Munich, Germany

We left Boston, MA on Saturday May 7 and arrived in Munich, Germany on Sunday morning. The Munich Airport was clean and chic.

After dropping off our luggage at the Maritim Hotel, where Pervasive 2005 was held, we headed to Nymphenburg, a Baroque palace. It took about 15 minutes by tram.

LoCA 2005 was held at Oberpfaffenhofen, which was about 30 minutes by taxi from Munich. We stayed at the Hotel Seehof, one of three hotels recommended by the conference organizers. It was located in a small village called Herrsching; it took us about 15 minutes by car to get to Oberpfaffenhofen. The hotel was located at a lake called Ammersee, one of the five lakes in the area. Herrsching was simply beautiful. We spent Wednesday afternoon walking around in the village and along the beach.

On May 12, there was a social dinner organized by LoCA. We were served typical German fare: sausages and beer. Here I'm with Annie who is a pre-doc (that's the term IBM uses for a Ph.D. student) at IBM Zurich.

To save over 500 dollars for the flight, we decided not to fly back to the States on Saturday. We enjoyed the extra day. We traveled to Salzburg, which took us about one and half hours by train from Munich. We walked around in the city. The old buildings in the city reminded me of Stockholm. Rain had been forecast but fortunately we had beautiful weather most of the day. (We did get some rain by the end of the day.) When we were heading to the train station in the evening, we saw many people in formal dress going to concerts. We were indeed in Salzburg, the city famous for Mozart and music.