Spain's southern coast

 I'm not going to continue where I left off because Sasha wants to tell you about Merida and El Rocio and national park Doñana.  So instead, I'm skipping ahead to the Friday evening of our trip, when we hit the coast near Tarifa and saw Africa.  I don't have pictures that does it justice, but the part of Morocco that you can see from Spain is mountainous, and in the evening light with just a touch of mist rising off the Atlantic, the views were pretty awesome.  At first as we were driving in, I told Sasha "I think that those hills/mountains are in Africa" and he didn't believe me.  But I became quite convinced that I was right when I saw a huge cargo ship between those hills and where we were driving, and ultimately Sasha had to admit that was convincing.  After checking into our hotel, we decided that the hotel restaurant food smelled yummy and rather than driving to find a restaurant in town, sat on the hotel patio watching the sun set over the Atlantic. I promise I'll post again later about all the food, but if I talk about the cool stuff we saw and the food at the same time, it will be way too long.

Where do these belong??

Saturday was another busy day.  It was warm and sunny, and we were torn between spending the morning on the beach or looking at Roman ruins, but luckily didn't have to choose, because there are Roman ruins right by a lovely beach in the town of Bolonia. Bolonia is a small town just west of Tarifa on the Atlantic coast of Spain, and although now it is a small tourist/farming/etc. village, it was quite the city back in the days of the Roman empire and was the place to go for salted fish (the town was called Baelo Claudia, in the Latin).  Since the Roman empire's days are rather old history at this point, the town is pretty much just a set of foundations and some columns and a theater that have, I'm sure, all been largely reconstructed.  I liked the pile of carefully numbered stones a short ways away from the excavated foundations.  It was like the archaeologists said "hhmmm...I don't know where these go, so let's just leave them over here for later".  It was also clear that plenty of the roman city is still buried under the grass; there were tantalizing stones poking out here and there.  Still, it is cool seeing things that old. 

Roman ruins and beach.  Sorry to make you jealous.

And, we got to look at them on a nice, warm day on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.  OK, so this picture is a little deceiving in that you can't walk onto the beach from the ruins; there were some fences, a small road, etc. But still, the ocean was right there. 

We were quite clever actually, and toured the ruins first thing in the morning (by Spanish standards) and we almost had the place to ourselves.  As we had our fill and were headed to the beach, we saw a bunch of tour buses arrive, so we left just in time.

We had an hour or so on the beach (enough to be warm and happy but not enough for either of us pale Northerners to burn) and then we went back to shower and go meet my labmate Nuria, who was visiting her family for a long weekend.  It was fun to hang out with a local, and after meeting her family and seeing their house, we went with Nuria and her boyfriend Marek to the nearby town of Castellar de la Frontera. 

Castellar de la Frontera

Castellar is a cool fortress of a town perched high on a hill.  I little while ago, they built a "new" Castellar down in the valley with more comfortable looking homes, schools, etc. so the upper walled town seems to be more the haunt of non-Spanish ex-pats and is full of hotels and the like, but the town is also a bit off the beaten track, so it didn't really have that tourist town feel. Although there was a donkey giving rides to kids having a birthday party at one of the hotels, and there was a guy with raptors that you could pay to hold...needless to say, we did pay and did hold them.

We wandered around, stopped for drinks in a small cafe, and, since it is so high on a hill, tons of raptors were migrating right over our heads, making my husband happy.

Nuria and Marek at Castellar

White houses in the old town.

We headed down to the new town for a tapas dinner.  Since Nuria likes food as much as me, you can believe it was a good dinner!

We went back to our hotel near Tarifa, and Sunday morning, stopped briefly in Tarifa before heading on.  I was set on getting to the point closest to Africa, but alas, there is this island/peninsula south of Tarifa that looked tantalizingly cool but is partly a military installation or something, so was off limits.  So I had to content myself with the map instead. 

At least it was cool to be on this strip of beach separating the Meditarranean from the Atlantic.  We have pictures by the signs for each, but I'll spare you.  Alas, it was windy and cloudy and hazy, so we couldn't even get a good final view of Africa.  We did see a guy doing some cool stunts while kite surfing, though.

