NYC

A couple weeks after Scott left for New York City, I used the rest of my personal days at work to take another long weekend to visit him in the Big Apple. My flight got in rather late on Friday, so, in true New York fashion, we had a piece of black forest cake at midnight at a pastry shop down the street from our hostel in Manhattan. I love New York!

The morning on Saturday brought rainy weather, but that didn't stop us from having a fabulous day. We started the day off right with some sushi! After that we took a walk through Central Park on our way to the Metropolitan Museum of ART. Which we thought was pretty clever since it was a rainy day, however the rest of New York was apparently just as clever as we were. It was very crowed, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway. Scott got to see the Dutch paintings and I got to see my Italian paintings. I got to see some of the contemporary art too, but just as I was getting started they closed that part of the exhibit. Although I was disappointed, I did get to see their Jackson Pollock, so I was more than satisfied!

We started to make our way back to our hostel via Grand Central Station. While we were there, we got to have some dinner at Michael Jordan's restaurant...and by dinner I mean we each got an appetizer because we couldn't really afford to have dinner there. I had some blue cheese fondue, and Scott had some seafood chowder. Mmmmm.... When we had explored to our heart's content we hopped on the subway and back to our hostel in the pouring rain.

Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day, which we took full advantage of. We started the day by visiting ground zero. I expected it to be a bit more emotional experience than it was. There were construction crews working hard to rebuild. The experience of being there was poignant, but encouraging. There was an atmosphere of renewal and hope as we saw the new construction rising above the barricades surrounding the area where so much tragedy transpired just 8 years ago.

After some lunch we headed over to the Statue of Liberty. Again we were proud of ourselves for taking advantage of the great weather, and again the rest of New York City also seemed to have the same idea. This little adventure took up pretty much the rest of the day, but we just enjoyed being together, and got some great pictures! For dinner we had some special plans to eat at Cafe Du Soleil, a restaurant recommended by the curator Scott had been working with. It was a little French Bistro that had several menu items created from locally grown organic food. I had a salmon steak served medium, just like I like it, and Crème brûlée for dessert...so good. It was cozy and romantic, and a great ending to our last sight seeing day together.

Bright and early Monday morning I got up with Scott and went to work with him for a few hours to see what he had been up to the past couple weeks. We ate some lunch together, and then, once again it was time for us to say good-bye. Scott called me a cab and I headed back to Iowa, and looked forward to the next weekend when Scott would come home again for two whole weeks before heading to stop number 3 in phase 2 of the "Grand Tour:" Africa...

The Travels Continue

...And you thought we were done traveling. In fact the travel saga does continue despite the tardiness of my update. While we were in Europe, I think I forgot what busy lives we lead. I then discovered just how much busier I could get as a dissertation widow. I have had so much trouble finding the time to post on this blog!!

Just three short weeks after Scott and I returned to home-sweet-Iowa, Scott embarked on a second phase of dissertation research travel while I stayed home and "brought home the bacon," and pined for his return. His first stop in travel phase 2: three weeks in Washington DC at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. While he was gone, I moved in with some generous friends, the Steeles, to keep away the lonelies.

Fortunately, I was able to take a weekend off to go and visit him. For those of you who don't know, Scott and I spent our honeymoon in this beautiful and historic city, and this is not the first time we have re-visited. We love DC, and we now have a couple friends that live there. Scott was staying with some of our former Iowa City friends the Lewises, and I joined him there on my visit. It was great to see so many people that I missed so much...granted I missed Scott more than the others, but seeing the Lewises was fantastic all the same! I got to get reacquainted with Olaiya and Naomi, two of the most precious girls in the world. The Lewis family took us to their favorite burger joint, Five Guys. It was a fairly small and simple place, but they had made the best burger I've ever tasted! While we were eating I got the pleasure of telling knock-knock jokes with Olaiya...very funny! I taught her the interrupting cow joke. Pictured here is my little friend Naomi.

Scott and I really had only one day of sight seeing together in DC, and we certainly made the most of it by hitting our favorite sites. The last time we were in DC we didn't get to go the American History Museum because it was under renovation. This time we made a point to go and see the newly redone exhibits. We had a great time seeing one of our favorite items, the first idea for the Washington Monument...George Washington in a toga. I think this is the most halarious piece of history! I also think that whoever said "Maybe we should think of a different idea to imortalize one of the nations most important figures," was very wise in his decision making.

