Phoenix

Speaking of France, if you don't know the band Phoenix, you should really really take a look.
This is easily my favorite band that I've never seen live. There's nothing better than goofy looking rock stars with great voices/songwriting. Check out these Acoustic/Stripped Down performances by Phoenix:

1901

Phoenix - 1901 from KEXP RADIO on Vimeo.

"Lisztomania" and "Armistice" in the same session are also amazing with Thomas Mars' voice just booming out there, but here are some different recordings for variety.....

Lisztomania/One time too many

Take Away Show: PHOENIX part2 from vincent moon / temporary areas on Vimeo.

By the way, if you don't know about La Blogoteque shows, you should also really check it out. If one of your favorite bands is on here, you will REALLY enjoy it.

Armistice



All these tunes were from Phoenix's last album.

Paris

Back in May I went to Paris for a long weekend. It was my first time to Paris, my first time to France in fact. I never had a great desire to visit Paris. I don't know exactly why, it just kind of seemed like it would be extremely touristy, and as an American I always just heard of how much the French hate American tourists. So it never really appealed to me. Plus, I always figured I'd get to Paris at some point in life, and I should be spending my efforts while living in Europe going to places like Krakow or Istanbul or Reykjavik. But I kind of had an opportunity I couldn't pass up when a friend of mine from Paris, a bit shocked I'd never been to France, suggested tagging along to Paris on one of her relatively frequent trips back.

One of the things I knew I'd like was the food. Ariane had looked up the bakeries in Paris that had won various awards in the last year (e.g. best croissant, best baguette, etc.) so that we could hit them and have a sampling. The first thing we did when I got into town was hit an award-winning bakery and sample the macarons (not to be confused with macaroons). I'd never had or even heard of these things before, but my goodness they were good. Sweet and bursting with a variety of flavors, and so soft and creamy. I can't even describe them, and apparently these were of a different class than the average macarons around Paris.

Following the obligatory boat-tour around Paris, we met a friend of Ariane's for dinner at a little place near where I was staying. Although I had recently converted into a pseudo-vegetarian, I took advantage of one of the many exceptions I've allowed myself in meat-eating (It's okay in foreign countries, as not to miss out on culinary cultural experiences), and ordered a big steak. When the waiter wanted to know how I wanted it done I said "medium rare" not wanting to overcook a great steak. Neither the waiter nor Ariane could translate what that meant, so Ariane ordered for me. Then she told me she got me the most well-cooked option. I was upset, thinking I would not be getting a real French experience with an overcooked steak. Then she told me the translation was "pink". She ordered hers "bloody", the middle option, which left "blue" for the least cooked. But what I got would be by all American standards "rare", and it was PERFECT.





For lodging Ariane knew about a little hotel in the middle of everything that was super-cheap. It was totally no frills (think shared toilet, stained carpet, creaky stairs), not even their own website. But something like 40 euros a night in the middle of Paris. And this was the view from my room:


That's Notre Dame cathedral in the background.


While in Paris I of course went to see the über-famous Eiffel Tower. I did not know the tower was right next to a river, I guess it's never in in any of the photos. Behold:

And then of course I had to have a photo of me and the tower:


And some more images I thought turned out nice:

One of the requests I had while in Paris as part of the culinary experience was to try escargot.
So we met Ariane's sister and found a nice little place and ordered a whole mess of stinky frenchy goodness:

The highlight of course being the escargot. It was actually pretty tasty. Well, rather it tasted like something rubbery baked into an overwhelming garlic butter sauce, which was tasty. But I'd totally get it again. Funnily, more than a couple customers in the busy restaurant commented that they were a bit surprised to see three young people eating a lunch of stinky cheese, random raw meat plate and escargot - and more so because one of us was clearly American - so atypical!

That night a tight group of Ariane's friends that all went to school together had a little party - I guess on the occasion that Ariane was back in Paris and they were all around - that was fun. Although I have to say I expected a party of young intellectual 20- and 30-something Parisians in the middle of Paris to be the essence of sophistication. On the contrary, this was all about cheap booze, 7-up shots, loud pop music, potato chips, etc...also fun!
I have some funny movies from that night, but as I don't speak French I don't know if there's anything unsuitable or implicating in there so I won't release them into the internets....

