Rönne - A sheer cosmopolitan village ( Ein reines Weltdorf)

Rönne is where I come from. It is but a small village in northern Lower Saxony, southeast of Hamburg. And Rönne stands for a glorious history through ages. Napoleon himself marched through my Rönne on his way to Russia, the famous but hated nuklear powerplant "Krümmel" can be seen from my house, and surely many more important things happened and still continue to happen in, around or because of Rönne. Thus, it is once and for all famous all over the world and not only gave name to Rønne, the capitol of the danish island of Bornholm but also to the Rönne Ice Shelf (see figure!), being part of the second largest ice sheets in the Antarctic. Isn't that amazing? This is, where the famous "calving" of the A-38 iceberg took place (remember "Tagesschau"?). Wow.. I am proud to be a true Rönnesian! And soon I will come close to the Rönne Ice Shelf myself, when I'm on "Polarstern" visiting and supplying the german Polar Station "Neumayer II" (see arrow on figure). The red line is approximately the heading of our cruise.
So far.. cheers..
Torben

Food - what's more important?

Lonely Planet's travel survival kit for South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland (2nd edition, 1996) says:

"Despite the fact that South Africa produces some of the best meat, fresh produce and seafood in the world, the food is often disappointing. [...] The British can take most of the blame. Large steaks (admittedly, usually excellent), overboiled vegetables and fried chips seem to be the stable diet for whites. Vegetarians will find the country a nightmare. [...] Basically, if a dish can have spices removed and sugar or animal fat added in large amounts, it will." That doesn't sound too good to me.. I hope, things have changed a little in eleven years since.
But what gives me confidence is the fact, that "Polarstern" will refill it's stocks in Cape Town. That means, we'll have Crocodile, Oryx, Ostrich, Zebra and probably more exotic meat during the first weeks on board. And I'm quite sure, with this delicious things in his store the chef knows how to satisfy his guests!!

Getting hungry..

Testicals.. one, two..

This is some kind of test.. for how the e-mail blogging works..

But I will use it to give some news anyway. Today I had lunch with Lydia, Laura and my boss Saskia. Together we will fly to Cape Town November 23rd and have a three days vacation. We planned. And it became gooooooood!
We'll stay at some kind of lodge outside Cape Town City, close to the beach (100m) in a relative secure area. It is quite cheap , though a ****Hotel. As far as this is possible, we want to visit some wine cellars, a colony of pinguins and of course Cape Town itself within this three days. On November 27th we will bord "Polarstern" and the cruise will start one day later.
Besides: Saskia told me, that unfortunately some of the scientists had to reject from the cruise. But for me this is relaxing, as I feared, I would probably have to sleep at the quarantine ward of the medical station. Originally the shipping company had agreed in letting three more scientists take part in the cruise than "Polarstern" has beds for. So they planned to give the two beds in hospital and the one in quarantine ward to scientists also - at least as long as there is no case of emergency.. and as I wrote before, I still do not know with whom I will share my cabin.

Huhu..

Halli hallo..
it is more than four weeks to go, until I will leave Germany for South Afrika to enter the most powerful ship in the german scientific fleet: the ice breaker, supply and research vessel "FS Polarstern".
I really look forward to it!!!
It is an honour to me that I was chosen to take part in expedition ANT XXIV-2 to Antarctica. I was integrated into the team of SYSTCO, which is a project to analyse the oceans' biological system coupling from the deep sea up to the surface. I will help sorting and fixing sampled material and extracting DNA from Isopods (Crustacea: Peracarida) on bord.
At the moment I am stuck in planning, buying, packing and mostly thinking.. I still don't know, with whom I'm going to share my cabin.. one of my biggest fears is that I may have to live three months on bord sharing my privacy with a fat old unfriendly guy who is smoking, snoring and farting all the time and a professor in physics.. well.. I'll be aware of it soon enough..

Cheers.. Sasquatch