Germany/Summer School

After Ireland, I went to Germany for my program's summer school. I was not at all ready to leave Ireland, but I was excited to see some classmates who were in Munich last semester and meet the second cohort (aka "new kids"--even the ones older than me).

So I flew into Frankfurt and over the next few hours greeted other classmates as they flew in. We arrived in various states of mental proximity to the current time zone and had for a meal that was breakfast/lunch/midnight snack, depending on who was eating! But eventually the bus arrived and we jumped on with the new kids and a few more old classmates and headed off. We stopped on the way to pick up a few more people and have dinner, and then it was off to our hostel in the middle of nowhere (south of Balingen if you're in a Googling mood). The hostel was in a really cool location up on a big hill overlooking a valley full of towns.

View from my hostel room

I won't bore you with the details of the week, but we had a huge icebreaker/nerdy science question scavenger hunt thing in the giant field above, had too many meetings, attended the European Society for Evolutionary Biology conference for a day (I know, I felt fancy-nametag!), ate German food (so much schnitzel), drank German beer, and visited a castle (my first castle that wasn't a ruin!), a cave, and a waterfall.

This meal is too funny. Mini pizzas topped with salsa, a fried mozzarella patty topped with jam, and potato salad from the salad bar that was six enormous, identical vats of potato salad. And meatballs. Mmm, maybe they're trying to kill all the evolutionary biologists at the conference??

Tubingen is lovely

Castle!!! Perched on a rock!

It was fun! After two weeks in meat-and-potatoes food cultures though, I was so ready for a salad when I got to France... But man I love Irish and German beer. I realized though, that I have no pictures of me drinking German beer. Oh well, guess I'll have to get some at OKTOBERFEST!!! I'm going. 2 weeks :) I am so excited.