Domas

Really? I've seen some the other day as well, but still a very nice bird, and worth to note whenever possible. As it is an important bird (at least I like it a lot), here the necessary words to communicate with other people (at the moment it is german-english-finish-swedish. French contributions are welcome): Austernfischer = Oystercatcher = Meriharakka = Strandskata.

As I'm more into taking pictures of butterflies, this picture of the oystercatcher has been taken from wikipedia.

As in other animals, hibernation allowed us conserving energy during the winter (in our case the hypothermia affected the whole country, which might sound familiar to some of our mediterranean group members). Now when we are back in Finland, we have to regulate our temperature up again. The usual way is the Finnish Sauna (a so called regulated hyperthermia). In a less controlled way it also works with eating more than usual, producing heat and power (think of us as a little block power station). But this doesn't work when one is ignorant while shopping. Only Thomas' sagacious foresight made me buying a double portion of emmentalmozzarella, two dozen eggs, plenty pirogi and 1.5 kg of butter. This prevented me of starvation after today's boat trip, and I got an adequate meal (auch wenn eigentlich ein Müsli reichen würde....). Why do I always forget that I get hungry anyway?

After a hibernating period of over seven months, we're finally back blogging.

Same procedure as every year. Or at least almost. As usual, we wanted to go to Tvärminne by train and ferry. One takes the 9 o'clock train in Basel, changes in Hamburg and arrives in Rostock before 18:00. The ferry leaves at 21:00 arrives the next evening at 18:00 in Hanko, which is just a 20 minutes' car drive from Tvärminne Zoological Station. Unfortunately, that's history because the Estonian company Tallink bought the three Superfast ferries circulating between Rostock and Hanko. Tallink fired most of the people and changed the timetable without further ado. Now the ferry leaves Rostock at 05:00 and arrives 26 hours later in Hanko. Because we had already booked our train tickets, this meant our trip took half a day longer, which is quite annoying. What's more, the new ferry crew is a bunch of lazy buggers. At least Florian was happy. The bed was very comfortable, almost as cosy as an eider nest.

After roughly - ahem - 13 hours of sleep, our Daphnia had to be fed, and all the bad air could pass off the falcon tubes. (BTW, if anyone cares, all clones are in good health, they're glad to be back in their home country.)

After another - this time rather short - night, we had a hefty French breakfast. The nice thing about it was that it was filling AND at the same time reminding us of Laurence :)

Don't worry, we won't post photographs of sausages anymore but would like to refer to a very good source of reviews on dodgy food.

And then we finally arrived in Tvärminne. How much did we miss the view out of our office window - at day and at night.

More to come. Stay tuned.

Don't fiddle around with God(s), and especially don't mix up with their lordship. The later obviousely happened lately to some of us in the report about Neptun. A sight for the gods, but the wrong ones. The whole assemblage of Andhrímnir, Baldr, Borr, Bragi, Búri, Dagr, Delling, Forseti, Heimdall, Hermóðr, Höðr, Hoenir, Kvasir, Lóðurr, Loki, Magni, Meili, Modi, Ódr, Odin, Ríg, Thor, Tyr, Vali, Ve, Vidar, Vili and their female counterparts Bil, Eir, Frigg, Fulla, Freya, Gefjun, Gna, Hlín, Iðunn, Jord, Lofn, Nanna, Nótt, Saga, Sif, Sigyn, Sjöfn, Snotra, Sol, Syn, Var, Vor and Þrúðr was offended and kind of complained. It was probably Thor who most disliked the intrusion of some Italien and Greek folks. Soon after, heavy storms passed over Tvaerminne. Lightnigs illuminated the sky, thunders made us shaking of fear and the wind blew up trees. We dare only now to show these pictures, still fearing these gods.

(and – just to mention – Thor's physique isn't to bad, is it?)

Dear believer in God(s), fellow Christians, fellow Christinas,

Neptun, God of the sea and God of earthquakes – also known under the name Poseidon – is finally back on earth. When you think, that a glimps of a bear in the Swiss National Park is thrilling, you have not yet talked to the elected eyewitnesses that observed the tremendous and incomparable comeback of Neptun. Although he hasn't been seen for centuries, the snapshots taken on the coast of South Finland match perfectly with historic depictions of Neptun. It is not clear why Neptun even went ashore (as seen in the picture on top left). But you can clearly see the distinct features that allow determination (compare also with other pictures of Neptun): The muscular chest, divine biceps, a piercing glance and his incomparable size. Also important are his devotion to the water, especially sea water. We could see how much he liked to swim around. His appearance was also accompanied by a serie of loud noices, though decency prohibits us from reproduction.

After some haunting minutes, Neptune disappeared in the depths of the Baltic Sea. We encourage all people to watch out for him. If you see him, please don't frighten him, as he seems to be quite harmless and peaceful.

Please notice that some of us approached Neptune quite close, even closer than some careless tourists approached the bear.

So far we've kept back any documentation that would allow the conclusion that bad weather does exist at all up here. Well, time for a change. Yesterday, it was raining more or less constantly. But we can't complain, on the contrary: look at the result.

