Hawaii is a strange and wonderful place.

After the massive snowstorm that we had in Minneapolis (and subsequent bone-chilling temperatures), I was pretty happy to have the chance to travel to Honolulu, Hawaii to Pacifichem to give a talk. Of course, all of my flights were delayed, and the crossing from Seattle to Honolulu was, according to my extremely chipper captain, "the worst crossing I've had in several years" due to all of the turbulence. But, I did make it, and it totally could've been worse.

On Tuesday, we woke up with the sun (and the delivery trucks under our window) and decided to hit up Starbucks and walk from our hotel up to Diamond Head. The weather was incredibly pleasant (80 F and sunny), and we got to walk by the beach for some of the way. Once we got there, we discovered that the trails were all closed for maintenance, but we still had a pretty view and had our picture taken with the sign.

For the afternoon, we took a long-ish bus ride to Kailua Beach which is a quieter beach on a different side of the island. Waikiki is really a zoo, so it was nice to get out of the city and to a beach with lots fewer people. We swam in the ocean and bobbed in the waves and enjoyed watching some ocean out-rigger canoe team race back and forth.

Today, my University of Minnesota advisor Bill Arnold was giving a talk at the conference, so I left my hotel bright and early to grab a coffee and his talk. The walk should have taken me 20 minutes, so of course I wandered around for two hours before finally making it to the Convention Center. (The last 45 minutes my coworker Megan was giving me directions from her Droid!) I apparently have issues with directions.

I had to work on my talk this afternoon, since I present tomorrow morning, but late this afternoon Megan and I went to the Waikiki Beach and swam until sunset. This beach was much more crowded, but the waves were also wilder and more exciting. I stayed in for quite a long time, and I can still feel the waves, even hours later. It's funny to pick the chemists out from the crowd- even on the beach you can tell. Some people just look like professors. I overheard one girl say, "This is the best day of my life! And I'm working!"

Hawaii is great. Waikiki is a little too... tacky and over-contrived for me, but the warmth and flowers and sun and beaches and scenery really are nice, and once you get out of the city, it gets much nicer. It is really weird to walk around a big city and to see people barefoot and shirtless and in swimsuits and hauling surf boards all of the time, right next to people in business suits. Also, all of the Christmas decorations seem a little out of place. And we went to a restaurant/bar last night and had to get wristbands to signify that we were above 21 years old, only to have the live band serenade us with "Silent Night". I am pretty sure that I never would have thought to put beer and "Silent Night" together. Hawaii is a strange place. 

I have my presentation tomorrow morning, so I have obtained explicit walking directions to the nearest shuttle stop so that I do not miss my own talk. (Knock on wood.) Wish me luck!

Home for the Holidays.

I guess this is a little delayed, but I made it home to Minnesota on Monday. My last week in Zurich was a whirlwind of Thanksgiving celebration, packing, dinner parties, meetings, a theater production of Heidi, and work, which made for a lovely last week in Switzerland.

So, now I am home for the holidays. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my family, and today we set up the Christmas tree! I am looking forward to celebrating the Advent season with my family and at my church. In the time that I am back in Minnesota:

1) I will watch my little sister graduate from college!
2) I will move back to my parents' house.
3) I will go to Hawaii to give a talk at a conference and spend more time in the plane than in Hawaii.
4) I will pack. And pack some more.
5) I will see friends and family. And my dearest puppy.
6) I will miss the public transportation system in Switzerland as I try to navigate life here without a car. I've already gotten stranded once this week!
7) I will revel in the Christmas season!
8) I will enjoy seeing the sun. And hopefully do some nordic skiing.
9) I will keep on learning German. So that I can say something besides "I have a small German car."
10) I will work on writing my paper. And moving lab stuff. Again.

My plan is to return to Switzerland in mid-January, when my sub-lease on an apartment in Zurich starts. I'm happy to spend the holidays in Minnesota with my family, but I'm also looking forward to moving back to Zurich and diving in to life and work there.

