I managed to find a cheap flight to Rome earlier this month, and went over the weekend.  Sadly, we only had two days there - which is not nearly enough - but in even that short time I fell in love with the city.  Regardless of the weather, it's one of the most beautiful I've seen, and every step you take brings you past something you've seen, read about, or studied before.  For some pictures check out the Rome Gallery.  I think that it would take a good month to see everything that the city has to offer, but two days was at least enough to hit (some of) the highlights.  Our flight from Germany was good, and we got into Rome late in the evening.  After some confusion around the train station we managed to find our hotel - but the doors were locked.  A few panic-filled seconds later we found a buzzer and managed to get in.  The room itself was pretty basic - a bed, two nightstands, and a bathroom with a sliding panel door - but it was cheap and centrally located, so my two big concerns were met. 

After a good night's (brief) sleep we hit the ground running at around 8:30, stopping by the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore on our way to the Piazza Venezia.  The church was gorgeous on the inside, a very nice Romanesque church (what a change after all the gothic cathedrals in Germany!) and it was surprisingly well-used - I think there were more people praying and giving confession than there were visiting.  From there, we planned to head straight to the Roman Forum, but we managed to get distracted again - this time by the ruins of Trajan's Markets and Forum.  After spending a good hour or so there (in the sunshine, no less), we tried to reach the Roman Forum again, after stopping for some Roman pizza, which is way better and cheaper than I had imagined, only to be distracted by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Vittorio Emanuele Monument on the Piazza Venezia.  Getting distracted in Rome is hardly a bad thing tho - the entire city is just dripping with history and the only hard choice we had to make all weekend was what not to see. 

All in all, I felt safe in the city - there were video cameras everywhere, and armed police, so it's clear that they take protection seriously, although the massive presence could get just a bit unnerving at times - esp. the police with automatic rifles.

So at around 1:00 we finally made it to where we wanted to start the day - the Roman Forum.  For me, seeing it was almost too good to be true - I've been fascinated by Roman history for a while, and to see the ruins (and they are some pretty ruined ruins) that used to be the capital of the world for so many years was fantastic.  Just wandering around and noticing the small details - game boards carved into the steps to a temple, the columns that used to support the mint, the place where Julius Caesar was cremated - really made the history come alive and provide some context for all that I had studied (so that's what the street might have looked like).  It did take a lot of imagination to reconstruct, but the pieces were all still (mostly) there, and wandering around in the sun made it all the more enjoyable.  Here I had my first run-in with Roman water fountains - there are springs that feed the ctiy, so these pop up all over the place.  To work these, you have to plug the water flowing out the bottom with your hand, which then forces the water to shoot out of a tiny hole in the top, resulting in lots of messy fun, but also free water. Since it was winter, there weren't too many visitors, which meant that we had some space to get up close and really wander.

A short distance away from the forum lies the Colosseum, which I found to be slightly dissapointing.  The outside is still fairly well preserved, but the inside is mostly rows of sloping cement and some bricks - the seats didn't survive erosion, earthquakes, time, and pillaging popes (most of the marble got stolen to build papal fountains, palaces, and St. Peter's Basilica) so it was much harder to imagine how it used to be.  Granted, a lot of this dissapointment stems from the fact that I've seen the arena in Verona, which is still in almost perfect condition - all of the seats, aisles, and arches are still there, and you can wander at your leisure without nearly as many tourists. 

Leaving the Colosseum, we walked through the ruins of the Circus Maximus to the Tiber, where we say the evidence of a major flood - trash in the trees and a crashed barge on the steps.  From here it was on to more pizza and then some coffee for a quick break.  The coffee in Rome is more like a strong espresso and very tasty, and sitting down for a while proved nice after all that walking.  After about an hour just relaxing here, we went to the Pantheon just as it was getting dark.  The Pantheon is just about the coolest church I've ever seen - it's basically a massive dome with a hole in the center and an altar with a few pews at one end.  The open space is a nice change from the vaulted Romanesque and Gothic churches where you don't really feel like you can just wander freely.  It had started to rain a bit by this point, but that was just fine with us - the rain came through the hole in the roof and they had to rope off part of the floor to prevent us from slipping on the wet Roman marble. 

