EUROVISION

So those of you not familiar with prime time television in Europe will probably not be familiar with the long-running musical contest called "Eurovision." I surely was not familiar until my compatriots who had lived in Iceland in previous years clued me in. Eurovision is a song contest similar to American Idol, but where each country competing has only one song and musical group to perform it. There are two rounds, the semi-finals and the finals. Winners are determined by phone in votes from each participating country. Tuesday we watched the first semi-final. It was quite the experience. We heard songs from the likes of Russia, Moldova, Serbia, Poland and Iceland (in addition to 12 others) We quickly picked our favorites: Iceland, because well... we're in Iceland; Serbia... cause their song was pretty cool, although kind of a bit weird [seriously he reminds me of a girl I know]; Greece, because their lead singer just didn't care... really I'm not sure he wanted to be there, but their song was still great)



We went 7 for 10 predicting who would make it to the final round. Not bad. There were some dogs who made it though... mostly Russia, which was terrible...

Anyway all our talk of Eurovision around the field station got us an invite to our friends Yann and Erica's house in Husavik for a Eurovision party. Our many of our friends from around the field station and some others we had not met before were there to watch the festivities.
During the contest we came up with some critera that make for a "good" Eurovision song: (This list is not necessarily complete)

1. Wind
2. Pyrotechnics
3. Following a panning camera while singing
4. Ballerina dancers
5. Key change
6. Facial gesture to the camera
7. Costume change
8. Novel "ethnic" instrument (mostly fiddles)

A surprising number of acts incorporate high number of these criteria. Just look at any of the youtube videos of the live performance.... Much to the surprise of all the German nationals in attendance at our party, Germany actually won! After the show, the viewing devolved into a full-fledged kitchen party. I sampled the local drink... Icelandic Schnapps called Brennivín... It tastes like spicy black licorice. Also involved was some lab ethanol... nearly 100% pure... talk about spicy...

The coolest part of the evening though was when Yann (purportedly well known as the best birder in Iceland) brandished some eggs from a local sea-bird called a Guillemont
and put them in a pot to soft boil. These eggs are rare (these birds nest on sea cliffs) and highly sought after by Icelanders. They were delicious, so different from normal chicken eggs.


I feel so lucky to be experiencing stuff like this and to be with such a great group of people here.

The Layer to Temperature Ratio

As awesome as the weather was at the time I posted last, the weather has since become equally poor. The past few days have been cold and snowy! We even got some accumulation, and not just on the mountains. The high has been ranging from 2⁰ C to 4⁰ C, and it is certainly cold enough to snow. It makes me really glad that I brought some long underwear along! I’m working the layer system. A t-shirt, light fleece shirt, pullover and fleece jacket, along with gloves and a wool hat is what I wear on cold days.

We got done working on Tuesday in the early afternoon which was nice. I took the afternoon to take a walk up toward the road with my camera and explore some of the places on Kálfaströnd that I hadn’t seen yet. There were a few birds that I hadn’t run into quite yet, and I used the time to familiarize myself with some of the local birds that I had been seeing every day but still couldn’t indentify. I saw two pairs of Horned Grebes, and I was in a place where I could snap a couple of decent photos without scaring them away. Also I saw a bunch of pink-footed geese, Barrow’s Goldeneyes and other assorted waterbirds. It was kind of nice to just be hiking around even though it was cold and there was some precipitation in the air.

Goldeneyes... I accidentally deleted my good photos of these guys

Wednesday we worked for most of the day putting up some experiments and such at a site known to me only as “hell” although I think it is more appropriately known as “HEL”… which is the abbreviation of the Icelandic name which I don’t know at this point… but anyway the site is out on a ridge in the middle of a wind-swept plain, and today the wind was surely sweeping and blowing snow around. But luckily the layer system did not fail me and I stayed fairly warm throughout. We finished work at a decent hour and after dinner we had a “party” which really was the four of us and Jasmine, the German student who is at the station for a number of weeks, just sitting around playing some drinking games. We had a really good time. Bre was an incredible question master and I fell victim to her traps numerous times (You have to answer the Question Master’s question with a question).

All our hard work paid off and today we enjoyed a day off. David, Kyle and I drove the hour to Akureyri in order to do some grocery shopping and run some various errands. The city is the second largest outside of Rekjavik and its surroundings, with a population of around 30,000. It is at the end of a large bay on the north end of the Island. We didn’t get to spend much time in the city, proper, but it was nice to be in civilization nonetheless. After our errands we went to the airport to pick up Claudio, who is the professor from UW in charge of this entire project that I’m working on. It was the first time I had met him, as he was in Italy for the entire semester.

