winter interlude in Heidelberg

It's the night after Christmas and all through Saarland, not a creature is stirring ... except me. I'm off to Heidelberg for a visit with my new German friends.

The last time I saw Heidelberg, I was a teenager. It hasn't changed - except perhaps for a MacDonalds or two. Birgit and Uli live in a lovely old apartment in the midst of tiny cobbled streets in the old city under the castle. We took a nice stroll along the river Neckar with their dogs, toured the pedestrian malls teeming with after-last-minute shoppers and enjoyed hot spiced orange juice in a local pub to warm up.

Eating was the order of the day. Birgit made salmon-leek soup, Belgian waffles and fondue. The dogs were desolate they weren't included.
post: Uli and Birgit are now the proud parents of twin boys!

the candles are lit

It's Christmas Eve again in Saarland. This year, we had a bit of snow, but it evaporated into the fog. (I've been enjoying the BC snow vicariously though :-) Santa is clambering up the Fensters and there's a giant reindeer peaking out from a balcony below me. Looks like an invasion.

There is a new addition to my Temperate Jungle. It's taken this long to find a living, breathing thyme plant, which is about to contribute to a Christmas dinner.
I hope you're well and enjoying the season, wherever you are.

Fröhliche Weihnachten aus Saarland!

Help! I've fallen into a black hole and I can't get out!

Slight gap between postings here - but I have a great reason. I'm on the job-hunting-path. Focus, focus, focus! Except for when I'm Christmas-shopping - so do you want your Christmas card or do you want to read about why I haven't sent it yet?

In the meantime, if I don't find an amazing job in Space, I may have to turn to a life of crime.

More later ... I promise.

The 3 I's of Cooking

I took my international education into the kitchen this weekend - with a recipe from Mom in Canada and a few added ingredients from Kathleen in England, my German oven turned out a respectable Chocolate Zucchini Loaf.

winter craft

This week was winter in Saarland - a week of frosty mornings that sent me searching for my mitts. The landlord fired up the boiler and bled the radiators. It also put my knitting project into high gear.

What started as a boa scarf pattern turned into a fuzzy snake, seen here basking in the sun after it's first meal.

After a few more meals of water-filled ziploc bags, it's fit for service as a draft dodger!

super week!

At long last, my ISU graduation ring arrived. To the Moon!

hot off the presses

Here is the latest working version of our bionic bee beam poster v.6. Equation is finally pretty! Changed translation text colour. (see old versions here.)

Criticism welcome! next: plan to make drop shadows for things on the path.

artist-in-training

The work-of-the-day called for *gasp* artistic skills - I needed an uncluttered graphic background for my poster, but couldn't find quite what I needed in google images. So I downloaded Inkscape, an open source graphics program, and tackled a fairly complex tutorial.

ta da! "My first computer graphic"

That was actually fairly straight-forward. Download Inkscape for Windows or linux and give one of the tutorials a try yourself! This is like fun!

Ikea addiction

I went to Ikea Saturday. I found everything I need - bar chairs for my kitchen table, a lamp for over the table, a long mirror for the wall, seat cushions for the bench ...

... and a little overpot for The Avocado That Ate Saarbrücken, so it feels like one of my little jungle family.









I thought I might have another plant that could use a pot, so I picked up 1 more
... and I couldn't resist this little grassy plant ... so that's another overpot. And then Manuela found these amazing collapsible vases. I don't like cut flowers, but now here are some underwater plants that would look great in the bathroom!
I almost made it out the door, but Florien led us through a section with ... coconut palms! Back to the sale section for a really big overpot ... and while I was there, these other coconut-shaped pots look so cool.

So I got everything I needed at Ikea, and a couple plants.

I can stop anytime ... really.


Welcome to the Temperate Tropic.

Tea in Tadley

ahhhh ... a proper cup of British tea. It is worth the 11-hour bus-plane-train-tube-train-car ride to Pond Cottage on Old Vyne Lane.

