liechtenstein-the teeeny country

My boss actually asked, upon my return, whether i knew there existed a country called Liechtenstein when i was at home in Canada. Apparently his moderate swiss german accent took a turn for the worse in that moment or i just wasn't paying attention so i didn't hear/understand him. my usual response at this juncture is to look mildly impressed/surprised and say "oh yea?" . This is due to the fact that the german people are often informing me of some interesting fact. unfortunately, as in this situation, this response to a question is completely unsuitable and in this particular instance makes me look downright stupid. i tried backpeddling but i'm not sure how good of a job i did. we didn't talk much for the rest of the lunch....ha

anyway liechtenstein is tiny. You probably all know this since it is a particularly good piece of trivia but the coutrny is about 30km long in the northsouth direction, ~10 km across and it lies directly to the east of switzerland.

The reason we choose this weekend was because it was the prince's birthday therefore the national holiday. there were two planning factions for this. Four other girls and i decided we were going to walk across the country lengthwise over two days and camp somewhere near Vaduz ( the capital) . Liechtenstein along with one other country which escapes me are the only two were you can camp wherever you want unless the owner of the land asks you to move.

The other group wanted to run across the country east to west. nothing like bragging to your friend on Monday that you ran across a country.... This group has started getting really into running races all over the place. Some of them are going to Budapest next weekend to run a half marathon. i really don't know what they are thinking. I can't concentrate on running and a cool new country at the same time so i am for sure going to miss out on something....or expire.

Anyway, we started in Feldkirch austria where i promptly dropped the ball by not having proper directions out of town. after we got that sorted out we started our stroll. It took a little longer than the anticipated 3 hours so we missed the meet and great with the prince but it was still a cool walk.

The apple tree pictured turned out to be surrounded by stinging nettle, on a side note.

There was a fair set up in the old town, lots of beer and music. there was one group, an older choir i think, all dressed as sailors and singing along, some more grudgingly than others, with and accordion that was particularly fascinating. I should also mention that we picked one of the hotter days...

We visited the modern art museum ( it was free entry that day because of the holiday and all the buses were free as well!) which was amazing. i think i probably curled into a little ball on the side of my favorite room and stayed for hours. it was also air conditioned. there was one whole exhibit on horse paintings which we bypassed. firstly because the lady told us no water bottle allowed and second because that room really wasn't very interesting. also we were told not to touch several times but in our defense, some of the displays looked interactive.

As evening crept up i decided i would not camp and instead head home on the train later that night. All the interns who were still planning on camping went to their site to put up tents and get organised and the rest of us had a mad, albeit small dance party in front of the stage where a fairly talented cover band played late into the evening. When the other group return from the campsite one girl described the scene in front of the stage as a "canadian dance partay complete with 10ft blast zone around the perimeter and then the rest of the audience" it was great!

We were certainly the sweatiest people headed home that night!

Zurich Street Parade

This is the event of the year in Zurich. Well i may have made that part up but it is definitely an vent. Wikipedia says that in 2004 and 2005 it drew crowds greater than 1000000. It rained this year so only about 600000 guests showed up but they were certainly ready for all the rain and techno.

I think i should probably mention now that i did not bring my camera to this event for fear of water damage but I have borrowed a couple photos from my soon to be roomate Bianca. Hopefully she won't mind...I just want to give you guys an idea. Also one of the photos should be referenced to Mike Miller. Hopefully he's ok with that.

The parade itself didn't start until 1pm so all the interns congregated at the berg to get all dolled up, apply face and body paint, eat and have a couple beers. As a group we then took the train to Zurich where nothing less than a giant dance party was started in the cavernous hall of mainstation. Those who felt unprapared for the rain could have stayed here but being brave we ventured along Banhofstrasse( trainstation street) towards the lake and the main event.

The parade was comprised of a train of 25 or 30 huge buses pumping techno, each with a theme and a whole bunch of dancers. There were also stages set up along the parade route that had music playing and dancers going all day.

