Family visit to Munich

At the beginning of July my parents came to Germany for their first visit since touring the world in their early twenties. It was nice to finally show them life in Munich including bier gartens, the Alps, and my pint-sized apartment. Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate the entire time (sorry!) but I hope they had a nice time anyway. At the end of the visit my Tauji (uncle on my father's side) from India came - his first time ever outside of India! And even though he took a few German courses nearly half a century ago, he still managed to communicate. Hats off to him. Unfortunately my Mom took all of the pictures, but she was there too, believe me.

We had lunch with a distantly-related family friend living in Augsburg. Look - my father is actually smiling in this picture - no small feat.


These were taken on a trip to Schloss Linderhof, one of the 3 castles built by crazy King Ludwig II who bankrupted Bavaria with his love of castles built in hard-to-get-to places in the Alps. Unfortunately it poured the entire time, but was still picturesque.



My father wasn't too impressed by Ludwig's Taj Mahal, but imitation is the highest form of flattery right?

Finally a respite from the rain! This is the Venus Grotto, a custom built cave for Ludwig II to see Wagner's Tannhäuser opera, in which large parts of the action are set in a cave. The water is the stage and where the seats would normally be sits the orchestra. There is only one real seat which is, naturally, for the king. Supposedly it took days to heat in the winter and was one of the first buildings in Germany to use electric light bulbs. In the photo below you can only see the stage. I'd hate to have to rehearsals knee deep in water though.

My Mom liked the sheep on the side of the road we saw on the way back. The waterfall in the background is also pretty.



Finally some decent Munich weather to enjoy my local (50 m from my apartment!) biergarten. Prost!

Kletterwald (High ropes course)

This is just a short post on a very enjoyable institute-sanctioned field trip we had at my work. Basically it's supposed to be about spending time outside with your colleagues and developing friendships that will serve you well at work without all of the funny team-building exercises. It's also about having fun and ending the afternoon in a biergarten having worked up an appetite and feeling thirsty.

There were multiple options available, but I signed up for the Kletterwald outing (literally means climbing-forest, but is a ropes course through the trees). It was a ton of fun, a little bit of exercise and a great
test of balance and nerves.

A play on words for the name of the place. Those clever Germans!

A preview of part of the course:



Probably the most challenging parts were climbing up and down two hanging rope ladders. I wasn't lucky enough to have someone holding the bottom for me though!



This part was exhilarating; you step off a platform and are in freefall for a fraction of a second before swinging into this net which you have to grab a hold of. (That's me by the way)


More fun and rappelling down at the end of one section.

Füssen, Allgäu (Bavaria)

Well, this post was supposed to have been called “my fabulous Portugal vacation”, but after the disappointing loss of my passport not to mention everything else in my wallet I had to opt for a few days off closer to home. After three days of running around taking care of the bureaucratic mess (“Papierkram” in German) and many expensive phone calls to Canada and Portugal later, I could do nothing but wait for things to trickle in, in the coming weeks. Rather than (a) go back to work and lose my vacation days or (b) sit at home, I convinced Jeff - who was there for a visit - to come camping and it was great!

The weather was gorgeous, I got to watch a few extra German European Cup games with the home crowd, and got lots of hiking, biking shorebird watching and good food in (including Allgäuer Käsespätzle which is a kind of deluxe macaroni and cheese). It was one of those not-overly planned trips where we hopped off the train, found the info centre and randomly picked one of the two campsites accessible by public transportation, which meant a bus four times a day. Normally everyone who comes to Füssen does a simple day-trip to Neuschwanstein, the tourist-overrun castle which inspired Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom. My favourite moment came while getting on the bus with my backpack to the tiny town with the campsite. The bus driver immediately started yelling the only English she knew I think: “No castle! No castle!”. At least she seemed embarrassed when I told her in perfect German that I wasn’t interested in going to the castle but to the campsite.

Check-out the view from the campsite; you can even see the castle!

In the other direction was the lake, which I snapped a few pictures of during sunrise at 5 am (I just happened to have to use the facilities at the right time).

While waiting for the bus we killed time wandering around the quaint little town of Füssen. This is city hall (the “Rathaus”) with a view of the Alps in the background.

Think these “Schneeballe” (snowballs) look good? We thought so but they were shockingly bad - just deep-fried-dough tastes-like-nothing-but-oil with some cheap chocolate on top. Let this be my warning to you!

Neuschwanstein from the Marienbrücke (Marion’s bridge).

