Bears!

Back in Vienna, the world-wide Buddy Bear exhibition had made a stop. You can find out more about the bears, and the idea they represent here. No Stephen Colbert am I. Indeed I'm a big fan of bears. Below are some of my favorites.

Cuban Cigar Bear

The Moldovian bear answers the burning question:
Where the Heck is Moldova?

UK & US Bears

They were all pretty cool in one way or another. It was quite a fun exhibit.

Zagreb

We got into Zagreb, Croatia's capitol, around rush hour. Despite the crowded conditions, we were able to locate a Rough Guide recommended hotel for the evening fairly quickly. After some parking instructions, we were able to secure a room normally meant for three. The Rough Guide says make your reservations early. as this place is a favorite. No doubt the big bonuses are its sophisticated beauty and high speed internet connection. It didn't hurt that we had a big flat screen TV in the room either. The return to technology was making cheese quite happy and I finally found out my beloved Buckeyes had beaten Texas.

Techno-geek approved

I think Cheese was happy to be back in the familiar surroundings of an older Europeon city, with public transportation and coffee shops every twenty feet. I think this picture gives the best feeling of the place, more so than any I took. We hiked around quite a bit and finally found a bar recommended by the Rough Guide and had several local brews. If we'd been on top of our game, we probably would have asked a couple of the local ladies who seemed curious to join us, but alas we just enjoyed the beer. Also, we were in a german car, and the locals seemed to enjoy a more traditional type of vehicle:

Crusing Zagreb Style

(Having spent several hours driving, riding on, or trailing behind a tractor, I'm allowed to make that joke. And make no mistake, chicks dig farm equipment!)

Sadly we didn't have time to stick around the following morning to check out much of the town's historical site, or learn much about what actually happened there damage-wise during the war. There did seem to be a number of buildings that had some external damage of some source.

Back to Vienna...

Return of the Olive

We left the beauty of the Pula and sadly headed back towards responsibility, albeit a day later than we told Cheese's boss. This was some incredibly green and unspoiled country, made even more striking by the clear sunny sky. This is one of the things I live for, The Drive: good tunes, good company and the world laid out in splendor just for you to drive by and appreciate and no place to be in a hurry.

If you look at the map of the Croatian province we were in (Pazin) you can see a big river that cuts into the country side around Rasa. Along this river was set a huge power plant:


It did remind me a little of the Kyger Creek or the Simpsons-like Gavin plants I grew up around, but not enough to bother me. Where the river met up with the sea, there were some stunning views. There was also a little circular restaurant on property that would be worth millions in the states. Being the only place for miles, they really gauged the customers. I mean it cost cheese and I nearly $10 to have some beer & pizza (olive included) and gaze out upon this:

Million dollar views, $4 dollar pizza

If you look close you can see a sailboat in there. Go enjoy this before some developer gets his grubby hands on it.

Crashing Croatia

After escaping Trieste, we headed into Croatia, land of limestone and tree covered hills. Now any caver can tell you that lotsa limestone means lotsa caves and sure enough, the Rough Guide directed us to the spetacular Skocjan Caves. I could not have been more happy we made the effort to see them. I've been to lots of caves in my life, from Kentucky to Texas and places in between, but the Skocjan Caves are among the most impressive. The sheer size and beauty would make Peter Jackson reshoot scenes from Lord of the Rings in envy. They wouldn't let us take pics inside (but you can find some on the web of course!) , so here's the exit:

Look close for the Hobbits

Luckily we made the tour of the caves in time. We weren't so lucky with lunch. Given the time restraints and one waiter to handle everyone, we only had time to order some fried potatoes. I asked for some ketchup, at which point Chesse told me I'd have to pay for the packets (God Bless America and Free Condiments!). Sure enough, he was right. Also, Croatian Ketchup is a little different than what we're used to. In fact, we'd probably call it 'mayonaise'. This little mix-up didn't keep Cheese from slothering it on his psuedo-fries.

At one point in the cave, you are several hundred feet above a river cutting through before it disappears even deeper into the earth. At one point in the cave's history, someone thought it would be a good idea to dam up the river. Turns out it wasn't a good idea and the local vally got flooded. Now they just give tours of the place. Standing there in a cave larger than the Horseshoe, I could not imagine the amount of water that had been contained, and the damage it must have done when released.

There's a map of the cave system. Here's a view of the church depicted on the map, as seen from the cave exit.

As close to Church as we got on the trip.

