If I’ll find the time to write more about polarstern and the chile holiday – I dont know yet. But I found recently some avocados here which are not too hard and thus ready to eat right from the store. ok, the price is a bit higher, you get one here, in chile you get a kilogram.
typical food when I was at pablos place in the evening/afternoon: white bread with tomatoes, avocados, red wine.

From santiago back to germany via sao paolo. actually really relaxing, I had 3 seats for myself on the transatlantic part, nice

At christmas time in northern germany, right back from 30°C in Santiago into the freezing cold winter of the northern hemisphere.

And not long in northern germany, back to Heidelberg, to finish my diploma thesis. more or less.

New Year eve had to be celebrated with a cake: that’s actually the ‘normal’ chocolate cake made of butter, chocolate, nuts and eggs and in between some pudding with cherries. great! You know that TNT has just 1kcal/g and chocho-late, äh, chocolate has 5? just doesnt burn that fast …

Some sima was prepared once again …

Sometimes climbing was the only possible way to relax from writing.

Data, I had a sufficient amount of it. Actually too much. This is one trace gas for the atlantic transect from Bremerhaven to Punta Arenas. Havnt printed all of them. (Ha, and next time, dont forget the gridlines.)

Now here’s snow for already some weeks or something, I don’t have any feeling for time any more.

Back in Germany again, after 2 months and over 30.000km distance travelled.

• Heidelberg -> Bremerhaven (train)
• Bremerhaven -> Punta Arenas (ship)
• Punta Arenas -> Puerto Natales (bus)
• Puerto Natales -> Torres del Paine (bus)
• Las Torres -> Lago Pehoe (W-Tour) (hiking) (pictures)
• Torres del Paine -> Puero Natales -> Punta Arenas (bus)
• Punta Arenas -> Santiago (plane) -> Valparaiso (bus)
• Valparaiso -> Santiago (bus) -> Sao Paulo (plane) -> Frankfurt (plane) -> Heidelberg (train)

http://johannes.lampel.net/hq/torresdelpainepanos.zip(~150mb)
http://johannes.lampel.net/hq/valparaisopanos.zip(~150mb)
http://johannes.lampel.net/hq/puntaarenaspanos.zip (~50mb)
http://johannes.lampel.net/hq/polarsternpanos.zip(~150mb)

Well, as you might have noticed, I somehow gotta lot to do at the moment, even though it’s not only work. In between i’ve been on the polarstern again, but only in the harbour, in bremerhaven. actually just to reinstall the thingy we installed when we came from las palmas, just in a better way. (the hair is way shorter now, btw …)

the way back we got quite shitty weather, kind of the whole time since then, very varying weather conditions, some days with 30°C, some with below 20°C and rain …

And of course we went climbing – in the stone pit and inside in the climbing hall …

Beginning of July it was also my birthday, we had a nice barbecue next to the dormitory with 10-15 people, ages ranging from 1-30. The weather wasn’t perfect but afterwards there was even the usual Heidelbergs castle fireworks ‘Schlossbeleuchtung’ which I saw now the first time from a position where it’s actually visible. bridges far away or viewing points somewhere in the woods might not be as crowded as the philosophenweg, but hei, there might be a reason

Birthday presents: Obviously people fear that I might starve, or they just wanna get more cakes and stuff. and in the back there’s a backpack for the rope for climbing …

and yesterday a flatmate got married and our flat and a couple of friends were invited:

The first day, on May 14th we arrived at the R.V. Polarstern in the harbour of Las Palmas by Taxi in the morning. All the other scientists were watching us arriving, we just caring about our luggage and equipment and more or less ignoring everything – must have been a funny sight for them

This sign can be found at different places:

The first day we stayed in front of Gran Canaria because some tecnicians had to test some equipment and went back to Las Palmas in the evening on a small boat.

During the whole trip the crew worked on the ship, they painted one thing after the other.
I had some problems the first days working, since the horizon was moving, the screen wasn’t, it was kind of hard to concentrate on the data. Or fixing screws outside on the deck wasn’t easy either.
The waves there were around 4-4.5m high and quite regular. My favourite place to stay that days was in bed, sleeping always worked there, and outside was ok too, so the first day was more like 5 minutes of work, five minutes of calmly watching the horizon …

The color of the evening sun was always impressive …

One day we all were invited to watch the propellers through a small window. we had to crawl down a small service tunnel after which there was actually a bigger room were a member of the crew gave instructions and we had some minutes to watch.

On the deck where the labs were and the crew’s working places, some tourist stuff from home:

Somewhere western of Portugal we had a barbecue evening instead of normal dinner, a great variety of meat, salads and deserts as well as beaverages.

(work in progress, more text to come)

Wieder festen Boden unter den Füßen …

Polarstern ANT XXV/5b Las Palmas Bremerhaven:

The R.V. Polarstern (de) is already on it’s way to Europe, to Bremerhaven. We’ll board the ship on Gran Canaria on 14th of May and go back to Germany that way.

(or also on sailwx.info)