After about four days in Nürnberg I hopped back on a train (the correct
train this time) and came back to Jena.
Downloading the data from the 82 Texans took all day. Although there had only
been about 50 explosions over the three day period the Texans were programmed
to stay on and record whatever they could hear for hours at a time. This made
each Texan record about 30 megabytes of data. The offloading of the data is
not a very speedy process by today's standards. It took about 6-8 minutes
to download each Texan. When the downloading was finished, the"problem
children" were dealt with (usually by downloading them again). Once everything
was downloaded the data was backed up, and everything was packed up. We finished
at about 17:30 which gave us enough time to catch a bite to eat, and for Wolfram
and I to hit the road back to Praha with all of the equipment.
On the day that we programmed the instruments Alex was kept busy giving interviews for the media. When we do experiments like this in the U.S. all we usually get are protests. A journalist and a photographer came to the institute and spent quite a bit of time learning about the project. Below is a picture of the photographer taking a picture of Rudolf.
The story made the front page of one of the German newspapers. There were also stories about the project on television news programs.
The area around Jena was rather hilly, and appeared as though it got plenty of rain which made for some nice scenery.
We went for a bite to eat at the Fuchsturm (Fox Tower) near Jena. The Fox Tower is the original keep of the former castle Kirchberg, which was first mentioned in 937. Together with two neighboring castles, Kirchberg was destroyed completely during the war between the Lords of Kirchberg and the cities of Erfurt, Nordhausen and Mühlhausen (possibly in 1304?). The Fuchsturm is the only part of any of the castles that has remained. The first attempts to renovate the tower were made in 1584, but it took until the end of the 19th century before the tower came in use again as a popular lookout tower and even astronomical observatory.
One of the views of the surrounding area from the tower.
2018-03-06