So, for now, tchuss! I wish you very happy holidays!

What I've been doing outside of work.

Really, not much.

In these last few weeks before I return to Minnesota, I have been working a ton in an attempt to finish a project, start a paper, wrap up things so I can leave them for two months and get things set for my return in January. Needless to say, this has been a tall order, but I'm making steady progress. I'm out of the lab now and mostly working on writing a paper. Yay!

Getting all of this work done now will mean that my time in Minnesota can be spent writing a paper instead of in the lab, with more ability to focus on moving and seeing all of my dear family and friends before I leave again. Somewhat luckily, the weather hasn't been that great, so working more (including weekends) hasn't been as terrible a fate as it could have been.

However, last weekend I was able to take the weekend to see my dear friend Aurore in Strasbourg. She is a professor at the University of Strasbourg. It was so nice to hang out with her and to just relax for a weekend. We slept in, walked around Strasbourg for most of the day, cooked delicious meals together, watched movies, and generally had a lovely time. I also got to see her labs and university- I always think it is interesting to compare labs and universities between countries... The weather was super nice, and we even had a picnic outside in short sleeves on Sunday (right after Minneapolis got hit with a foot of snow...).

One of the funniest things of the weekend was that there was a Switzerland fair set up in the main square of Strasbourg, complete with alp horns and fondue! It was to promote winter tourism to Switzerland, and I found it funny that I couldn't even leave Switzerland behind for one weekend.

Welcome to the Switzerland fair!

This is my last week here (for now), and mostly life is going to be a whirlwind of packing and organizing and taking care of those little details that always come up. I am looking forward to going home and seeing my family, but I am also looking forward to my return here.

Picnic outside!

Strasbourg cathedral.

Strasbourg.

Halloween Weekend.

Last weekend was Halloween weekend, which is not a huge holiday here in Switzerland. However, there are enough of us Americans here that we had a quorum for a party on Friday evening. Costumes were mandatory. Of course, finding a costume in a foreign country where everything is freakishly expensive is rather a challenge. First of all, I didn't bring many clothes along for just three months, so I was already limited in what color palette I could choose. Second of all, I had no idea where to find a crafty store in which I could obtain supplies for whatever wondrous costume I could imagine. Third, I didn't really want to spend money for a Halloween costume, since I'm really not that enthusiastic about Halloween. Hence, I worked with what I had and decided to dress up as the Minneapolis landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry. (Props to my roommate Kara for the inspiration on this one- she dressed up as this last year, with much more success, I might add.) I wore a pink fleece hat, fixed a brown pipe cleaner "cherry stem" to the top of my hat, and then taped a spoon to my hat. I also had a "Do not climb on the sculpture" sign, which I taped to myself. Super classy, all in all.

On the way to the party, I stopped at the Coop (grocery store) to pick up some wine to bring to the party. At the checkout, I was carded! The legal age to buy wine here is 16, by the way. Do I look like I'm 16!? Even when I was 16, I didn't look like I was 16! I was quite amused... [I should probably clarify that I was not wearing my costume at this time; I changed at the party. If I had been wearing my costume, my guess is that being carded would have been the least of my worries.]

On Saturday I went in to work. Lame, I know, especially since the weather was nice, but I am running out of time here (I leave in less than 3 weeks!), and there is still a lot of research to be done. I am hoping to get enough experiments done that I can be writing most of the time I am back in Minnesota. Since the instrument that I use is in very high demand, sometimes it's easier to come in on the weekends, when there are fewer people around.

On Sunday I went to a vernissage/concert with Lisbeth, where one of her friends was the singer, and afterwards we took a walk along the Rhine River. The walk was quite beautiful. Fall here is definitely different from fall in Minnesota. It is much more mellow and leisurely. I think that most of my memories of scenery from this trip have a yellow and bronze glow from the fall colors. I am pretty sure that the leaves started changing a week or two after I arrived, and they are still changing now- 8 weeks later! While fall here doesn't have the joyous explosion of riotous color that fall in Minnesota has, nor a definite "peak" in color, it is definitely more enduring. I think that I like both versions, probably because I love fall!


