So, it is official: the summer season 2007 had started. Or will start tomorrow with Memorial Day. We already are slowly backing in temperatures around 30C, but at least the humidity hasn’t arrived yet. Even though I am more of a Arctic man, I suppose, the heat isn’t too bad. Especially with the cool breeze coming and going…

Haven’t written much lately. So, let me see if I can fill some of the gaps from the past months ever since I have been back from the Pole….

My car: Yep, till riding my red Olds Cutlass Supreme International. It stinks, it is loud, and behaves rather unpredictable sometimes, but it still runs! A few weeks back someone hit the front, now I have a big dent above the left headlight. This happened on one of the University parking lots, of course, the person didn’t leave a note or anything… Well, it gives the car a notorious character, I guess…

My job: Work has been intense and interesting lately. We are preparing contributions to a big conference, so things are a bit hectic… The conference is in Mérida, Mexico. That is close to beaches and Mayan ruins, so this might be a fun vacation…. Well, obviously I am there for work… 😉
What else? I have been applying for jobs. So far, I haven’t gotten any offer, but there are still options open. I can say a much: If I don’t stay here, then I will be either back in Europe or still on the North American continent. Let’s keep fingers crossed!

My movies: Well, haven’t been out much lately. Of course I saw “Spiderman 3”, “Grindhouse”, and “28 Weeks later”. Nothing much to report, they were entertaining, but not much more. Ok, “Planet Terror” rocked, it was very funny… Will watch Pirates 3 next week. On DVD, I saw some interesting movies. “The Fountain” was strange but also very touching. Aronofsky is a hell of a film maker, if you ask me! “The Crying Game” also felt unusual, but was very good. And no, I didn’t know about the worst kept secret… Anyway, movie wise things are a bit slow right now…

My music: Pärt and Schnittke are definetly the composers of the season. What, never heard of them? Try “Tabula Rasa” or “Alina” for Pärt, check out the violin concertos or the Concerto Grosso No.1 for Schnittke. And if that is too heavy, go and check imdb for their music used in films… 😉

Hmmm, I guess that is pretty much all for now. Enjoy the summer feeling!

Imagine… Four lonely travelers, on the road for oh-so many hours. Riding the Interstate 90 westwards. Always westwards, towards the sinking sun. The road is glowing with the bright reflection, tiring out the eyes of the driver and making the inside of the van stuffy and uncomfortable. A slight dampness of the clothes nears witness to the stifling heat that the feeble AC can’t fight. The road is as unforgiving as the ever present sun, being straight as a needle and flat as a German housewives’ pancake. Yes, sir, these roads do dry out a man’s soul!

When these travelers, weary and dusty from the voyage, finally stop to have a decent meal and some cold beverages, the prospect of rinsing the throat and quenching the souls’ thirst brings life into the tired faces:

– “I’ll take a Tsing Tao, please” – “Oh, me, too!”
– “Sorry…”
Darn ,they are out of the good stuff… Well, I can live with an American beer tonight.
– “… but on Sunday’s we can;t serve beer or wine.”
and a Michelob isn’t that…. Whoa, wait. What was that? “‘Scuse me, come again?”
– “Sorry, no alcohol on Sundays”

We were shortly behind Toledo, Ohio, when we couldn’t get hold on any beer to wash away the woes of the day!

WHAT THE F***!?!?!?!?

Well, welcome to the Midwest of the US. Where good people don’t on the “Day o’ the Lawd”. Amazing, huh? So, we ended up drinking our sodas and hitting the road, hoping to leave Ohio behind as fast as possible! Now we are staying over night in Shipshewana, Indiana, in the middle of nowhere, and still no beer. Dude! Wisconsin better be no dry state!

From the road, yours truly, the sober and very dry l

And there we are again: on the road. Yesterday, we set out to drive to a collaboration meeting in Lake Geneva….
… Wisconsin. Of course, driving there in a straight line would be boring, so we put the Niagara Falls on the menu, just to make it more interesting:

So, for some reason we four made it over the border and back. I guess, even though our stories and outfits didn’t necessarily speak for our benefit, we just make an too harmless impression to raise any concerns. We even made the American officer smile when we came back from Canada: “di you buy anything in Canada?” – “No. But we ate there, does that count?”. Well, I know, a bit lame… Physicists on the road, ej!

Another week, another 7 days down to the inevitable end. What can be said about that past week? Was there any remarkable event? Anything worth mentioning? Or was there just the constant, never ending flow of time, uninterrupted and unimpressed by our meddlings with life.

Actually, there is a reason for my by all means insignificant ramblings: one of the fellow postdocs had his last working day on Friday. After a few days of vacation, he will move on to other things. Chairs will be jiggled, desk moved, and soon everything will be just business as usual. I don’t know, but people leaving always gives me this intense feeling of vertigo, standing on the edge of the abyss where deep down the river of time flows unabated.

Well, that’s the way things are. People come, people go. And in the midst of all this shambles we stand and wonder if we cause these sort of feelings in others, while everything personal seems to stand still…..

To end this post before it gets any worse, I give you a poem by Emily Dickinson, that has been haunting me for a while….

