Helen FieldsScience Writer

I’m posting with the free WiFi at BWI:

Thanks, Google! Ok, I only logged on to do this post, so really I’m not using it. But if I were here for a long time (rather than rushing to finish before they call my row for boarding), I’m sure I’d appreciate it.

UPDATE, 5 minutes later: Heyyy, it reaches out to the airplane! Ok, ok, I’m turning it off now. Sheesh.

I never got around to writing about a lot of my adventures in Germany, partly because I was having trouble uploading pictures to Wordpress. So, I guess you’re in luck, ’cause I figured that out.

When my parents came and visited at the end of my stay, we took a week and went down to poke around Bavaria. Our first stop was Berchtesgaden, a lovely alpine resort town and one of Adolf Hitler’s favorite places. For his 50th birthday, the Nazis built a mountain retreat for him on a crag with 360-degree views. Hitler, according to my guidebook, had vertigo and hated it there.

The building survived – unusual for Nazi sites – and is now a major tourist destination. Buses run up the winding road all day, and there’s a restaurant up top.

The day we went up it was super cloudy and you couldn’t see the views. My dad and I went on a little hike on a trail that climbed up and down the rocks and wound around, with what should have been fantastic views of the alps.

It felt exactly like the beginning of the second Lord of the Rings movie, when Frodo and Sam are trying to find their way through the rocks of Emyn Muil. Spooky.

Last Friday evening, one of Norway’s national broadcast stations showed a documentary called “Bergensbanen minutt for minutt” – “Bergen Line, Minute for Minute.” It was a seven-hour-long documentary showing, in real time, the train trip from Bergen to Oslo. Seven hours. And 16 minutes. Of train. According to NRK, 176,000 people sat in front of the TV for the whole thing and another 1.2 million dropped in for part of it. (That’s about one in four Norwegians.) The train goes through 182 tunnels on the way; during those bits, they edited in historic clips from the railway.

Missing out on the Bergensbane was the great disappointment of my last trip to Norway. I was so excited to take this train. It’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful train rides in the world; it goes from sea level in Bergen to sea level in Oslo, passing over the highlands on the way. The high point is 4,060 feet above sea level. But a couple of days before my ride I saw a picture on the front of the Bergen paper showing a derailed train lying in the snow. Uh-oh, I thought. I read the article and, yep. That was the Bergensbane, and it would be closed until they got those cars out of there.

So instead of a scenic seven-hour train ride over mountains and snow, I had a one-hour train ride – mostly through tunnels – to Voss, then a 5,000,000-hour bus ride to Oslo. The bus was full. The guy next to me wasn’t friendly. It was about the least pleasant transportation experience I’ve ever had in Norway, and I’m including the month in 1998 when the Trondheim city buses went on strike and I had to walk several miles to work.

The train documentary was such a big hit that they’re scrambling to get a DVD out in time for Christmas. I think they could sell that to train buffs all over the world, don’t you? Heck, I would watch it. I’m trying to get part 1 of the documentary to load on the NRK website right now.

Here are the articles from NRK: An Orgy for Train Lovers and A DVD of the Bergen Line is Coming!

photo: SRS scandiline

Hey, so all those people weren’t lying: The Grand Canyon is spectacular. We only had time for a day trip between the concerts in Phoenix and Las Vegas, but I’m told we picked the prettiest trail to go down. It’s the South Kaibab Trail. It goes down into the canyon along a little ridge, so you get 360-degree views. Wow. It was pretty. And since it’s a canyon, the trail goes down fast. It starts out like this:

and goes on like this:

We stopped for lunch at the little bump just left of the middle of that picture, which also turned out to be a prime spot for knitting.

Yes, I (1) carried a partly-finished sweater 1.5 miles into the Grand Canyon and (2) was still wearing the wristband from the concert two days earlier. The sweater pattern is here, if you want to recreate the experience.

You have to be really careful hiking in the canyon, since this is the opposite of your normal hike – rather than going up (a mountain, say) in the morning and down in the afternoon, we went down and then had to get back up. But we adopted the motto “If you can perceive movement, you’re doing it wrong” and walked really, really, really slowly on the way out. We felt great, and the hike back up only took about 20 more minutes than the hike down. It made me think I could actually handle doing the whole canyon someday. I mean, some *two* days. I’m not crazy. The park is full of signs telling you not to do it in one day, many using this example.

We often wished we had a geologist along. For example, what the heck is going on here? This is in limestone at the top of the canyon (in that first set of switchbacks dropping down into the canyon).

I got excited when I saw these ants running around on the sidewalk at a scenic overlook in Arizona, because I vaguely remembered that the ants I studied in grad school were from Arizona. But I spent a lot of quality time dotting those ants with model airplane paint, and I’m pretty sure they were bigger than this guy. Still, you get a portrait of an ant:

The little guys move fast – kinda hard to focus on them with a point-and-shoot. Little girls, I should say. Basically all the ants you see are female. The males exist to mate with a queen and die. So this is a female worker, out scavenging for treats on the sidewalk. I wonder how that’s working out for her.

The best vacation ever included a stop by Montezuma Castle, a cliff dwelling just off the highway between Phoenix and Flagstaff. Our original plan for the day was to take the scenic route and stop by this place. But, thanks to Arizona’s miserable finances, it’s only open on weekends. We found this out when we drove up to the entrance. So, Tonto Natural Bridge will have to wait for another time. Fortunately, Montezuma Castle was there to heal our bruised tourism plans:

The cliff dwelling was occupied from A.D. 1100-ish to about 1400. It has nothing to do with Montezuma – early settlers connected it to the Aztecs (incorrectly) (surprise). The two different colors of plaster on the dwelling are because carpenter bees got in there and they had to refinish part of it a few years ago.

