My nemesis - the French keyboard. After years of adjusting to QWERTY keyboards in the US, Sweden, and elsewhere, I finally met my match with this one. Check out the placement of the A, M and W in particular.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
There’s something wrong with this picture!
We’ve had a great week so far discussing science. Our hosts Dr. Vivaudou and Dr. Moreau are outstanding scientists who have welcomed us fully. The members of the lab have been equally welcoming and we are lucky to have such accommodating hosts who also happen to be world-renowned scientists. It is clear that this will turn into a long term, mutually beneficial collaboration and I’m glad we had the chance, via the ACS GREET program, to capitalize on this opportunity.
Lost in Grenoble
I decided to rent a bike from the train station for a month. It's dirt cheap, 105 Euros (90 for the safety deposit and 15 for student rent). The bike comes equip with a front and rear light, helmet, basket, and a lock. One of the best deals I've seen in a long time. As a first bike adventure, I went to find Nico's place for a small get-together (Nico is a graduate student in the Vivaudou lab). I left the train station around 6:30PM, Christophe was nice enough to drop me off at the train station and show me the Metro Velo office (this is where you rent bikes).
I started out my journey with a map, but due to the location of the train station (circled in red on the map below) it was hard to tell which direction was north, east, south, or west since it is surrounded by tall buildings on all sides. Nonetheless, I began my journey down the road a bit, following an underpass, and then through the local shopping areas. The blue outline sums up to some degree my "great" sense of direction and how "deftly" I can navigate the city. The summary may look completely wacky, but when you consider that some of the street signs, especially in the older parts of town, may be a 1'x1' sign on the side of a building it's quite easy to get very lost, very fast. I'm pretty sure I made three attempts to head southward, but managed to circle around and return to the train station within my first 50 minutes of the journey.
Once I got on cours Jean Jaures, I began to head south, though it turned out too south. The map doesn't extend far enough to show where I ended up, but it was about 1-1.5 km more south. By that point I though it might be better to stop, look for a bus stop, and see if they had a map saying,"Voici etes" (You are here). Voila! There was a map. Finding Nico's place was fairly straightforward from there (missed a couple of turns here and there).
But I must admit Europe makes a very conscious effort to provide services to students at a well-discounted price be it bus, train, or even bike rentals. I'll most definitely take advantage of this opportunity to travel as I probably won't have the ability to later into my graduate career.
Here are a few tips I've come up with for traveling around town:
1) Bike's are fun to ride and cheap for students, if you can rent one, do it.
2) Maps are your friend, but landmarks, like the Bastille, are your better friends. If there are people who are familiar with the area, they are your best friends.
3) Sometimes walking around town is better for your first excursion. The pace is slower and allows you to familiarize yourself with smaller sections of town. You can actually walk a fair amount (on the order of kilometers) in a 6 hour period.
I started out my journey with a map, but due to the location of the train station (circled in red on the map below) it was hard to tell which direction was north, east, south, or west since it is surrounded by tall buildings on all sides. Nonetheless, I began my journey down the road a bit, following an underpass, and then through the local shopping areas. The blue outline sums up to some degree my "great" sense of direction and how "deftly" I can navigate the city. The summary may look completely wacky, but when you consider that some of the street signs, especially in the older parts of town, may be a 1'x1' sign on the side of a building it's quite easy to get very lost, very fast. I'm pretty sure I made three attempts to head southward, but managed to circle around and return to the train station within my first 50 minutes of the journey.
Once I got on cours Jean Jaures, I began to head south, though it turned out too south. The map doesn't extend far enough to show where I ended up, but it was about 1-1.5 km more south. By that point I though it might be better to stop, look for a bus stop, and see if they had a map saying,"Voici etes" (You are here). Voila! There was a map. Finding Nico's place was fairly straightforward from there (missed a couple of turns here and there).
But I must admit Europe makes a very conscious effort to provide services to students at a well-discounted price be it bus, train, or even bike rentals. I'll most definitely take advantage of this opportunity to travel as I probably won't have the ability to later into my graduate career.
Here are a few tips I've come up with for traveling around town:
1) Bike's are fun to ride and cheap for students, if you can rent one, do it.
2) Maps are your friend, but landmarks, like the Bastille, are your better friends. If there are people who are familiar with the area, they are your best friends.
3) Sometimes walking around town is better for your first excursion. The pace is slower and allows you to familiarize yourself with smaller sections of town. You can actually walk a fair amount (on the order of kilometers) in a 6 hour period.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Safety First!
Today we were introduced to the first of several steps of IBS (and EU) bureaucracy. I’ll spare you the details but let’s just say we’re prepare for any disaster that may occur and are ready to dial 18 at the first sign of trouble.
After the safety training we took a tour of the labs. I knew the Channels group at IBS from their publications on Ion channel-receptor hybrids, but today I learned how far reaching there science is and how many interests we had in common. We talked for hours (editors note: this continued on for several days due to the sheer volume of our scientific overlap). This will be a very exciting place to work for the short term and the prospects for future collaborations are greater than I had expected. We have a chance to do something special here – thanks ACS!
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Grenoble – Part One
Christophe picked us up this morning and took us for a short walking tour of Grenoble. The city is beautiful and has a very classic feel. We then took the “bubbles” up to the top of Le Bastille de Grenoble, one of several, but the most prominent, fortress that protected the city from invaders. It would be too hard to describe so I won’t offend it with the injustice of a poor description. The view from the top is stunning!