What is more British than a thatched roof estate in an endless maze of country lanes, dogs obediently at your side, lazing in the sun by the pool?
Having a nice lie-in till the sun peaks out ...
... starting the day with fresh-made (Canadian) blueberry muffins and more tea ... ending the day in the hot tub with mango juice.

ahhh - the Good Life

Oh look - llama!

Fastest snail in Saarland

In the blink of an eye, I have been teleported from Old Saarbrucken to Malstatt. Not only did my friends get everything hauled downstairs, packed into 2 cars and hauled up 4 stories in 2 hours flat, I had enough daylight to construct and install everything!

Presenting - Snail Manor 3, The Comfy Bed

For the rest of the layout, check out the album.

Room with a view

Apparently, I can ask for more luck than finding a great new apartment on short notice. My new internet service comes with free cable tv for 6 months and a €200 store credit for Conrad, so I bought a new digital camera, and I've got something left over toward a big-screen tv. So now I can give you something to look at:

The bedroom with tenant, tea and a good book
And as promised, you can see France from my front windows.
Click here for more photos.

Beaming

I can't wish for better luck this week... except maybe if my camera didn't choose the exact moment I walked in my new front door to quit.

This would be the floor.
You'll have to use your imagination for the rest. My new apartment is another loft - this time overlooking the university where I work and France. I have the whole floor to myself in a renovated 1927 apartment. And I'm a story above the last place. It has a full-size built-in kitchen, including dishwasher and oven.

It still has beams, the original wood floors and white stucco walls, so it is very bright. You'll just have to trust me on that.

The Quest

I am on a quest ... for something I don't even know the name of in English. Anybody know what to call this widget? It's for the plastic-thingy-for-scrubbing-your-scalp-in-the-shower - thank goodness for the internet.

cité de l'espace

I'm in Paris for the 3rd time this year - this time for the IAF Symposium Celebrating 10 Years of the International Space Station.

(go to the album by clicking on the photo)

Over the 2-day event, I had time to catch up with a couple classmates from the ISU summer session '05 and meet a few new contacts in human space flight. I was introduced by the President of ISU to the former president of the Canadian Space Agency, Mac Evans .I chatted with cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev who flew to the ISS a Soviet and landed a Russian. And I met Dr. Ron White, an expert in Mars mission health issues from the USRA.
New JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa tells me the hardest part of astronaut training is 48 hours extreme cold survival training in Siberia - I hope surviving 8 years in Edmonton counts :-D

After noshing down with the notables in the 7th floor reception (looking out on sunset over the Eiffel Tower!), I had a few free hours to explore another neighbourhood of Paris around l'Abbée de St. Cluny. The Musée National du Moyen Age in the abbey is hosting an exhibit 'Reflets d'Or' on metallic ceramic coatings thru the middle ages.

The best part was laying back with a baguette next to a fountain in the shady midaeval courtyard. Ah, Paris.

(click for more pics)

Visitor from Space

This weekend, my friend Maria visited me from Leiden, Holland, en route to Sweden! We ate (home-made Caribbean shrimp soup) and walked around sunny SB and ate (Belgian pommes Chez Tin Tin) and talked about work and ate (whole grilled fish and plantains at the Africa Bistro in my neighbourhood.)





We even went Nordik walking with the usual Sunday gang, stopping on the way home at a mariachi festival where we ate fresh burritos ... to grill Norwegian salmon on a Canadian cedar plank.

... and still had room to eat roast marshmallows :-)

What a great end to the week - I also made it to Round 2 of the Great Canadian Astronaut Search.

It's dead, Jim!

This is the what happens to a jungle when you don't water it for 3 weeks in a tropical climate a.k.a. Germany with global warming. That was once an avocado tree, the scraggly grey remains of lavender ... and some sort of white flowery thing drooping over the empty watering can.

Luckily I got the unkillable varieties - after 1 day with water *ta da!* Presto digitalis They're all back to their former height. They should make you have a license before they sell you plants.

