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2006 is over – and it was a rather interesting year.
Probably one of the best years of my life, but this is closely related to my girlfriend. Many projects were really successful in 2006 and I could complete a lot of things. I got nice opportunities to get around a little and meet people from other background… So I took some time to recall the events that were important and impressive for me – and this list got quite long…

Climbing in the so called Franconian Switzerland was one of my key sports improvements last year – got together with shutdown to many places and climbing nice sites all around. Although I’m not really deep into soccer, I rather liked the WorldCup. Mostly because for just 4 weeks most people forgot about common problems and just did a nice party together. I especially enjoyed watching the games at university – Like at my chair or the summerfest of Chemical Enginering! The visits to Hannover Messe and Achema were very impressive. I saw much impressive technology – Actually the “Messeparty” in Hannover together with some friends was one of the best parties in 2006. The best thing was: For both events we stayed overnight: So we had enough time to dig into details!

Bergkirchweih 2006: The biggest party of the year. Had been on there at 8 of 10 days. Most times just drinking nothing, but just enjoying the athmosphere. Nice was the gathering there with people of CCC. The Schlossgartenfest was my favorite social gathering last year – Being nicely dressed I had the honor to accompany my girlfriend… It was pretty nice to show of the dancing skills, we got in the advanced course of university sports. Besides that, I really enjoyed going to the Erlanger Poetfest in August – Listening to odd lyrical creations in an nicely illuminated atmosphere is an interesting experience.

Best hacking event in 2006 was PH-Neutral in May. I had the chance to meet a lot of relaxed people and watch interesting talks. Nice party and some relaxing time to chill out in Berlin. The (hacking) camp ICMP3 was the most relaxing event this year – Met many people, enjoyed cooking together and finally had enough time to sit down and dig into some stuff. A camp like this is rather better than a big one: Cause it’s less administrative work involved!

I passed my last exams for reaching my university degree. My Studienarbeit was also quite a success – It kept me busy between April and August. The Projectcourse of Chemical Engineering was the biggest team experience I had in 2006: All the people of my academic year trying to solve the problem of a Silane-Waste recovery producing pure HCL – With all the drawbacks like missing thermodynamical data, literature and so on. This was a real challenge and it went out pretty good. A really great academic experience was the High Pressure Chemical Engineering (Intensive) Course in Lissabon. Luckily a good friend of mine (Florian) and me had the chance to get this course. We met so many nice people from all over Europe. Of course we had time for sightseeing: Lissabon and its surrounding area is really impressive. Probably I will get back to Portugal soon! Just for fun I went to the Jahrestagung of Dechema/GVC: It turned out to be a good choice. I caught many interesting details not only about scientific progress, but more how the community works: You meet people and drink beer – And there the real conference is going on. The talks are just to pretend, that there is something big going on!!1
Finally there is the biggest thing in the last few years: In November I left Germany for altogether about 5 month in order to do my academic attachment (internship) at Sulzer Chemtech in Singapore. Just browse around the last entries: It’s not important to say, how impressive and forming this is. Besides my girlfriend this is the best thing that ever happened to me.