Some of the other highlights of the museum (pictured at the end) were, seeing the Julia Child exhibit. I love watching her old episodes on PBS on Saturday mornings, so getting to see her kitchen and learn some other things about her was really fun. I also got to see the musical instrument exhibit. Of course I had to have a picture of their old French horn that uses crooks instead of valves. I'm grateful to the guy who invented valves. Playing the French horn used to be somewhat inconvenient.

Sunday came all too quickly and I headed back to Iowa City. It was hard to say good-bye again, but the very next weekend he got to come home before he flew to his second stop in phase 2 of the "Grand Tour" -- New York City!

Julia and me

French horn and crooks

Thessolanica and Home

Around noon on August 25, we boarded a train to Thessalonica, Greece with McDonalds in hand for lunch. This train ride was better because we had our own private sleeping car. However, shortly after eating our lunch, we were informed that there was no food on the train. We found that to be ridiculous since we would be on the train until 6:00 a.m. the next morning! Thankfully, we had packed some almonds and dried apricots just in case which we ate for dinner. Fortunately, by this point in our travels we were used to big lunches and small dinners. We did not starve.

We arrived, tired and nasty, in Thessalonica, Greece on August 26 at around 6:00 a.m. We could not contact anyone at the University to start work on the next “sacred” skull, Petralona, or check into our hotel, so we "parked" at a cafe in the train station. We bought some breakfast and killed three hours before taking a taxi to Aristotle University of Thessalonica at around 9:00 a.m. We soon found the professor in charge of the skull. He was personable and offered us coffee. After a few minutes introduction, Scott got set up and got to work. Petralona was the last skull, and the granddaddy of them all. The best part for me was that I got to help this time! Scott let me push the button that recorded the measurements he was taking! That was my one shining moment contributing to the world of science on the trip.

Once we were done, we grabbed a quick sandwich for lunch and took a taxi to our hotel...on the beach! After showering (finally), we headed out the door of our hotel, and walked fifty yards to the beautiful beach. It was the end of the tourist season, so it wasn't too crowed and there were plenty of eating establishments to choose from. We lounged with a drink for awhile, and discussed what we were looking forward to the most about being home a just a few days. Then we walked a little further down the beach and had a great seafood dinner right there by the water! The food was excellent, it was beautiful, and Scott and I were having a great time! It was just what we needed to cure our Eastern Europe and “I’ve been away from home for three months” blues. As you can see from the pictures, how could we possibly not enjoy our surroundings after three months of “hard” work!

We turned in early that night in order to get up early for our flight back to Vienna. We arrived at the airport and checked in nice and early. Unfortunately, about 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave we heard our names called over the loud speaker to come to the ticket counter. What we learned is that our plane had a technical problem, so they were going to transfer us to another airline to a flight that was going to leave at 9:00 a.m. to get us to Athens, so we could make our connecting flight to Vienna. Seems pretty nice right? Well…transferring to another airline meant that they brought out our luggage, and we had to get tickets and check in all over again. Because of the massive lines that had formed by that point in the day we were pushing our limits on time. While waiting in line we saw on the departure screen that our original flight was rescheduled to leave at 9:15, so we were only saving 15 minutes that we would lose by having to pick up our luggage in Athens and recheck it with our original airline. On top of that, everyone that had to transfer airlines held up the 9:00 flight and we didn’t take off until 9:30. So…our original flight actually left before ours plus we wouldn’t have had to recheck our luggage...we were very frustrated.

Despite the best efforts of Olympic airlines we caught our flight to Vienna without incident, and arrived safely in Vienna with all of our stuff after lunch on August 27. On Friday morning, Scott finished up his work at the Vienna Natural History Museum, and then we spent the afternoon shopping, and planning and preparing for our journey back to the US on Sunday morning. On Saturday, we met our good friend Bob Lojeck (Raija had left for Finland to visit her parents), for some authentic Japanese sushi. As usual, after consuming the best sushi I’ve ever had, our conversation took us to another spot for drinks, and then dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant. I can’t think of a better way to spend our last day in Europe, good friends and good food!

Finally, the morning arrived for us to travel home! Our flight from Vienna to London Heathrow went quite smoothly. We even arrived a few minutes early. However, since O’Hare and Heathrow, the two vortexes of travel, were on our itinerary we ran into big problems. Our flight to Chicago was delayed four hours. This meant that we would miss our connecting flight to Cedar Rapids, and guaranteed that we would be spending the night in Chicago. Fortunately, they put us up in the Hilton over night since the problem was technical. However, thanks to jet lag, we really didn’t sleep, which made getting up at 5:30 a.m. less of an issue to catch the first flight out to Cedar Rapids.