This was kind a random place we stumbled upon with our rental bikes. It’s the “path of the senses”. The idea is you walk around the path with bare feet, feeling and internalising the textures of the different surfaces beneath your feet. I think I’m too much of a wimp; I thought most of path was waaaay too sharp, especially the broken-glass stuff in blue!

Part deux of the foot senses path: step through progressive buckets of mud, clay, and some substance I couldn’t identify. Maybe it’s hard to read the expression on my face but I’m not really relishing the experience.

For distraction after the poky-path and mud-bath we checked out junior ski jumpers training on grass which was kind of cool to see.

Madrid: Glaciology Conference

Does anyone else see the humour in the above subject line? Yes well, even glaciologists with a passion for Antarctica deserve a conference in Spain once a while don’t they? I learned a lot about ice and ground penetrating radar, had seemingly neverending delicious tapas, and unfortunately was on the receiving end of the amazingly adept thieves they have in Madrid. The conference was a success but on my way back to the Madrid airport in the metro my purse with money, bank/credit cards and passport was stolen. Thank goodness I had a copy of my passport on me so that they let me on the plane, but it has been a huge hassle and huge expense getting everything replaced. I think it’s impossible to be vigilant 100% of the time (these guys are professionals), but I’ve learned my lesson on keeping everything together in one spot. Please learn from my mistakes! Hopefully it won’t cost you a vacation in Portugal like it did for me since no passport = no travel.

But enough dwelling on the negative; fortunately my stuff was stolen at the very end of my week in Madrid and I had a little time to enjoy the city. I arrived on a Sunday morning and had most of the day to go wandering around: I wanted to see the famous Prada museum, but this line-up convinced me otherwise:


Instead I went off to see the huge public park directly behind the museum which was pretty lively on a Sunday afternoon:


I noticed a curious phenomenon in my wanderings; Madrid parents seem to have a penchant for dressing their children identically. This is only one of about a dozen examples I saw and that I managed to capture on film. Even the Mom is into pink…

This was by far the best conference I’ve ever been to when it comes to the social program. Wednesday we only had a half-day until 1 pm and then took off for a day-trip to Toledo, a quaint little city with well-preserved old city walls, a cathedral and multiple historical synagogues:

The conference also had a fabulous banquet one evening where they drove us way out of town to a hacienda (ranch). Unfortunately I was too busy snapping tapas off of the plates the waiters came by with to take any pictures of the food, but the tapas and main course paella were delicious. They even make their own (very strong) brandy which they store in bottles inlaid into the ceiling of the wine cellar (I didn’t really get a good explanation of why). In addition to the food there was an impressive Arabian horse show, with the horses displaying some amazing crossing-over footwork. If that weren’t enough after the meal there was professional flamenco dancing and Spanish guitar. Olé!

Friedrichshafen, Germany

Sorry for the long drought! I’ve been busy for most of June and July with conferences and visitors, but here comes a series of catch-up posts to keep you informed of the ups – and downs – of my travels…more on that later. Just a quick congrats to Dev, Jeff, Lindsay and the rest of their team for clinching a spot for Canadian ultimate nationals, which will be held this year in Calgary. A bunch of my German teammates are off to Vancouver as well in the next week for the start of the World Championships; for anyone out there reading I’m pressing my thumbs for you guys! (German equivalent of crossing your fingers).

At the beginning of June I was at my third EUSAR conference (EUropean Synthetic Aperture Radar conference), held this time in Friedrichshafen in southern Germany directly next to Lake Constance, which for whatever strange reason has a completely different name in German – Bodensee – which literally means “ground lake”. The conference itself was really great, very specific to my topic, and a little bit like a reunion with many former Ottawa and Calgary colleagues in attendance. It was this conference four years ago which originally put me in contact with some Germans which lead to me coming over here. Makes me feel a little nostalgic!

The weather was pretty bad the whole week I was there – all the better to concentrate on the conference itself I guess, although I did have a lovely walk along the waterside there and back every day from my hotel to the conference hall and I managed to snap a few pictures.

Friedrichshafen is the home of the Zepplin. Similarly to Calgary which is plastered with multi-coloured cows, there are bright model Zepplins all over the place.

My hotel was beautiful and I had a wonderful huge room to myself. The only thing was that I needed to go up, across a terrace, and then down this treacherous staircase in the dark, in the rain, with heavy bags and fancy shoes. I thought I was going to slip and no one would find me until morning!