By this point we were quite hungry, so we headed off to dinner at 7:30, a normal time for us but apparently farrrrr too early for Roman standards - we were the only ones in the restaurant!  The ambience was nice, with cheap (and tasty!) house wine, a smoked pig's legs standing by the door that they would shave thin pieces off for an appetizer, and a location right off the Piazza Farnese.  The food was also excellent - I had Abbacchio, a sort of grilled lamb leg that they served with potatoes. Certainly puts the cafeteria food to shame.  We finished off the first day with some Gelato and a rather unpleasant walk through the rain (maybe we should have packed an umbrella) but made it back to the hotel and promplty crashed.

By the morning our jackets from last night still weren't dry, so we hit them pretty hard with the blow dryers until they were at least wearable.  After another quick breakfast at the hotel we caught a tram to the Vatican Museums, which are just ridiculous.  The popes essentially appropriated (stole) whatever they could find from Roman ruins (the bronze roof of the Pantheon was melted down to make cannons and the altar at St. Peter's) so their museum is appropriately well-stocked - there are endless rooms and hallways where they've piled scupltures that would be a centerpiece for other museums on top of each other.  In general, it's about as sumptuous as you would expect (the Borgia Popes doing a lot to maintain the luxury).  Gilded ceilings, paintings by Raphael, Sumerian reliefs, and mummies all mix together in a confusing and engrossing complex.  It would takes a few days or even a week to really go through this museum, so like most people we had to focus on a few highlights.

One of the highlights was, of course, the Sistine Chapel.  The ceiling, walls, and back altar were about as amazing as we had expected, but the room is just as chaotic as the rest of Rome - it is technically forbidden to take pictures, video, and even to talk, but these rules are widely ignored.  Every five minutes a grim and clearly pissed-off guard would come through and yell "Shhhhhhh! No foto!  No foto!", but this only had an effect for about 15 seconds.  I can understand why he clearly hates his job.  I will admit, however, to taking a discreet photo or two (no flash, of course).  After four hours in the museum our feet hurt and museum fatique was setting in rapidly, so we made a break for the exit and got some more pizza, fried mozzerella, and a calzone at a little hole-in-the-wall.

The quick lunch was just what we needed, and soon we were back on our feet and heading towards St. Peter's Basilica - the most impressive church I've ever walked into, and while not technically the largest, it still knocks you off of your feet with its sheer size.  Loaded with tombs, sculptures, relics (they have so many that the spear point supposedly used to stab Jesus while on the cross is used to decorate a statue of a pope!) and a suitably impressive high altar it demanded quite a bit of our time.  After we left the inside, we noticed that it wasn't raining at the moment and snuck back through the entrance line (bypassing the crowds at a moment when the Swiss guards were looking the other way) to climb the dome.

Climbing the dome took a bit of a while (520ish steps) but the views it afforded were more than worth it.  The first stop is on top of the church, where you are relatively free to wander around, looking at all of the smaller domes and detail of the sculptures decorating the roof (they look small from the ground, but are about 10 feet tall and 3 feet thick), which leads you to a vantage point inside the dome - looking down at the nave and marveling at the fact that used mosaics to cover the inside of the dome - something you can barely see from the ground floor!  Although the church has stolen so much from the Pantheon, the Pantheon still beats it in one important respect - its dome is 3 feet wider.  Take that, papacy. 

From here we climbed between the inner and outer walls of the dome to the vantage point, where it promptly started to rain.  Just as we were about to head back down, the clouds broke and the low sun turned everything a yellow-orange-red color, which was truly stunning.  To top it all off, a double rainbow appeared for a while, more than making up for us getting soaked on the previous night.  We stayed up there for about 45 minutes just enjoying it - it was even pretty empty, considering the mass of people we'd had to fight through in the museums earlier.  After the climb down, we got to see sunset over the Vatican and in St. Peter's Square.

By this point our feet were dead, so we popped into a mediocre restaurant (the day can't be completely perfect...) for some pasta and then headed home.  After a quick night's sleep we made it to the bus and got to experience the joys of Roman traffic on the way to the airport, replete with honking, unannounced lane changes, and a general lack of regard for vehicular well-being.  The flight was ok, and after a few more hours in buses and trains I made it back to Marburg.

