Vienna - April 2006

Conference impressions - Austria Center

Main purpose of my travel was to attend the eductional symposia during the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in the Austria Center in Vienna. It is the largest meeting of Earth and Space Science in Europe and is attended by several thousand scientists from all over the world.

The Austria Center is a very big congress center with diverse lecture halls, some only for 30 - 40 people, some for a few hundred. In the entrance hall exhibitions from companies or book editors are organised as you see here on the view down from the gallery. The center has five levels. From Monday morning to Thursday evening I spent the whole day there, talking to many colleagues from all over Europe, you can usually only contact via e-mail.

My field was in atmospheric science before during my PhD thesis. Now I am involved in international projects bringing climate science to the classroom. The EGU invites also teachers (this year from about 15 countries) to Vienna, in order to listen to lectures of expert scientists and enjoy further education. The photo is taken in the lecture room for the teachers.

Here you can have a look into one of the large poster halls. Not everybody can present his work in an oral presentation, a so called "talk". The time is too short and number of rooms is too small. Most of the participants show their work on a poster.

We are used to make posters in Powerpoint or Corel Draw. They are printed in a size of for example 130 x 100 cm and presented on poster boards to other colleagues, who talk with you about projects and results.

The Austria Center is located a bit outside of Vienna City in the East of the town close to the Donau river. Next to it is the big building of the United Nations branch in Vienna, which is dealing among others with nuclear control issues as the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA, which is also located in Vienna and has rather a bit to do in these days. My hotel was in the West of the town next to the townhall. Every day I made the way below the town by subway to the East (about 30 minutes), but saw nearly anything of Vienna than the subway tube. Only in the night we were used to meet for some job talks in a restaurant in the centre.