Our good friend Hannah Marsh was waiting for us at the airport, and we arrived back at our house at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, August 31 and were greeted by…a foiled living room! Our small group at church carried on a tradition that was started four years ago of pranking our house while we were gone. You can see that the quality of the prank is impeccable as they even individually wrapped a Starburst wrapper we had left on the table. Home sweet home!!

Romania

Saturday evening on August 22 Scott and I boarded a night train; on our list of destinations, Bucharest, Romania, and Thessalonica, Greece. Scientifically speaking, this portion of our European travels was important. Each destination held a “holy relic,” if you will, of the human fossil world.

Whatever golden ticket of science this part of the trip was supposed to be, I was not looking forward to the long train rides. Bucharest, and Thessalonica are neither close to each other nor close to Vienna. Once again all the private sleeping cars were booked on our train from Vienna to Bucharest, so we traveled 19 hours on a train in a four person couchette. I could not wait to get off that train! We “roomed” with two very nice Romanians who did not speak English, and did not stop talking, except to sleep (thank goodness). The air conditioning on the train was very poor, and passport control woke us up twice in the 3:00 a.m. hour. It was not the best night, morning and early afternoon I’ve ever spent on a train. We arrived in Bucharest at around 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, and went directly to our hotel to shower!

After lots of R & R in our great hotel room, Monday brought a brighter outlook. We had a late start to the morning waiting for someone from The Institute of Speology to meet us, which was just fine with us. A note about The Institute of Speology: it holds the “sacred” skull called Oase, the building that houses it is hidden among back streets and junk piles (the mailmen can’t even find it), and the guys that work there are serious “cavers!” They are absolutely passionate about the research they do, and they have NO MONEY to do it! Dr. Constantine, who started the institute, told us that he recently was awarded a grant of 1,000,000 Euros for his research, but because of the world wide financial crisis he was told he won’t receive a penny of it. We liked hanging out with them; they were good guys.

For lunch they took us to a great local restaurant. We knew nothing about Romania, so we asked what was good there. The suggestion we were given was Moldovan Stew, a traditional Romanian dish. Dr. Constantine did however give us the disclaimer, “I don’t know if you’ll like it, but they make it properly here.” That was good enough for us, so we each ordered one. So, it turned out …that the stew was made of sausage and internal organs of some animal of which only liver was identifiable. The other two items on the plate were a healthy portion of the best polenta I’ve ever tasted and a fried egg. Despite the mystery meat it was good! I ate most of mine, and Scott cleaned his plate. I have to tip my hat to the Romanians for making something yummy out of something so yucky!

Once we were finished at the institute, we hauled all our stuff back to the hotel and decided to eat at McDonalds for dinner. Yes, McDonalds…one adventurous meal was enough for me, so it was time for something predictable. We also picked up some lunch here before getting on another long train ride to Thessalonica the next day.

(Sorry for the lack of pics on this post. The pic of Scott working in Romania is one of the only pic worth sharing; I have another one with Scott smiling...that's about it.)

Vienna Highlights

Life for us in Vienna became different after the Madduxes left. My title on the trip became less “tourist,” and more “housewife and supporter of science.” Staying the next 3-4 weeks in Vienna meant that we had to learn how to become temporary residents. I spent most mornings shopping for and making lunch for Scott and myself. Then I would take lunch to the museum where we would eat together. Many of my afternoons were spent trying to catch up my blog, shopping, or on an occasional excursion to a museum, or reading in a park or garden. In addition, once a week or so, I would load up all our dirty clothes in my pack and make the 30 minute trek by metro and walking to the wash center to do our laundry. All these daily/weekly activities took up a majority of my time during the weekdays; therefore, I don’t have too many exciting things to report from the last three weeks. However there have been several highlights worth sharing.

Making new friends at church takes the number one highlight slot. We were blessed to meet up with a Bob and Raija Lojek who live in Vienna on our first Sunday, August 2. They are also friends with Jerry and Sara Steele who are close friends of ours in Iowa. Through Facebook, Raija was sweet enough to welcome us to Vienna and invite us to their church on Sunday. We happily accepted their invitation and ended up enjoying bible class and worship there for the next three weeks. Church was always followed by lunch and lively conversation that turned into coffee which usually turned into dinner. They showed us some great places to eat including a great sushi place called Natsu. We ate with them there twice, and went on our own several times as well. We had a blast getting to know them as huge sushi fans, runners, and wonderful people! We had quite a lot in common and many travel stories to share. Getting to spend time with them has been one of the brightest parts of our European travels.

