Happy Mother's Day!

We have literally hours of footage of SMC...most of which only a parent would be entertained watching! However, we've started going through and paring the vids down to some choice moments. Here's our first attempt: a video of SMC in the first three months of life. :)

A conference with cow bells, what's not to like?

As some of you may know, I'm in the middle of a whirlwind of conferences. At the moment, I'm two down with one to go. Just to give you a recap, in the past two weeks I've presented one poster, given two talks, attended upwards of 60 talks, visited 4 poster sessions, met and memorized the names of 30 new networking acquaintances, and eaten 20 restaurant meals. Conference time can be exhausting.

The good news is, that sometimes you get to visit a place that's cool, like Braunwald, Switzerland. This tiny little village is perched some 1300 m (4265 ft) up along the side of a mountain. It's quaint character is increased by the fact that no cars are allowed, and the only transport up there is a cable car from the town of Linthal in the valley below. It was really a beautiful place to be, surrounded by rolling green hills and glistening white mountaintops.

View from the hotel over the Glarus Valley

Cows Grazing

This cow had a particularly loud bell

Riding scooters down the mountain.
A group of us took another cable car 200 meters further up,
then rented these scooters to ride back down. Super fun.
Here I am posing with Dan, a fellow post-doc
who works in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Green hills in contrast with white mountains

I have to say though, one of my favorite things was the cows. As you many know, it's common to tie a cow bell around the neck of each member of your herd, so that you can always locate your flock. Multiply that times dozens of cows spread over dozens of farms, and you've got a continuous little cow bell symphony each day. I took a video to try to demonstrate this effect:

My other favorite things was the fire hydrants, which were painted to look like miniature people:



All in all a very nice conference. I think it's inspired me to look into Switzerland as a weekend getaway option. Either for hiking in the fall, or skiing in the winter. It may be an expensive country, but when you see how pretty it is you really don't mind.

Only took 8 months to get my 15 seconds...

I guess you may not have heard yet, but I'm totally famous. That's right my friends, I was on the news in Germany. Not like I say anything in the news segment, or even look at the camera, but those phone calls from Hollywood will be coming any day now. I can feel it.

If you wanna check it out, I posted it below. Basically, my boss is leaving MPI to take a job at this Leibniz Institute, and the local news there made a little featurette about him becoming the new director. I happen to be in the background with other co-workers, since we were there taking a tour of the labs when the guy came to film the segment. Oh, I'm special alright. :)

News clip about the Leibniz Institut in Saarbrücken

Another reason to love the Autobahn

Okay. So everyone can agree that the coolest thing about the Autobahn is the "no speed limit" thing. But the second coolest thing is...drum roll please...the Self-Cleaning Toilet! Yep. That's right. Many of the rest areas along the Autobahn have these nifty little toilets installed in the bathrooms... a clear improvement over the pee-on-the-seat alternative found at most US rest stops. And so cool in fact, that many a toilet-goer has recorded his/her very own video, like this one:

Self-Cleaning Toilet in Germany

Makes me laugh, every time.

I'm pretty sure I forwarded this to some of you before (maybe even posted it before...), but I just thought about it again today and decided to post it. It's just so darn funny! I think it gets funnier the longer I live here, too. :)

You know we're just struttin' for fun!

'85 Bears doin' the Super Bowl Shuffle


How exciting is it that the Bears are in the Super Bowl this year?? I remember loving the Bears when I was a kid, mostly because they were my big brother's favorite team, but also because they had the coolest song ever....The Super Bowl Shuffle! If you don't believe me, check out this awesome video of Da Bears performing their signature song. Then go here to read the lyrics.

GO BEARS!!!

In Germany, the new year comes in with a bang!

Now that I have finished posting about our Christmastime here in Germany, it's high time I told you all about how cool New Year's Eve is here. In my opinion, in the US there's not a whole lot to look forward to on NYE. Maybe you have a party to go to, but as far as the hours leading up to a grand event, the "ball-drop" just doesn't do a whole lot for me. Not the case here!

In Germany, NYE is mass chaos, and it's well worth waiting up for the big show: children and drunken adults, with little-to-no safety training in the use of pyrotechnics, setting off fireworks they purchased at the dollar store the day before, on, no joke, every single street corner of the entire city. It's mayhem, and it's great!

I put a video of what this craziness looks like from a high vantage point. You can see explosions of color and light going off all over the city, all at once. Be sure to watch it with the sound on to get the "war zone" feel of the whole thing. The video is only a couple of minutes long, but the actual event went on for at least 2 hours. Man, you get a couple of beers in people, and they just go wild! :)