Hiking and biking and surfing and BBQs!

First off, let's talk science.  I've been absolutely loving the lab environment here.  Whereas my lab at Emory was involved in protein design, the lab I'm working with here is more concerned with the second stage of drug development--drug formulation.  This means they don't actually design drugs.  Instead, they are searching for systems to model subcutaneous drug injections, reworking spider silk proteins to serve as vaccine carriers, and formulating the most ideal buffer systems for the production, storage, and administration of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies.

My project has to do with examining the stability of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and trying to find correlations between different buffer solutions, thermostability of the proteins, and aggregation behavior.  I feel like I'm making pretty good progress with the research here.  Before my first week in the lab was over, I'd already collected a solid dataset to analyze!

What makes the lab even better are the labmates.  They do good, efficient science here, but the atmosphere is also relaxed at the same time.  For example, they will spontaneously decide to hold a lab BBQ one day after work or decide to go biking 30km together to a lake outside the city to grab a beer after work.  Now if only I could understand the German they speak when they're relaxing.

That brings me to my second point.. Munich residents know how to stay active!  My grad student mentor is an avid climber, so he's been teaching me a lot about what Munich residents do in their spare time.  Since the Alps are so close, it's obvious that many people love to go climbing or hiking.  I even gave it a shot this past weekend by hiking up the Wendelstein with some of my friends.  The mountains surrounding Munich are incredibly beautiful!  And a good workout to hike up as well.

Picture at the summit of the Wendelstein, a 1,800 meter high mountain in the Bavarian Alps.  Took three hours to hike up (and quite some time accidentally going off-trail and getting lost)!

Rolling hills at the base of the mountain, reminiscent of "The Sound of Music"

The view of the mountains from the summit of the Wendelstein.  Absolutely breathtaking!

~10 min. cable car ride or three hour hike?  Easy.  Hike!

But if they can't make it to the Alps, apparently climbing up the exterior of buildings is just as good.  It's an unofficial sport in Munich to freestyle climb up the sides of buildings like spiderman.  Another unofficial sport is snakelining, which is where you attach a flat cable between two trees and tightrope walk across it.  Apparently, snakelining was so popular and so many people were attaching these cables to trees in parks that now there are restricted areas where it is allowed.  I'd imagine it'd be hard to play frisbee or volleyball in a park with a cable stretching 70 meters in the air between trees!  I still haven't seen these unofficial sports in action, but my grad student mentor assures me that he partakes regularly in these activities.

Also, who knew Munich was a surfer spot?  I had heard about surfers in Munich through word-of-mouth since the first day I got to Munich.  And indeed, there really are surfers in Munich.  They surf every day all day and all night on a standing wave in the river!

My friends and I happened upon the surfers late at night while exploring Munich.  They really are there ALL the time!

That's a pretty good update on what I've been up to this past week.  With the spontaneous lab BBQ, hiking, Munich's Birthday Festival (Saturday), and exploration of Munich bars, restaurants, and parks in the evenings with my friends, I've been keeping busy!  I'm thinking this next week will be busy as well.  More to come as I continue to explore Munich and check out Venice and Rome this weekend with Shawn. :)