For the rest of the day, we decided to check out Gibraltar.  It was kind of a last minute addition to our itinerary, but it proved irresistible.  Now, you may have heard of the rock of Gibraltar and maybe you are like me and were picturing, I dunno, something like Plymouth rock on a hilly coast.  Not so. Gibraltar is one giant rock with a small bit of town crouching on a strip of beach. Unfortunately, the clouds and fog made it sub-optimal for photographing and for birding (Sasha was hoping to see more migrating raptors) but Gibraltar was cool nonetheless.

The Rock of Gibraltar through the fog.

That's a lot of town crowded into a very small area; I guess a lot of it is even on "reclaimed" land.

Gibraltar is still a British colony, so we had to go through a manned border crossing to get in.  It was pretty prefunctory, though; we just sort of waved our passports at the guards and they waved us through, although that was definitely a blessing given the long line of cars waiting to drive in.  I think there are all sorts of cute Britishy things to do in the town, but we didn't do more than quickly drive through the town to get up onto the rock.  Now here is a moment where what we did and what we should have done diverged.  If you go to Gibraltar and want to wander around seeing all the cool things up on the rock, take the cable car up or figure out how to hike up.  DO NOT  try to drive into the upper rock nature reserve, even if your bird finding guide seems to suggest this is a good idea.  Especially not if your wife is prone to carsickness and your rental car is somewhat lacking in the pick-up department, since you will inevitably need to start your car while it is parked on an exceptionally narrow road on an exceptionally steep hill.  After stop number 2 (a cool if curiously techinicoloredly illuminated cave; stop number one was a closed birding station), I decided that it would be best for all involved if I walked to the next sights on the list and met Sasha there...but that's skipping over the myriad reasons to go up to the upper rock nature reserve. Besides the cool caves, that is.

 Monkeys doing monkey things (or posing for the tourists)

First, there are monkeys. Monkeys are cute; maybe not quite as cute as sheep, but still. Monkeys are not native to Spain (or Gibraltar) but someone decided that Gibraltar needed monkeys and introduced them in the 18th century, and it's clear that they are well loved by the people, as I saw several monkey play stations complete with piles of monkey food (cabbage, potatoes and wedges of various fruits) while hiking about.  It is also clear that they have sharp teeth and nails, so I tried not to get too close, although that can be a bit hard given how narrow the trails are and how much the monkeys like said trails.

Next, there are tunnels.  2 parts of the tunnels are open for tours, some from the "Great Siege" and some from WWII, but the information said that there are 34 miles of tunnels in the rock.  It even said that in WWII, they weren't just for shooting out of, but there was enough space carved out of the rock to house thousands or 10s of thousands of troups for a year.  That's a bit crazy to think about.  We toured the Great Siege tunnel, which was cool, but alas, most of the tunnels are off limits.  We did happen upon all sorts of proof of the military history of the rock, though; giant chains and rings for hoisting heavy things about, structures that looked like ventilation for those tunnels, even this awesome lookout post near the high-point.

Sasha being a look-out.  I don't think he was very effective with all the fog.

 It is clear that parts of the Rock still are used by the military; I know I couldn't pass up the possibilities that all those tunnels offer, not to mention the strategic location, so it's not surprising.  Needless to say, we didn't poke around too much in these areas.

Sasha can tell you some car stories that I missed by walking, one involving a nice Columbian who knew how to unpark a car pointed up a steep hill when one of the tires is off the road...but I'll let him tell you the details.
After touring the siege tunnels (which were cool, even if the mannequins loading cannons and the talking signs were a bit odd) we needed to press on, so we didn't even get so much as a cuppa tea in Gibraltar, and I had so been looking forward to a proper cup of tea.  Alas.  At least I was able to drink a satisfying amount of mint tea that evening once we had reached Grenada, but it is late, so I will save our last two days in Spain (Grenada and Madrid) for another post.

Sunset over the Atlantic, Matalascana

Spain, part 1

Hello friends!

We're back from Spain and it was really a great vacation.  We crammed a lot into a week, so perhaps it wasn't the most restful trip, but on the other hand, looking back, there's nothing I wish we'd let out, so I guess we did it right.

