Freiburg

Yet another guest post from D.

October has been a travel month.  Just before J. and A. went to Florence, I went to a conference in Freiburg on stability of novel low cost solar technologies.  This was the 9th ISOS conference, and I had been at the 3rd (Roskilde, Denmark) and 4th (Golden, CO USA) so I saw some familiar faces, including colleagues from our year in Denmark on our last stint abroad.  I arrived a day early and had some time to explore.  I had never been to Freiburg before, and found the architecture in the old part of the city to be well preserved and beautiful.

This is the old Church behind the train station

This building is in the plaza with the Cathedral which is under restoration

This is one of the two remaining gates to the old city

 I also took some time to hike on trails near the city.  I did not know exactly where to go, but I tried to go up which was easy to do.  Apparently if I had gone further up there was a lookout tower that would have given vistas in all directions, but I missed that.  Nevertheless, this Black Forrest region is beautiful.

Taken from a bridge over the busy street.  I hiked up to the restaurant situated halfway up the hill

 Outside the Cathedral there is a plaza which has an open market daily.  There were lots of different vendors there selling wooden toys, wooden kitchen items, and many kinds of food.  I made a meal from the Tofu Bratwurst stand, roasted chestnuts, fresh raspberries, and some cheese cake.  The first three vendors are shown below.

I was pleased to be able to enjoy brat wurst without eating meat

This chestnut vendor spoke to me in both English and Hebrew

The fruits and vegetables were very attractive and tasty

 I don't have a picture, but I did go to the "new" synagogue in Freiburg.  The previous one was burned down in the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 10, 1938.  The new synagogue was built with support from the city in 1987 and is modern and functional.  It is located very close to the cathedral.  I went to a service which was very international, as there were folks from Russia, Brazil, Israel, etc.

Later I walked by a Science Shop, which unfortunately was closed.  I had hoped to get back when it was open, but it looked like a nice place, and I was glad to look in the windows.

Main window of the Science Shop

I found this shirt available online which may be related to the shop or simply a supplier

 As always I enjoyed seeing a city that has a thriving bicycle culture.  There were lots of bicycle lanes and I had to be careful not to walk across them without looking.  I went to four bike shops in town, including one that is explicitly for tandem bikes.  I met other bicyclists and enthusiasts attending the conference.  There were incredible numbers of bikes parked all over town.

Just along the main street by the conference center.

The year we lived in Denmark, two women from a design school invented the Hövding invisible bicycle helmet which is kind of like an airbag for a bicyclist's head stored in a neck garment that looked like scarves worn in Scandinavia.  I had never seen one of these in person, but they were in the store in Freiburg for about 3 times the price of a regular helmet at that store.

This store actually sold Hövding helmets for ~300 €.

My science colleagues noted that bike theft is a serious problem, especially in the area near the train station.  There is actually a giant bicycle parking garage system near the train station where you can join and have your bike stored.  My colleague noted that she has two bikes, and uses the old one near campus and the other for riding other places.  Most bikes I saw were heavy duty commuters, but there were occasionally really nice bikes like this bamboo one.

A pretty high end bike parked near the train station and conference center.

The conference ended with a tour of Fraunhofer ISE, which hosted the conference.  I saw my collaborators labs and the central facilities.  They do all types of solar energy systems there including electrolysis of water for hydrogen powered cars (they had the Toyota Murai there), solar thermal systems, concentrated solar PV, silicon PV, and a wide range of thin film PV technologies.  It was impressive.  The atrium of the main building has panels they made there which have silicon cells spaced out on the glass to allow both energy harvesting and natural light.  They also had some nice displays.

Solar panels in the Fraunhofer ISE atrium

A display showing the processing of high purity silicon

Flexible thin Silicon crystal PV on thin glass

Several generations of concentrated PV systems

Overall the conference was a good experience, and I learned quite a bit and felt that I made significant contributions to the discussions.  I led one of the break out sessions and reported on it to the full conference.