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choco_froshSunday: Get up insanely early. Groan. Pack last things into backpacks, hike to near Swiss border, meeting fellow-hikers from the Deutsche-Alpenverein group we´re going on a hike with on the way. Get in vans, drive several hours to point slightly south of Liechtestain, in Kanton Graubünden (Possibly Switzerland´s most remote and B-F--k: some of the inhabitants still speak Rhaetian, a romance language left over from when the area was the main Roman route over the alps. But I digress). Reflect on the way on the similarity to New Hampshire, only with more castles and even more precipitous.
Hike up 8000 ft. mountain with indefatiguable German sexagenarians. Encounter cows. Enjoy incredible views. Get badly sunburned, due to failing to factor in the fact that
a) We would have 2000 fewer meters of atmosphere between you and the sun
b) for several hours around noon
c) on a sunny day two days after the solstice, and that
d) it is possible to get a sunburn on the tops of your calves and the back side of your elbow.
Go home, eat quesadillas in Irish bar while watching Germany demolish Sweden in the World Cup.
Monday: Attempt to have normal research life. Fail. Have Tandem Partners over for dinner, to say goodbye to Grace. Enjoyable evening, though regret telling Britta she could bring a bottle of wine. Contemplate possibility of having pre-departure party to use up bottles in cellar that thought would have drunk with dinner by now.
Tuesday: Take a fifteen minute train ride to Radolfzell, for one last archive fling. Archive closed for renovations, but staff had kindly agreed to let me in anyway.
Have Joe (friend of Grace´s from orientation) over to dinner. Joe and Grace talk Red Sox. Joe and Josh talk Fulbright. Josh confesses that he doesn´t remember much about the application process, except for one thing that won´t work for Joe. But recommends the Orientation session in Frankfurt and the Berlin Conference.
Wednesday: Last day in archive with functional computer. Spend second half of it at University anyway, to meet colleague and check email. Spend morning paging through records of loans... except for the bit where I go to the farmer's market for chicken and Pfifferlinge (chanterelles: apricoty mushrooms), which I cook for Grace's last dinner in Germany.
The really sad thing is that I STILL got more archive work done than I did on Monday.
Thursday: Get up. Reflect that I should have gone running while Grace was finishing packing. Move the futon back into the living room and the daybed back into the bedrooom. Help schlep Grace's very heavy luggage to the train station. Hope she wouldn't be forced to check the backpack once she got to the airport. Hope I'd be ABLE to get my (similiarly enormous quantity of) luggage to the airport at all.
Say goodbye to Grace, went running after all, went up to Uni, begged spare laptop cable from guy in Mac lab, recharge computer (partly). Did 15 minutes work on 15th century loans before computer ran out of power. Reverted to working on actual paper, with actual pen.
Upgrade side of neck to "No. 1 area to have doctor check for possible melonoma in twenty years time".
Friday: Get up at 3 to go to john, attempt to go back to bed. Bed now different height, width, configuration than previously. Miss. Thank God I was relaxed eough not to break anything in the process; make second attempt, succeed, go back to sleep.
Woken at 5 by light coming in window. F-ing rosy-fingered f-ing Aurora. Doze til 7. Alarm goes off. Decide can stay in bed a bit longer. Realize have latin class and have not yet finished translation. Groan, get up. Go up to Uni, translate, class, lunch, email-checking, brief stint on card index of charters til archive closes, go home. Make soup. Mail box o´ books at hideous expense. See how much stuff can fit in remaining box.
At ten til eight, as I was walking to the bus stop, it was becoming increasingly clear that Germany had just won another world cup game. (Against Argentina, as I only just now found out). Apparently, the incredibly naff adds back in the Fall had been either successful or unnecessary: There was an unbelievable number of people waving flags, honking car horns, waving flags and other red-black-and-gold paraphernalia OUT of cars, standing chearing and waving assorted flags as cars went by, and generally going nuts. It was like Konstanz had one the Super Bowl, except that the same thing must have been going on in every city from here to Stralsund. I guess the country´s found something it can be nationalistic about... I felt very out of it, especially since I was on my way up to the Uni to do some more work (Hah!)
