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I am now in Vienna ‘live-blogging’ at the European Geophysical Union meeting. I arrived on time (although I almost missed my train to the airport) to very sunny, warm, and a green city. Spring is definitely coming to Europe! Last weekend in Potsdam it really felt like spring. I am happy about this. Yesterday was a good day at the EGU. Some interesting talks in the state of the cryosphere and the remote sensing of the cryosphere sessions. Sina’s poster also went over pretty well with some nice discussion.

I came away with 3 messages from the talks and discussions yesterday — 1) ‘Modeling is easy, but it is worthless.’ (an actual conclusion in one of the talks yesterday morning); 2) Remote sensing products are so good that field based measurements/studies are no longer necessary; and 3) Field based studies are critical (more than ever) for remote sensing community/products. Now I don’t know what to think. Maybe it is time for me to start a new career path applying my until-now-useless psychology minor. I am not sure what I can do with it, but at least I won’t be running in (until now unrealized) circles (based upon my day one take home messages) any more. Now that is a horribly constructed last sentence.

Yesterday was also good as I ran into Ted and Martin – two friends from Fairbanks. Ted is now a big-wig at BAS spreading propaganda on BBC about how Santa Claus’ home will never exist again after next summer. Martin is the same Martin I met up with in Zürich a few weeks ago. Ted and I had a nice lunch sitting outside at an Italian cafe. We are staying in a nice apartment near the convention center. I slept very well (a welcome change since I have not slept well recently). We started the day in a cafe. Today is a slower EGU day – a day of just sitting in on different talks in different topics areas that I am curious about. I may venture into the city center this afternoon (the weather is not as good today, so maybe Thursday). Tomorrow will be a busy day with lots of talks and my poster presentation.

UPDATE: The comments about running in circles and making a career change were all made very much in jest. I very much believe that science (or anything else really) must be holistically approached. Systems are just too complex to use only one approach. I just found these messages from the speakers amusing.

One of the nice things about living in Berlin is the huge amounts of cultural opportunities. Last weekend, Paul and I went to the IMAX theater to watch the new U2 – 3D movie. Not a movie that makes you think a lot, but I was in a mood to listen to loud music, so it was perfect! The 3D effects and the huge IMAX screen was great combination.

This week, Billy Bragg is coming to Berlin. He is playing in the same church that I saw the Cowboy Junkies play last spring. Very cool setting. Unfortunately, I will be Vienna at the European Geophysical Union meeting. I use the term ‘unfortunately’ very loosely as I am going be hanging out in Vienna for a week. Not soooo bad. I was pondering flying back to Berlin just for the night to watch the show, but my presentation is the same night as the show! Ugh. Probably for the best anyway. I have wanted to see Billy Bragg for a while now. I hope to be able to get this done before I leave Europe. I bought Billy’s new album, Mr. Peace & Justice. It is very good.

I also managed to get R.E.M. tickets for later this summer. I have read good reviews from their new album, but it has not been released in Europe yet (as of last weekend). I am pretty excited about seeing them. I saw them play a LONG time ago in Los Angeles after their Orange album came out. Yes, that is a long time ago.

Here is a video I found a little while ago that (sort of) sort of converges around this topic, or at least the last couple of paragraphs. It is Michael Stipe (of R.E.M) Billy Bragg, and Natalie Merchant (who is one of my favorite singers) singing ‘Hello in There,’ written by John Prine. One of my favorite shows I have ever seen was John Prine (in Fairbanks). So I guess it all converges….

Last weekend I spent the long (4 day) Easter weekend in Zürich, Switzerland with Ryan, Hil, and Sophie. Yep, two weekends in a row hanging out with these guys. I am pretty lucky. Two great weekends back-to-back!

I arrived early Friday morning (after a late night out with Konni watching the Blue Man Group in Berlin). First thing, brunch at the apartment. Dana and Martin (friends from Fairbanks, Martin is on sabatical in Zürich until late summer) arrived with their two kids. It was great to sit around and talk a while. After brunch, they headed off to the mountains, while I headed off to the couch for a bit of a nap. The weather was pretty lousy, so I did not feel so bad about taking a nap.

On Saturday, the sun came out and we headed off to the mountains for an afternoon of sledding. There is a small ski resort about 1.5 hour (by train) from Zürich that has a dedicated run for sleds. We rented out sleds and headed down (even Sophie). Ryan did an amazing job of keeping on the sled while keeping Sophie with him. By the end of the day, I managed to bruise my bum pretty good (as well as Hil’s leg). At the end of a run, I decided it would be fun to steer toward Hil, thinking I would be able to stop right before hitting her. Well, I did the steering part pretty well, but I did not come even close to stopping before slamming into her. Luckily, only a bruise! We were pretty wiped out that night.

