A small subset of CALICE on the Great Wall of China at Badaling.
After a few weeks break from QuantumDiaries, I’m back again, and again on travel: The CALOR2010 conference in Beijing, China. At this conference, all aspects of calorimetry in high energy physics are discussed in great detail. I already got a few useful ideas for new things to try out, so certainly a worthwhile event. In addition, this time my trip is “family neutral”, since my wife is with me to visit a mutual friend and to do some sightseeing. The consequence: No complaints from home, no minus points for being away so much this time :-).
While I’m spending long days in the auditorium listening to talks and participating in discussions, it is not all work here in Beijing: Yesterday afternoon we had the opportunity to visit the Great Wall at Badaling. We even took a group photo of a small subset of the CALICE collaboration (with a clear bias towards hadron calorimetry). Not such a big showing as for our beach event, but way more work: Some of us had quite a climb up the wall behind them at that point (others took the easy way by cable car).
The Wall is by far not the only thing to discover in Beijing, even given the very limited amount of free time. Every dinner is a new adventure, and one night we got to witness noodle making to make an Italian cry. Erika (front center in the Wall picture) certainly was deeply impressed…

A noodle making demonstration in a fancy restaurant in the center of Beijing. Even Italians were impressed...