Most people showed up in costume to this event. We saw everything from a family ( parents + 3 or 4 children) all dressed as unicorns to a couple of guys who were only wearing rain ponchos. only. and when it stopped raining those came off as well.

it was a great day all around. many people stayed late but my vigorous dancing took a toll and about a half dozen of us went home around 9pm. i know, buzz kill. but it's difficult to explain how wonderful of party it was an i still got to bed early!

Swiss National Fireworks Bonanza

You would think that at some point the swiss would rebel against all the ridiculous rules they have to out up with here, but i think we have discovered the reason they are so complacent. once a year they are allowed to go absolutely insane. we didn't know this of course, before the actual event, except that fireworks were available at all major stores.....














most of the other interns spent this weekend in
Ticino bungee jumping off the same dam as in Goldeneye with the IAESTE organizers. (apparently the highest commercial jump) unfortunately the sign up for that trip happened so fast we missed it and were put on the waiting list.


Instead we started our day early heading down to Luzern to see the sites. We had been to luzern very breifly on the way to a hike but we noted it's quaint and apparently highly photographed footbridge and thought we would go back to visit. we spent most of the day wandering around the older districts. we found one very cool vintage store which was unfortunately closed but we plan to go back at some point in the near future. I brought my new camera and so always seemed to be lagging behind the group to get some kind of picture that i hoped would work out..... some did but mostly i think i need more practice.




there weren't going to be any fireworks in luzern so we hopped on a train that evening and speed to Brunnen which is also a lakeside town, just the other side of the lake. we got a good seat early right on the water. Chan bought some of the fireworks and proceeded to periodically light them off froma large peice of drift wood directly beneath us, much to the chagrin of the poor woman beside him. you should of seen some of here maneuvers!







The fireworks were shot off from a barge in the middle of the lake and they were spectacular. Probably one of the best fireworks displays i've ever seen. two type of fireworks though come to mind specifically...





the first seemed fairly traditional and were shot straight upwards but once they exploded, instead of a flurry of sparks there was a distinct vertical line, fairly small but firework standards. this seemed like a letdown until we noticed what seemed to be tiny parachutes on each of them. these lines then remained suspended in the air, their glow actually dying before they began any sort of descent. the second ones we thought were a mistake because they were fired directly into the water. apparently this was expected though since they went of anyway and became giant green volcanos spewing out of the water all the way around the barge.




at the end of the official display the locals began their fun. First thing to note was the abba cover band and giant inflatable cell phone present on the mainstage. second, it sounded like you were in the battlefield. people would pick a corner (not distinguishing at all between the merits of a back alley vs a downtown main corridor) and set off hundreds of fireworks. some small. some huge. some didn't make and "works" as such they just set off a massive shockwave style BANG.
I am sad to report that we made a small girl child cry with one of our misplaced fireworks. our only defence is that though fireworks are available at home we apparently still do not have the same inherent "light and flight" skill as the swiss are apparently endowed with.

needles to say it was an eventful day. a side of the swiss culture that until now i would have deemed non-existent. proved me wrong though!

If some of these pictures don't make sense it is just that i happened to take them that day as well and like them enough to want to include them......

On the 20th of july Celia, Pat, Rachel and I headed to Vebier in south-west switzerland to see the last part of the of one of the only swiss legs.... We had to take a fairly early train and TONS of people were headed our way. Everyone and their dog. Most of the dogs were quite small though and polite and appropriately dressed for the occasion so that was fine.

On a side note europeans don't use lines at all. I mean the adults are a little better and if you give a good glare and throw some elbows and you define your "spot" in the line but the children are wild things and have no respect, NO RESPECT. I'm practically and elder after all.
This is rachel cheering like nobody's buisness. Note free water bottle, free flag, free hat! I also got said hat but i wanted one of the polka dot ones so i asked an old french man if he'd humour me with a trade. He already had two anyways...... This was after asking the drunk couple in front of us is they would give me theirs cuz they had like 5 of them but no, they already had a yellow one and they only had one polkadotted one so no they can't give the cute hat to the poor canadian. jerks.


