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.

Never enough time!

It's with huge sadness that I say goodbye to Bill Curtis, who passed away on Sunday. Meeting Bill and his wife Pat Emmons was a highlight of my time in Seattle, and I've spent many wonderful evening hours enjoying their company and easy hospitality. Bill was a remarkable man with a sparkling character...naturally wise, humorous, spiritual, creative and witty...as well as fully capable of drinking his 25ish year-old dinner guests under the table (with homemade limoncello, naturally!). I first met Bill and Pat as an accomplished architectural team, but they quickly became friends, as well as an inspiring example of how to live a graceful life full of love and adventure.

My best wishes and love to Pat, who has lost a truly special man...I feel like I was just getting to know him.

excuses

Okay, so for my vigilant hordes of devoted readers, I admit that I am a bit behind on posting. As much as I would like to maintain the illusion of constant leisure, photo opportunities, food and so on, I can only pull off so much Continental flair at one time. Alexander, of course, is another story entirely. In reality, there's been some monkeying with computers and equipment, waiting for experimental stars to align, me becoming cranky and incoherent in the heat, sporadic (or is it spastic?) fits of typing...all with requisite caffeine abuse. However, I do have some posts and pictures which I will put up in the next few days...

springen Sie jetzt!

After typing away for most of the day and doing some random experiment-related preparation, I decided to give my back a treat and follow through on a plan to find an evening yoga class here in Munich. Luckily, we are quite close to the Leopoldstrasse main street that runs North-South along the Englischer Garten, so I was able to find a place within a ten minute walk. The class was only six people, and the teacher was serious and not afraid to make adjustments. And yes, he did manage to live up to some of my preconceived notions about German yoga instructors. The class was in German but I managed with only minor confusion (a certain hand grabs a certain elbow while you twist in a certain direction and balance on a certain hip, this actually started to give me the giggles)...an unexpected benefit: something about the German vowels is very well suited for the 1-5 counts between postures. eiiiinsss sweiiiii dreiii etc... really resonates more than onnnnneee twwwoooo threeee. It's been a while, so I can feel stiffness coming on. Afterwards, I gratefully inhaled some delicious lemony pasta along with fennel-orange salad, courtesy of Alexander.

Tintenfischen

Last night, Alexander took me to a Spanish restaurant to celebrate my birthday, where we reminisced about our trip to Spain while attempting to ignore the frantic screams of the people watching the European Soccer Etc... of course, we had squid (see title), along with some Lammrippchen. This name attracted me because it sounded fairly disturbing, but of course it just meant baby lamb ribs, which is actually fairly disturbing, but also tasty.

To celebrate being officially older than the hills, I also received a certificate worth my choice of:

1) a trip to the Czech Republic
2) a trip to Italy
3) a dinner at McDonald's
4) all of the above

At the moment, both of us feel like we need to do more work before anything but option 3 is a real possibility...however, hopefully something last minute will work out towards the end of the month. Luckily Munich is so close to so many non-German destinations that lots of quick trips are a real possibility.

domestic interlude

Today we went downtown to the Altstadt (see Glockenspiel) and briefly stopped at the famous Viktualienmarkt for more Biergarten snacks...on a mission for a present, we also stopped by a store which specialized in expensive honey which (not surprisingly) smelled exactly like my mother's house when she extracts honey from her beehives. We then went on a subway journey to an old furniture store in the hinterlands and bought some sexy chairs and a table for basically no money (plus no cheapo birch-esque laminate...take that, Swedish furniture conglomerate!). Just as we thought we were going to have to haul everything to the subway stop in the rain, a magical Mercedes bus taxi appeared.

Unfortunately, we came to our senses about the fabulously hideous chair.