Well, it is time that I straighten out something here: I did not travel to the South Pole as a tourist. No, sir, I am actually on work here. What’s worse: when you are going to work on your detector, your work becomes pretty much your life, 24/7. In that regard, being here is not different from being in Uppsala or Jülich during beamtime.

What is it exactly that I am doing? The part of the Icecube experiment I am working on consists of tanks filled with frozen water (yes, I mentioned this earlier, but anyway….). Altogether, three crew were down here. The first supervised the digging of the trenches and the placement of the tanks. They also made sure that we have all the components that we need. The second team installed the electronics for the tank and supervised the filling with water. Then the tanks get their sunshades and are opened to start freezing. The third team (yep, that’s me) babysits the tanks, supervises the backfilling of the trenches and does calibration measurements for the tank deployed in the last year…..

Now, doesn’t sound like much, doesn’t it? But in Antarctica, everything has the Antarctica factor multiplied to it: Ten times harder, ten times more difficult, ten times more intense. We need two hours to make one station (= 2 tanks) ready for the closing operation, there are ten station we have to handle. Sounds like an job easily done in two days. But in this cold, with all the snow and the wind, we are glad to do one per day. Plus the calibration measurement on an old station, which takes easily thesame time, and you are done for the day. And all this calculation is only valid, IF you got some sort of transportation. We can borrow either a skidoo or sometimes even the Icecube van (a minivan on tracks!). Without, one of those tasks just kills you. Walking 200m or so, pulling a sled full of equipment, your done. It is incredible, but both the cold and the altitude/low pressure just makes everything a huge task!

To make things more complicated, we have to decommision an old experiment. that means decabling, deassembling the electronics crates, packing things in boxes… This is not done outside, thank goodness, so it is sat least bearable for quite a few hours.

So, everytime I get “home”, I am completely exhausted. And since I don’t sleep well, getting up two times a night to pee (I have a bottle now, though! No more running through the cold…), I am more and more tired every day. Which is good. Gives me the feeling to get a glimpse of what the pioneers of the Antarctic exploration might have felt working here at the end of the world….

Good night!