Last week our "bridging" or preparatory courses began. The first day consisted of a welcome, introductions, and introductory flood risk management lecture at the TU Dresden main campus. We spent most of the rest of the week reviewing basic statistics and learning how to use the open source statistics program R in Tharandt.
Tharandt is a short train ride away from Dresden. Since our classes began at 9 am we had to make sure we were on the right platform in the main train station (Hauptbanhof or Hbf for short) in time to catch the 8:07 am train every morning. I enjoyed the train rides with my classmates and looking out the windows at the passing scenery.
Tharandt is a picturesque town in the forest. The hall in which our statistics lessons was located had very interesting decor - dozens of antlers. We had our lessons in a computer lab outfitted with Apple computers. This is unusual for scientific work. It was a challenge getting used to using an Apple again, and even more of a challenge adapting to the Apple German keyboard. Many common keys (like brackets) had to be accessed through shortcuts, and on German keyboards the "z" and "y" are reversed.
We were happy to be done with statistics on Thursday afternoon. We will be back in Tharandt again the week after next for GIS classes.
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