After the caves, we headed onward until we hit the city of Pula on the coast. I was super excited to finally see a real Roman Coliseum, the inspiration for more modern sports complexes (such as The Horseshoe). Pula is blessed to have a fairly large and well preserved one:

If I knew HTML, this would look better

There were relics of the Roman era scattered throughout town. Old buildings, gateways etc. Most had seen better days, but I still loved looking at their intricate details and imagining Roman times.

A funy thing happend to the forum: Acid Rain.

We decided to stay in the more touristy beach area rather than downtown. So after yet another delicous ice cream treat we headed out to the island-like outcroppings on the outskirts and scored a really spiffy hotel room. Spiffy, except that the blankets had been washed not in water, but in perfume. Nasty 2-dollar hooker perfume. I had to throw mine out on the balcony in order to sleep. Cheese can sleep through anything after a big enough ice cream. The place was beautiful dear reader:

Morning in Paradise

I really want to go back so I can do things like this:

Afternoon in paradise

Now I won't lie to my good friend, I am the hot-blooded Aries, but really, look at the following picture. All I caught was her foot! I didn't even know she was topless! (at first anyway) Still I didn't know how to say "I only got your foot" in Czech so I tried to indicate I was Canadian so impressions of Americans wouldn't take another hit.

Despite the lack of upper-wear
Girls are not so Gone Wild in Croatia

Triste Trieste

I'm the sort of person that really took the whole, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" lesson to heart, so expect this section to be brief.

Trieste sits on the Adriatic Sea, about as far east in Italy as you can get. The people there have highly developed brains that let them navigate their incredibly complex roadway system.

I thought Trieste was just horrible. It took us forever to drive around and find anything, even with a highly detailed map of Trieste. Of course it was super crowded and full of zipping Vespas everywhere. Maybe you could go there and have a great time dear reader, but I was ready to leave about 15 mins after arrival. Compared to the nice tranquil pace of Ljubljana, this was sheer hell.

We finally scored a hotel after Cheese satisfied himself pricewise. Checking out hotels was complicated by the fact that you had to illegally park on the sidewalk, abandon the car in the street or perform some other complicated maneuver to allow you time to run in and make inquiries. Now I love my dear pal Cheese dearly, but his insistence to invest a lot of time to save a few bucks on a hotel doesn't entirely jive with my "Now!" Arian nature. Add that onto the parking problem, and you can see me and Trieste just started off on the wrong foot.

We unloaded our stuff (from the street) and drove the 2 miles (one block as the crow flies) to our parking spot. One bathroom break later and we're ready to go exploring, and I believe I discovered why the hotel met with Cheese's price requirements. It was a House of Freaks:

The Tip of the Freak Iceberg

Actually, the Freak show that happened later in the lobby was probably the highlight of the evening. I must have been missing San Diego a bit, as I was determined to see the sun set against the ocean. We walked quite a bit through the town, and it just wasn't exciting. The food wasn't all that great either. (Excpetion: The Ice Cream treats we had rocked!) The following day, we tried to check out the old castle, but it was under repair. So we set off to leave and faced another hour or so of backtracking and cursing at the map. We finally found our exit and headed down into Croatia.

No Place Like Home

Between the Ohio-like country side, the Euro-Buckeyes and Jenny Holzer's art exhibit, it was clear the Ghost of Gallipolis was following me through Europe. However, I would have never guessed that the iconic Gallipolis Gazebo would show up in a one square block in downtown Ljubliana.

Oddly Like Odd Home

My maternal grandmother had taught me to yell at pesky poltergists in sets of threes to get them to leave you alone. So after a cry of "GAHS! GAHS! GAHS!" and a monster sized breakfast provided by the hotel, we set out for some exploring.

After trolling through some local stores (including a nicely stocked record store) we headed up to the old castle that used to dominate the local landscape. And it's quite a landscape:

OK, so it's bigger than Gallipolis.

The castle was pretty cool for an old D&D geek to see, but not out of this world. There had been a wedding there that day with traditional dancers and singing. Sadly we missed crashing it by about 5 mintues or so. After the hilltop hike, I convinced cheese to go and inspect the ruins of the Roman wall that had surrounding the old part of town. Sadly, there wasn't a whole lot left and it was more like a Roman low fence that might have kept out some rabbits in a pinch. There were bigger parts where some gates had been, and some benches, but nothing terribly exciting. Here's a Roman feature:

Not my graffiti, despite what the
spelling might lead you to think.

We explored the old part of town the rest of the day, got accosted by some young Euro-Christians and ended up drinking some more beer by the river to end the day. It was pretty easy to see why so many young people came to the place for a week or two, it was a beautiful relaxed setting. I certainly could have stayed there for several more days happily. I guessed the Gallipolis gremlins were gone after I found convincing evidence it wasn't small town Ohio after all:

"Shameless Hussy" defined.

