It's Almost Like Home

It's easy to find t-shirts with english text while walking around downtown Marburg. California Beach Club, New York Yankees - I read this stuff all the time. The grocery stores are stocked with peanut butter, popcorn, Texas salsa, marshmallows, etc. The guys in my lab even know all about American politics. After our most recent soccer game by the Lahn, we had a pretty good discussion about Obama (he's a big deal in Germany, and actually traveling in Germany right now). Sometimes I fear my labmates know even more about American politics than I do. With all the similarities, I can almost forget that I can see the sun set every day about six hours before anyone in Atlanta. And then I walk into an 800-year-old church and see something like this:

Or I'm on my way to a botanical garden to sit out in the sun and read a book, and I stumble across a sight like this:

I hope you're not getting tired of seeing Marburg's castle. I'm not (and if you are, don't worry. I'm leaving for Italy tomorrow with Hannah and I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures. Stay tuned!). And while these reminders of Germany culture are a bit hard to miss, there are many other reminders that are a little more subtle. For instance, there are no free bags at the grocery stores. You have to buy them with all of your groceries. Germany is going green, which is great, but I'm just glad that someone warned me before I had to use my German to ask the cashier where the grocery bags were! I also remember being surprised after listening to a talk from one of my lab mates. At the end, I started clapping, and quickly realized I was the only one. Everyone else in the room was knocking on the tables. Who knew? Even the water is different. At restaurants or in bottles it's almost always carbonated. However, the least subtle of the small reminders is the lack of air conditioning. The idea is that AC is not worth it, when Marburg get only one to four weeks of hot weather all year. I can tell you that AC seems totally worth it working in a hot lab all day, doubly so when working in front of a bunsen burner. Interestingly enough, the Marahiel lab does a few things different than my lab at Emory. Their method of mutagenesis doesn't involve the use of ligase. It's pretty easy and I hear it saves a lot of money (what do you think of that, Dr. Weinert?). Overall, lab is going very well. I've gained a fair amount of independence, and pretty soon I'll even have some data. Some of the recent developments in the lab have been pretty exciting, too. I'll just say that lasso peptides are full of surprises.

Of course, it's the people that make Marburg feel the most like home. I haven't met a German yet who wasn't willing to try to help me out. It's great to get back from lab everyday and have friends to cook dinner with back in the Studentendorf. It's great to joke about the heat and learn obscene German phrases in the lab. 

I'll just finish with one last picture that I haven't managed to fit into my blog anywhere else. I was actually in Frankfurt when this was going on (and I'll be returning to hopefully a more peaceful Frankfurt to meet up with Hannah tomorrow).