More cheersing. I had my camera out cuz this was my tester run. We were kinda up on the hill so we got to see most of the finish but the picture opportunities as far as the riders go were not so good.



























This is a view from the top of the mountain where verbier was located. we took several trains to the bottom and then lined up for about an hour and took a cable car to the top for the very respectable price of 10 francs.
This is the finishline. Some hubbub for certain. note the abundancy of yellow hats..... and my matching hat in the picture below. Below is a picture of a helicopter which i liked and therefor included.





























































This is my Coop add. Coop is one of the two main grocerystores. I thought the colors were nice...













Here are some switchbacks leading up to the finish. There were thrown toghether campsites all along the route and "pseudo racers" ie they have the gear and the bike so they'd better suit up and get out there! typea guys.












Here are some St. Bernards posing for the camera....surrounded by police? really cute, really huge and slobbery.












They had a whole band of swiss horn players all of the slightly older generation and i'm fairly certain they hiked all the way up the mountain because we saw them at the top and the bottom and my physics classes are telling me that there is no way its plausible for those instruments to make it into the cable car.












This is another panorama. one of the nicer ones.......

The LAB

I thought I'd take some pictures of work just in case anyone is interested and these were the results.......

So i have an office which i share with my bosses Martin and Thomas.

My days pretty much consist of coming into work, checking work e-mail then if I have something to scan I will go down to the lab otherwise I will stay upstairs and work on either one of the ongoing projects for martin or Thomas or one of my own projects......

So maybe I should explain about the scanners. They are micro computed tomography scanners which essentially take a series of xrays in a circle around the sample and then the information from each xray is compiled into a set of data that provides a lot more detail than a single xray.
We have three scanners, to with 40micrometer resolution and one with 80 micrometer resolution. I am also responsible for scanner maintenance which is pretty much just a set of calibration scans once a week. The acctual scanning process is probably the most mindless thing i do at work. I prepare the sample in a scanning vial making certain that it is well fixed (if it moves during scanning it causes artifacts) . Thus far i have scanned a series of human biopsies ( i can't beleive they take chunks that big out of people), whole mouse legs, mouse tibia, and humerus, sheep tibia and vertebra, pills, scaffolding for cells, and last but not least some lindt chocolate! After sample prep you put them in the scanner and boot up the measurement program. the rest is history....

The project work that i do for martin and thomas mostly consists of data backup, data preprossecing as well as some processing. This means that i help tak ethe image data from the measurement disk where it is located after a scan, and put it on th project disk. then i go throught the steps of filtering, contouring for specific regions and then all sorts of image manipulation to retain only certain protions of the image ect.

My own project for this year is three seperate things. The fist is called JAX which is a study started quite a few years ago that looks at a series of about 2000 mouse vertebra. my job is to write appropriate masks to subselect cortical ( hard outer bone) from trabecular(spongy inner bone) so that density analysis can be preformed on all the vertebra. The tough part is the mask needs to theoretically work for each vertebra....... Anyway that project is moving along ok. Second thing on my list is revamping some image visualization software developped at the institute.... just code orginisation mostly maybe a few extra features. I havn't started this yet but I have a feeling it's going to be a big task. The last project is more development of a program that i havn't used yet. I havn't thought about this one too much because I don't know if i will get there....

Yea so this is it! I should also mention , just so you can visualize it, that the lab is on floor C in the second "finger" of the building. The office is on floor E between the 3 and fourth fingers of the building. Floor c is the subbasement so occasionally walking down to an empty lab at 7 in the morning is a little nerve racking but mostly I grab my Ipod and dance all the way there. It's a solid walk.....

The campus itself is a little strange. They call it science city sometimes which i just found out about, thats not the wierd part though... It's located on top of a big hill and is surrounded by pastures. Not unending ones, you can see civilization but we are definitely blessed with the smell of manure from time to time. It acctually kinda reminds me of home.

To get to work in the morning Rachel and I normally take the 8:21 train from Baden to Affelturn which is kinda a suburb of Zurich. then we can walk or take the bus up the hill. If we miss that first train we can go directly to mainstation Zurich and get tow work up the otherside of the big hilll.