Honestly, there was a time when I thought that being an astronomer meant working at the “Europäische Südsternwarte”. I remember the whole concept as weirdly wonderful: Europeans not being content with observing the Northern skies and its stars, no! We absolutely needed to see the stars in the South, too! Let’s go up the mountain in the Southern desert and build the largest telescopes in the world!

Given the abundance of exclamation marks, I was probably also eight years old at that time.

No matter. I do feel rather nostalgic thinking about the European Southern Observatory. My dream of working for them is probably no longer in the cards. I am not an astronomer myself, for a start, but that’s ok. They helped getting me hooked on science.

What more, really, do I want?