Nice ranger-type people (they were volunteers) kept stopping by and asking if we had questions – Kate wondered if it was because we were the only people there who weren’t either retired or dragging young children around. And of course we had questions. Hello, we’re reporters. (How come it’s two different colors? Where’d they get water? What are those holes? Are the swallows here this time of year? Who are you? What’s that organization? Do you like it?)

It’s a lovely spot – not too hot on a Wednesday in October, with nice trees giving shade and a stream for water a few feet down the valley. The only sounds were the wind in the trees, some birds…and this dumb diorama thing that was about 30 feet away. Ok, it was a perfectly nice diorama. I love the little people weaving and carrying pottery and stuff. But it also had a recorded narration that you could push a button and listen to, so the whole time we were sitting there looking at the cliff dwelling, we were also listening to some man go mumble mumble worple worple worp mumble in the background. Annoying.

Whew. After 2.5 months in Berlin, I came home for a week, then went to Arizona and Nevada for a week to see U2 twice and do some sightseeing. Fellow science writer Kate flew in from Oregon, we rented a car, and we had the best vacation ever. Oh, I’m sure you think you’ve had some good vacations in your time, but sorry – this was the best one ever.

It’s a little embarrassing to be a big U2 fan. They’re so mainstream. And yes, I know it’s ridiculous to fly most of the way across the country to see a band. But they know how to put on a darn good show. And due to a complete failure on their part to check with me before scheduling this tour, they played D.C. in September (while I was in Berlin) and played Berlin in July (while I was in D.C.)

If I may be allowed to brag (gush?) for a moment, this is how close I was in Phoenix last Tuesday:

(That’s Bono. Hi Bono!) The crazy huge set is like a donut with a round central stage (at right in this picture), an “inner circle” where a couple thousand fans can stand, and an outer catwalk thing. We were in the front row, leaning on the railing, right outside the catwalk. For this we got to the stadium at 7:30 a.m., prepared for a really awful, hot day – but the genius Phoenix stadium staff had put the general admission line on the north side, out of the sun. I wore a sweater most of the day. I got a lot of knitting done in the 9.5 hours we were in line.

For the show in Las Vegas on Friday, we were coming in from the Grand Canyon, which meant we would’ve had to get up at, like, 2 in the morning to line up that early. We’re fans, but we’re not crazy. Instead we strolled up at five and stood in the inner circle. Where we were also ridiculously close:

AND we got the full band-immersion experience, because we had stage on both sides of us, plus the inner stage and outer walk are connected by these moving bridges that swung over our heads:

(That’s the Edge. Hi Edge!) It was so! cool! I’m already plotting how I can see them on the next leg of their tour – they’re swinging through the East Coast again, so this time I won’t need to travel quite as far. (Sorry for the cruddy photos. I didn’t want to carry a purse, so I only had the camera on my phone.)

My plan for the month of November was to go to Namibia, but then the friends I was going to visit moved to Liberia. Honestly, I wasn’t that disappointed – a trip to see Namibia, with all its big game and awesome scenery, would have been great, but I’m happy to be home with no major trips for the foreseeable future.

I’m not sure I’m quite ready to visit these friends in Liberia. It’s settled down a lot since the civil war ended in 2003, but it’s still more adventurous travel than I feel ready for right now. This article is a great read – it’s a story from the Washington Post travel section by a former aid worker who traveled across the country recently by bush taxi, motorbike, and foot.

Liberia was settled by freed slaves in the 19th century. A taste of the social dynamic, from the story:

Gentlemen!” a voice suddenly boomed from the back seat. “I am Samuel Jefferson.”

I turned to see a distinguished man of about 60, with glasses and a graying Afro. He said, a little boastfully, that his ancestors had arrived from North Carolina in 1842.

With this, a hush of respect blanketed the bush-taxi. In Liberia, slave blood is blue blood; here, saying that your ancestors picked cotton is akin to letting it casually slip in the United States that your forebears had founded Princeton.

After a very long time on an airplane, a much-longer-than-planned time at the Newark airport, and a very short time on another airplane, I am home from Berlin! Hooray! Now I have to think of something to do on my blog other than make mildly amusing observations about the German workplace.

This weekend the Burns Fellows had our official almost-end-of-fellowship meeting in Munich (or, if you prefer, München). There’s this little festival you may have heard of in Munich. Happens once a year? Lots of beer and lederhosen? Yeah, Oktoberfest, that’s right. It started on Saturday. Many of my smart friends have pointed out that it’s actually September, so here you go, fact of the day: Oktoberfest always runs for 16 days and ends on the first Sunday in October, so the latest it’s ever going to go is October 7, and it can start as early as mid-September.

Oktoberfest is the kind of thing I should hate. I don’t like beer. I really, really don’t like cigarette smoke. Loud boisterous rooms aren’t really my scene. And it was really hot in there.

But, holy cow, it was fun. Soon after we got to the Augustiner beer tent and ingratiated ourselves with a partly-full table of Swedes and Germans (you have to have a table or you can’t order beer), the band started playing, and we learned that what you actually do at Oktoberfest is dance on benches. That’s it. That’s the whole activity. Wave your one-liter mug of beer and dance on benches and sing along with the band. Note that you do not dance on tables. You’re not supposed to step on the tables. Everybody just stands on the benches. It’s easier than standing on the floor, really. (This may vary in other tents at other times. But in that tent on Saturday evening, it was all about the bench-dancing.)

I would totally go again. Heck, I have a dirndl now, I have to find another occasion to wear it.

Sorry the picture’s shaky. Blame one of my new Swedish friends.