We bulked up the following day at the local Mexican restaurant (not bad, but service was suh-low!) and then took off for the Italian coast. What a mistake that was.

Eh, it is Only One Olive

We arrived late in Ljubljana, with a near full moon shining down upon the town. If I had been quicker, that photo would be really spiffy, as some sort of comet trail was following the moon. I was lucky enough to get the crappy shot I did. In any case we pulled out the Rough Guide for some eating advice. After a bit of searching, we found a pizza place with promised atmosphere and headed underground. The restaurant was in the lower portion of some huge old building, with brick vaulted arches everywhere. Medievel paintings (at least in subject matter) were ensconced along the walls. The place was huge enough that the smokers, despite their best efforts, couldn't fill the place with choke, in fact if not for one other nearby party, it would have almost been private. I became a bit concerned after looking over the menu. I wasn't bothered by the fact that the only thing they had to offer was pizza, but that every pizza offered olives. My request to remove them met with a chuckle from our server "Eh...I wouldn't worry, it is only one olive". Sure enough, the food came with one big olive right smack in the center, easy enough to pluck out. After dinner, we strolled the streets a bit. Both sides of the river that flow through the town (the Ljubljanica) were spotted with cafes serving beer, wine and coffee, so we sat down for a night cap. The town is a popular destination spot with students, and there were many around staying in cheap looking hostel type spots near the river. We got handed all sorts of flyers for late night discos and dance clubs promising all sorts of wacky high octone drinks. Not my thing, and since we were prety wiped, we decided to rest up for the day of exploration to follow.

Slovenia is for Slovers

After securing a rental car at the local tram station (nowhere near as painful as I thought it would be) Cheese and I set off down the A2 towards Ljubljana. You know how previously cooped-up krauts drive on open roads? Before long we were passing through Klagnefurt and by the beautiful Lake Worthesee. Worth way more than a see, it looked loverly enough to warrant a vacation on its own. As you can see from the picture, we were right in the middle of a valley that started at the lake, went up the forested hills to the spectacular mountains in the background. Look at that picture and be jealous! Occasionaly you could see a little castle or small fortification up in the hills. They looked like they hadn't been touched for centuries. There was certainly no easy access to any of them.

Eastern Block

Soon enough, it was time to cross over into the forbidden land: Slovenia, stronghold of the Eastern Bloc and my conjured childhood foes, The Commies. Two things immediately went wrong: First, the iPod broadcast station was taken over by some (I'm assuming here) commie talk radio and couldn't regain the signal. This was the start of our love/hate relationship that made me appreciate the fact that I still have a cassette player, and therefore a cassette adaptor, for my iPod. This broadcast stuff (iTrip) is for creeps like ClearChannel. Secondly, after passing through the pictured passage, we hit the worst weather of the trip. The pass between steep slopes shuts out the sun, and a fog, at first just misty, quickly turned to rain. Not far in, we found some promised cheaper-than-EU-price gas. I tell you, there is nothing like a quickie-mart to make an American feel at home. This one came complete with white trash family (his shirt: Porn Star; her shirt: Love Sucks; kids shirts: dirty; Cheese quote "At least they agree about something") and every kind of salted product you could ask for. Naturally, I went for some chocolate to bolster the days dwindling supply. I felt like I was on the road between Charleston WVa and Gallipolis OH. The only thing missing were coal seams in the cut -away mountains.

This bit of gloomy was immediatley gone upon arrival in Ljubljana, but that's for the morrow.

Back to Blogging

Apologies for the downtime, but I had to readjust to life in these United States. My goal is one trip day per current weekday until I'm finished. I'll try to put in some more food related items for my pal PE.

More below.

Oh yea, here's a shot from Vienna Rob should appreciate:

Sorry, no frozen goods available.

You Are a Victim of the Rules You Live By

Knowing we might cut things close coming back from our road trip, I wanted to head out to the airport and claim my return ticket before we set off. Having changed my departure date from the dreaded 9-11 to the following Wednesday, I needed to pick up my new paper tickets. At the airport I saw this:

This is art. No really. It's like museum quality stuff.

