Surfin’ USA

Zurich

After coming back from Stockholm Wednesday night (it was an interesting workshop, although I didn’t understand some of the things they were talking about ) I needed to get packed pretty quickly, since on Thursday around noon I had to get on my way to Zurich.
I had recently contacted a professor at the Federal Institute of Technology there and asked about a potential PhD position in his group. After some mail exchange and phone conversations he eventually invited me for a personal meeting.
I arrived Thursday night and met a friend from Aachen who is currently doing a practical term in Zurich and with whom I could stay. On Friday I then went to meet the professor, give a little presentation about my Master’s thesis and talk to some other people in the group. The university itself is certainly very good, the people are nice and the ongoing work in the group is very interesting. So it really seems like an option to consider.
I also had some hours to take a brief look at the city, by means of a walk through the city, which I also liked quite much (I might put some pictures up later). The only major problem might be the language: I can’t understand a word of the local German dialect.
Last week I’ve also had another phone interview with Google and am currently waiting to hear back from them — we will see whether that will become an option as well.

For now, however, I am back to bugfixing my program and writing on my thesis paper…