I am a Wave, a new Wave

So, this is the recipe for a successful conference..
I went to a conference in Kemer: the NUFRA2011 on nuclear fragmentation.  It was arranged at an all-inculsive five star resort, which I generally believe was a terrific idea. (As an arranger, you save all the catering fuzz, and its not all that expensive!)

I was invited to give a talk here, and surely it was one of the most enjoyable conferences I have ever been to. I gave a talk about the impact of nuclear models on particle therapy. (I will provide a link to my talk here, once it becomes available, or possibly make a post about it on my work-blog.)
Update: here it is.

A very brilliant idea was to keep the talks in the morning and evening, leaving the afternoons for hanging out on the beach.

Pictures here: https://picasaweb.google.com/niels.bassler/NUFRA2011?authuser=0&feat=directlink

We had terrific weather the entire week, though the trip home was more or less a disaster due to heavy rain, see video:



My flight was delayed a day, and on monday even a plane had a kind of mini-crash (fortunately no casualties!) which blocked one runway, causing further delays, see:
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,791016,00.html

Nonetheless... what I really found fun and enjoyable was that the resort "Hotel Fantasia" was primarily for Russians. All employees were very friendly and fluent in russian language, better than English or German (very surrealistic). At the evenings somehow some of us ended up in the local "disco", called "Monkey Club" (see the irony?) ("Whooo whoo whoo") which had a propensity to play awful Russian dance music.

Reactions:

1st evening: "WTF! This is really bad."

2nd evening: "OMG, they play the same music as the day before. Wtf!"

3rd evening : putting your hands into the air and sing along:

Я волна, новая волна,
Подо мной будет вся страна
Подожди, скоро навсегда,
Затоплю ваши города.

Я волна, новая волна,
Подожди, скоро навсегда,

Video here (just for the records, of course):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4FuWMXRqhg

I even smuggled this piece into the physics Friday bar play list at our university the following Friday and everyone freaked out dancing when it was played. (How bad can it get?!!?)

Meh... big thanks to Анна Пшеничнова, for making this tolerable.

Take-san and Vakkas in the background to the right.

Conclusion: Russian dance music is not worse than anything else, you just have to get used to it.
Thanks also to Vladimir, Konstantin, Take-san, Vakkas and our "princess..." !