This reminded me of a tortured tale from my younger days. It was during one glorious spring in the wilds of Ohio University that I decided perhaps my current relationship was best broken. I beg you sensitive readers to forgive my youthful callousness, but the springtime spell of the college campus beckoned and my playful soul was ready to burst forth upon the greens like a rapidly budding branch. Of course, this required parting from my equally playful companion L. As these things go, it wasn't such an enjoyable springtime for L, who had to suffer the consequences of my will to wander. This was compounded by the fact that she was then force to serve her student art teacher duties in the Gallia County School district, my home county. Thus, by the time summer arrived, L was quite ready for some time away from Southeastern Ohio and its painful memories. So, being the intellectual artist (I do have good taste dear reader) and having a stepfather in the airline industry, L decided that she would head off to New York City and repair her soul at the famous New York City Museum of Modern Art, where paintings and sculptures would lift her spirits and inspire her own art with new creativity. Instead, the cruel fates treated her to an installment of crap art like this:

No, not the block of granite, the display.

Well, the words on the display actually.

Here is how I recall L retelling it later (We're dear friends now, of course): "We walked into the museum and I'm all excited about the possibilities and the first thing I see is all these giant LED displays everywhere, scrolling sayings and phrases that are supposed to make you think, like "The future is stupid". Well that got old before we even paid our entrance fee. But it wasn't until we'd paid that I realized that the other halls and exhibits were locked off, and that the entire museum was given over to the work of this one artist whose medium was flashing words. That was bad enough, but it wasn't until I was reading over her biography that the proverbial kick in the crotch came in."

Some of you astute readers may have already guessed from the artist's name "Holzer" where her origins might lie. She's from my hometown of Gallipolis Ohio. Her father built the hospital where my mother worked and 80% of Gallipolis was born (the rest really were born in barns, so forgive the open doors). You can imagine that for one trying to avoid reminders of that low-brow local, the irony was lost on L. "It was like I had been given balls for the sole purpose of having them kicked. I wanted to puke. It ruined the whole trip really."

I should take this opportunity to thank L for not kicking me square in the nads when I unabashedly laughed my ass off upon hearing this a few years later. Of course, I realized that my fellow gods had punished her for making off with my favorite toothbrush sometime during that spring, but that's a tale for another time. (But be warned mortal, there are no such things as coincidences!)

In any case, Jenny Holzer has an exhbit titled 'XX' of her truisms (like the title of this entry) at the Vienna MAK museum/art gallery through October. Sorry, didn't get a chance to check out her temporary LED graffiti, as we were headed south to Slovenia.

I'm on my way-ay...

Well, that's it. My luggage is full of chocolate and all the underwear and socks have been worn at least twice. Apologies for the lack of posts, but all the hotels in Slovenia/Croation/Italy lacked access, and the tenuous connection we had at Cheese's apartment finally gave up the ghost. You'll have to wait til I get some time at home. By the sound of things, there is plenty of work to be done when I return as well.

Holy crap, the Buckeyes held Texas to 7pts. Would have never predicted that.

more later.

Vienna

Nearly every building in Vienna is photo-worthy. However, pictures just don't do them justice (at least from my camera). You can't capture their size and include all the intricate details at the same time. I don't even know what a third of them are, they just look impressive.

You can't throw a brick in Vienna without chipping off something ornate.
I've tried three times now.

Since cheese is one of the session chairs, and he knows the conference organizers, I got to crash the reception dinner held in the stately Rathaus. I have to revise my predicted ratio of men to women here at the conference to about 10:1. The food was good and you couldn't help but feel a little regal in the extravagant surroundings (follow the links to the festival hall). I talked a good deal with Wolfgang from the University in Osla (he doesn't know Ottar). In the summertime, he gives hiking tours in Norway, so that may be on the agenda in the far-off future.

Some of the other interesting places I've visited include the Pathology-Anatomy museum. The skeleton on the front-page is one of their centerpieces. Their basic collection includes preserved tissues and molds made from people infected with various diseases. At least I think they were molds, they were disturbingly life-like. The syphilus section being the overall winner in that category. They also have a large collection of skeletons from people with various spinal deformations. They weren't offering an English tour the day I arrived but since I have some 'medical' connections, the lady at the front desk let me walk around the first floor on my own. Trust me, they have lots and lots of bent skeletons.

The Gasometer structure is an inspiring piece of archeticture to look at, despite being a shopping mall today. The metal apartments on front make the whole outfit look space-age.

I did find a record store today. They had tons of 45s, which is exciting for someone from the single-starved US. It seems to be a Billy Joel themed trip as I picked up the hard to find "All for Leyna" single (it flopped in the US, I don't think a PS was even released) and "Say Goodbye to Hollywood". There were some others, but they were from his later days when he started to wuss out (I can hear Rob's comment now: "Started?" but he had some attitude in the early days) or some schmuck had written on the cover. The real score was the vinyl copy of Fish's "Internal Exile" album.