Easter Sunday we woke up to big snow flakes. Very un-Easter-ish if you ask me. We spend most of the day inside talking, hanging out, etc. Hil and I took a walk late in the afternoon to pick up some supplies for a night of Texas Hold’em Poker. Four of their Zürich friends showed up to play. It had been a long time since I had played poker and I had never played this game. For some odd reason (is luck an odd reason?), I ended up the big winner for the night. While I had a hard time losing hands, Ryan managed not to win a hand the entire evening! I think I played pretty well (strategy wise), but I think I am most proud of the fact that Ryan did not yell at me once the entire time. In the past (with other games), I have managed to frustrate him with my ‘logic.’ So all in all, another good day.

Hilary and Sophie watching the snow fall from their balcony.

Monday was a short day as I had to return to Germany. We wandered around the city and had a nice lunch. While being fed some orange-red mush, Sophie decided it would be a great time to get an itchy nose. The itchy nose resulted in a very large sneeze and orange-red mush being sprayed all over the place (a large portion of this spray finding me). The table next to us could not stop giggling. It was indeed pretty funny.

Ryan and Hil talk about this weekend on their blog. The rest of my pictures from the weekend can be found here.

Last weekend, I met up with Ryan, Hil, and Sophie in Barcelona to play some beach ultimate frisbee with Strange Blue (from Cambridge, England). I had a fantastic weekend! By far the best I have had in a very long time. It was a great weekend that was good for my soul.

Getting to Barcelona was fairly amusing and long process. It all started on Thursday night while packing. I had gone to the Costa Brava website and printed out all the information I thought I would need to get myself to the tournament. Without looking at the printouts, I finished my packing and stuffed my “information” into an envelope thinking I would have time to figure out my logistics in the airport or at the worst, on the airplane.

I had to take a taxi to the airport as the buses were on strike. The traffic was horrible from the train station all the way to the airport. The trip in the taxi took nearly 60 minutes (it usually takes me about 20 minutes in a bus). I arrived just in time for the Air Berlin personnel to make the final announcement for check-in. After checking-in, I did my first real ‘German asshole’ thing by crowding to the front of the very long security line as I was close to missing my flight (crowding to the front of the line is something I have found Germans to be very good at and something I really dislike). I guess I consider this to be part of my ‘German integration’ program. Once on the airplane, I took out my information and discovered that what I had printed out was complete garbage. The only thing I really knew was that I was going to Lloret de Mar and that I was playing in a beach ultimate tournament. I had no idea of my hotel name or even how to get from the Barcelona airport to Lloret de Mar. After getting some directions from the Barcelona airport information booth, I headed out on my way. I missed my first train by 2 minutes (and had to wait another 28 minutes for the next train), I had to wait another 30 minutes in the main train station for the 90-minute train ride to Blanes. After another 30 minutes wait for the short bus ride to Lloret de Mar, I finally made it to the town. A trip that should have taken me about 90 minutes total ended up being about 4.5 hours!!!! Once in the town, I still had no idea of where to go, so I wandered down the main street for a while until I ran into a bunch of people who looked like they might have an idea of what was going on in the town. They pointed me to the beach and told me to turn left (there was not much to the right). After a short walk, I ran into a few people throwing a disk around and I knew that I found my destination. The combination of being in a good mood and being too tired to care allowed me to laugh at this entire event. Every once in a while I find myself to be pretty amusing.

Playing with Strange Blue was great fun. We placed 11th of 26 teams, winning 6 of our 9 games. I had never played in a beach tournament before. I found playing in the ‘sand’ very difficult and more tiring than normal. It was sort of slow motion ultimate played at a fast pace. It was possible to make only one hard cut at a time — each time I tried to make multiple cuts, I just seemed to bury myself deeper and deeper into the sand. Some of my personal highlights (there were many many more) included bumper cars, gelado, drinking wine on the balcony, Sunday night ‘Ring of Fire’ complete with porn cards, going to the Sunday night party and being handed a barf-bag at the entrance, LOTS and LOTS of laughing, blue face paint, hard spirited play, great team spirit, lots of layouts, a hotel courtyard that turned into a European fußball game without the fußball game, and most of all hanging out with Ryan and Hilary (and Sophie).

I think the only bad thing from the entire weekend is that my limited knowledge of the Spanish language has been displaced by my very limited knowledge of German. Every time I wanted to say ‘gracias’, ‘danke’ came out of my mouth. Every time I wanted to say ‘por favor’, ‘bitte’ came out. Ja’s replaced si’s, nein’s replaced no, and so on. I knew what I wanted to say, but what came out was completely different. It is funny how the brain works sometimes.

Isn’t the month of March saying ‘In like a lion, out like a lamb?’ March arrived this past weekend with a very strong storm sweeping across central Europe, killing some 14 people. Most of the severe damage and accidents took place south of Potsdam. However, there were still a fair amount of broken branches lying around.