We stopped at Goðafoss on the way to Akureyri

Things are still going great here, despite a bum finger (it got slammed in a door that the wind blew shut) and the poor weather. I’ll write some more in the next couple of days about some of the fun stuff we’re doing and some more about the project. Also check out the blog uwmyvatn.blogspot.com, the official blog of my research group here. We update that almost daily.

Tourist/Traveler/Temporary Local

The past few days here at Mývatn have been great. We've had perfect weather, albeit a bit cold at times, and a bit windy at times. But that is to be expected. The sun has shone way more than I had envisioned though. Not only is the sun out longer every day here than at home, there have been relatively few clouds, and judging from the reactions of the veterans of the field station seems to be fairly rare for periods of more than a day or two. In the past few days I've done some pretty cool stuff. I've played tourist, traveler and local. Here is a highlight from each.

Tourist: We visited Krafla, a dormant volcanic caldera that is about a 15 minute drive from our house. I think the area is a national park, but I am not sure. There are a few interpretive signs and some sort of ranger station, but really you are on your own except for a few marked trails through the lava fields and a boardwalk through some areas with some mudpot-kind of things. I was playing tourist here. I had my camera and I took a bunch of photos, and most of the portraits do not have me in them because I couldn't figure out the time delay (the next day I figured it out in under 30 seconds of trying). The landscape is really pretty incredible, and the volcano was last active in 1984. There is still plenty of steam escaping from vents all over and it is pretty amazing to see where rocks have flowed in a liquid state and hardened in their lava-river shapes.

The traveler part came in when we received an invite through our one of our local contacts to see sheep being birthed at a local farm. Naturally we accepted the invitation, and in the morning we drove over to the farm Vagnbrekka (all of the farms here are named). We were directed into the barn and Egill the farmer invited us in. We were introduced to the leader sheep, Fluga. Leader sheep are bred specifically to lead the herd around in the summer when the sheep are put to pasture in the central highlands of Iceland. Egill explained leader sheep are a bit skinnier than normal sheep in his flock so he only has two (out of about 300 total). Fluga was very much like a dog, eager to be pet and interact with humans. Sheep normally have two lambs, but may have one, three or even four, rarely, and Egill had marked each pregnant ewe with a different colormark so he knew how many lambs each ewe was carrying. His daughter Hilður (11 years old) came in and was also answering questions. One of the ewes was about to give birth and she reached right into the birth canal and determined something was amiss. The lamb’s legs were not aligned right and the lamb would not have come out right, so she rearranged them and pulled the lamb right out. The mother immediately began to clean the lamb so it could breathe easier. The transition from relying totally on one’s mother to breathing on its own is nearly instantaneous. And something of a miracle in my mind. Within five minutes the lamb was up and teetering around!

The local part of my week happened after my first stint on lake Mývatn itself. I call this a local experience because there are very few people who are actually allowed to be on the lake in a boat. The lake is owned by the farms around the lake (one came up for sale in 2009 for the first time in 40 years) and it is only the farmers us at the research station who are allowed on the lake. I even got to go on an island, which even fewer people are allowed to do.

A man in a new land

Hello all, so here comes my inaugural post from the land of perpetal dusk... Iceland. Currently I sit in the Myvatn Research station laboratory (about 4 miles from our house) at 11:30 pm and it is still light outside. And it will be until about oh... I don't know, maybe 2 am, and then it will probably be light again at 4ish. Anyway, I am here safe and sound, after what amounted to two days of travel when you calculate in time zone changes. (left STL at 10am on May 19, and arrived in Akureyri, Iceland at appx. 1 pm on the 20th)

After a quick look around the field station and barn it was time to go unpack and whatnot. We have a great house, much better than I was expecting, and compared to the Double Wide, A.K.A. the Palace of Cat Piss, this place is like the Ritz, or maybe the Taj (although not a tomb, hopefully. Also an UNDERC reference [the Taj, not the tomb ]). Our place is on a peninsula named Kálfaströnd, affectionately known as Kal. With it being light here so long, I had to put on this mask in order to get some darkness (thanks, mom). James said that I should wear a mask every day for my co-worker's sake... thanks man.

Our house on Kal

Actually our house on Kal

I ran out of time to post this when I wanted so it’s a day later. Soon I’ll get into some of the dat to day stuff we have going on, but we’re incredibly busy right now, working 10-12 hour days trying to get all our stuff set up. Check out the flickr site or some pics I put up. More will come shortly. Sorry for the current lack of captions. www.flickr.com/photos/tedkratschmer


I'm beginning to get aquainted with this place. It's really quite spectacular, and really the photos don't do it justice. The names are the hardest part. I just don’t get it yet… I’m picking things up slowly but surely. I’ll post again soon!

Skál! (Cheers!)