In the midst of racking up an impressive bar tab

Last night I met up with Cheese and some other folks from the Grpahics conference for dinner and some drinks. A good time was had by all. Matt, on the left, offered up some funny Canadian jokes that were baby seal variations of the interrupting-cow knock-knocks. (Baby seal walks into a club *WHAM*) Of course, Cheese ordered a lot of schnapps for everyone. Maybe too many. At least that is what mein kopf is suggesting to me this morning.

Like most meetings, the adenovirus meeting ended with the announcement of where the next one would take place. Turns out its Budapest, and will be held on an accelerated schedule of two years. (That's right lab rats, ask Dave for projects now! Work hard and Dave & I will do our best to present your work properly in Hungary.) Because of that, Cheese and I have been rethinking our travel plans. Car-company permitting, the current model is to drive through Slovenia (Ljubljana) and the way to the coast of Croatia (Pula), stopping along the way at the Italian port city of Trieste. It had better be nice since I'm missing the most important college football game ever. I know, I know, poor me.

Vienna: Sex, Drugs & Rock 'n' Roll. And food.

These two shots are taken from the same corner. On the left we see Cheese standing by his university-provided apartment complex. On the right we see Cheese next to Club Xema. That's right folks, I'm staying in a bona fida Europeon red light district with at least three brothels in a two-block radius. Of course this is all across the street from the State Fair-like amusement park. (Drop off the kids, and come take an adult ride!) Now I know what all of you are thinking: Awesome! (Ok, just Rob) but walking home past the Eastern bloc girls running down cars at every corner whilst various Guidos and West Si-eed pretenders kept an eye on the whole operation didn't really sit well with me. It's nice they are so liberated here, but I'm betting its more along the lines of simply ignoring the foreigners and their problems.

I did think our location could help out with one current issue facing the organizer of Cheese's conference. Held in stately Vienna, the organizer couldn't resist having a meeting-ending reception as a full on Ball. As in fancy dress and ballroom dancing. Attendees are even provided lessons every night this week for those who lack the required social education. Now, given that its a computer-geek conference, the organizer has aleady taken the step of forcing every female in his institute to attend. Even with this, I'm betting the ratio of men to women at the conference is going to be something like 3.14159 to 1. I suggested we then collect some of the local street walkers to help make up for this deficit. That way, every programmer gets a real live women and the girls get to go to a fancy ball. I know, I know, I'm brilliant at times aren't I? Of course, all of this assumes three hours perpindicular with a programmer is preferable to their regular horizontal routine.

Like most vegitarians, Cheese lives vicariously through others who still have the divine pleasure of eating flesh. So, the first thing we had to do in downtown Vienna, was go to Figlmuller for world's widest weinerschneitzel:

Sadly, not for use as a tortilla

Specially sliced to be so thin, and breaded with crumbled Emperor's rolls, it was quite a tasty treat and even Cheese couldn't resist momentarily forsaking his vegan vows. If you have a guidebook to Vienna, this place will be mentioned. Be sure and bring it to flip through whilst waiting on your weiner, or you'll look like an out-of-place dork.

After lunch we headed over to the Kunstmuseum which had an exhibit on, what else, Psychedelic art from the 60's and 70s. The art itself was groovy as expected, and your Mars was happy to see real albums being used as art (at least the covers). Plus, the exhibit was so complete as to feature actual arty acid tabs, my favorite being the sheet made out like a telegramm from Arthur Ginsberg. So this, along with the light-show projection room and booming 60's jam music (thankfully not the Dead) had all the ingredients for a full-on rave to break out at any moment. Unfortunately, I was already under observation for trying to read the liner notes on their very rare copy of Farewell Aldebaran by Judy Henske & Jerry Yester.

The exhibit shed some light on a recent confusing moment for me: the big visual sequence at the end of 2001:A Space Odyssey. By 1968, light shows were viewed as a new art-form in their own right, one that could provide a trip for those too square to drop acid. So Kubrick was merely using the lastest and greatest visual method to express some mind expansion. Guess its one of those moments that needs to be surrounded by the rest of the year to be fully appreciated and understood.

We followed this with a tour of that old Europeon standard, the Big Ol' Gothic Church. The cool part was walking through the catacombs beneath, where bones had been stacked like cordwood in the good days, and scattered Helter-Skelter during the Black Plague years. I should have snuck a couple of photos for posterity.