I did a bit more touristy stuff - took a walk around - went into Notre Dame cathedral - and of course had to go into the Louvre, where I saw the Mona Lisa:

which was most interesting for the mass of cell phone cameras held over people's head trying to get a snapshot. Why would you want a crappy cell phone snapshot of the Mona Lisa behind glass when there are hundreds of high-quality photographs online? I don't know, I guess to somehow prove you were there? But then why not get in the picture yourself? It all boggles the mind.

What was quite crazy was Napoleon IIIs lounge:


For which it turns out there are also tons of online images, but it's my blog, so pffffft. Plus that photo ain't so bad....And finally, returning to the food-theme, on the last day we went to the bakery that won the award for the best croissant in Paris, and got a couple of raspberry(?) croissants, yummmmmmmm.

Balkon Bilder

I finally broke down and set up a Flickr photostream, to have a nice way to share photos with a reasonable viewing interface. I'll keep my Shown'd gallery for a small set of my favorite pics, but this way I can share more than a handful at a time.




Here's the first set, these are all photos I took on my little balcony garden, where in addition to a small variety of vegetables and herbs, I have a little Lantana bush, because it reminds me of Austin/Texas. They are all of two bees and a puddle of water on a dead leaf.

These were taken with a Nikon 60mm AF micro nikkor lens on my D300s. On a 35mm SLR this lens gives 1:1 reproduction of the image in size (i.e. the size of the image on the negative is the actual size), so in front of a 12 MP DX format sensor you can get some potentially really close up images.

Edinburgh

I'm still delaying on posting about my trip to Paris because I have several pictures and stories to go with them and I've been lazy. But if Jeff can post 4 times in 2 weeks, I can drag something out this month. I was in Edinburgh last week for a conference. I didn't take many photos, but here are a few from the Castle. The weather was nice. But the way the locals were freaking out about it made me not want to live in Edinburgh. It seems like a fun town with lots of beautiful architecture and history, which I get a kick out of. But if it seemed a bit gray and dreary on the best, sunniest day of the year, I'm wondering what the norm is.

this was a dog cemetary for soldiers' dogs in the castle

Finally, this reminded me of the beer situation back at home in Saxony....

World Tour 2010

Already halfway through world tour 2010, which currently has 8 countries on 3 continents, half for science, and half for pleasure....I would like to have a few pictures up from each of them eventually, here is one from Mallorca....

April
Mallorca, Spain (Research Symposium and Lab Retreat)
Vienna, Austria (Mitosys Scientific Meeting)

May
Paris, France (fun)
New York City, USA (Cell Cycle Meeting and visit Colby)

June
Heidelberg, Germany (Microtubules Scientific Meeting)
Edinburgh, Scotland (Aneuploidy Scientific Meeting)

July
Istanbul, Turkey (meeting Mom)

August
Moscow/St. Petersburg, Russia (with friends)

to be added.....Prague? Athens? Amsterdam?

The Elbe - 2006 and 2010

Photos from when the Elbe flooded in 2006 (not to be confused with the all-time record flood of 2002), preceded by photos from 2010 from the same spots. It was not trivial to align these shots taken 4 years apart and with different cameras. They should sit side-by-side if you expand your browser.

View from Albertbrücke looking West from the South side

Southeast corner of Albertbrücke, looking Northeast. I should have taken the non-flooded picture when the Flohmarkt (flea market) is there in full-effect.

Looking toward the Fährgarten biergarten. The entire biergarten was under water.

Looking East from the south bank. Notice the Waldschlößchenbrücke being assembled in the 2010 shot.

Trabi Stunt

This movie gets a lot of play 'round these parts ("East overtakes West"), I would just like to point out that the stunt driver there is yours truly.

Old roads

I like it when old cobblestones peek through the asphault, as if somebody someday is going to look at it and say, "Oh my goodness, look at this old beautiful cobblestone road underneath this asphault" and then rip it all off like carpet over a long-lost hardwood floor.

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: