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Tressa and I finally got home to Iowa City on Monday, August 31st after a less than smooth trip back from Vienna involving a long delay in London and an extra night spent in Chicago. Hannah Marsh picked us up at the Cedar Rapids airport and brought us home, where we anticipated the usual shenanigans played on us after a long absence... the gang put forth a pretty solid effort this time.

Greece

Tressa and I rolled into Thessalonica (Thessaloniki), Greece in the early hours of August 26th after a 17 hours train ride from Bucharest, Romania (complete with a 2 hour layover in Sofia, Bulgaria and a couple of fun 3 am passport control stops along the Buglaria-Greece border). While riding through Bulgaria I couldn't help but notice the hundreds (maybe thousands) of rock shelters littering the mountainsides along the train tracks. I could only wonder how many Neandertals used to live in those valleys. After waiting in the Thessalonica train station for a few hours (we watched CNN at a cafe, Ted Kennedy died while we waited) we headed to George Koufos' lab at Aristotle University so I could study the Petralona cranium. I had saved Petralona for last, primarily because of the geographic difficulties in getting to Thessalonica, but also because it gave me something to look forwards to the entire trip. It was everything I had hoped for and more. Having previously studied a number of Petralona casts, this is definitely one specimen where nothing compares to the original, there's all sorts of little epigenetic features that casts just don't pick-up. After taking all my measurements and pages of copious notes, I finally had to acknowledge that it was time to get my very patient wife to a shower, and we headed off to our hotel.

Our hotel was exactly what we needed, a small relaxing place right on the Mediterranean. After enjoying a long awaited shower, Tressa and I headed out to the beach for a drink and some fresh seafood. We lounged on the beach for as long as we could, enjoying the sunset before crawling into bed to get some much needed sleep before our ridiculously early flight back to Vienna (you can read Tressa's blog to hear about this airline adventure).