I'm Goin' out West where the Wind Blows Tall

Last month in country. It seems like a needlessly sad thing to leave Iceland in the winter, when the southern sun is doing all its pretty things, reflecting orange on all the buildings after lunch-time, passing through the trees and making the silver bark look gold, giving shape to the storm clouds and making the frozen Pond shine.

Google is refusing to let me post more photos, apparently I've filled up my quota. I'll put some up on facebook, soon, but I already sort of botched my intention to get all the pictures from Germany and Amsterdam up in short succession. Apologies. I have managed to get my diploma, get my first academic job transcribing manuscripts, and finish all my PhD applications in the meantime. And considering I have meanwhile somehow convinced myself that it's imperative to watch all of Star Trek DS9 again, I think it's a pretty fair amount done.

Deep ambivalence is ruling life at the moment (I think ambivalence might be the official emotion, not only for my life, but for liminal spaces in general); joy and sorrow at leaving Iceland, elation and anxiety at waiting to hear where I'll go next, and pride and disappointment that I have managed to embark on an academic career, yet somehow it managed to be about translation and grammatica and history rather than about Beowuld and mythology and dragons. Funny how that works, how curiosity and interest and time and opportunity all sort of twist around with each other and, if you're putting any effort into life at all, you end up somewhere different than you'd expect.

I will miss Skyr most of all (just kidding, Magda). Alongside it with be the wind and the water and sun, the rain and snow and hail, the basalt and the moss and particularly the birch trees; I will miss walking absolutely everywhere and only rarely thinking it's slow. I will miss the taxi drivers talking about Laxdæla saga and the bartenders talking about Guinness. I will miss my Irish session and the general feeling whenever I listen to medieval music while walking about that this is the perfect place to do it. I will miss the swans and the geese and the ducks and the gulls and whatever those birds were that attacked Paul's head.

I will mostly certainly not, however, miss any of my friends here. None of them have the philological skill to be worth missing.

A Long Time to Get Back on the Train

Back in Iceland, from a long trip to Amsterdam and the Rhineland, with Mom and her friend Ann and Magda. The two old ladies left after Amsterdam, and Magda showed me around her home region. Me being me, the central component of every place was the history, the museums and castles and churches, but the side benefits were excellent as well: The amazing generosity and hospitality of my hosts, the knowledge of my tour guides, the beer (which, as we have learned, as all basically derived from Bavaria) and potatoes and fish and cabbage, the walks and rides through the countryside, the trees, and the basic knowledge that folk of Germany and the Netherlands enjoy quantities of mayonnaise that would make a lesser American than myself sick.

It was an excellent, and exhausting, post-thesis vacation (still waiting for the grade on that, hopefully post it soon), and it's good to be back in my hole, my secular halfling monastery of one, and back to work, with a fresh supply of gummy candy from my German hosts at my side. There's a GRE at the end of the month to study for, and PhD research proposals that need to be prepared, a Kalamazoo paper to write, and XML encoding for transcribed manuscripts to learn. Plus a solid kilo or so of beer and potato weight to burn off.

Fortunately, I think I enjoy being busy.

Pictures will have to be split up, for some modicum of organization. For, some of the fine sights of Köln, mostly the Cathedral and artifacts from the Roman-Germanic museum.


First visit to the Cathedral, and trip up the tower.

 You quickly learn that many young Germans apparently have no qualm

writing graffiti on seven hundred year old structures.

 Roman-Germanic Museum

Some prehistoric and Celtic exhibits.

I think the Roman stuff begins somewhere around here.

 Saxes, found in the Rhineland.

 Particularly awesome Saxes, too.

For James. I apologize for the poor quality, but I will still be expecting typologies.

Not sure why I found some of this so fascinating, but what can you do.

Roman River gods. 

Disney and Demonology, in their early years.

The wall of locks, that tourist couples puts up.

An eternally disgusting display.

Second visit to the Cathedral, to the interior.

Chocolate museum, with a rather excellent selection of Meso-American artifacts.

My own personal chocolate bar. 

Finally, ancient American comic books.