We flew into Madrid two Tuesdays ago, rented a car and headed straight out of town.  Our first stop was the town of Trujillo (for those of you not so up on Spanish pronunciation, it's "true-hee-yo"), a small town in the Extremadura region.  Although our guidebook says that Trujillo has a population just under 10,000, it makes up for the quiet feel by being an old city.  It still has its city walls, and the oldest part of the city within the walls is full of churches and homes and such from medieval Spain.  The city was the home of conquistador Francisco Pizarro, and so apparently the town became much richer after he brought back plundered American wealth and a number of churches, etc. were built after his time in Trujillo.  There are carvings and statues of him in the main square, which is cool I guess, but current historical interpretations being what they are, we felt it a bit odd to be commemorating a hero responsible for such wholesale slaughter. 

A view of Trujillo from a church tower.

  By the time we parked and checked into the hotel, it was pretty late, but luckily everything operates on Spanish time, and we were still able to pop into one church and one castle.  And by castle I mean the walls of a 10th century Islamic fortress, called an Alcazaba (a generic name for this sort of Moorish castle; we saw several Alcazabas during our week in Spain, and to be honest, they were pretty similar.  Although I guess in all fairness, it's not surprising that only the walls are left after 1000 years).

Trujillo's Alcazaba, towering over the town

 We got to the Alcazaba 15 minutes before it closed and were given a very clear warning by the gatekeeper that if we weren't in sight at 8, she would have to close up anyway, and since the gate was very large and very metal, and the walls were very high and not so good for scaling down, we were very careful to not get too distracted. But it still was fun to wander around the battlements and the views of the surrounding area were great.  We also enjoyed puzzling over all the random signs of the place's long history; the statue of Mary in the tower's window, the inscriptions in the stones fixed here and there on the walls, so many little details to admire.

Greek? Latin? Ancient Spanish? We couldn't tell, but wondered what this stone could tell us if it could talk (or we could read its inscription)

After leaving the Alcazaba, we wandered aimlessly through the lovely ancient streets, admiring all sorts of things before making our way back to the Pizarro statue and the Plaza Mayor for our first Spanish dinner, which was honestly a bit disappointing. But, we sat outside in a large plaza in Spain watching the storks nesting on top of 500+ year old buildings, which was really great.

Storks nesting on the church roof near the Plaza Mayor

 The next morning, Sasha got up early in an attempt to see Bustards (big brown birds that are exciting both for their size and the fact that the males turn their feathers all about during courtship in a move referred to quite excitingly as a foam bath) but alas, he saw no bustards, foam bathing or otherwise.  He then returned for our first disappointing Spanish hotel breakfast (fruit, packaged pastries and toast with cold tomato smoosh) after which we hit the road for our next stop, the National Park Monfragüe. To be honest, this park was one of the major reasons we flew into Madrid and not somewhere further south, because all of Sasha's books say that Monfragüe is one of the best birding spots in Spain if not Europe and, low-key birder that I am, I actually am rather inclined to agree.  

Before the trip, I had envisioned Spain as being rather flat.  Sure, I had heard of the Sierra Nevadas and the Pyranees, but I assumed that they were the exception rather than the rule, and had pictured terrain more like the Dakotas.  Silly me.  Spain is hilly, even the flatter farmier parts (at least of the parts we visited).  The terrain reminded me much more of Utah or the foothills of Colorado, although in many ways it very clearly was not like anywhere in the States.  We saw multiple spots with snow-capped mountains, even in May.  While they aren't tremendously high, Spain does have a pretty warm climate, so I wasn't expecting to see snow at all.

Snow!?!

Now, we didn't go into any real mountains and didn't touch any snow, but the terrain of Monfragüe was still impressive.  The park is basically the land around a river valley, and the river cuts through rocky cliffs, which are gorgeous in their own right.  Add to it very large birds nesting on those cliffs and it becomes national park material. 

Cliffs and river

 Full disclosure: those very large birds that the park is famous for are vultures.  We saw three different species of vulture at Monfragüe.  Sasha's going to post later to tell you all about the birds, so I won't tell you too much about them, but mostly we saw Griffon Vultures, and I never realized how huge vultures could be.  I will admit that I didn't expect to be excited by a bunch of carrion-feeders. I was surprised. Even with their odd bald heads, wheeling about in the sunlight, these guys are majestic and quite impressive.  The place was crawling with birders, too, making my husband feel quite at home.

