We arrived at Potsdam and checked in to a wonderful hotel on the river just across from the University.
As
the sun lowered and the summer river swimmers had retired we wandered
down the avenue to find a restaurant. We wandered in an took a seat at a
packed street restaurant only to find they served a eye fillet steak
with shaved truffle. This was one of the best steaks I have ever eaten
and that include the Tassie Strahan hotels masterpiece. Day two we
toured the University's Human Interaction Design school and labs. Some
really cool research going on and some great workshop/maker/hacker/fab
Lab set ups.
Day 3
was reserved for a visit to San Soucci Palace. I have visited this once
before but its grounds and its situation is brilliant. This time we were
lucky enough to tour the palace. These places always remind me of how
small people were before improved diet and health caused a growth spurt.
I expect I could handle the lifestyle of the privileged but hate to
think of the middle and lower classes' plight.
We also had
a formal duty here which was to visit the Hasso - Plattner institute in
Potsdam University. We met with a colleague of Gertys, Patrick who is
the Professor of computer science and chair of Human Computer
Interaction (HCI) Lab. He took us on a tour of the facilities and got to
see some incredible research.
See some of the research here I especially liked the "Haptic Turk" and the "Protopiper", brilliant.
The
visited ended with Danielle giving a lecture to an undergrad engineer
class. This certainly disturbed some of the students (Danielle would say
constructively disrupted) and gave them a good shake up.
Oh,
and one of my favourites is that lots of places in Europe seem to have
robotic lawnmowers, and the one at the uni is priceless see below.
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