We walked through the downtown square (there are dozens of beautiful old buildings, I'll try and Flickr the lot of them) before heading off to dinner. Our destination was a restaurant called simply "Burrito". Nowadays, Burrito is a mixed African-Asian restaurant, and even in its heyday was simply an Austrian restaurant run by a local enamored with Mexico. The food was excellent though, and thankfully they took the time to create a veggie dish for Cheese. We assured the Ghannan owner that he could simply wrap up his meat and rice dishes in a tortilla, and the many who visited asking for burritos would be quite happy.

Tomorrow, I'm going back to the Video Game museum. You can even play the old games. If they didn't close at 6PM, this might be my last post.

Happy Anniversary!!!!

It's been (approximately) two years since Mars used his divine powers to join Bill and Judy in Holy Matrimony. Congrats to the happy couple and continued blessings and best wishes. To borrow a phrase from one of the new kids on the block, go forth, be fruitful and multiply! Here's a few pics from the ceremony and the Best. Reception. Ever.

I love this shot. No its not "New York, New York", its "Y-M-C-A"

Melanie explains to Mars why, despite a NC, Tressell still sucks.
You think I'm kidding, don't you?

La Musica

Our guide had mentioned that in the month of September, Zurich was keeping all the museums etc. open late. They were also featuring free live music performances at the Operhaus. I got there in time to get a good seat for the 7PM performance, which turned out to be a run through Mendelssohn’s 3rd Symphony (“Scottish”). Despite Zurich’s tourist aspect, this was a show for the locals, with all the performers (sadly no redhead cellists) wearing jeans and waving to their kids in the audience.

It was a rollicking piece with lots of nice basso-rumble and Billy the Kid style rhythms. The conductor was a young American who really got into his role, using his whole body as the baton. Seeing this made the whole concept of a CD seem silly.

After the run-through, the conductor went through some rehearsal action with the group. I thought the performance was gold to begin with, but I had to agree that his suggestions (from ‘play that section a little more clearly’ to ‘its sad, but not that sad, more like a distant memory’) were spot on. The only one I didn’t buy was when he told the timpani to play ‘a little crisper’. Cucumbers are crisp buddy, timpani just bOOm! In any case,the 'behind the scenes' peak was rather interesting to watch.

Prior to my trip, a friend suggested loading the ipod with some Beethoven to get ready for Vienna. A good suggestion, but I actually find myself drawn more to another piece, one that I picked up for one of those “The Year You Were Born” collections I often promise to people but never seem to deliver. (Only two have actually reached distribution) It’s Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 15 Op. 144 and it is as sad and heavy as a lonely mountain. I like it for its minimalist nature and the echoes of 'Psycho' that filer through. If I can figure out how to post some empee-threes, I'll put the march up for everyone to enjoy. If not try and imagine what a Russian composer contemplating his own death would come up with. Yup, a spoonful weights a ton.

Last Meeting Day: Talks and Walks

The last day of the meeting featured some of the more interesting talks, at least for me. The two basic topics were immunology and gene expression studies. The gene expression studies were all over the place and which emphasized their dangers. On one hand, you get lots of data. Like terrabytes worth, and its really hard to sort through all that data carefully and get data you are confident in. So, we had Ad studies saying everything from 20 to 7000 genes were affected by infection. On the other hand, doing studies with transformed cell lines growing in a dish may not be the best way to find out what really happens when a complex vector (i.e. a human) actually becomes infected, no matter how many time points you take. Without all that intracellular communication, I'm not sure any of the signals you see are real. I've been consulting with a DoD group who has tried to do the experiments with actual infected recruits, and they've run into the problem of human data too noisy to deconvolute. Caught between the fruit fly and the petri dish.

Of course, everything was running late, and I wanted to both have lunch and drop off my laptop before going on the sponsored hike through Zurich. I grabbed a Co-Op kebob (best of the bunch) and headed to Paradeplatz to meet up with everyone doing the walking tour. I actually got there about a half-hour early, so I headed down towards the lake to kill some time. There was a flea market going on and someone had a collection of early seventies 45s. I didn't have time to dig through all of them, but I'm already kicking myself for not buying the Paranoid picture sleeve. I mean its SABBATH!

