Jena for a Viral Bioinformatics Conference

Post date: Mar 09, 2017 5:34:32 PM

This week I headed to another small University town in Germany for the 1st Annual Viral Bioinformatics Conference. It aimed to bring together virologists and bioinformaticians to start speaking the same language.

But besides the conference what it did was allow me to compare Halle to another small German University town. Spoiler alert: Halle is better. But Jena was really cute! And there were some awesome people to work with (seen above: Two collaborators and my boss Rob).

First morning on the walk to the conference google maps guided us to the castle above on the right. I was puzzled and excited! A conference in the ruins of a castle how very European! I was wrong. It was in the building on the right. Next to the castle. Still pretty European.

The cute thing about Jena is that it has all sorts of bits of castle that were mixed in with the city. World War II apparently hit Jena pretty hard, and the GDR was not kind to the aesthetics, it’s an adorable town. The little bits of castle helped.

Also, nice Marktplatz! I have no idea what the statue in the middle was… but it was really really cute.

So at this point, as promised, I’m going to compare Jena to Halle. It was full of cute little alleys, and the castle bits were really cool. But it doesn’t have as much character. Halle looks like a proper European city, and while Jena is nice, it’s not as nice. I could do a full comparison of the Universities, their relative age, and the history of Halle, but it is for another time and place.

However, the one thing that is noticeably different between Halle and Jena is this ridiculous tower. It’s huge, towers above every other building in town by 20 stories or so. And because it’s so much taller than anything else you can see it all over town.

At night.

From the conference.

Everywhere, you can see this building everywhere.

And nestled amongst the castle bits and cute streets, was a Cheers bar.

As the only American in the group, I was the only one who found this truly amusing. But I found it amusing enough to make up for everyone who didn’t understand.

But really, this was another work trip, so most of the time my epic views looked like this.