Vultures

People watching vultures

My husband watching vultures

I'm sorry we couldn't help you, fox, but you were very pretty.

 At Monfragüe, we also saw our largest wild mammals of the trip, a deer and a very sad looking fox that might have been hit by a car (it was alive, but didn't move off the road even when Sasha honked the horn).






We spent the day driving around looking at birds, and then to take a break, we hiked up a ridge to another Islamic castle to look at more birds.  Standing on the top of a castle tower on top of a ridge with vultures soaring right overhead was definitely a high-point of the trip.  Oh but who am I kidding, this trip had so many high-points it was like a mountain range.
Eventually, we decided it was time to head on, so we drove down to spend a night in Merida before heading to the coast.  Sasha will fill you in on the next part of our adventure when he gets a chance.

A weekend of many small adventures

Hi friends!

We have had a great weekend, and so I'm not going to wait, but will tell you all about it before it's even over.  We never left the Marburg area, so our weekend's adventures were the small kind. Perhaps you think that I overuse the word adventure, but the way I see it, life is just a series of adventures big and small, and even some of the small ones are worth savoring and noticing, so here you go. Savor away.

First, after about 2 weeks of nice warm temperatures, we had rain on Friday and Saturday.  I'm still sick of rain after the winter, but what it meant here is that all of the sudden spring exploded.  Before the rain, a few of the trees had started leafing or budding out as had some of the earliest flowers, but a little rain and poof, the woods are now a gorgeous shade of spring green and the city is full of flowers; magnolia, forsythia, and all sorts of things I don't know the names of (but can appreciate nonetheless).

Something about the newness of spring in the oldness of Marburg makes it more exciting somehow

After months of brown sleeping woods, this color is so lovely!

I don't know what these are, but they're nice.

I decided it was so nice while doing my weekly Saturday marketing that I made Sasha go back down the hill with me in the afternoon to go enjoy a slice of cake at our favorite cafe and to buy supplies for adventure number 3...

Sunday, after church, since it wasn't raining or freezing, we decided to go for a bicycle adventure and played another round of "find the castle".  We picked Mellnau as our destination of choice, and it was a good one.  The castle ruin had a Tower and we love Towers.  And, it had a paved road all the way to the walls, so no wading through muck to find a partial stone foundation this week (not that I mind those rounds of the game, mind you). The fortress was built in the mid 1200s and, to be honest, we had a strict timeline and the paint was pealing off the information sign, so I can't tell you all the details.  Although it seems to have been founded by Archbishop Siegfried from Mainz, and not by a Ludwig or a Friedrich or a Wilhelm (or a Friedrich Wilhelm) for a change. 

Riding up (and up and up) to the ruin.  The views are great, but man do the castle visits work the legs.

If you want more details, here's the sign.

 On the way out, we went through the town of Wetter, and saw a bonus tower, although we didn't stop to explore, so I can't tell you much about it. I think this is a stop on the "Fairy Tale Road" if you're following the brother's Grimm, but I'm not sure. It's a pretty safe guess, though, given how many "Grimm towns" there are around here.

Sasha photographing the unexpected tower...some things about Germany are just great.

We didn't have much time, so we didn't stop anywhere for cake, etc. but I did see a whole field of lambs and sheep on the way home, which made me almost inarticulately excited for several km.  Sasha, if one follows me home, can I keep it?

Wouldn't a lamb like this make you almost inarticulately excited, too?

The reason why we were hurrying back is that we invited a friend from church over to partake in adventure number 3: grilling!!  Although I feel like we mostly see open hibachi-like open grills here in Germany, we managed to find one like a good old Weber (if a mini one to fit our mini space) and charcoal and a few packages of marinated pork steaks (we picked a few somewhat randomly, but they were surprisingly good), vegetables, etc. 

Notice our fully recyclable grill table...after we're done reusing.

I am glad I'm not a German pig, but they are quite tasty.