The walking tour was interesting, with lots of tales of early Zurich. Turns out it has been invaded by both the Romans and The Celts of all people. Talk about overachieving. Even the lady who organized the tour was griping about how the meeting was arranged, and she had asked to do the tour during the meeting, which would have dramatically increased attendance, and gotten us into a few more places. Being the type of person that has to know the origin of everything (Zurich comes from the name of a local tribe leader, Tsuri) I really enjoyed the hearing tales of all the old buildings. The tour was led by a former Master of the Carpenter's Guild, which given the role of Guild's in Zurich's history, he's basically minor nobility. It's difficult to explain the complexity of the Guilds and membership (for instance, our guide was a mathematician and knew nothing of carpentry) but its your basic boys club of insiders. The lady who organized the trip took every oppurtunity to rib the Master about the exclusion of women from the guilds. We ended the tour with him showing us the exquisite downtown guildhouse, and their collection of ornate drinking glasses donated by members over the years. In times of trouble, these were melted down to make gold and silver ingots, but quite a number had survived. The shots above/below are of the top floor of the Guild House, which looks like it could have been used for evil syndicate planning. You can see the river running through the middle of town in one shot. Also, there are a few shots of the devils in the details from one of the main Zurich church.

The train ride to Vienna was beautiful but uneventful. Basically, we came down the valley that is Austria between the alps the entire way. Quite scenic, but I didn't feel like being the tourist trying to shoot shots through the window. The best part was that Cheese was here at the end of it. It seems he has been sending me emails, but they are not reaching me for whatever reason. Must be one of those internet tubes plugged up somewhere.

"Vienna Waits for You"--William Joel

A few shots of Zurich for you. Time to head out on the 9 hour train ride to Vienna. Still haven't heard from Cheese, which is making me a bit nervous. Hopefully, he's just busy. I'll fill you in on the last day of the meeting and some sight seeing at the next internet connection. Hat tip to Ames for the title. Oh, and whomever came up with the idea of putting strawberry yogurt on bran flakes needs to be given a large sum of cash. Europeon food needs all the creativity it can get.

Day 3: Needs more Alphorn

There's been a nice trend at the latest round of meetings to feature some traditional music, such as the German band at the beerkeller in Bayern, and the traditional asian-instrument sounds at the Korean tRNA-synthetase meeting. This meeting was no different, as it featured an attractive young Alpine Horn player. Her poster promised that she had brought the instrument into modern times, by doing some funk, jazz and blues variations in addition to the normal Riccola commercial style music. I was looking forward to it.

The dinner table was laid out with a collection of various spiny fruits from around the region. I guess buckeyes aren't the only thing that have had to develop some sort of defence against tenacious brids over here.

The food was good, the wine was flowing and the music was...well a little disappointing. The blues numbers were the best, as the jazz tended toward the Kenny G(blows) variety. She sang a couple of songs as well, and had a costume change between every course (hopefully Liz's photo's came out better than mine, as some of the outfits were rather spicy dear reader). I hope her lyrics in german were better because "I'm the swiss lady, and you can take me as I am baby" and "Everyone is trying hard to be cool/trying to be cool isn't so cool" made me feel like a third grade teacher hearing yet another book report about "Treasure Island".

At the end of her show, she offered the chance to let some people give the Alpine horn a chance. Nothing like sharing spit at an Adenovirus meeting. Our Man Morris gave it a try:

Morris Jones appears courtesy of George W. Bush Records

I forgot to mention that after Dave's morning scouting report, we ditched the last few evening talks and headed to the Clock museum in downtown Zurich. Small, but pretty darn cool. My favorite were the mystery clocks, with no visible means of moving the hands:

I'm on time homie, that's how it goes

Turns out there are two or more glass plates that slide up and down ever so slightly to turn the hands. The mechanism is hidden in the glass frame, which also hides the glass edges, so you can't tell there is more than one pane. Clever.

Day 3: The Trek

The plan was to hike up to the top of a local incline (it's hard to call it a mountain with the alps in the background) at Uetliberg and snap a lot of photos, and relieve my typing burden. Unfortunately, my camera gave me some sort of 'card not initialized' error. Too bad, because its the first sunny day here in weeks, and the views were spectacular. You can get an idea if you do a google image search for Uetliberg or Uto Kulm, which is the hotel at the top.

Dave mentioned the hike wasn't so bad, and this was confirmed by the desk staff at the loverly Bristol hotel. Somehow I missed the normal way up to the top and ended up on a grueling Grouse Grind version of the ascent. The bonus was that I only saw one other person, so I could rest often without shame. I must have been in War God form (wild-eyed, sweaty, hair flying) as I emerged from the forest onto the main trails, because everyone looked at me like an invading norseman.

Once at the top of the earth-upraising, you can climb another 70 meters up the tower. From this vantage point, you can get some pretty darn spiffy views of the lake, the surrounding alps and the city of Zurich itself. Shame about that camera, for both of us dear reader.

