Here is a picture of Fribourg’s old city center. Even though Fribourg is pretty small this is of course not it.

Of course we wouldn’t leave our cats behind when moving to Europe. I have been following local ads on craigslist over the past two years and for many people in SLC, moving seems to be equivalent to abandoning pets. I got really used to reading things like “Moving across country, can’t take my pet” or “Cat for free. My new apartment does not allow pets” - stuff I really don’t understand. I would safe every penny to take care of my cats and when you choose an apartment, what keeps you from looking for one that actually does allow pets? They are not necessarily more expensive. It just needs to be important enough for you - you need to care about it.

Anyway, we are not such people and of course, Nori and Watson had to come with us all the way from SLC to Europe. If you think taking a pet on a transatlantic flight is irresponsible and the pet would be better off with a new owner….please, wait a second and continue reading!

We prepared a lot before moving our cats to Germany. Of course they needed to be current on their rabies vaccination and have a microchip. Those are basically all the requirements the European Union has for pets traveling to Europe. An immigration form of the EU was then filled out by our veterinarian together with an international health certificate (valid for 30 days), which was not required but can be helpful during overlays in other U.S. states. Both forms also had to be endorsed by the APHIS Area Veterinarian-In-Charge at the Salt Lake office.

The rabies vaccination was one point that freaked me out a little. Once the cats had their annual vaccination I found out that Europe requires the use of an inactivated vaccine. My vet however used a common active vaccine, which is approved in the U.S. but not in Europe. However, it was already too late and since the immigration form only contained a three-letter code for the vaccine brand I decided not to worry about it and hope that no one else would notice.

In terms of transportation, we decided to take the cats as carry-on. That way they can be inside the main cabin, they stay with you the entire time and the airline does not get a chance to loose them (what seems to happen when they fly as checked baggage). We made a reservation for them several months in advance (Delta only allows 4 pets in the main cabin) and bought some large Studibag pet carriers. Those are the best carriers available and it’s the only kind I would recommend! Even though the dimensions are a little bit bigger than allowed they work perfectly fine and are way better than the Sherpa cat tote we tried before. The Studibag top is flexible and it’s easy to put it under the seat in front of you but it gives your pet maximum space. Officially, the carrier is about an inch too long, but that’s no problem at all. Additionally, the carrier has the big advantage to come with some security features: It has a D-hook inside where you can attach a short leach to secure your pet (use a harness for that, not a collar). And most importantly, it comes with clips that securely close the two doors of the carrier. An important feature for Watson, our little hooligan.

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4:30 am (MST)- Salt Lake City, UT, USA: getting ready for the big trip

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We got them used to the carriers early before the flight and on the day of the move they went in by themselves. I bought some absorbent pads for the carriers and the cats got their last meal 12 hours before our departure. One thing that is pretty controversially discussed is the use of tranquilizers. We talked to our vet and decided to use a low dose of Acepromzine to calm them down a little in the beginning. Of course we tried it before to see how the cats respond and to make sure that we have the right dose. The morning of the move, they both got the tranquilizer with a little bit of wet cat food. And it worked out perfectly. The cats were not even very sleepy but they stayed calm and relaxed once we had to take them out of the carrier at the airport security check. Nevertheless, we also asked to get a private room for the check. The TSA officer at the Salt Lake City airport didn’t really understand why we would need that and kept telling me that the cats would be just fine passing through the body scanner (What would that look like? “Sir, please, lift your front paws…”). Who is he to tell me what my cats would or wouldn’t be ok with? Anyway, I insisted on a separate room and it worked out great.