Highlight number two would have to be spending the next Saturday, August 8, at Schoenbrunn Palace with Scott. In my previous blog update I have already explained why I love this particular site and you have already seen pics from my visit. However, Scott was not able to come with us on our last visit, and he didn’t want to miss seeing one of his favorite sites in Vienna. As always we had a great time touring the opulent rooms of the apartments, and strolling though the gardens. I have included a couple pics here.

Highlight three was the next weekend starting on Friday, August 14. Friday was a short day for Scott because the Natural History Museum was doing some fumigation in some of their working areas. This means that he could only work a half day, but the all the exhibits in the museum would still be open. After lunch Scott and I spent the rest of the day re-exploring the exhibits at the Natural History Museum. We had such a great time that afternoon. We took several goofy pictures that I have included. It was nice to just get to play with him all afternoon. If anyone reading this blog gets the opportunity to go to Vienna you must see this museum. I think it has something for everyone even if you’re not into nature. The building itself is worth seeing. Even if it didn’t have excellent exhibits, which it does, it is worth seeing. The architecture and interior decoration are impressive! (yay Franz Joseph and Baroque architecture!)

We spent the next day, Saturday, Aug 15 at the Art History Museum. The building that houses this art collection is a twin of the Natural History Museum, and they face one another with a lovely courtyard in the middle. Overall that area is one of my favorites in Vienna. We spent the whole afternoon looking at the history of Dutch and Italian art. As you may know by now, I am the art fanatic, Scott is not. However, he was sweet enough to go with me, and also to go with an open mind. We had a great time, and he discovered that he likes Dutch artists, while my preference is for Italian ones (duh). Scott is more Rembrandt while I am more Caravaggio.

The following Monday, August 17, while everyone back at Strawberry Hill Elementary in Anamosa, Iowa was beginning a new school year, we took a day trip to Brno in the Czech Republic. Scott had a few important skulls to measure there. There isn’t much to report about this trip. It was just a work trip, and we didn’t get to see anything spectacular. As soon as Scott was done with his work we hopped back on a train to Vienna and were “home” by dinner time. The next weekend would be our last in Europe, but probably our most intense for traveling. Somehow we would have to go to Bucharest, Romania, and Thessalonica, Greece (yes, the one in the Bible), and back to Vienna in order to catch our flight back to Iowa on August 30…wish us luck (I think we’ll need all we can get)!

More pics:

Sushi at Natsu with Bob and Raija

I like this picture I took of a rose in the gardens at Schoenbrunn Palace

Scott wit a cool skeleton of a dinosaur at the Natural History Museum.

Tiny Arctic Tressa at the Natural History Museum.

Vienna -- Week 1

We arrived in Vienna late on Monday, July 27. Both of us were relieved to finally be here! Four years ago when Scott was working on his masters we were here together for our first over seas data collection trip. Scott was here for 5 weeks. I joined him for the last two since I had to finish my school year first. We both fell in love with the city then, so coming back and getting to spend the next 4 weeks here was almost like coming home. We were also glad to see Scott's parents, Jana and Dave, along with Caroline, Scott's little sister, and Scott's Aunt Sandy. They left Moscow to meet us here in Vienna for a little "vay-cay" with the fam. They had never been to Vienna, so we were excited to show them some of our favorite museums and food. Unfortunately, Scott missed most of the site seeing this week for his work at the Natural History Museum. However, Scott is used to making such sacrifices for science, and he always joined us for dinner and festivities after work.

What makes Vienna so great you ask? Well...For any of you who don't know, Vienna used to be the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. Vienna was where the Hapsburgs lived and ruled for 6 centuries. This means there is an overwhelming amount to learn and see, loads of art, history, and music. In addition, the historic center of Vienna was constructed or reconstructed during the Baroque period which means that it's also a charming. Add clean, safe, and not as expensive as other EU countries to the list and you have one great place to be! Every day I am surrounded by beauty and culture.

We started out on Tuesday morning with the Vienna essentials in the Hofburg Palace complex which is where they lived in the winter. They had a whole different, better one for the summer. You'll see some of that later. Within the Hofburg complex, we toured their silver collection (it's impressive!), the Sisi museum and the royal apartments. Pfew...we were tired.

