Mein fünfzigster Tag in Europa

Yes, that's right, today is my 50th day in Europe! Three days in Holland, a day in France, and all the rest in Germany! As expected, time is flying and I simply cannot grasp the fact that I have been working at Fraunhofer IBMT for over a month. Mind boggling.

Regardless of how natural my schedule has become, or how much I've improved in the lab, things continue to go wrong for my experiments. But hey, I guess that's the nature of the beast that is research. And besides, how could I have predicted that when it is sunny outside, DMSO has a greater effect on cells than when it is cloudy? Oh well, I still love my job!

Let me return briefly to this past weekend, which was mostly uneventful except for GERMANY WIPING THE FLOOR WITH ARGENTINA!! Also, I learned something:

Der Schwenker schwenkt den Schwenker auf dem Schwenker.



I have to admit that Saarland, with its little bits of crazy, is slowly growing on me. This picture shows a Schwenker (the one at the very end of the sentence). Funny story: this Schwenker reads, "Made in Canada". According to my colleague, that is because this type of grill can be used in a forest. I laughed.

Below is our little setup at my colleague's house to watch the game, drink, eat, watch the next game, repeat...for about 8 hours. Every time I pulled out my camera, everyone ran away, so I had to settle for a shot with a few people in the distant background.



RANDOM GERMAN FACT: The CAPS lock key on German keyboards does not only capitalize the letters, but also acts as a shift key does on the numbers, ie you get symbols. That blew my mind.