There's a good description of the hike here. I started at Albisguetli (left side of the map down a bit) and ended up at Ueitliburg Kulm.

PS.
The 'take-away' indian place next door has all the kabob places beat by a mile.

Day 3: "I'll shit like a wildcat for a week if you put my name on the paper"

It's been pointed out to me that I haven't actually mentioned what meeting I'm at. It's the 2006 International Congress on Adenovirus.

Thursday's program was scheduled from 9AM til 10PM. Given the windbagosity of any scientist provided with a chance to describe their work, or ask a question to show how much the know at the end of every talk, 10PM was a generous estimate at best. Today continued the entry session (over which there is a good deal of healthy debate) and led into "Replication and Host Cell Interactions" before ending with "Evolution". Like every meeting, there are good and bad talks. The good ones seem to whiz by, while the bad ones can make you feel every second tick slowly away. One of the problems for this meeting is that the speakers are given a whopping 25 mintues to tell their tales. At first I didn't mind so much, as the speakers would start off with some background thats new to me. By the 2nd session, the later speakers had sussed that speaker number one bore the burden of background, and had replaced their intro slides with more data. Wahoo.

Dave and Adriana spoke during the Evolution section, and both of their talks went well. Unfortunately, by this point of the day, the Chair was limiting questions to the speakers in a vain attempt to try to get back on schedule. I felt bad for Adriana as several hands shot up immediately after her talk, but no questions were allowed. The talk that followed was by Don Seto and was mostly about bioinformatics, so people used this time to ask questions about Adriana's work. The biggest was "Why does Ad4/Species E only affect military populations?" Not a surprising question given that every other talk had been about Ads B-D. Therein lies the answer to their question: everyone is still Ad4 niave when the enter training camp, although many have been exposed to the other Ads out their in the wild. Recruits are fresh fruit for virulent viruses.

I met Morris Jones today, an African-American Air Force member who works out of Travis Air Force Base north of San Diego. Our conversation started off a bit rough: I was curious if he was enlisted or contracted (he was wisely out of uniform despite protocol) and he gave me a momentary case of white-guy conversation paralysis with his response of "I'm the property of George W. Bush". (What do you say to that?? I said "Oh that's nice. (pause) I like football.") After that, we had a good chat at lunch about the DoD etc (turns out he's getting all the Affy equipment that used to be at AFIOH) and science in general.

It also turns out he's the one presenting the proposed discovery of a new gastroenteritis adenovirus (that's right, Serotype G, Species 52) that was found in the stool samples of an outbreak cluster in Los Angeles. At the poster session, the Adenovirus Police were on heavy patrol, and not entirely out of chest-thumping impulses, as you need to be rigourous regarding such claims. It was almost comical to see the disconnect from the 'scientists' from those on the medical side of things. They all asked a variation of the same question: "Why didn't you: A) take a blood sample; B) take repeated anal swabs; C) sacrifice and harvest organs from the affected patients?" Everytime Morris would patiently explain that by the time he got the grown monkey cells, those affected were long gone from the hospital, that IRBs frown on organ farming without the proper written consent and that there's really not much he can do about that.

Although the sequence is unique, Morris's proposed Ad species is phylogentically very similar to simian adenoviruses. Since it was cultured in monkey cells, the question arises if the source is truly human, or if it is the monkey used to make the culture cells. (It should be noted that Ad4 is also a lone-star adenovirus whose closest relatives are monkey-ads, and it has no problem affecting humans.) To help clear this up, Dave generously offered to eat the new adenovirus in the name of science and Koch's Postulates. From that discussion comes the title of this entry. I invited Morris to come give a Thursday talk at NHRC about his new Ad.

After the late-nite poster session, most of the attendees headed over to the local student pub to have a few brews and round out the evening. Everyone was grumbling about the meeting being a bit too ambitious (there was almost a riot at lunch as the extended session ended near the closing time of the cafe where free meals are provided.) Dave and I were joined by Wake Forest Dave and Paola from Argentina. Paola, a good friend of Adriana's, had given the final talk of the evening about Ad7H affecting children in Argentina. She'd done some sequence analysis and shown that the fatal cases all clustered into a unique group, so she was hot on the trail of finding lethal virulence markers. She told a really funny story of how her husband had joined her at the first meeting she went to after they had gotten married. The meeting was in Cancun, Mexico, during Spring Break. Thus, her husband had used up all their camera AND video film the first day of the trip. He has since offered to go with her to all other meetings. (He's home with the kids for this one.)

Tomorrow is Ad vector stuff. Dave promises to cover, while I'm heading to a local hike before the afternoon sessions start.