Croatia vacation

For my last week in Europe, Alexander and I rented a car and drove to Croatia. This means that Alex drove while I took pictures out of the car. We decided approximately 24 hours before leaving...we were going to go to Italy, but then we realized that it would be full of Germans and Americans. We even managed to camp in our extremely sophisticated 20 euro tent purchased at Woolworth's (yes, they still exist!). It was extremely low-impact camping, lacking all of the standard features of my previous camping experiences: rain, cold, no car, debatable traveling companions, low-grade fear of carnivorous wild animals. The only catastrophes were relatively minor-- more than 25 mosquito bites on my legs when I managed to kick the tent open (maybe we should have gotten the 30 euro tent) and eating so much squid that we made ourselves sick. We made it as far as the island of Brac on the Dalmatian coast. Delicious food, beautiful landscape and ocean, cheap wine, superb company...we had a great time and at some point I would love to go back and make it all the way to the far south.

Some highlights-

The border between Austria and Slovenia (welcome to Eastern Europe).
The cheese of Island Pag-- the sheep on the island live off of sage that is full of sea salt, which apparently gives the local cheese its excellent flavor.
Camping in cypress forests and olive groves full of wild thyme and mint.
Frantic reading on the beach.
Fresh fish, melon, and Dalmatian dry ham.
The Magistrala highway down the coast.
Drinking cognac on the beach.

Here's a link to some pictures. May contain minor romance.

Return to Woods Hole

Two months goes by quickly...after a sad goodbye (getting up at 4am did not help at all), I arrived in Boston on Friday and got on a bus to Woods Hole in Cape Cod. I'm a teaching assistant in the Marine Biological Laboratory's Methods in Computational Neuroscience course for the next month, then it's back to Seattle. I'm looking forward to the series of lectures, and I think it will be good way to step back and get a broader view of the various problems people are working on. I have plenty of work to do in my spare time; if there will be any spare time remains to be seen. As many know, I have a sentimental attachment to Woods Hole...I met so many friends here over the summer of 2006 (including the most important one I somehow manage to leave in Munich). Sticklet is receiving private German instruction from Alexander and probably being a nuisance.