So for the first time since 1987 (according the ever-reliable middle-aged German man I struck up a conversation with), the Lahn has frozen over.  And by frozen over, I mean that it's a good 10 inches thick, and strong enough to support the weight of a good 200-300 people.  A lot of families and students were out on the river today, which the DLRG (Deutsche Lebensrettungs Gruppe, think lifeguards for the river who can also do cool rescues) has thoughtfully marked with signs indicating if it is safe or not.  Some were just skating around, some walking, a few (like me) taking pictures, and some hockey players.  A few groups brought tables, chairs, and hot chocolate with, and made a little gathering point on the ice. 

Apart from the sheer coolness factor of this (now) rare event, it has even made the Germans happy!  I should note that seeing Germans smile to each other on the street is kind of rare, but it seems the cold weather brings out the German warmth and Gemuetlichkeit - it seems that everyone was smiling and striking up conversations with strangers.  Getting to walk on the river also gave me a nice new view of the city - there are a lot of cool houses that butt up right against the river, and when it's frozen you can just walk right up and look at the old Fachwerk houses - which from up close look even more like they are about to fall in!

The cold weather (lows are around 8 degrees Fahrenheit, highs around 25 degrees Fahrenheit) should stay until at least the end of this coming week, so I'll be heading back out to the river pretty often.  As soon as the light is right and it's not so hazy I'll come back with some cool pictures of the city from a new angle.

So first of all, a happy new year to everyone.  I just returned from a nice 9 day trip through Frankfurt (thankfully only a few hours there, it is one of the more boring towns in Germany.  After it was totally bombed out, the reconstruction made it a little too sterile.), Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Nuremberg, Munich, and, of course, Marburg.  Getting to see the wide variety was nice, as we went from Frankfurt, the most Americanized city in Germany, to Rothenburg, the most perfectly preserved medieval village (misleading, as in it's day it was more powerful than Frankfurt or Munich) in Europe.  Surprisingly, the streets were mostly free of tourists and we got to enjoy the city at its emptiest. 

After Rothenburg we went to Nuremberg - also heavily destroyed in the war, but the reconstruction was done with an eye to retaining its former glory.  The city still shines, and it is easy to see why the Holy Roman Emporer chose it as one of his residences.  After that, a quick jump to Munich and a day in the Alps (the Koenigssee) rounded out the Bavarian aspect before heading back up to Marburg for two days.  I took a lot of pictures (close to 800 total), and you can see some of them in the Gallery.  After my family left I've been getting back into the swing of things in lab and trying to get another PCR to work, but as usual, it is somewhat slow going. 

The weather has been rather bad for the past few weeks - cold and snowy.  It's snowed about every day, which, to be fair, is much better than raining everyday, but in my wisdom I assumed that it just would not get this cold.  Lies.  Since I work on the top of a hill (Germans call it a mountain, but this is a lie) I get to walk through snow and ice to work.  But it is not so bad, and is at least nice to look at. 

Marburg in the snow is also a pretty cool experience - I went walking through in a light drizzle (or the snowy equivalent) and the city was deserted, so I got to have the cramped alleys and old half-timbered houses all to myself.  There are lots of "hidden" city wall ruins and old churches, so taking the camera was a good idea.  Lots of fun (and overly dark and gloomy) wintry black and white images resulted.  Check the gallery. 

This weekend Erica and I went to Wetzlar to look at the Weihnachtsmarkt and see the town and such.  I can say with some measure of confidence that it is the only city in the world to offer a free night-vision telescope (not kidding!).  However, the cathedral is the town was somewhat lacking - they wanted to updgrade their romanesque basillica (some saint is buried there, but there are a lot of saints and it wasn't an important one) to a gothic cathedral to keep up with Marburg (yay!) and Limburg (another town in the area, orange/white cathedral in gallery).  However, the city went bankrupt, so they made it halfway through one tower and part of the shell before having to stop work, leaving it looking half destroyed.  It would appear that not all Germans are industrious.  This lack of industry carries into their Weihnachtsmark - most cities have individual mugs, but Wetzlar just stole some from Darmstadt and stickered over the Darmstadt part, hoping that no one would notice.  Once again, some pics are in the gallery. 

Work is going much better, there is a chance that I will get to go to a conference on methanotrophs "somewhere in the Netherlands" (my bosses exact wording).  All I know is that the town is apparently unpronouncable, and if you've heard Dutch you know that this is likely.  The conference would talk about the microbial of the methanotrophs, and thankfully I would not have to present.  When I do get (knock on wood) presentable results, there is a chance I can go to the FEMS conference in Uppsala, Sweden.  Good times.