last weekend, i was in banff. again. this time, i attended a weekend conference at the birs, the alberta number theory days. since it was just a short visit, there wasn’t much time to look around. nonetheless, here are some impressions from the banff centre and its surroundings. note that the lightening conditions weren’t very good as i took the photos in the evening.

the deer was grazing on the banff centre grounds; one sees “wild” animals roaming around there rather often. they tend to pretty much ignore humans, but you shouldn’t feed or touch them. one morning, i could see an elk walking around from my room’s window. i don’t have a photo of it, though.

on the third day of the ants, we had half a day off. some of us took the chance to make a small hike to sundance canyon on that afternoon.

on the way to sundance canyon.

to reach the sundance canyon, one has to walk a bit through beautiful nature.

sundance canyon.

the first picture still belongs to the way to the canyon. the canyon itself is going upwards, a small river is floating downwards. it’s pretty steep, as you can see. when one reaches the top, one gets a pretty neat view.

on the way back.

the way back featured several other great views.

finally, we reached the banff hot springs, which are not in use anymore to ensure the living of the banff springs snail. this is a kind of snail which basically only lives at exactly this place.

the banff springs hotel.

after returning to the conference center (which involved a stop in banff and drinking some beer), we took a small walk to the bow river, from where one has a good view on the banff springs hotel.

the bow falls.

another thing one can see from there are the bow falls, a pretty low (just a few meters) waterfall.

well, last but not least, a really big thanks to all involved in making this trip possible!

this week, i was attending the ants. that’s not a conference on ant colony optimization and swarm intelligence, but the eighth instance of the algorithmic number theory symphosium, held in banff, canada.
banff is situated in the canadian part of the rocky mountains, whence one has a pretty neat sight:

here are some impressions from the conference center facilities. the first is a shortcut to the dining hall, the second the professional develop center, and the third one a pathway inbetween:

the next two photos show a view from inside the professional develop center, where we were housed, and me together with my poster:

this conference has been really great. i had lots of fun, learned a lot, met a lot of nice folks (again). and some more.

i was there. expect more photos soon…