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:

Good Weekend (!)

This weekend my first first-author paper of my postdoc was accepted for publication (in the Journal of Cell Biology) This is work I've been doing for 3+ years, and a manuscript I started writing up 9 months ago. The basic focus of the research is on how cells build and regulate the transient apparatus (shown below in purple) needed when the cells divide to accurately segregate their DNA (green) perfectly and equally into the two new cells.



In addition, this weekend our MPI-CBG Ultimate (frisbee) team "Ring of Fire" competed in a two-day tournament in Jena against teams from around Germany, and took home 5th place! out of 20 teams. (photos and video to follow...)

Two of the Greatest Things with Two of the Worst Names

Ultimate Frisbee and Fantasy Football

I will never get used to these names. At least in Europe the soccer version of fantasy football is called "football manager". What's worse is when people just use the first word. "Are you gonna play some Ultimate?" "Are you doing Fantasy this year?"

Come to think of it, there's probably not alot of people that enjoy both. Ultimate Frisbee players seem to me to be the kind to have an irrational hate of pro sports and watching sports. While pro football fans seem to be the type to look down on dirty hippies and people that are actually in real-life athletic and competitive.

Scars and stuff

Today I was killing time here waiting and looking through the few blogs/websites I have linked to here and the first two I clicked I came across these: (reproduced without permission)

What are people doing to themselves?

So I thought I would post my own gross-out picture I took a few weeks ago but didn't want to put up:

several hours of ultimate frisbee and not the best shoes.

Weeeeee are the Champiuuuuuuns my Friiiiieeeennnd.........in Beautiful Chemnitz

Last weekend the MPI-CBG and friends ultimate frisbee team Ring of Fire competed in a tournament in Chemnitz (more on Chemnitz below).

This was our first tournament as a team, and I have to say, we had especially low expectations. Mainly stemming from a combination of the facts that a)we "practice" on a field about half-regulation size b)we are usually out there for fun and don't spend alot of time on rules and strategy and c) we've never actually played all together on a full size team. So to our amazement we went out there and gave a good show. Actually from the beginning we were winning convincingly. Like 6-3, 7-1, 5-2 types of scores. In fact we didn't lose a game and took the championship with a closely fought and dramatic comeback (against another Dresden team) in the last game. Down 2-4 with 5 minutes left, reeled off 3 scores to take it. It was a great sports moment.


Now there were only 8 teams at this tourney. And this clearly wasn't the best Germany had to offer as far as ultimate. But people were traveling from as far away as Munich to participate. And we actually did a very good job as coming together as a team, sticking to our game plans, remaining calm, playing tough defense, and going close to 100% all the time with frequent substitutions.
Our rewards included a couple of bottles of Sekt, which Sanni and Albrecht quickly made good use of at the awards ceremony:

And a small trophy in the shape of the head of Karl Marx:

Which brings me back to Chemnitz. Chemnitz is a city of about 250,000 about 45 minutes southwest of Dresden. I'd never been there before, but heard things about it, all of it bad. As in, basically a crappy place nobody would ever want to go. During East German times Chemnitz was named "Karl-Marx-Stadt" and was basically the quintessential communist DDR city. The trophy above is a replica of a giant stone head in the city:

As you can see, it's freakin' huge (see person at base). If this scene isn't communist, I don't know what is. Unfortunately, Chemnitz hasn't come a long way since reunification. My first impression was that is was a quite green city. Then I realized that was from trees and grass growing up through run down, abandoned buildings. Communist type buildings are everywhere, and most streets and buildings remain in a state of disrepair. Unemployment in Chemnitz is among the highest in Germany, and birth rate is the lowest. There are ongoing plans to restore the city center, but it will be a slow process.

but back to ultimate. Which I will never get used to saying. I don't know what hippie came up with this name, but I still cringe to say we're playing "ultimate frisbee". One nice thing is that it offers a nice chance to practice some sports photography:

These are from our regular Sunday games in the Grosse Garten. More pics are here.
Wow, long post....So I'll leave you with the aftermath of a long Saturday