 7PM (EST). The flight was OK. I had an exit row window seat, which would have been great, but it was extremely cold on the plane; cold enough to not be able to sleep very well, which was a bit of a drag. The time change is such that when I arrived in Rome, it was 9AM. Considering the absurdidty of my regular sleep schedule, it wasn't that bad. About an hour and change later, I took off again for the second legof the trip, from Rome to Palermo, Sicily. I wasn't awake for a second of the trip. 

The first thing I noticed about Palermo airport ios that it is tiny. There are (apparently) 6 belts for luggage (albeit I only actually found three), and one set of doors that every landing flight comes through. I didn't mind this, because I figured that it implied that I would find the guy who is supposed to pick the school participants up easier. This was not true. I kind of stood around awkwardly for an hour until someone else waiting for their lioft tracked me down. Eventually, after about two hours total, we left on a minibus for Erice.

Erice is a smallish town built on a mountain at ~750m altitude. The roads are at least 75% cobblestone (and my shoes are garbage, but that's another story). There are a few castles here (or I suppose it's really just one castle spread out?) so my new friend and I spent the day wandering around the city. The school openening 'ceremony' was only at 10PM local time, so we had something like8 hours to explore.

Eventually, we met up with some other students. Therew's another summer school going on here at the same time, on Quantum Electronics. So far as I can tell, most of them are Italians. We ended up walking around with some of them for awhile (which was great because there are not many English-speakers in Erice). 

At about 11PM I konked out, fell asleep without even setting my alarm. 

The internet connection here is tenuous at best, and there isn't wifi everywhere, so I'm going to have to figure out a system for uploading pictures without blowing all the bandwidth for everyone. Alright, it's breakfast time. 

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