Wednesday brought a new experience for me in Vienna. We took a bus tour of the Danube Vally. It took all day, and also included boat time on the Danube. This was really a winner for everyone. It was relaxing, interesting and beautiful. What more could you ask for? First we drove through the rolling hills of the Austrian countryside. There were trees and vineyards as far as the eye could see. Only an occasional castle or other beautiful historic building would interrupt the natural landscape. After a couple hours we arrived at the docking point for our boat tour. The boat was a decent size complete with cafe, and bathrooms. It was a little warm, but beautiful outside, so we enjoyed the tour from the top deck where we could watch the scenery go by as we sipped on various drinks and snacks. (The picture I included here was taken on the boat. I hope you will ignore the random guy standing up in my pic, and just look the the scenery. There is a castle above the guy's head.) When the boat again docked we got back on the bus and headed to lunch at our next tour site in Melk. In Melk we toured a Baroque monastery, and then we headed for home...er...I mean Vienna and our hotel rooms (Freudian slip).

Thursday brought a tour of the magnificent Schonbrunn Palace! This is where the Hapsburgs spent the summers. Oh, Schonbrunn is one of my favorite places... amazing Baroque architecture and interior decoration, lavishly furnished, extensive Baroque palace gardens that include a maze, monumental fountain, and a zoo! I have been there a total of 3 times, once in 2005 and twice on this trip (I went back with Scott)! We couldn't take pictures inside, but I've taken plenty on the grounds outside. There is also a small cafe on the edge of the grounds where I had a great melange (roughly an Austrian cappuccino), and apple strudel! I don't have a picture of it because I hadn't had breakfast that morning, so I ate it too fast. When we were done here we stopped there again for ice cream. *wistful sigh*

Friday brought another bus tour and another new Viennese experience. (Mom, I hope you read this because you will appreciate this part more than anyone else) This time our tour was only a half day through the woods. These were the same woods that inspired composers such as Beethoven and Mozart! However, the most interesting part of this tour was visiting an old gypsum mine. It was so much cooler down in the mine that they gave us blankets on our way in to keep us warm. We learned all kinds of things about how it flooded while they were mining gypsum, so they closed it, and then how they opened it back up just for visitors, and then how the Germans took it over during the war. The coolest part for me wasn't any of these things. The coolest part is that they filmed parts of the movie "The Three Musketeers" in that mine! They even left the movie boat down there (that I have a very bad picture of but can't resist including)! When that movie came out when I was in high school I went to see it in the theater 7 times! I had a huge crush on Kiefer Sutherland back then when he had his gut. You may be laughing now, or you may be disgusted at my taste in movies or men at that time, but it was true.

Saturday was our one day to site-see with Scott, so we went to his favorite site the Treasury Museum. This is an amazing museum! The Hapsburgs had loads of treasure. Some of these include: the crown jewels (of course), the largest cut emerald in the world, the "holy grail," and supposed relics from Christ's crucifixion! It was fun to go back.

Too soon after we finished at the Treasury, the Madduxes and Aunt Sandy had to fly back to Moscow, and Scott and I were left to finish out our trip on our own. We had a great time showing them why we like Vienna so much!

Extra pics that wouldn't fit right in the text:

Our tour boat: Prince Eugen

The castle above "that guy's" head

Me and my melange on the boat

Left to right: Aunt Sandy Vinzant, Caroline Maddux, Jana Maddux on the boat

Dave Maddux on the boat

In front of the Schonbrunn Palace gardens

Dave and Jana at Schonbrunn

A little traditional Viennese Sacher Torte and melange

Berlin

In order to talk about Berlin, I must mostly talk about our adventure getting there. Berlin was hard to schedule in the first place, and by this point in the trip we had already rescheduled with them. Geographically there was no good time to go, and there was only one skull there. We only needed 1/5 of the time it would take to get there for Scott to collect the data he needed. However, this skull was important, so we figured this particular weekend after Florence (July 23-26) was our one shot.

Here was our plan:
We had booked a night train on Thursday from Florence to Munich in 2nd class because 1st was full when we made our reservations. This meant that we would be sharing a 6 person sleeping car with 4 strangers -- not ideal but at least we had beds. The night train was scheduled to arrive in Munich in the 6:00 a.m. hour, and then we would catch a train to Berlin in the 7:00 hour. We would arrive in Berlin just in time to take a taxi straight to the museum and measure the skull before they closed that day (Friday). Then we would spend a relaxing weekend in Berlin before heading to Vienna on Sunday which would take most of the day on another train. Scott's family was also scheduled to be in Vienna Sunday night, so we could spend our first week in Vienna with them.

