Meanwhile, back in Aachen...

Dustin's in for the long haul of mostly working until he heads off to meet Julianna in Africa in two months. From here on out most of the entries will probably be about Julianna's adventures in Africa, and you can all assume I'm plugging along here in Germany. This past week was probably one of my last trips before I head to join Julianna in Ghana -- on Thursday I headed out to Karlsruhe for two days to visit my advisor Mari who is on sabbadical there. It was a good visit, I got to meet people at the lab she's visiting, and had a great dinner with her family and a couple of the students she invited over to her place.

Friday was more meetings at the lab, but "most importantly" at the end of the day we headed to the city center to watch the opening World Cup game (Germany vs. Costa Rica) in a plaza where they had set up a big screen for watching the game. It was a lot of fun, and I understand more what all the excitement about World Cup soccer is all about. On Friday night I also made a spontaneous plan to go meet up with two friends from high school, Ralph Zeigler and Matt Thompson. I headed to Nuremberg on Saturday, they picked me up at the train station and we went back to Raplh's parents' house. It was great to see everyone there again (they used to live across the street from us in Seattle). We had fun catching up, and then went out to a festival in their town (Erlangen) that happens once a year for a week, a la Octoberfest, but in the forrest under a canopy of trees, rather than tents - it was really nice!

Sunday we headed into Nuremberg to watch more World Cup games, and this time went to a big screen they erected outside the stadium in Nuremberg where Mexico was playing Iran. People were all clad in their teams colors, and went crazy waving flags and yelling and running around when goals were scored - all in all - a great experience of how exciting European soccer can be. So, a good weekend seeing old friends and jumping into some classic European culture. From here on out you'll all have to depend on Julianna for the exciting adventures, I'm hunkering down for lots of work...