Sasha manned the fire, I sliced the eggplants and prepared foil packets of zucchini, onions, etc., and it was SO satisfyingly delicious both to eat food fresh off the grill and to be sitting outside into the evening.  OK, so it was a bit chilly, but the birds were tweeting, the grass was green, and life was good.  Life is so good.

more lacrosse games

Hi friends and family,

I've been told I'm overdue for a blog post, and the reality is, we've been quite busy and I've been bad about taking photographs, etc. lately.  Also, Sasha's been doing a lot of work on the weekends, so we haven't been going on as many adventures together, and it's a bit less fun to blog about stuff I did without him.  BUT I have been traveling a bit for lacrosse with the Marburg Saints, so I'll tell you a bit about the last two trips.

The first was 3 weekends ago.  We went to Munster to play the team from Munster (big surprise, right). OK, so Munster normally has umlauts over the "u" but I'm feeling too lazy to figure out how to type umlauts into blogger, so just pretend I'm using them.
But back to the game/trip. Most of the experienced players on our team were on vacation because the semester schedules here are kind of funny and they have about a month break between the winter (October-February) and summer (April -July) semesters.  Science-y people seem to spend the breaks doing "practical" coursework (aka labs), research internships, etc. but many people also go on vacation or go hang out with their families.  SO, that left me, a few folks who were back from vacation already, and a few people who didn't leave for whatever reason.  Add to that the fact that we hadn't had practice in a few weeks, and we were NOT playing well.  Like I think we had a half-dozen successful passes all game.  For an hour of very fast-moving sport, that's abysmal, really. I had a ton of fun anyway, though, because we had no extra players, which meant that I got to play the whole game and I got to play the field positions where I basically got to run really fast all the time.  Which is what I'm relatively good at.  I know, I know, maybe I should just do running races instead, but until I find people to run with, lacrosse is far more social and thus more fun.  But also, the weather was gorgeous and sunny and we all played with short sleeves or shorts (well, lacrosse skirt/shorts) or both. Warmth and sun was really appreciated after the cold, rainy, dark winter. I went for a cool-down jog along the river, and I swear half of Munster must have been taking advantage of the warm sun and there were hundreds of people out for walks along the river.

The other awesome part of the Munster lacrosse weekend was that because we had room in our vehicle, we picked up "mitfahrer" (basically, instead of hitchhiking, you can look on a website and find people going where you want to go and you can pay them a bit of money to take you with them...the "blind dating" of German transportation, but faster than the train and greener than everyone driving alone) and thus we had about an hour to wander around the old part of Munstern before our pre-scheduled meeting time.  Munster in German means a monastary, and indeed there are some gorgeous old churches and we had time to stick our noses into 2 of them AND to get big, yummy ice creams. 

The munster for which the town got its name.

I didn't have my Germany guide, so I didn't know much about the churches that we were looking at, but really that whole part of town is pretty.  Which is amazing, really, since it had been pretty well flattened during WWII and rebuilt subsequently. Effectively all German cities over a certain size were bombed heavily during the war and thus many of their downtowns are ugly, because they were rebuilt to be "modern" during the 1950s.

A nice part of the old downtown; pretty buildings (with the Marburg Saints in the foreground!

However, as our lonely planet points out, the Munster residents were quite smart to ditch the typical 1950s architecture and instead to largely restore stuff to how it was; it's much cuter than many of the other similar-sized towns.  It also looks affluent and nice; lots of nice stores and added bits of art, etc. so even though there are plenty of old touches, the town looks liveable, and not like a decaying time capsule.  All told, the trip included a bit of running (aka lacrosse playing), a bit of touristing, and was generally a nice day-trip.

Modern art (I think) in the older part of town...for you MN folks, "cherry and spoon bridge" is cooler.

This past weekend we went to Dusseldorf (also has an umlaut over the "u").  Dusseldorf is ostensibly an industrial town; not cute like Munster.  I say ostensibly, however, because we did what a skier friend called a "one day surgical strike" for the game, and saw nothing of Dusseldorf outside the sports fields.  The way the game days work is the home team usually plays two games back to back and the visitors take turns playing and reffing/working the bench.  Luckily, I don't know enough to ref and they didn't need me to do any of the scoring things, so I just got to watch the game before us, which is fun, since it was two relatively good teams.  The previous weekend I went into Frankfurt (and biked home...which really deserves a post in itself, but since I don't have any pictures, I'll spare you the details) to watch the German national team play Austria.  It's fun to watch teams that are better than us play because it helps me see what I am striving for while playing.  If you can catch and throw balls reliably, then you are able to do more teamwork and more clever strategies than "get the ball, run to the goal, and shoot" which is what we largely resort to (when we manage to get the ball).  Anyway, it was a close game, and left me excited going into our game. 