Here is what actually happened:
We arrived at the Florence train station a couple hours ahead of time. About an hour before our train was scheduled to leave they posted a 20 minute delay for our train. Then, twenty minutes before our train was supposed to leave they removed the delay, so now our train should be leaving on time, but there was no platform number posted for the train, so we didn't know where it was. I asked a train station employee about it, and I was told that the train had not arrived and they didn't know when or on what track it would. THIS WAS THE SAME ANSWER I GOT 2 MINUTES BEFORE OUR TRAIN WAS SCHEDULED TO LEAVE! THE BOARD SHOWED NO TRAIN DELAY, BUT NO ONE KNEW WHERE OUR TRAIN WAS! HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?!
...I probably don't need to tell you that I was panicking. They finally posted the platform number as we watched the train pulling in. *exasperated sigh*

Anyway, Scott and I got on the train carrying 6 bags and one briefcase since we are, basically, hauling around a portable lab. We found that we were sharing our compartment with 4 tall very nice Danish college aged people. They spoke English well, and were just as interested in sleeping as we were. The train employee in charge of our car came around and took our tickets and our passports so she wouldn't have to wake us up in the night, and explained we would get them back at 5:30 when she came around to get us up for our arrival in Munich around 6:00 a.m. *pause* Well, that was the good part. Scott then had to whip out his mad Tetris skills to try to fit our luggage into our tiny closet of a sleeping compartment that somehow slept six people, four of them Danish giants (comparatively), that was already full of their luggage! Finally we got settled and got to know our bunk mates a little bit. While this was going on the train started to move. I looked at my watch in surprise when I realized that we had left an hour late! Already this is bad -- our "layover" time in Munich is about half an hour, so unless this train can make-up a lot of time on the way we will miss our next train. All we can do at this point is hope for the best, so we all go to sleep.

I woke up somewhere in the 2:00 hour to a loud creaking and disconnecting noise, and then silence, stillness, and darkness. On a train, these are not good things. I expect trains to move, and make noise when they do so, and the darkness meant that we were not stopped at a train station. However, I know from former travel experiences and Rick Steves that not all parts of the train always go to the final destination, so we might have been "dropped" somewhere waiting for another train to pick us up. In the meantime, there is no power, so there is no air conditioning. It is getting hotter and hotter which means sweatier and smellier. During this time I considered my situation. I am now possibly trapped in a tiny box with 5 other people without air or power in the middle of Europe with no idea if or when another train will come to "rescue" us... On that note I tried to go back to sleep. Eventually, we did start moving again, and the air came back on, but even in my half awake half asleep state that I was in for the next several hours, I knew something was not right.

At 5:30 someones travel alarm went off. It was about 30 minutes before we were supposed to get to Munich but there was no sign of the lady with our tickets and passports. I assumed at that point that we were late, but I didn't know how late. While I waited for my answer the train stopped a lot in random places, and when we did so there was shouting in a language I couldn't understand, and lots of banging noises. Finally, around 7:00 a.m. our "lady" comes by to give us our stuff back and let us know that the train had broken down and we will be arriving in Munich 3 hours late. This means we have missed our train to Berlin, and we wouldn't make it there before the museum closed for the weekend.

When we arrived in Munich tired and disheveled, we paid for new reservations since they could not change the original ones, and got on a train to Berlin before lunch. Fortunately, while we were on the train Scott was able to get a hold of the museum on the phone, and let them know what was going on. They said he could come on Monday morning, so he could still get his data. However, that meant that we had to sacrifice a day with Scott's family in Vienna. The pictures I included above are actually taken on the train we took from Berlin to Vienna, but I thought you might be interested in seeing how we have been dragging our worldly possessions with us from country to country, and to show you how much we had to stuff into our sleeping compartment.

Once we got there we liked Berlin, and were able to get out and see some of the sites. Enjoy the pics of the fun part. Monday we measured the one skull he needed first thing in the morning, and by lunch time we were on a train to Vienna. The down side is that we were on that train for almost 11 hours...but what can you do?

Saturday we toured the Charlottenburg Palace.
Scott took this picture of me in the gardens there.
Scott's museum was also in this complex.

Charlonttenburg Gardens

The Charlottenburg Place and gardens

Scott and me in the Charlottenburg Place gardens

Sunday we spent seeing some of the major land marks of Berlin. Here I am standing by a piece of the Berlin Wall. We also went to an art museum that we both really enjoyed. I got to see some old Italian art by Botticelli and newer Italian art by Caravaggio. We also discovered that Scott like Dutch painters.