Beautiful Heidelberg

Last weekend my dear friend Isabella from Zürich came to visit me. And we had a fun time. Three months have almost passed by since I had to say good-bye and left her appartement (I stayed there in my last weeks in Zürich).
Since she has never been around we did the big tourist programme.
Well, Friday night was time for chatting. We had Flammkuchen, Zweibelkuchen and New Wine- all special foods for late summer/ early autumn in this region of Germany. And we watched some hilariuos Margaret Cho....
Saturday we all went for a little run before we hit the town and did some shoppings and of course we went to Heidelberg Castle.

It was Bills Birthday and we all met at Tokyo Sushi (THE sushi place to be ;-) ...) in Mannheim and had a good time eating and talking.
Sunday we had a little brunch at Todd's and went with Tony to the "Altes Pumpwerk" in Mannheim where D. Brixy had a little venue to show his new art circle "Eine runde Sache".
Time passed by to fast once again and Isabella left Sunday afternoon.

Dissertation

For almost 3 years now I ve been working on my dissertation.
A clinical study is involved and I reported about it earlier (check archives in February and March).
Finally, we do have first results and showed them to the public at the 56th annual meeting of the German Association for Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Berlin. We did a poster and presented our work in the poster fair and in a short discussion. I had to take the night train on Tuesday to be there Wednesday morning. It happens that my mother was in Berlin as well and we spent some time together before I went to the Congress Center and met with my collegues for the Womens University Hospital.

Everything was way shorter and less troubled than I expected. But we "succeeded" - a smooth presentation and that was what counts in the end.
It was only a very brief intermezzo in Berlin for me. The same day, I had to take the last train home , was in bed past 2 a.m. and got up at 6 a.m. to go to work again...

Königstuhl

The beginning of September was under the sign of the KÖNIGSTUHL (= King's chair). That's the mountain (uhm okay maybe more hill?!) on which Heidelbergs Castle was erected.
One weekend we did the Volksmarch and took the 22 km tour joined by Max, Michelle and friend. The same evening we had a little barbeque and people coming over to play "dirty uno" with us...
The other weekend we did the 8,8 km Königstuhl run. I succeeded in 49 minutes and we had a nice picknick in the sun having reached the top. We also had dinner with Bill and Heidi at their house that weekend....

Her MADGE-esty

I had tickets for the Madonna concert in Düsseldorf early in August, but couldnt go due to the changed schedule of my grandpas celebration for his 80iest birthday.
So we tried our luck to get tix in Amsterdam while we were there and the second hand market works almost everywhere... :-)

We got great seats and enjoyed her show...
I loved "Get Together" on stage, though its not my favorite song. "Sorry", "Ray of Light" and "Paradise" were amazing as well!
"Live to Tell" with her very controversary discussed appearence on the cross was probably the highlight of the show.

However, I have to say I do like her latest album Confessions and the disco groove but she shouldnt have tried to make old songs of her like "Lucky Star" sound like a new contemporary... Anyway we are waiting for new stuff to come - hopefully soon!!

Amsterdam

The weekend of the 2nd till 4th of September we spent in Amsterdam.
Though so close, it was only my second time in the Netherlands. And my first time in Amsterdam. So we did a lot of touristy sight seeing including a diamonds cuttery and an exhibition about Rembrandt.

Artic Circle

One of those days, we went on a guided tour. We flew from Fairbanks about 60 minutes north. We crossed the Artic circle (very unspectacular- but we got a certificate afterwards for having done so) and on our way we also crossed the Yukon River (obove, right) that was famous when the gold rush started in Alaska.

We landed on ground in Coldfoot, 280 miles away from the next supermarket and drove to Wiseman- a 13 people settlement in the middle of no-where, about 53 south of the point where trees stopp growing.


Very unique and very special people there...