Pre-game stick check to make sure our sticks are legal, we have mouthguards, our shoes won't tear up the field, etc.

Now, we knew going into our game that we were outmatched, and sure enough, we lost.  Still, for the first 20-30 minutes, we were actually holding our own pretty well.  Then, our less-fit team started getting tired and Dusseldorf started racking up the points. Oh well.  Personally, I can tell that I'm doing much better than that first game I wrote about in Mainz, and I am doing a bit better about actually doing smart things with the ball (when I get it, which is rare...if you aren't renowned for your catching ability, your teammates seem to not pass you the ball that often, strangely enough).

Us in action; I'm in the red socks.

 Even though we played better this game, I spent the second half of the game largely relegated to the offensive side, which doesn't see much action if the other team is stronger.  SO, I didn't get to run as much and that wasn't quite as fun.  But still, we were outside and the sun was shining, and every game I play I get a little better.  As my cycling coach often pointed out, I approach sports very analytically, which is great for helping me set incremental goals and to stay motivated even when I'm on the steep part of the learning curve.  OK, I know that there were interesting aspects of the games that didn't involve me, but I don't want to blog about my teammates without asking them first, so I'm sorry if I come across as too egocentric here.

Anyway, both of those trips ended up being a lot of driving per hour playing, and while they were fun, I'm glad I'm going to take the next weekend off from lacrosse and hopefully will get to go on a small adventure with my husband...and then the weekend after that, we're going to a tournament in Dresden (the lacrosse team, not my husband) and after that, Sasha and I are taking a vacation to Spain to fulfill our marriage contract-dictated Spain birding trip (although I have finagled some time for cultural experiences and eating into the itinerary).  So stay tuned for all of that!   

And, it's spring here in Germany.  The trees are budding, the flowers are blooming, and the frogs eggs are turning into tadpoles.  For those of you Minnesotans stuck in endless winter this year, you're welcome to come visit!

Lots of frog eggs in a puddle in the woods I walk through most days to get to work. Happy spring!

Mainz and lacrosse

Hello friends!

This past Sunday, I went to Mainz, but instead of visiting the Gutenburg museum or any of the other cool sights of Mainz (well, accept for a few that we accidentally drove by on the way home...stupid GPS...), I spent the afternoon in the rain on a sports field on the outskirts of town.  Lacrosse game!  After the semester ended, I started training with the local lacrosse club, the Marburg Saints: http://www.marburg-saints.com/

This post is going to be less a blow-by-blow of the game (we lost by a fair amount, but we scored some points and made some good plays)  or anything about our opponents (Mainz is one of the stronger teams in our region, and their coach is an American, who was super nice and even gave our team some pointers during half-time) and more of a pondering on sport and expertness and what makes lacrosse different from all my previous sports.  And fair warning, I forgot my camera, and it was cold and rainly, so there are no pictures.

So, last year when I was teaching at Colgate, I sat through a lecture by Kathy Takayama, a biologist turned education researcher at the Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University.  It was a thought-provoking talk and she was cool, but the thing she said that really stuck with me was describing the difference between "novice" and "expert" audiences.  She used a chess example; the novice chess player looks at a board and sees an array of black and white squares and a ton of pieces of different shapes and, while a novice knows the rules and objectives, has to look at and consider all the pieces.  On the other hand, a chess expert looks at the same board and sees the general pattern and then automatically hones in on the critical pieces in that set-up.  The novice doesn't know enough to tune out the unimportant things.  Now, for teaching, her message was clear; you need to teach in a way that you aren't overloading the novice, making sure that your information is clear and isn't buried in details that you (as an expert in the field) just automatically tuned out.