Yesterday evening, we had a worthy celebration of the Swiss national holiday (as upright Swiss, we didn't celebrate on the 31st of July like the traitors in Basel).

Florian and Katja had brought 1.5 kg of cheese and some Fendant with them, so nothing stood in the way of the first Fondue after a very, very long time of deprivation. The two invited Finns (who would like to stay anonymous) seemed to enjoy the melted cheese, but strangely enough they didn't confirm the stereotype of boozing too much (on the contrary – that must have been an exhausting weekend :-).

Florian, a true patriot (and pyromane), had smuggled a volcano and a rocket in his baggage. Fortunately, the police didn't arrest him – these days, with so much gun powder on you, you'd probably have a hard time explaining that you didn't want to blow something/yourself up. But all went well. Even the rocket, that had broken at two places, could be fixed and even had a better start than the NASA Discovery shuttle (hmm, it didn't manage to land in one piece, though).

Last night, young and innocent men were recruited by an offical NATO general (commanding officer Thomas "Hilti" Zumbrunn, mission "Dytiscidae") and by private drill sergeant Saggese in a mission violating human rights. On the picture below you can see one of the victims, already in army dress ("gnägi") and on the way of getting a proper haircut. The mission has already been planed for weeks, and detonations on the nearby training camp were chasing away elks. Unfortunately our wretched victim showed below dutifully continued working and didn't leave for Estonia, with fatal outcome. Please donate some money to the account of the Caribbean Bank (52 - 1378 - 219), as in case of escape our victim has to start a new life under a different name and in not yet known locality. Also pray for the lost soul of commanding officer T. H. Z., as he doesn't know, what he is doing....;-)

Someone sent me pictures of a funny guy getting a haircut. At first, I didn't quite understand why this person sent me the pictures, but then suddenly I realized that the pictures are meant to be posted on our blog. That's destiny.

Florian will probably kill me for that. Or take me on a little boat tour to Iskär...

Here's the solution to the question asked in Wednesday's entry. It's FinnTurf, a Finnish variant of AstroTurf.

Someone suspected it might be an anti-slide carpet of the golf deck of MS Uleåborg. That was close. FinnTurf isn't too different from that. Usually one makes doormats out of it, but we use it to trap ephippia (resting stages of Daphnia), or at least we try to.

On the historical pictures on the left and right you see us in action, drilling holes into the rock with a real Hilti. Should we really ever catch ephippia with these mats, this is a day to remember and celebrate. So it's maybe a good idea to already make a note in your agenda and mark the 1st of June as an official holiday.

What the heck is that?

Tonight, we were sitting outside on our patio, eating dinner. Suddenly, there was an outcry – Florian had been bitten by something. This little something jumped off of Florian's hand onto the table. There it was, a nasty flea! Shriiiiek! In a knee-jerk reaction, Florian packed the evil-doer into a plastic box.

In the main building, Florian wanted to preserve the flea in 70% alcohol. But, hey, the flea was not dumb and jumped away. Oh gosh! Luckily, he found it again. But gain it jumped away. And again Florian could catch it and finally drown it in ethanol. Next he looked at it under the microscope. Shriiiiek! "It's a human flea!!!" Well, at closer inspection it turned out to be a species that doesn't primarily suck human blood. But this one did. The flea's stomach was brimfull with Florian's blood.

Where could that little bastard have come from? From a dog, or a cat maybe? Suddenly, Florian remembered. Yesterday, he had picked up a dead spotted flycatcher and left it in his room. The flea must have left the cold, dead body of the bird and chose Florian as an alternative host. Yummie.

As the algae problems also persist up here in Tvärminne, we had to find alternative food sources for our Daphnia. Luckily, Dieter has large stocks of pesto because traditionally he eats spaghetti with pesto after sauna, i.e. every Wednesday and Saturday evening. Florian, Sandra and I tested the product on ourselves (uargh). The consequence was that we involuntarily worshiped Flatulus, God of the Winds.

But we had no choice. We had to feed our daphnids. Pesto consists of green particles, that's not too far from frozen Scenedesmus. Therefore we mixed up pesto in ADaM and poured it into our jars. The daphnids didn't particularly like it, and the consequences were the same as with us. Now our jars bubble and some unlucky Daphnia that passed gas under their carapaces float on the water surface.

I can't keep back what Sandra recently said when she philosophised late in the evening: "Die Welt der Biologen ist klein. Aber schön." (The biologists' world is small. But beautiful.) Has she gotten sentimental up here? I hope this won't happen to Florian and me, as we'll stay much longer than three weeks. On the other hand, if all the sunsets were like the ones depicted here, I can't guarantee for anything.

Well, as you may have noticed, our last blog entry was posted a whole week ago. This more ore less coincides with the arrival of the "maestro", at least that's what Dieter is called by one of the Tvärminne staff members.

Since then, we've been working even harder than before. Uh-oh, I have to come to an end, Dieter is coming in...