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(meteorobs) Travel to the Romanian IMC

It seems that there aren't many registrations for the International
Meteor Conference this year yet - a pity since it promises to be particularly
exciting with the tremendous progress our field has made after the Leonids
storm. Perhaps many consider the Pucioasa location too exotic or too hard/
too expensive to reach? I've done some 'research' today into the cheapest
flights to the region - either directly to Bukuresti or to Varna in
neighboring Bulgaria, from where it should be a road trip of ca. 450 km one-way.

Flying to Bukuresti from Germany sets you back about DEM 400 to 600:
   CSA (Chech Airlines) from Duesseldorf via Praha is DEM 419.-
   AF (Air France) from Cologne via Paris is DEM 562.-
   CSA and AF from Hamburg are DEM 419.- and DEM 562.- respectively.
   SR or OS from Dresden is DEM 577.- (all prices exclude the tax).

*If* it is possible to cross the border between Bulgaria and Romania,
however (has anyone tried?), there would be an ever cheaper and more
interesting way to get to Pucioasa:

Late September marks the very end of the holiday season at the Black Sea
resorts North of Varna, and the prices, both for the flight alone as well
as the flight plus a stay in a hotel, are in a steep dive. From the catalog
of "Air Marin" I learn, e.g. that there are flights from Hannover on Sept.
18, from Berlin and Erfurt on Sept. 19, and from Leipzig, Dresden, 
Duesseldorf and Frankfurt on Sept. 20 - all at the special end-of-season
rate of just DEM 349.-! 

And if you throw in a week in a moderate hotel at the Bulgarian Black Sea
coast, the full package (!) is *still* below DEM 400.- (and below DEM 500.-
for two weeks). Similar packages are not available for the Romanian Black
Sea Coast, unfortunately, at least from German companies.

Going to Pucioasa via Varna would have yet another advantage, by the way:
35 km South of Varna there seems to be a remarkable geological formation
of interest to meteor(ite)-minded people. Quoting from the website -
http://cass.jsc.nasadot gov/meetings/impact2000/impact2000.2nd.html - of an
impact conference in Vienna from which a field trip to the place is organized:

"In 1991 the first K/T boundary section in hemipelagic marine
sediments was discovered in Bulgaria on the coast of the Black Sea near the
city of Bjala, 35 km south of Varna. This K/T boundary section is located in the
Luda Kamchiya unit, lying between the Balkan chain in the south and the
Moesian platform in the north. A spectacular rhythmic sedimentation over a
vertical range of a 100 m resulted in the deposition of limestone with
intercalated marl. Two hundred limestone beds correspond to precessional
Milankovitch cycles. A 5-m.y. absolute geological timescale results from the
combination with the measured magnetic polarity changes (Chron 29R to
Chron 26R). The reference age (65.0 Ma) corresponds to the level of the
maximum iridium content in the K/T boundary. Evidence for Maastrichtian age
is given by macro-, micro-, and nannofossils. The evidence of Palaeogene age
is given by micro- and nannofossils. In the Bjala section three post-K/T event
markers can be distinguished:  fall-out, boundary clay, and reworked
Cretaceous sediments."

Too bad we missed that when we stayed in the Varna region for the solar
eclipse last year - but since geologists consider the site worth a field
trip FROM AUSTRIA, it's got to be important.

So much for the early stages of research,

Daniel Fischer
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