London: Week 1

I arrived in London via the Chunnel from Brussels on Tuesday the 23rd. I made it to the Natural History Museum in just enough time to study the Gibraltar 1 (Forbes Quarry) Neandertal. After gratefully leaving all my equipment at the museum, I wandered the charming streets of Chelsea looking for the home of Mike and Debi Kirksy (Tressa's mom's bestfriend), who are kindly letting us stay with them while we're in London. On Wednesday I studied the ~300,000 year old Kabwe specimen, which is something I've been looking forwards to doing for 5 years. On Friday, Tressa arrived in London (after enjoying a week spent in Italy with her mother and sister) to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. We enjoyed a great meal at Ziani's, a wonderful little Italian restaurant tucked away in the back streets of Chelsea. On Saturday we walked through London taking in the major sites: Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, Big Ben and Parliament, etc. On Sunday we traveled to Wembley for church, and then toured the British Museum for a few hours (enough time to see about 1 percent of this gigantic museum). Like true tourists, we headed straight for the Rosetta Stone.

Brussels

I didn't get to spend much time in Brussels, just enough to measure the Spy Neandertals and catch up with Matt Tocheri who was in town scanning pygmies to compare the the Homo floresiensis hands and feet. It was fun to get all the inside info on the Flores stuff and to hear about the excavations coming up in September.

Germany

We took a night train from Rome to Munich and then rode to Frankfurt where we met up with Tressa's college roommate Melanie Horst who is stationed in Wiesbaden Germany with the Army. Melanie, and her husband Joe, have been kind enough to let us crash at their place this week while I've worked in various Germany cities. On Thursday we traveled to Bonn where I studied the two Oberkassel crania and had a chance to see the Feldhofer skeleton. If you're not an anthropologist (i.e. big nerd), the Feldhofer skeleton was found in Germany's Neander Valley.The German word for valley is "thal". Thus, the Feldhofer skeleton is where we get the term Neanderthal man, or man from the Neander Valley. Unfortunately, Feldhofer has no face, so I didn't actually get to study the specimen up close...which kinda made me want to cry. On Friday, Tressa's mom and sister flew into Frankfurt, and they all hopped on a train bound for Florence for a week of all girls sight-seeing. I on the other hand, opted for something even better...traveling to Stuttgart to study the 250,000 year old Steinheim cranium.

Rome

We arrived in Rome on the Sunday 14th and checked into our cozy little B&B right across from the University of Rome. I worked with the two Saccopastore Neandertals housed at the University on Monday, and the Guattari Neandertal housed at the the "L. Pigorini" Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography on Tuesday. It was a truly a surreal experience to be handed specimens to work with that you have been reading and writing about for 5 years. Rome was kinda hot (especially when hauling equipment around town) but we had a great time in our short stay there. While we didn't have a lot of time for site-seeing, we did have a chance to stop and see the Colosseum for about an hour. On Tuesday, after measuring the Guattari specimen, Tressa and I took an over-night train from Rome to Munich Germany. It was a little cramped, but we had a lot of fun in our little private sleeping compartment. Wednesday morning we took a train to Frankfurt to meet up with Tressa's college roommate Melanie Horst and her husband Joe who are stationed in Germany with the Army.

Moscow

Arrived in Moscow on Saturday, June 6th. My parents took us out for "Ethnic" food, which in Russia means food from Uzbekistan. The baked rabbit and sliced horse flesh was excellent, so was my Siberian beer. Toured the Kremlin and Red Square on Sunday, and started work with the four Sunghir crania at the Laboratory of Anthropological Reconstruction on Monday. Erik Trinkaus is currently working on a comprehensive project on the Sunghir material, and has been helping me out while in Moscow (a lot). The highlight so far has been Erik letting me reconstruct a couple of broken Sunghir mandibles, a pretty simple task, but it's not everyday that you get to fix something 26,000 years old. The lab is small and cozy, and the staff are really nice and helpful, our conversations at tea time are always fun with various people translating in English, French, and Russian. I was actually able to have my Birthday with my parents for the first time in several years, I only had to travel to Russia to make it happen. As usual, Tressa made an awesome birthday cheesecake for me, which is pretty impressive considering she had to shop for ingredients in Cyrillic (crazy Russian alphabet).