The nearly "Feuerzangenbowle"

Since December is coming close, and Sunday will be the first of Advent, we decided to bring german traditions to Spain and to celebrate this evening with a "Feuerzangenbowle".

For those of you not familiar with this thing, Wikipedia (as nearly always) is a pool of wisdom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuerzangenbowle

Below, you can see what it should look like:

Unfortunately, we were unable to get all the ingredients. At first, you need a "zuckerhut", a sugarloaf. But this one can be easily replaced by sugar cubes. Ok, it's not as original as it would be with a real sugarloaf, but it works. What's not gonna work is if you're not able to find some rum with at least 50% alcohol content. Because, it's not burning, unless you do some nasty tricks, like heating it up before. And we didn't succeed, although we went to three different grocery stores.

So, in the end we did just the cheap version: a simple Glühwein. Which was also quite nice, and enough to get some of us really drunk. ;-)

It's getting cold

When I woke up this morning, I shivered - it was really cold. This night, temperature dropped below 5°C.

But while in the morning sky was still a little bit cloudy, by early noon it had cleared up, and when we got our official tour through the base and institution.

Most of the stuff they're doing here is SOOOO secret I can't tell you about it. ;-)
But part of it has to do with testing unmanned miniature aircrafts and other self guided flying objects.

Another typ of measurements our spanish hosts do (or did) is sending rockets with scientific instrumentation up into the atmosphere to measure as high as 40 km. Unfortunately, they had to stop because of funding problems.

Besides, they have a station performing aerosol measurements all over the year - that's the type of stuff I'm dealing with - small particles, floating around and beeing inhaled by us all the time.

After all this scientific stuff, we were so hungry that we tried to by stuff in a supermercado. What we didn't know - they do a siesta here from 2 pm to 5 pm. We had to go home and to come back later in the evening ... even more hungry!

Internet gone...

Today, there was a maneuver at the base, so we had to shutdown all equipment which could produce electromagnetic interference. Therefore, we lost contact to the world in the morning, because there was no internet!! ;-) Man, the mood at the site dropped drastically. Fortunately, the maneuver was over by 11:00h, so our network guys did their best to restore it.

Later that day, we had our first "serious" data meeting. We have a very short and informal one every day around 4 pm outside in front of the measurement containers. This one, everybody had to prepare a presentation for, and it took nearly the whole afternoon.

Although we didn't see any scientific breakthrough, people showed some nice results, which is really impressive after less than a week of official measurements. If you're really interested in how scientific data looks like, check out the pictures below.




On the picture above you see a daily temperature profile, just to give you an idea... ;-)

The measurement site

Today, I want to tell you a little bit about the place we're measuring. And where we live right now.


Größere Kartenansicht

Our measurement site is located at the southern coast of Spain, close to a town called Huelva, and approximately 90 kilometers west from Seville. We're located on some kind of military base in a little forrest of what we call "broccoli trees". Infact, I think they are some kind of pine trees, but if you see them from above, they really look like broccolli.

The measurement site is directly besides a camping ground where we have rented some barracks. Some of them are quite big, but mine doesn't even have a kitchen, so I don't get my morning tea!!!



Close to the camping ground, there's the ocean and a big sandy beach. And just in the middle of it, you can see the remains of an old watch tower. Unfortunately, it's much too cold, else I would try to go swimming there, at least once.



Actually, I just found out I'm not living alone at my booth, although it's just a single room. I saw a cockroach today, and you know, if you've seen one, you can be sure there are hundred more around. So I'll stop writing and start a little hunting session ....

Monday morning

This morning I let the girls do all the work. Later, I had a trip to Huelva which was in the end nearly useless.

I woke up this morning around 6:30, but since the girls should learn to take care of MoLa on their own, I turned around and decided to sleep in. Unfortunately, I had to get some spare parts for MoLa in Huelva, so I forced myself to rise around 8:30 am.

When I arrived at the measurement site, all instruments were running, and Sarah-Lena and Jovana didn't have any problems. But Zeinab, another college of mine, was close to getting cabin fever, so when I told her that I would drive to Huelva, she immediately joined me.

When we approached the city of Huelva we could not only smell but also see the exhaust of the petrochemical industry. The air around Huelva was kind of brownish, and it smelled like it did in Germany twenty years ago, when you did live in an industrial town.

I found a shop, and after I had explained two shop assistants what I needed (it took me nearly 15 minutes and a lot of bad drawings, but I managed without a word of spanish ;-) ), they found out they didn't have my spare parts. It seemed to not only suprise me but also them! The same thing in a second shop - I was kind of frustrated. Zeinab, on the other hand, really enjoyed shopping.

But it just wasn't my day. Also my second task, to find a McDonalds or Burger King, failed. And I was so eagerly hoping for some freedom fries and a Burger!

So we went home, Zeinab relaxed and happy, me a little bit frustrated. Now I get the spare parts from Germany, delivered by FedEx. We will see how they perform this time! ;-)

Weekend

First, I would like to apologize for not updating the MoLa diary yesterday. Those of you knowing me well do remember for sure that I'm a lazy person. ;-) And of course, I have a lame excuse for it: I was just to busy introducing the new MoLa-crew members into everything.

Actually, we had a pasta-and-garlic-bread party on Saturday night, and it was over somewhen around 2 A.M., and ... I awoke with a bad headache on Sunday morning. ;-)

Nevertheless, we also had a lot of work to do. One of our instruments had a problem, because another instruments exhaust was heating up its stand. So, I became "MacGyver" and created a heat shield using bubble wrap and some cable ties.


The funny thing with temperature here is: during the day it's quite warm (around 20°C), but as soon as the sun goes away it's getting quite cold. Unfortunately, we had to calibrate our mass spectrometer today. And since we missed the calibration time in the morning, we could not start earlier than 6 pm. By the time the calibration was finished it was half past seven, but I was frozen to the bone. That's why I will finish now and go "home" to avoid a cold that will otherwise catch me for sure! ;-)

Change of MoLa crew

This was a day full of changes. Two third of the MoLa crew left. On the other side, two new members joined. And, I got a new job! :)

This morning, we all got up around six. Frank and Thomas, my companions during the trip to Spain, left and had to be driven to the airport at Faro in Portugal. So I got promoted to become a taxi driver, where I had to pickup the new members of the MoLa crew, Sarah-Lena and Jovana, who have to take care of our measurements for the next days.


Why's that a promotion? Since I'm "only" a meteorologist/atmospheric physicist, I'm not a full physicist. But taxi driver is the job most "real" physicist work in, at least if you believe some sharp tongues! ;-)

Poor MoLa, it had not only to survive the night but also most of the day without anyone watching over it. And it did, with nearly no problems.

So tomorrow, I'll start to introduce the girls into handling MoLa so they'll be able to run the measurements without my help, giving me some time to enjoy Spain! ;-)


Größere Kartenansicht