A 53º (N) cycle

It's been an interesting stay here in Bremerhaven so far - Bremerhaven is a port that sits on a river 30 km away from Bremen, which may or may not have been a place you've read about on a label of Becks beer. Considering that Bremerhaven has been relegated that historical position of being the lifeless satellite orbiting the quite-lively planet Bremen, it's not doing a bad job of reinventing itself as a centre of polar and ocean research, spicing it up a bit with an immigration museum, straight-outta-Dubai sail-shaped hotel and the yet to be completed Klimahaus, which will be a museum dedicated to climate, changing climate and variability found along the longitude of Bremerhaven - 8º East. For nightlife, graffitti and contemporary culture, refer to Bremen.


...but the weather has been compliant and today's blue skies and balmy weather invited me to go for a cycle up the coast - originally a very long way, but the headwind and dodgeyness of the bike helped me decide to go easy. Besides, there's nothing worse than working in a coldroom with aching legs as well as numbing fingers and toes...makes it hard to concentrate on not dropping the ice cores or pushing too hard through the bandsaw...

Anyway, I found it interesting how the countryside on the otherside of the car- and container-processing port facility was so mixed up compared to our very linear and organised Australian landscapes. It's almost as if we can't accept fields with cows and wind turbines in the background.




or tidal plains mixed up with container loading cranes:




Landscapes that seemed miraculous here would be labelled..."eyesores" back home...

Gotta go watch a football (soccer) match now. Ciao! Paul.

North of Germany

Hi all,

Long time between posts but just a quick update from here in Bremerhaven where I'm sub-sampling the Talos Dome ice core with a mixed group of students and scientists. The ice core from Talos Dome is the material that I'm working on for my fellowship, and while it has already been drilled, there remains about 600m of 1-metre long tubes of ice which need to be cut into square or triangular pieces for all the collaborating labs (my piece is square). Yesterday I got in to Bremerhaven after a few days in Munich, and I'm happy to indulge in such decadent pleasures as muesli and cycling...the hedonism!

Considering we just started this morning we got 37 metres processed today, so I'm expecting us to get at least 60 m done tomorrow. Took some photos but I still have to transfer them off the camera - hopefully have them up soon. Quite nice here but Bremerhaven is a very sleepy little town and I haven't seen a huge amount to recommend...but you can walk through a WW2 U-boat in the harbour which is an interesting experience of the cramped spaces and technology of the time.

Enough from me for now!

Ciao, Paul.