It's Alive!

Just when you thought I fell off the edge of the Earth, I have re-appeared in another location. I just got back from soggy Vancouver. I think I left there several days ago, but with the 8-hour time zone shift, I have no idea what day it is exactly. One airport looks just like another.

I took a sleepless red-eye flight that landed me in Gatwick, decided to save a pound by taking the new Easybus (horrible misnomer there) to Victoria station, waited endlessly in the Tranportation Information line-up (another oxymoron) to find out there is indeed a bus to the Globe, but it takes an hour sic to go 2 miles, so spent 4 pounds for the Tube and still had to run over the Thames and find the Globe. *phew* I did make the afternoon showing of King Lear a.k.a. the Longest Play Ever Written About Nothing Exciting At All. I managed not to knock myself out in the standing-only yard. I think that's me there.
Then there was another airport, and another plane to a field near Frankfurt and another bus to somewhere in Saarland, and finally a taxi home to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream of the Longest Way to Go From Point A to Point B.

Aye, there's the rub. If it's Monday, I think I was supposed to be at work today - but when I woke up, the sun was on the wrong side of the bed, so I had dinner instead. More pics to come ... after I've reset the clock.

*sniff*

After 3 weeks of over-eating, shopping and cruising around in a not-red GT convertible, I'm taking off across the Big Pond again. Who's gonna miss who? Bye Mom, bye Dad!

lazy summer days

30°C ...

muggy ...

nothing is moving
very fast.

Perfect book-reading- on-the-backyard-bench weather.

The roses like it too.

zu Hause

Picture postcard pretty, but it's time to go home. The landscape is all rain-washed green on the short train ride north to Saarland.

And now I'm walking up familiar stairs, hearing our local woodpecker and dozens of spring-happy warblers. Saarbrücken is definitely a more relaxed pace. But wait - what's lurking around the door? Is it ... nooooooo#/*$&!

Strolling around Strasbourg

Last night, I was serenaded to sleep by a flotist hiding in a shop doorway playing Bolero counterpoint with the raucous hymn of the footballers.

There is always a parade somewhere in Centreville - today I think the Turks won something, but their car collapsed in the celebration.

I woke up this morning to the clamour of church bells - my room for the weekend overlooked the Strasbourg cathedral, from whence issued intonations and organ music.

Sadly, the Class of 2008 are a bunch of sleepyheads, so I am off exploring Strasbourg on my own this morning. zChocolade chaud and croissants in a café, listening to the sing-song of the regulars debating communism in Polish or Czech.

The cathedral looks almost naked without the scaffolding. There's the interminable strong wind blowing around the base, and it's time for me to leave again.

Le French

This weekend, I am reminded how different the French and German cultures are, in spite of, or maybe because of being close neighbours.

Germans treat regulations as a second language. The French consider them a suggestion.











The Germans use bicycles sedately to commute or wander along a city bike path.
The French have a major love-hate relationship with the bicycle - they ride through red lights, run down predestrians (the second national sport) and twist bike wheels up like bretzles for fun late at night.

Strasbourg bicycle art

The Germans just enacted a smoking ban in all public buildings. For the French, that is passé, a fait accompli - they already have non-smoking rules, merci bien, and they really don't care. Bien sûr, but coffee comes with a cigarette!

Yuri's Mini-Space-Break

I am just kicking back in my old haunts of Strasbourg, France for the weekend. This is the 37th anniversary of the first man in Space, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. And where better to spend this weekend that enjoying the Yuri's Night festivities with International Space University Masters Class of 2008 on a riverboat!

Last night we listened to Professor Nikolai Tolyarenko talk about his personal experiences with Gagarin and the latest generation ISU Masters class band (loved their rendition of Fly Me to the Moon).

Tonight, the big party is on la Rafiot, a converted wooden barge on the canal. So I'm getting ready by having my hair done at a French salon and relaxing in the sun with a cup of tea looking over at the cathedral.

Dual use for a beret