Now, I haven't been a novice in many things for years and years, but by taking on Lacrosse, I find myself back in novice shoes (and literally, since I'm still playing in running shoes; cleats are expensive and I haven't justified the expense yet).  For those of you who aren't familiar with Lacrosse other than my post back in November, it's both a simple game and quite complicated.  The goal is to use sticks with baskets on the end (your crosses, I think, if you use the US term, or Schläger, in German) to throw a hard rubber ball into a goal as many times as possible, which sounds simple when I put it that way.  BUT handling the ball and stick take a fair bit of skill and  there are all sorts of rules about what you are and aren't allowed to do and there are different positions for players with different rules in effect.  We had 11 field players and a goalie, and 3 are defense, 3 offense, and 5 midfield. There are these lines on the field called restraining lines, and you must always have at least 4 players behind the appropriate restraining line or your team is "off-sides". You may notice, if you do the math, that means that one midfield player has to stay back at any time.  

SO, you can see how many things there are to think about if you're a novice player and have to think about everything: Where is the ball? It's small, and moves fast and you almost have to see it by the body language of the person possessing it instead of actually seeing the ball.  Where do I need to stand to increase my team's ability to maintain control of the ball, or to gain control of the ball from the other team?  If we're defending, where is "my player" and how can I keep them from getting the ball? Are the other team's star players covered right now, or do their defenders need backup? If we're attacking, how can I get clear of "my player" on the other team so that I could catch the ball?  If I do get the ball, who is open for me to throw to?
If the ball is moving across the field, do I need to run really fast to the other end, or do I need to stay on this side of the restraining line?  Is it my turn to rotate out, or can I keep playing?  And on top of that, add in the actual "holding your stick and catching and throwing the ball if it comes to you" which are still not trivial tasks to me.

So I constantly found myself in the novice's dilemma: do I keep the picture of the whole game in my head, and risk losing track of my specific task, or do I just focus on staying with "my player" and then perhaps leave a gap somewhere else on the field that I should have filled?   

Oh yeah, and everything is being discussed and explained in German, adding another level of challenge. It was only a week or so ago that I realized that these cool moves we'd been practicing to get around other players was not some intriguing thing called a "Dutsch" or "Dötsch" but is actually the English word "dodge".  It seems obvious in retrospect.

Remember, I'm used to being an "expert" in bike racing.  I may not have always made the right calls, but I could simultaneously pedal my bike, anticipate cross-winds/hills/course changes, keep track of my teammates and any women on opposing teams that needed careful watching, evaluate any attacks/counterattacks to see if we needed to worry about them and if my team was represented, etc. That's a lot of things, so it's not that different from Lacrosse, the difference is that I was good enough at pedaling my bike that I could keep all those things in my brain at once most of the time, and I'm clearly not there yet for lacrosse after one field game.

I don't want this to come off as whiny.  It's really fun learning something new, and in the midst of feeling generally confused, I totally made a few good moves on Sunday; I made a few good passes and there were moments when I was guarding someone who could have made a great shot otherwise.  And, the other folks on the club are very understanding that I'm a novice, and give helpful advice instead of being mean when I make mistakes.  It's more that I'm thinking like a scientist, and am trying to pinpoint what I need to do to improve. 

Clearly, I need to practice catching and throwing and being more comfortable moving the ball around, but also, I need to play more games so I can start to see the bigger picture and keep that in balance with making sure my piece in the puzzle is locked in.  Sounds like a fun challenge!

AND, my new safety goggles came (http://www.captain-lax.com/Lacrosse-Protection-Eyewear-/Gloves/STX-4Sight-Lacrosse-Goggle-Adult--3520.html, I had them delivered to work, since our mail there is more reliable), so to get in the Lacrosse spirit I think I'll wear them all day...my labmates already thing I'm crazy, so what's to lose?  or...maybe not....

Austria or bust

Hi friends!

Sasha and I are back from our adventure in the Austrian Alps, and it was fabulous.  We went to Ramsau am Dachstein, a town that I'd been to one autumn back when I was racing and training seriously for skiing, and it was such an awesome trip, I vowed to try to come back some winter. Well, something like 7 years later, I made good on that wish, without the pressure of any training goals.  Instead, our goal was simply to have a great vacation; a much simpler goal and one that would be very hard -not- to reach in Austria.

