Dum Dee Dum

At least we have very good reasons for not posting on our blog.

First off there was the whole allergy season thing, which caused about 6 weeks of non-stop sneezing, massive tissue consumption, and the generation of approx. 6 liters of gross bodily fluids. Jeff has crossed the finish line into 95% allergy-free living, while Kate is still suffering a bit more.

Then there's the whole work situation. Jeff has spent the last two months putting together his first ever DFG (which equals Deutsche Forschungs Gemeinschaft, which equals money) grant, to try and obtain a job in Berlin for the next three years. And Kate has been working very hard poking mouse neurons with glass needles, staring into microscopes, and proof-reading Jeff's grant.


But just to show that it's not all snot and stress, here's a photo from Jeff and Gary's recent bike-trip through the Sachsen countryside. Talk about poo-gefahr.

Oh, and Italy got bounced out of the Eurocup tournament, which should make everyone happy.

We're leaving next week for holidays in the States, and if we aren't too busy stuffing ourselves with tacos and beer we'll post up fun vacation pictures.

Hooray!

The Tribe in Berlin

Our last post didn't seem to spark much interest - was it the cackling? The Enland bashing?
Or just the stupid video?

Anyhoo, here's a little discovery I made while exiting our former neighborhood hippy food store.

It would seem that there's at least one other Cleveland Indian (aka the baseball team from my home town) fan in Berlin. I wonder if they're as disappointed as I am that they have lost their last FIVE games - including three to the Cincinnati Reds, their supposed in-state rivals.

Ugh.

Ausländer + Too Much Beer = Late Night Indoor Cricket

Behold one of the sillier moments from Ausländertag:

The cackling batsmen is yours truly.

And yes, the English do seem to perform better at this form of cricket than they do at the outdoor, sober, international level.

Honk

Hi everyone. We're back. For now at least.

I don't really know where to start.

For our friends birthday several weeks ago, we went to a Russian supermarket and sat in a funny tent in front of the store. There was a very large woman there, wearing a fur vest who served us a lot of pork. Periodically, someone would get up, go into the store, and return carrying many bottles of russian beer. The flavor was nothing extraordinary, but the labels were cool. For example:


I've been "hanging out" in Dresden a lot recently. Which basically involves moonlighting at my former job at the MPI in pursuit of scientific greatness. Elusive thing, that. One of the many changes in Dresden has been the grand opening of a pretty cool restaurant called "Hell's Kitchen" (so they're not very original). They serve a mean burger (veggie and otherwise), fantastic tofu and something that is called the CRISPY CHICKEN TOWER. I've eaten about four of these bad boys in the last two months, and kept trying to snap a photo of one. Unfortunately, the flash on my phone was broken and the pictures always looked crappy. But no longer!! Behold...


That's right. Two breaded chicken patties. Two Kartoffelrösti. Cheese. Assorted veggies. And a fried egg. Needless to say, the bun melts about 30 seconds after it arrives at the table, leaving one with a big frickin' mess. But it tastes sooooo good.

Next post: Ausländertag!!

UPDATE: Oh, but I almost forgot. The genome of the platypus, (AKA Schnabeltier) has been sequenced! This article only reaffirms my long-held belief that platypi are the coolest animals evar. 10 sex chromosomes? Heck yeh! And by extension, my platypus tattoo is now even more awesomer than it was before.

Science = Purty

The wonderful world of science has been a tad stressful recently.

One could even say that I've been having a hard time finding the fun in it all.

But then you collect images like this and everything seems a little bit better.

Now if only it would stop snowing.


Super duper award points (ie, beer) for anyone who can provide a reasonable guess at what this is. And don't look at the file name - it's not "laminin"

The Elder Statespeople of Cool

We've been spending a lot of time reading this website lately:

nailonthehead.com

I particularly enjoyed these two posts:

#80 - the idea of soccer
#84 - t-shirts

And here's a picture of the banjo that Kate got me for Christmas. Next to our giant inflatable dinosaur.

Streik!

So there's this really fun strike going on in Berlin right now. No subway, buses, or trams are
running until further notice. What makes it funny is that the first day of this strike was yesterday. Which just happened to coincide with the first real snow of the year. Coincidence?

This situation will become even more interesting on Monday, when the German train system plans to begin a strike of their own. Which means that there won't even be any commuter rail service (which both Kate and I require to get to work). We'll be living in a city of 3 million people with absolutely no public transportation. And both of these strikes are open-ended, so no one has any clue when this will end.

(Oh - in the interests of full disclosure, this photo was not taken from either of us, but ripped from the Spiegel site. However, I do bike past this stop every day, so I felt justified in putting it up.)