Hike along the Rhine

Another reason that me and Switzerland get along so well is that they take Christmas really seriously here. Extremely seriously. Stores have had Christmas decor since the start of October, and grocery stores are already stocking Christmas-time foods and sweets! I have had Christmas music stuck in my head for a week now- a fact which I am choosing to blame on the Christmas enthusiasm that I see here. I'm already getting excited for Christmas, I have to admit it.


Also, related to Christmas, did you know that chestnuts are a real thing? After growing up singing "Chestnuts roasting on a open fire...," I had never even seen chestnuts or understood why you would roast them. Or sing about them, really. In the early 1900s, the US experienced some sort of chestnut blight which basically wiped out the entire population of chestnuts, explaining why they really aren't that common in the US. Here in Switzerland (and probably most of Europe), they are a fall staple and are everywhere! There are heissi maroni (roasted chestnut) stands almost anywhere you go. There are special desserts made out of maroni called vermicelli (among others). Maroni show up in many dishes- pastas, risotto, roasted alongside meat, etc. People even go on vacations to hike and hunt for maroni in the woods! Apparently we Americans just don't know what we are missing in these chestnuts! Also, for the record, apparently Christmas is a little late to be roasting fresh chestnuts. Really, who knew?

Alex and Aurore's Visit.

This past weekend I had a pair of visitors: Alex and Aurore! They are friends from France who I met in Minnesota- I used to work with Aurore at the University of Minnesota. Aurore lives in Strasbourg, which is about 2.5 hours away, and Alex is in Grenoble, which is more like 5 or 6 hours away. In fact, because of the strikes in France, the trains weren't running, so Alex had an even longer journey. He had to drive a few hours to Geneva (in Switzerland) before he could catch a train to meet Aurore and I in Zürich!

They came in late and later on Friday evening, so we slept in on Saturday and had a late brunch before getting in the car (Aurore drove from Strasbourg) and heading to Stein am Rhein, which is a cute little town close to the Rhine Falls. We walked around the town and along the river for a while, and also purchased the necessary supplies for fondue, which I can now make quite skillfully, if I do say so myself.

Scenes from Stein am Rhein

We then crossed the border into Germany and visited the border town of Konstanz. The town was SUPER busy- all of the parking garages had absolutely no spaces open! This is a result of the high prices in Switzerland; many people go across the border to Germany to shop for groceries and other things on the weekends, usually saving quite a bit of money in the process. Probably half of the cars we saw in Konstanz had Swiss license plates! We wandered around the town and down to the lake, and we took a beautiful walk along the lake right at sunset before heading back home and having cheese fondue for dinner.

Scenes from Konstanz

Hello, man wearing a WISCONSIN SWEATSHIRT.

The weather took a significant turn for the worse on Sunday and Monday: both days were rainy, windy and about 40 F and sometimes sleeting, which is not conducive to walking outside and seeing Zürich, which was our plan. Both days we walked around Zürich: touring ETH (where I work), visiting the Fraumünster and the Grossmünster, wandering around the old streets, enjoying a coffee in Starbucks (my first time since I've been here!), admiring the view from Lindenhof, walking the Bahnhofstrasse, strolling by the Zürichsee, seeing the Niederdorf neighborhood, meeting our friend Sarah for tapas, etc. In general we could walk for an hour or two outside before retreating to somewhere warm for a while, but still managed to have a nice time together, despite the dismal weather.

Scenes from Zürich

View from the conference room in my building. Usually you can see the snow-covered Alps.

Grossmünster.

Fraumünster.

Walking by the lake.

View from Lindenhof.

Of course, it has been nothing but sunny since they left, but what can you do? It was a fun visit, and I'm looking forward to more, since we are relatively close to each other!