So, as far as I can gather, the creative forces in the universe that led to the creation of Austria must have thought something like "let's make a country that is really nice." The place is full of gorgeous mountains and cozy valleys, and in the winter, it seems to turn itself into one big ski resort. (OK, so a Brit we met on a mountain top said, you think that here, go to Switzerland, Switzerland really is one big ski resort.  He may be right, but that doesn't stop Austria from being pretty darn awesome).  And, it's civilized. Everytime you start to get thirsty or hungry, there's some hut or restaurant, etc. just waiting to feed you.

We left mid-day last Friday, and drove through snowstorm and nonstop heavy traffic (Sasha drove, I still can't drive a manual) and despite some brief worries due to inabilities to get through by telephone to our pension, made it safely down and checked in (Pension G'senger; good price and great location and ski/wax room in the basement with an ex pro-nordic skier as one of the owners, actually) and went to bed.  A word for anyone planning on driving to Austria from Germany, you need a special toll sticker to drive on their Autobahns.  Luckily, I learned this from a hiking trip this past August, because otherwise, we would have had no clue.  While there aren't frequent checks, so we could have gotten by without one, if you do get caught, I think the fine is quite stiff.  But, we got our sticker and got a spare reflective vest, too, since they also are required (if your car breaks down on any highway, only people wearing reflective vests are allowed to get out of the vehicle. A sensible rule, actually).

Since we reached the mountains at night while it was snowing, Sasha had no idea what awaited him the next morning, so he spent most of our first ski going "wow, this is so awesome". 

Snow! Mountains! Skiing! What else do you need for awesomeness?

Because, well, it was awesome. The mountains are gorgeous, and there are a hundred + km of trails and the grooming is outstanding.
 And he also spent much of our first ski falling. 

He asked if he got bonus points since the waterbottle made that many skips. I think, yes.

He got better over the course of our trip. Well, somewhat better.

Day 3...look at that distance!

I could paste in dozens of pictures of beautiful mountains and impeccably groomed tracks, but, well, I don't want to make you all hate me.  Instead, I'm aiming for showing you just enough to make you want to come out and visit!

Well, when we started to get a bit hungry, we took a break for some strudel (Sasha eating apfelstrudel on the left, a plate of topfenstrudel on the right) or soup or some such warm and satisfying snack, and when the sun went down, we went to a restaurant recommended by the innkeepers for dinner. No bad meal in the bunch.


The best day of the trip was probably day 3.  Days 1 and 2 were snowy, and while we had views of the mountains on and off, there were plenty of moments when we could have been in Northern Wisconsin (albeit one where everyone you pass is speaking some European language, and there are opportunities for goat petting or schnaps drinking along the trail).

Goats!! They're almost as good as sheep!

The sign says "self service"

Day 3, however, was sunny as can be, and so we took the gondola up from the neighboring town Filzmoos, and skied on a beautiful trail on top of a mountain. 

Forget about Eden, this seems like paradise to me. That's Sasha in the mid-ground, proving that he did spend most of the trip upright.

 

 

Many a summit in Austria has a cross on it.

The text says, "Lord God, our homeland is pretty" 

 

 
From the high point on the trail, we had a 360 degree view of the mountains, and even way up there, there was an "Alm" hut, at which we could stop for hot cocoa and cake. Although fewer food choices than in the valley.  Not surprising, given what it took to get the food and drink up there in the first place. 

In case you think it was all sunshine and skiing, there was one worrisome moment (evening of day 2) when we were worried that dinner might need to be Wasa bread and gouda since it seemed like we might not be able to get the car up the snowy side-road that our pension was on, but with some careful driving by Sasha and some serious pushing by me, we were able to get out and buy some yummy pasta dinners, afterall.  Which, really, is not a bad "worst part" as trips go. 

Well, I'll probably post again later with pictures from our birding stop on the way home, etc. but for now, I'll leave you with a final thought.  If the buddhists/hindus have it right, and instead of one life we keep getting reincarnated, I hope this: if I was a little good, I'd like to come back as an Austrian.  Such a nice country.  If I was naughty, perhaps I could come back as an Austrian pig; I've never heard of free-range pigs, but they do taste pretty delicious.  And if I'm really, really good, then I hope I get to be an Austrian sheep or goat.  You get to be adorable and fuzzy and you spend the winter snugly nestled in gorgeous valleys and all summer frolicking in the mountains.  Lovely, lovely mountains.