Spain

At the end of last year I took a short but memorable trip to Spain and am finally trying to find the time to post about it. I figured I should get it done before I head back there in a couple weeks. The whole motivation for the trip came when Elena (a native of Sevilla) found a beach ultimate frisbee tournament not far from there. She managed to convice 4 of us to join, not in little part due to the promise of food, food and more food like we would not forget. Fortunuately, that promise was met, and more than my expectations. Conveniently, the best flights worked out that we would really have to spend an extra 3 days before the tourney for it to make sense, a tough sell for the typical grad student and postdoc labrat workaholics afraid to leave for more than a weekend.

I had just got my new camera the week before so was able to grab some good pictures. As soon as we arrived in Sevilla we were treated to a giant home-cooked meal by Elena's entire family. This photo captures the evening, where doting hosts were continually throwing food at us.

It was all. good. And when we thought we were full, we would have a small argument about finishing the last few pieces of whatever on the plate, which we would always lose. And when said plate was finished, it meant it was time to bring out the next 3 plates. And it went on. Lots of traditional goodness that Elena had been telling us about.

Elena was basically our tour guide for the whole time, with the local tips. This not only meant the best eats, but between feedings we were able to get some good sight-seeing in. Here are some photos I have that don't involve food:

The largest Gothic Cathedral in the world only uses "Clock-O-Matic" brand clock motors.

After visiting the Cathedral we went for fried seafood. And as Per illustrates, we stuffed our faces. It was as good and as greasy as it looks

The only photo with me in it

After finishing off the fried seafood and sweet wine, we worked it off with a stroll, about 10 meters north, where we found a great place to sit down and have a glass of red wine and some sausage and cheese

here you see the proximty of the two establishments

A trip to the park, and then another break for some beverages

That evening we sampled some nice rum while listening to impromptu erotic poetry in Spanish, and then went to meet some of Elena's friends at one of their favorite places for eats:

Later on we went for more rum and I took some movies. Here is the first and tamest, to spare the viewer and those in the videos some laughs and awkwardness (and if any of you guys wanna complain about putting movies of you on the internet, well, you'll have to admit to reading my blog. HA!)

The next night we were treated AGAIN by Elena's parents, this time in a nice restaurant. And this was one of the best meals I've probably ever had. I mean, we just had lots and lots shared dishes and tapas. And everything was great. And everybody was in a great mood. We also hit the market to get some of the best Jamon in Spain to bring back home. Everybody got some, and while the idea was to also share some with friends back in Dresden, we seem to keep meeting up and just sharing it among ourselves....

...And finally it was time for the "main reason" for going, the beach ultimate tournament.
I risked bringing out my brand new camera in the salt and sand to try to get some fun action shots:

and I made it into a couple courtesy friends:

Dohna

(click to enlarge)

Beauty in Science





DNA (Blue) and two microtubule-associated proteins, tagged with red and green fluorescent constructs.
About 10x real time.