Heart, we will forget him!
You an I, tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When you have done, pray tell me
That I my thoughts may dim;
Haste! lest while you’re lagging.
I may remember him!
— Emily Dickinson

Note: I started writing this entry a loooooooong time ago. I never finished it but instead of deleting it I decided to post the fragment anyway…

Ah, at last: a few moments to spare so I can summarize my little adventure travelling down south. I wager that this piece of writing has been anticipated greatly by a numerous audience. Well, I shall not keep you waiting any longer…

The setting: Our collabortion has two meetings a year. One is in the US, since half of the collaborating institutes reside on the new continent, the other is usually in Europe. In April, the destination had been chosen to be Baton Rouge, far down south in the heart of Louisiana. (btw, the next meeting is in October in Berlin).

The mission: Gettin’ there, deliverin’ our talks (I had two), checkin’ out the place, and comin’ back without getting into trouble. However, this seemed to be a good opportunity to get an impression of other parts of the country besides the “Latte East”. So I found a colleague ready to drive the roughly 1250mile trip. It would take us through several States (Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana) and require two nights on the road: Piece o’ cake!

The vehicle: A Honda Civic LX. An unspectacular, yet decent car. Surely, we wouldn’t be braking any speed records, but ,hey, you don’t mess around with the highway patrol…

The trip south: We started out on Friday afternoon. Bad idea: The evening traffic was quite a mess, especially the closer one gets to D.C. On the other hand: D.C. is always a traffic mess… So we passed the capital in the early evening and left the I95, driving first the I66 west and then the I81 south . The I81 runs parallel to the Shenandoah State Park, but since it was already dark, we couldn’t really see anything. Towards 10pm, a storm hit us pretty badly, rain was pouring in buckets, keeping the car on the road became quite a challenge (I was driving at that time). So we stopped at Roanoke, VA for our first night.
The next day we jumped on the road and were flying south with 80mp/h. Passed Bristol and stopped in Knoxville, TN, for lunch. That was fun, since Knoxville was celebrating its Rossini festival: opera music and italian food on Gay Street! The last thing I would have expected there! We stayed for two hours or so, watching some students play Romans and browsing through the booths with nice handcrafted things.
Back on the road the I75 took us to Chatanooga and from there to right into Alabama along the I59. The first thing that made unmistakenly clear that we were far away from home was this huge, I mean HUGE cross right next to the expressway. It was at least 10m high and visible from a great distance! The radio reflected this not so subtle change: At least half of the stations we could get in were playing “christian music” or had a preacher on air. Stopping at the visitor center to grap some maps I had my first contact with “south folk”: barely understandable, but I guess that this might have been mutual… Otherwise, all the people we met on our way were very friendly and helpful.
The day passed without much excitement, the roads were more or less stright and flat with low or no traffic at all. Since the speed limit is 70 we were pushing the car a bit above 80 most of the time. We made it to Mississippi in the early night and stayed in Meridian since we both had to work on our talks…
Sunday was our last day on the road. Following the I59 we hit the I12 (welcome to Louisiana!) and followed it west stright into Baton Rouge. People along the way had predicted that we might run into problems so close to New Orleans due to uncleared debris but that turned out to be false information.

During our one week stay we didn’t see much of Baton Rouge or the surroundings. The hotel was located at the highway, being part of a very large traveller haven, including your favourite fast food places and a Starbucks. The latter was actually remarkable since we hadn’t encountered anything that resembled coffee after leaving Maryland. I made a trip to Baton Rouge on my own, downtown turned out to be a strange mixture of brand-new government and business buildings, uninhabitable residential buildings, a architecturally generic art center, and block large churches which seem to double as community centers. It was already late afternoon when I arrived so I was more or less the only person walking around. It got a bit more lively when I passed one of the big gambling steamers at the Mississippi Riverfront.

Hi folks,

long time, no news. I know. Summer laziness has me firmly in his grip. Can’t help it. Therefore, only a short note here and now.

Got my third molars aka wisdom teeth taken out (to go?) two weeks ago. Though there is still some pain in my jaw, the swelling’s gone and the cuts are almost healed. This is the first step in my long Tour de Medical to be accepted on my Tour de Antarctica. Btw: the tour dates are Jan. 18th till Feb. 2nd. 13 days at 90 deg south, that’s gonna be fun! I watched a documentary about Antarctica, the people who winter over, the different stations… It is all very exciting. I’l keep you guys posted about the other tests I have to endure to prove my worthiness!

Hot and humid greetings!

Yeah, Delaware is going for the record today: We already have 33C which in combination with the humidity feels like 42C (sic!), but it hasn’t peaked yet! We might reach 36C or so which will feel like almost 45C…. Yeah. Meanwhile, I have exiled myself into my living room, which can be cooled down by the AC to acceptable 25C, abandoning my bedroom to rot and cock slowly….

To make things worse: Next week, my third molars are coming out. Two of them. In this kind of weather it might add to the pain and suffering in an uncontrollable manner…. Hope, nmy AC doesn;t quit on me if I start pushing it for real.

So much from the Delaware Heat Misery. Cheers!

Just a short update. Been back from vacation now for a week and, boy, I am ready for another one… But that is no surprise, having to cope with weather conditions that are comparable to a sauna and weird fitting functions that bug me now for a week.

Oh well, things are not too bad if you have a nice tune in your ear. This weeks selection: John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things”, one of the BEST jazz albums out there. Let yourself bedazzled when the Heavyweight Champion picks up a soprano sax and takes you on a ride through some of the best known standards of all time!

Enjoy and happy summer….