Into town.
6_26_2011
Christophe picked us up in the morning to give a short walking tour through downtown Grenoble. Our first stop was the grocery store (marche). It was quite interesting to find that store hours are different from our own; during the weekdays, stores operate from 9AM-8PM, and on the weekend they may only be open from 8:30AM-12:30PM. Certainly we have our own equivalents, e.g. the post office (9AM-5PM), and their work hours do not always coincide with our work hours, but there are always "fall-back" places, places which are open at later hours of the night, maybe with limited supplies, but still nonetheless open. Here, there are much fewer of such commodities, and as a result people in France feel more stressed due greater time constraints, despite the actually work week being 35 - 40 hours. At least in that aspect, we are lucky to have commodities like Taco Bell's "Late-Nite" menu and the like, but, at the same time it raises an interesting cultural question: why do we desire things to be available when we want them (certainly to be distinguished from something we need, e.g. a hospital, in case an accident happens)? I'm confident several plausible answers are available and all would seem reasonable. But I'm simply asking a, "Why," question which looks for an answer that is somewhere deep-rooted in the making of the U.S. culture and society. All-in-all our culture and French, or more generally European culture, are different.
Anyways, Christophe showed us around town, took us through some of the backstreets and some of the more interesting landmarks. We eventually made our way up to La Bastille, a fort built into the northern mountains which provides an excellent overlook of the city. Luckily we didn't have to walk our way up. We ended up taking "Les Bulles" (the bubbles) which are bubble-shaped ski lifts. Below are several pictures from the Bastille.
Hello from France!
It has been a while since the last post, and there certainly are a lot of updates!
We arrived in Europe last Saturday (6/25) in the afternoon. Our flights flew into Geneva, Switzerland, and from there we rode a passenger bus through the French Alps and into France. The drive over was absolutely amazing. Both sides of the freeway were flanked by small forests with various trees and shrubs only to be interrupted by small patches of grassy areas or farms. Of the crops we saw there was definitely corn and lettuce (both red and green leaf), though corn seemed to be the larger majority. Once in France, our first stop was in the town of Chambery before we headed to our final destination of Grenoble. We did not stay long in Chambery - only a few minutes to drop off a couple of people we shared the bus ride with - but the town certainly had a quiet and rustic feel to it. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures while we were there; however, Googles images has some representative pictures which provide a much better impression of the city that I cannot be described in words.
From Chambery it was onwards to Grenoble. Grenoble is situated in the southeastern part of France and is about 60 km southwest of Chambery. The city itself is scientifically well-recognized, housing the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (CEA), and home to the Joseph Fourier University (UJF), as well as a number of other strong research centers. As mentioned in previous posts, the ACS GREET program has given us the opportunity to collaborate with Drs. Christophe Moreau and Michel Vivaudou with the intent of providing preliminary data illustrating the feasibility of incorporation of ion channel-coupled receptors (ICCRs) into ultra-stable polymerizable black lipid membranes for use as chemical sensors or high throughput drug screening devices. We will be at the Institut de Biologie Structurale (IBS), located near the ESRF, for seven weeks.
Our bus arrived at the train station in Grenoble, where we were warmly met by Christophe. He gave us a quick tour of the city, where IBS was stationed, and where our guesthouse was. He was able to get us housing on the ESRF campus, quite literally located within walking distance from the Synchrotron. Usually this housing is for visiting scientists who buy time to utilize the Synchrotron and the maximum days of occupancy is 15 days. We are very lucky to have someone as hospitable as Christophe. Well, it is time to settle in. As a way to pass time, here are citations to two of their publications we are very interested in:
Caro, L.N.; Moreau, C.J.; Revilloud, J.; Vivaudou, M., Beta-2-Adrenergic Ion-Channel Coupled Receptors as Conformational Motion Detectors (2011), PLoS One, Vol 6, Issue 3, e18226.
Moreau, C.J.; Dupuis, J.P.; Revolloud, J.; Arumugam, K.; Vivaudou, M., Coupling ion channels to receptors for biomolecule sensing (2008), Nature Nanotechnology, Vol 3, 620-625.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Bonjour!
When we arrived in Grenoble, after a 2 hour bus ride through the French Alps, our host Dr. Christophe Moreau was there to greet us. After a brief tour of Grenoble we settled into our new home for the next few weeks – the guest house at the European Synchrotron Facility. We are probably the only guests here (and this has been confirmed by eavesdropping on dinner conversations) that are not working on the beamline. Luckily, we are very close to IBS, the institute where we will be working for the next several weeks.
Welcome to Geneva!
6/25/2011
We arrived in Geneva (well I did anyway) early in the a.m. There was a mix up on our flight schedules so I decided to await Mark’s arrival so that we could travel to Grenoble by bus together. There was only one problem – Mark’s flight was to arrive 8 hours after mine.
I took the time to explore Geneva a bit. Geneva is quite beautiful along Lac Leman and I enjoyed a lovely morning sitting in the park, looking at the flowers and swans and staring at the famous (and very impressive) Geneva water tower. If you get a chance to stop in Geneva, be prepared for sticker shock – it’s the most expensive city I’ve been too (and that includes several Scandanavian capitals).
The famous Water Tower on Lac Leman!
Friday, June 24, 2011
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