Dear loyal blog followers, now that I've been informed that there is at least one of you out there (Danny you know who you are), I'm going to go over a few of the few exciting things that have been going on. After the Roma weekend, I worked on finishing up some book/article stuff. On Friday and I worked Lauchli's chronic wound/ulcer conference which was very interesting, however it further instilled in me how much I don't like chronic wounds and ulcers...I guess the idea of dead rotting flesh on a person that is still alive (or even not alive for that matter) is just not that appealing to this intern. I got to sit in on many lectures about the cutting edge of the field which was, as the Germans would say, "lernreich" (learning rich). I also got to run around the auditorium with a microphone, like those production assistants on Oprah and Maury (which ever you prefer), so that people could ask questions/argue with each other; this was very fun. Of course the typical conference bonuses also applied: multiple coffee breaks with free treats, free hot lunch, kilos worth of creams (except this time they were for incontinence, I learned what that meant this weekend), bandages, lip balm, measuring tapes, stockings (yes like pantihoes), and pens (my goal is to never ever have to buy a pen after this trip). On top of this I made 100 CHF cash, which was nice. Friday night I had Freitag Bier with the research crew and some of Keith's mathy friends; this was of course lovely, and afterwards we went to dinner at a cool Pakistani place. Saturday night I went to dinner at the VB's which was lovely. The whole family schooled me in pingpong on the new table and we had very heated debates about yoga. The next week I wrote a case report for Dr. Waldo (I swear to you put this guy in a red striped shirt and into a book and no one would be able to find him) about pitted keratolysis. We have the first dermatoscopy picture of it and we're submitting it for publication! I continued working on the book stuff and planned my research project with Keith a bit. I ordered the antibody that I will need for my immunohistochemistry stains, and I can't wait to get started this week! I will be looking at the expression of a certain gene in melanoma and confirming that it is regulated by another gene and seeing if it's level of expression has a significant correlation with patient survival times. Friday after work I went to Freitag Bier again (if this is not clear this is a Friday tradition because most of us work some on the weekend and this is a nice little bonding/downtime within the quagmire of derm-science that is F Stock) and afterwards went to the Paki place again. After this I caught a train to Interlaken, checked into Balmer's Herberage (read little USA) and met up with Molly and Courtney. I was shocked and mildly (ok highly) irritated by some of the behavior of some (most) of the Americans in this hostel. Not to say this was not a super fun/friendly hostel, it was! The staff was great, the facilities were great, the activities offered were great, but the sorority/frat girls/boys who decided that playing loud obnoxious drinking games and wearing hoop earings and designer "sexy clothes" was appropriate for the backpackers hostel in a town known for outdoor adventures, e.g. canyoning, hiking, rock climbing, ice climbing, rafting, sky diving, bungee jumping...etc. Get the picture? The earthy, crunchy granola, hippy side of Ms. Lockwood was not pleased. Friday we slept though most of the maddness, but on Saturday....well I'll come to that later. Friday morning, Molly, Courtney, and I woke up, ate a FREE breakfast at Balmers, and met our guide to go canyoning. We drove to the canyoning headquarters, got dressed in wetsuits/jackets, booties, helmets, and lifejackets and loaded into the van. It was a short ride to the canyon, at which point we proceeded to hike for twenty minutes or so to the canyon. We hiked in the river downstream for a little ways before we came to the spot where we repelled down into the canyon and after that there was only one way out: the bottom. Canyoning was amazing! Jumping off waterfalls, hiking in the river, sliding down miniwaterslides etc. Pictures to come perhaps. After that we walked through downtown (where a nice man gave us free truffle samples) on our way to the lake. We got lost along the way and ended up in a barn. There were cows in the barn and goats in the yard. It was very sweet and I bought some Alpkaese from the nice owner man (his name was Balmer hehe). We hung out at the lake for a while. It was gorgeous: mountains right into the water...my favorite! After that sat in the hostel in a semi-vegetative state and Courtney and Molly had a complimentary hard candy eating contest. Courtney won. We wanted to buy stickers, but they didn't have any so what were we supposed to do? We stole the three magnets that were holding up some ads. So if you see our wanted posters around Interlaken it's for Grand Theft Magnet. We justified this by equating them to hotel soaps...as they weren't for sale....I'm not sure this justification holds up but oh well; they're cute. After our crime commiting, we had our 10 euro special which we were very excited about: cheeseburger ("the best in europe"), fries, salad, beer. We hung out into the evening with some of the friends we met canyoning, we ate someone's half bag of potato chips that was left on a table (maybe Interlaken just makes people go clepto...I have no idea). Of course the drinking game loud maddness was still going on which we were not happy about, because we were trying to have conversations like civilized humans. To get these greek system hoodlooms/scalliwags/ (insert fave word for obnoxious little shits here) to shut up I decided to ring the very enormous cow bell (think beach ball-sized) that was hanging right above my head. The thing is is that it worked! They temporarily shut up. Unfortunately though, one of the staff came in and said (yelled) "PLEASE DON'T RING THAT BELL IT'S LOUD ENOUGH IN HERE ALREADY!" What this cute Irish boy didn't understand was that were on the same team. Too bad. I accidently rang it again while trying to get photo documentation of my new noise control method, but he didn't yell at us then. This morning I woke up and waited to meet my guide for ice climbing. This guy was awesome. His name was Hanu and he was a born and raised Interlaken-Swiss mountain man. He owns this company that runs rock climbing, ice climbing, heli skiing, glacier trekking, and he guides it all! We walked down to his headquarters, paid and got set up with our gear: boots, crampons, packs, picks, ropes, leg thingies, helmets etc. I must note Hanu's grasp of english cursing idioms and the creative liberties he took with these were awesome. He'd say things like "cool bananas" and "this sandwich isn't shit, it's absolute shit!" and "look guys," as he gestured to a poster of a little boy in a crevasse, "little shits can do it, so big...i mean well you guys can do it" and "Bucking Feutiful" all while making crude references and saying "trust me baby" as he lowered us into the crevasses. This guy was the man. If you ever get a chance to go to Interlaken, ice climbing is a must do and Hanu from Alpine Guides is the guy to go with. So after we drove the hour up to the Stein Glacier we hiked about half an hour or so from the base up to the ice. We then parked it and ate our picnic lunches while Hanu set up everything. There were hundreds of people out on the glacier. According to Hanu they were doing mountaineering courses, self rescue education, other safety courses etc. Worth noting is that the weather was beautiful! not a cloud in the sky, sunny and warm! I wore a tank top all the way until we sat down and ate lunch. After lunch we started climbing. We'd repel down into the crevasse, it was beautiful down there, and then climb up. It was very hard though, and by the top you were huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf. In the crevasse water would run down the sides and everything was blue, it was gorgeous. Even the rivers of run off from the glaciers was milky baby blue. This is from the air bubbles in the ice and the way they throw the light (just like the sky). We kept going like this for a while, down into the crevasse climb out, down into the crevasse climb out, until we were all pooped out and out muscles were squealing. Then we hiked down. The views on and around the glacier were incredible. Jagged, young, mountains, some just walls of rock jutting up from the valley, covered in green mosses, trees below tree line, and the occasional marmot (we saw one on the hike down). Words cannot describe the epic beauty of that nature. I felt like I was in a Patagonia add or in National Geographic or something. Then I took the train back to Zueri and now I'm in bed and tired...really tired....and I will be sore tomorrow so it is sleep time.
XOXO from your back country blogger
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