Hike up 8000 ft. mountain with indefatiguable German sexagenarians. Encounter cows. Enjoy incredible views. Get badly sunburned, due to failing to factor in the fact that
a) We would have 2000 fewer meters of atmosphere between you and the sun
b) for several hours around noon
c) on a sunny day two days after the solstice, and that
d) it is possible to get a sunburn on the tops of your calves and the back side of your elbow.
Go home, eat quesadillas in Irish bar while watching Germany demolish Sweden in the World Cup.
Monday: Attempt to have normal research life. Fail. Have Tandem Partners over for dinner, to say goodbye to Grace. Enjoyable evening, though regret telling Britta she could bring a bottle of wine. Contemplate possibility of having pre-departure party to use up bottles in cellar that thought would have drunk with dinner by now.
Tuesday: Take a fifteen minute train ride to Radolfzell, for one last archive fling. Archive closed for renovations, but staff had kindly agreed to let me in anyway.
Have Joe (friend of Grace´s from orientation) over to dinner. Joe and Grace talk Red Sox. Joe and Josh talk Fulbright. Josh confesses that he doesn´t remember much about the application process, except for one thing that won´t work for Joe. But recommends the Orientation session in Frankfurt and the Berlin Conference.
Wednesday: Last day in archive with functional computer. Spend second half of it at University anyway, to meet colleague and check email. Spend morning paging through records of loans... except for the bit where I go to the farmer's market for chicken and Pfifferlinge (chanterelles: apricoty mushrooms), which I cook for Grace's last dinner in Germany.
The really sad thing is that I STILL got more archive work done than I did on Monday.
Thursday: Get up. Reflect that I should have gone running while Grace was finishing packing. Move the futon back into the living room and the daybed back into the bedrooom. Help schlep Grace's very heavy luggage to the train station. Hope she wouldn't be forced to check the backpack once she got to the airport. Hope I'd be ABLE to get my (similiarly enormous quantity of) luggage to the airport at all.
Say goodbye to Grace, went running after all, went up to Uni, begged spare laptop cable from guy in Mac lab, recharge computer (partly). Did 15 minutes work on 15th century loans before computer ran out of power. Reverted to working on actual paper, with actual pen.
Upgrade side of neck to "No. 1 area to have doctor check for possible melonoma in twenty years time".
Friday: Get up at 3 to go to john, attempt to go back to bed. Bed now different height, width, configuration than previously. Miss. Thank God I was relaxed eough not to break anything in the process; make second attempt, succeed, go back to sleep.
Woken at 5 by light coming in window. F-ing rosy-fingered f-ing Aurora. Doze til 7. Alarm goes off. Decide can stay in bed a bit longer. Realize have latin class and have not yet finished translation. Groan, get up. Go up to Uni, translate, class, lunch, email-checking, brief stint on card index of charters til archive closes, go home. Make soup. Mail box o´ books at hideous expense. See how much stuff can fit in remaining box.
At ten til eight, as I was walking to the bus stop, it was becoming increasingly clear that Germany had just won another world cup game. (Against Argentina, as I only just now found out). Apparently, the incredibly naff adds back in the Fall had been either successful or unnecessary: There was an unbelievable number of people waving flags, honking car horns, waving flags and other red-black-and-gold paraphernalia OUT of cars, standing chearing and waving assorted flags as cars went by, and generally going nuts. It was like Konstanz had one the Super Bowl, except that the same thing must have been going on in every city from here to Stralsund. I guess the country´s found something it can be nationalistic about... I felt very out of it, especially since I was on my way up to the Uni to do some more work (Hah!)
Well ...
Date: 2006-07-01 09:38 am (UTC)They sent us a text message on our in-flight movie screens to notify us of this on Virgin Atlantic flight 45.
- grace, on American keyboard (help! where's my Y?)