Despite the wind and rain, I ventured out to the local Potsdam Turbine fußball game yesterday morning. The winds were still quite strong. Any ball kicked very high off the ground seemed to take abrubt sharp angle turns in mid-flight. There was one sight that I found very funny. Standing next to me was a man holding a small umbrella with one hand to protect himself from the wind and rain. The wind was much too strong for the umbrella, so it sort of folded/collapsed around his head. With his other hand, he was battling the umbrella to get his beer to his mouth, while at the same time trying to peek out from under his trap to watch the game. I very much wished I had my camera to capture this. It would be much easier to describe with a photo. Oh well. It made me laugh a bit.

Speaking of going in like a lion and going out like a lamb (dove??), on Thursday the Daily Show had a very funny segment describing W’s recent trip to Africa. Maybe something good will come out of this presidency. Hard for me to get my head around that idea ….

On Tuesday morning, my worst German (apartment living) nightmare was realized. While Heather was in the shower, the insurance man (their office is directly below my apartment) rings the bell and tells me that water is pouring out of his ceiling!!! The floor of the bathroom was dry, so the house master called the plumber, ripped open the bottom of shower and discovered the complete underside of the shower was filled with water. My stomach was tied up in knots with this experience – mostly because there was water pouring out of the ceiling downstairs, and everyone who came upstairs to work on this did not speak any English. My German skills were more than put to the test! We had to take baths for a couple days, but everything seems to be in working order now. I was able to take a shower this morning and the shower floor (it won’t be completely sealed up for another week) is dry. Luckily, since this was not my fault, I will not have to pay for anything. I am very happy this nightmare is nearly over.

Heather Best, a friend from Fairbanks, made the long flight to Freundenstadt, Germany (located in the famed Black Forest) to compete in the World Winter Triathlon Championships. The winter triathlon combines running, biking, and skiing – supposedly all on snow. Paul and I ‘road tripped’ down to watch to her compete. The conditions were less than ideal for the participants, but amazing for the spectators with temperatures rising to nearly 20°C with very blue skies and strong sun.

The ‘winter’ portion of the winter triathlon was all but missing. There was very very little snow to be found, and what was found, was scraped up (complete with gravel, grass, branches, dog crap, …) and spread over the ski loop – only a few meters wide. The bike and run portions where completely off snow and mostly dry. I think it would be difficult to train for these conditions living in Fairbanks during the winter. Although she did not appear to be too happy with her result, it was a lot of fun to watch her compete. It was also great to really feel the sun – the first time in quite a while – and visit the Black Forest.

All images and a couple movies from the race can be found in the image gallery.

Last weekend was my ‘game weekend.’ It started out on Friday night when I hosted ‘game night.’ I had been craving to play games recently, so it seemed like a good time to do this. A number of friends from work came over with the games and I made a lasagna and salad.

(clockwise): Emil, Konni, Torsten, Moritz, Maren, and Paul. I am not sure where Finny was hiding.

I was very happy when Emil left. He kept winning the games – especially the Memory game. He had close to twice the number of matches than everyone else. The memory game made me realize that my attention span capacity is slightly less than the volume of a peanut M & M. Torsten and I played some strategy game where you try to push the opponents marbles off the edge of playing surface (I don’t know how to describe it any other way.) I was told the best strategy is to keep your set of marbles grouped together to avoid being pushed off the edge. Well, it took all of about 3 turns before I seemed to be spread out all over the board. I lost this game twice (rather quickly). This game made me realize that I am entirely all too predictable. We finished the night playing a card game similar to UNO, but in a free-for-all manner. I did much better in this game, which was much more a game of reaction than strategy, skill, or luck.

I woke up early (5:30) the next morning to go to Leipzig to play with the Goldfingers in the German Masters Mixed (co-ed) National Championships. The field we played on in Leipzig is amazing. It is the size of a regulation size fußball (soccer) field with a no-slip ‘astro-turf’ surface. I heard that Leipzig was the training center of the former East Germany, so there are an abundance of great facilities there. I have now played in two different facilities here and both are very very nice.

The sport hall. There were four ultimate frisbee fields set up for play, going across the field.

While the field is great for the no-slip part, this no slip feature also applies to humans. I dove only one time the entire weekend and this is the result. This will take a while to heal.

The Goldfingers did not fair so well, placing 25th of 29 teams. It was fun to watch the good teams play. Ultimate can be such a beautiful game when played well. Unfortunately, this was not my last Goldfinger experience. Bad play, bad chemistry, team mates complaining to each other on the sideline, team mates complaining to each other in the game, rubbish calls, very physical play, trash talking (for no apparent reason) … I actually had players from other teams talk to me about the way the Goldfingers were playing, lack of spirit, etc. It was the first time in a very very long time that I had zero fun playing – possibly negative fun if that is possible. This one is going to take a while to recover from.