**NOTE: The post below was written on the flight from Germany into Singapore but I am just uploading it now about a week later. I have had terrible internet access at my motel in Parkes, Australia and have been to busy during the conference to do much on the internet.
This post is being written on the airplane to Singapore. From Singapore I will travel to Sydney which is not my final destination. My first destination is Parkes where there is a radio telescope. Yippee!! I will be there for a week for the student portion of the IPTA (International Pulsar Timing Array) and not the International Pediatric Transplant Association as Google always likes to put up first from the search, even though my cookies and former searches should predict that I want the first one and not the latter.
I didn’t write any posts but one while I was in Germany. I am now going to make up for those unwritten posts. This year I didn’t travel at all in Germany. I have been saving money for the trip to Australia plus for my upcoming wedding. I did however go to a circus and the movie theater while in Bielefeld. I will tell you about those in this post.
I attended the Circus toward the end of June. It was called Circus Roncalli and apparently is pretty famous throughout Germany. I chose the cheapest seat available and with my student discount the ticket was around 12 Euros. The seat was really close but I had a post in my way. It really didn’t spoil the show much at all.
The show opened up with a laser show. The laser show was superb. The actor pretended like he was grabbing the laser beam and then using it as baton or fighting weapon like in Star Wars. Sadly, the name of the weapons they used is escaping me at this moment. While everyone else was enjoying the show, I am thinking the whole time about the fact that the actor wasn’t wearing protection goggles. Granted, the performer never looked directly into the green laser light but it sets a bad example in my opinion for children. When I have done Laser Fest shows with the WVU SPS (Society of Physics Students), I always wore specialized goggles if I was going to be in front because the laser can cause blindness. We even stressed to the audience the importance of safety practices and why lasers were dangerous. Back to the point, everyone else was enjoying the show and I was thinking the whole time about safety.
The circus only had one animal act; it was horses. There were no elephants or tigers as you would expect. They did have a lot of acts suspended from ropes or hoops during the show. One act was a gentleman who juggled with soccer balls and did other tricks. One act consisted of a hula hoop show. The same performer who did the laser show also did a shadow hands performance which was neat to watch. The clowns were hilarious and provided entertainment between sets. The longest act was the performer who balanced a whole bunch of sticks and other items. She started with a feather and then went on to small twigs/bones and then ended with a giant bone/twig. You could also tell that am I a physics major because I was thinking about unstable equilibrium and center of mass during the act. My question for myself is, will I ever be able to enjoy movies or performances again without being so critical of the safety practices or thinking about the physics behind it.
I went with another foreign student to the movie theater. Lorena is from South America and is working on some type of education degree at Bielefeld. She had spent time in Richmond so she was familiar with my part of the world.
We went to see Jurassic World. We thought the movie was going to be in English which is why we went on a Sunday but it ended up being in German. It was okay though because I got the gist of the movie and understood some of the simpler lines. It was a 3D film of course. In Germany, you pay extra for the 3D glasses but you can keep them and not have to pay for them again if you bring them back. In the USA, the glasses are included in the price so you have to pay for them each time. While the ticket prices were comparable to those in the US, the concession stand prices were lower. I purchased a combo. It came with a soda which was in a cup you could keep, a small popcorn, and a nice Jurassic World keychain. It only cost me nine Euros which is around $10. That type of combo would cost you way more in the US and you wouldn’t get the keychain. The other difference at the movie theater is that it sold beer but of course, this is Germany so they would sell beer at the movie theater. You could actually buy a small cooler pack with four beers in it for the movie. The movie theater we went to also had a bar inside of it.