New York City

I arrived in New York in mid-October to begin work at the American Museum of Natural History where I studied the museum's cranial collection looking at European, Eskimo, and Australian skulls. The curator, Gisselle Garcia-Pack, was incredibly helpful and I had a lot of fun overhearing some of the ridiculous phone calls she had to deal with. My personal favorite was lady who wanted to know if Gisselle (a skeletal biologist) could tell her if the pot she just found was Native American over the phone (only slightly better than the guy who called saying he had figured out the "secret" behind racial skin color). My very humble Upper West Side lodgings on 94th and Broadway provided me with a really enjoyable walk everyday to the museum on 77th and Columbus, and the weather cooperated most of the time too. As with D.C., Tressa was able to spend a weekend visiting and we managed to see most of the major sites such as Central Park, Grand Central Station, Ground Zero, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Statue of Liberty.

Washington, D.C.

After only a couple of brief weeks back home in Iowa City (mostly spent frantically planning the rest of my trip), I headed to Washington, D.C. to work at the National Museum of Natural History again to study their collection of fossil casts and Eskimo, Mongolian, and Australian Aborigine skulls. Having spent time at the NMNH in 2007, it was great to go back and see everyone at the museum again. Even better, since Kurt and Tara Lewis had recently moved there, I got to stay with some great friends during my time in the nation's capital, making my 3 weeks away from Tressa easier to handle. Thankfully, Tressa was able to come out and spend a weekend in D.C. and so we got some sight-seeing in as well as spending some quality time with Kurt, Tara, Olaiya, and Naomi. Having been to D.C. several times now, Tressa and I were less concerned with hitting the major attractions and instead focused on some of our favorite stops. Tressa, of course, had to visit the Corcoran gallery, her favorite art museum. I really wanted to see the American History Museum again since it had been recently renovated. As before, it displayed possibly my favorite historical statue: the original Washington Monument, a statue of George Washington wearing a toga. Tressa, however, was really excited about one of the new exhibits: a full scale reconstruction of Julia Child's kitchen (Tressa watches her show on PBS every Saturday morning).

Home

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).

Romania

Tressa and I rolled into Bucharest, Romania on Sunday, August 23rd after enduring a grueling 19 hour train ride from Vienna. I had feared that the worst was yet to come, as I had heard some real horror stories about Bucharest hotels, but our hotel turned out to be one of the best we stayed at in Europe. It was incredibly clean, air- conditioned, had super friendly staff, and about $30 a night...it was exactly what we needed after 3 months of traveling on a shoestring. On Monday one of the staff at the the Institutul de Speologie arrived at our hotel and walked us to the institute. Erik Trinkaus had warned me that we would never find the institute on our own, and he was right, it was truly in the backstreets of Bucharest. For lunch, the guys at the institute took us to a fun local restaurant where we got to enjoy a Romanian specialty, Modovian Stew, a unique mix of unidentifiable internal organs, polenta and a fried egg. After getting over the initial idea of it, i actually found it to be really good. Back at the institute I worked with the Oase 2 cranium and Oase 1 mandible, likely the oldest H. sapiens fossils in Europe. It was just another one of those fantastically surreal experiences of working with fossils that I never thought I'd ever actually get to see. At the end of the day, the director, Dr. Silviu Constantin, walked us back to our hotel, where we spent the night anxiously watching the news (the room even came with a TV with english stations!) about the forest fires in Greece... our next destination.

Brno

Tressa and I made a quick day trip from Vienna up to Brno in the Czech Republic on August 17th to study Dolni Vestonice III and Kulna along with some other fossils and casts. For lunch, our host, Jana Klicova, took us out to a great restaurant located in the celler of a building built in the in middle ages. I knew the Czechs liked their beer, but this place took it to a new level. The tables actually had a tap for each person with a meter that recorded how much each person poured themselves. I had hoped to wander around after I finished work at the Moravske Zemske Museum and find Mendel's pea garden, but unfortunatley as soon as we left the museum a torrential downpour began. We rushed back to the train station to get the equipment out of the rain and decided just to cut our losses and catch an earlier train back to Vienna.

Vienna

Tressa and I arrived in Vienna from Berlin around Midnight on Monday, July 27th. As we prepared to get off the train Tressa thought it would be a good time to document how much junk we had to haul all over Europe for three months. I am much indebted to my wonderful wife for carrying various pieces of equipment across the continent, day after day, with nary a complaint...I don't know how I would have done it without her.




















.















.







After spending the night in a hotel by the train station, Tressa helped me carry the equipment to the Natural History Museum. Having spent 5 weeks there in 2005, arriving at the museum felt almost like returning home, some where comfortable with people that you know. Another great benefit of arriving in Vienna was that my parents, my sister Caroline, and my aunt Sandy had arrived from Moscow to spend a week in Vienna. Getting to spend a week in Vienna with family was a lot of fun, and Tressa really appreciated the help hauling all our dirty laundry to the laundromat (by this point we were pretty tired of hand washing everything in hotel sinks). The museum staff had set Tressa and I up in the museum dormitories, which, in addition to being really inexpensive, was conveniently located just across the street from the museum. The dorm was really set up to be shared by two single people, a twin bed on each wall (think college dorms) but after we adjusted the furniture (and bought a fan) we had a pretty comfortable home for three weeks.


Since we were spending so little on housing (10 euros a night), Tressa and I were able to splurge a little on the some of Vienna's wide array of culinary delights. There was the classics, Sacher Torte and Melanges (Austrian version of a cappuccino), Lentils with bacon and bread dumplings, and there was the ethntic food; great Indian food (I can still smell the lamb korma) and then there was the sushi...

On our first Sunday we went to church and met up with Bob and Raija Lojek, who were friends of our Iowa City friends Sara and Jerry Steele when they all lived in the UK. They took us to lunch at a local Turkish restaurant and we began what would become a weekly ritual of spending the entire day together wandering around Vienna stopping here and there for something to drink or eat while enjoying some great conversation on virtually every topic under the sun.


The next Sunday Bob and Raija (who once lived in Japan) took us to a little Sushi restaurant. The sushi was great, but even better, the restaurant had a summer 1/2 off special on mixed sushi sets (10 pieces of nigiri and a maki roll for about $7). Thus, unbelievably, the cheapest food in Vienna was Sushi, and from that day on Tressa and I felt almost obligated to eat there...daily.

There is of course, no shortage of fun things to do in Vienna. In addition to being where I worked, the Natural History Museum in Vienna is one of our favorite museums. Opened in the late 1800's, the museum exhibits a huge collection of virtually everything found in nature.































































































.













.






We're also big fans of the two Habsburg palaces: Schoenbrunn (summer palace) and the Hofburg (Winter palace). One of my favorite things about the Hofburg is that they've excavated part of one of the nearby squares to show the 5th century roman ruins that most of Vienna is built right on top of.