Quantiful Quality

After 11 cytotoxicity assays, hundreds of rubber gloves, dozens of reviewed articles, and spreadsheets upon spreadsheets of juicy data, you could argue it's been an eventful first month at Fraunhofer IBMT St Ingbert. Throw on top of that bags of fresh-baked goods, rounds of fine pilsner, and a plethora of wursts, and you could call that last weekend.

But it's not the quantity that matters in times like these; it's about the qualiteee. That's why I enjoyed the quality time spent with my coworkers in the past few days.

My colleagues at the Department of Biohybrid Systems are just like any other group of fun-loving, grill-loving, and nanoparticle-loving people. That is, except Christian and Impi, who are monstrous. As I went tranieren with them last Wednesday, their go-to phrase was "noch 20 dazu?" after I finished lifting. Apparently there is no such thing as spotting in Germany; instead, it's the person's duty to push down on the bar for added weight...as if kilograms weren't heavy enough.

We waved off the work-week with a more leisurely activity and patronized a Biergarten overlooking the Saar. I hazily recall an interesting discussion about how many Germans mistake Saarland, Germany's smallest state, for a part of France. The suggestion was then posed that Michigan is practically Canada, which I vehemently denied with considerable outrage. Reppin' the Wolverine State with pride, baby.

Saarland custom was observed Sunday with some lecker grilling. The practice is called schwenken in this corner of the country, and what a magical word it is...it is possible to say "Der Schwenker schwenkt Schwenker aufem Schwenker," i.e. "The chef cooks steaks on the grill". This brings my total of German grill-related-sayings up to two. I gave my associates a taste of American culture as well and brought materials for s'mores...of course you can't find Hershey's or graham crackers here, so it was more like a German adaptation...Schmehrs? It was exciting to share that little cultural gem of ours, and also Germans roasting 'shmallows is always good for a laugh.

As if that wasn't enough, I just returned from our competitive weekly pick-up soccer outings. Jan played admirably - the young grasshopper is learning well.