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6:00 am (MST)- Salt Lake City, UT, USA: taking the rental car to the airport

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Even though the carriers were replacing two pieces of hand luggage we still had to pay extra to take the cats with us. And that’s really expensive. For an international flight, Delta usually charges $200 per cat but the lady at the check-in counter somehow got it wrong or intended to be really nice and only charged us half the price. What a lucky day…

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8:00 am (MST)- Salt Lake City, UT, USA:

waiting for our plane at the terminal

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The cats stayed calm and quiet at the airport, looked through their mashed windows to see what’s going on around them (they were more nervous once the carrier was covered, so we kept the blinds down for the rest of the trip) and started sleeping pretty soon after we arrived at the gate. Of course the noise of the airplane was new to them and they meowed during start and landing. But for most of the trip they were pretty quiet. Watson had some moments when he tried to brake out of the carrier. But the mesh windows were sturdy and the clips were the best thing every. When flying into Stuttgart he managed to push the clip far enough to get his head through the hole. He had immense power and I had a hard time getting his head back inside. But of course Watson is an expert in breaking out of carriers and a bully all together. So Studibag did a really good job in keeping him inside for almost 24 hours.

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9:40 am (MST)- flight #1:

Salt Lake City - Atlanta

Flight time: 3 h 50 min

Aircraft: Boeing 767-400

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The tranquilizer lasted for about 6-7 hours and we tried to give them a second dose before leaving Atlanta. But somehow they managed to eat all the crumbs of dry cat food and spit out all the pieces of the little pink pill. So it was just not meant to be and since they were already pretty used to the noise and everything, they did just fine without it.

I was surprised that nobody noticed our cats during the flight - that was until flying into Stuttgart. But still they were not very loud. The guy in front of us told us later that he thought we were playing a “Talking-Tom”-type of iPad game without headphones.

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5:40 pm (EST) - flight #2: Atlanta - Stuttgart

Flight time: 9 h, Aircraft: Boeing 767-300

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Bringing the cats into the European Union was much easier than expected and no problem at all. The officer at the custom looked at our papers but it seemed like he didn’t really know what to look for. He did not check the microchip nor did he look at the cats.

My dad picked us up in Stuttgart and we spent another hour in the car before arriving at home. Of course the first thing was to take care of the cats (Watson REALLY appreciated the litter box). They got used to everything really quickly, discovered room by room. And our plan to keep them in my bedroom for the first 24 hours didn’t work at all. They were way too curious to wait any longer. By now they are enjoying my bedroom, our corridor, the bathroom and our entire basement. Unfortunately, the rest of the house has to stay cat-free - during the summer we have too many open doors and I really don’t want the cats to get outside right now.

Nevertheless, it was a long and crazy trip for those little cats, Watson was a little bit insecure after waking up the next morning (for not more than half a day), both were really affectionate and Watson had some troubles getting used to the new food. But overall they managed it really well, are not showing any signs of stress and are really happy every time Marc and I come home. So I believe it was the right thing to do and our cats are happy to be with us in Germany.

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10:15 am (MEZ)- arriving at home after 20 hours total travel time

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Well, that’s actually not entirely true since we are first moving back home before going to Switzerland. But still…the song Kelly was singing for the last two weeks still has a point. We are leaving Salt Lake City for real, it’s tough but it’s also a new beginning of something great.

When we came here in 2008, I wrote something about bags being packed. Now it would be about two 40 ft containers.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

I applied for the scholarship this January, passed the first round of selection in March (30% pass that round) and last week I received the final letter that my application was approved!!! Yeah…I will be a B.I.F. fellow for the next 24 months starting in September. Since I’ve been in the US all that time I didn’t have an interview (which seems common for applicants in Germany/Europe). But my application alone must have convinced the external reviewer and the Board of Trustees, which consists of several internationally renowned scientists.

Of course I’m pretty excited about it. I have seen what that scholarship has meant to Marc, I have met many former scholarship holders (and it’s a really nice group of people) and I’m looking forward to being part of that community. They have a great network of people, an annual seminar in Germany and an annual retreat in Austria. So B.I.F. provides much more than just money and prestige.

]]> http://www.not-a-blog.de/?feed=rss2&p=480 http://www.not-a-blog.de/?p=476 http://www.not-a-blog.de/?p=476#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:44:27 +0000 Hanna http://www.not-a-blog.de/?p=476

The title says it all. Soon, we’ll be starting a new chapter in life. After almost two years in Salt Lake City we will leave the US again (sooner than expected) and move back to good old Europe: Switzerland to be more precise. Our PI accepted a job offer at the University of Fribourg and with the exception of Makiko and Shukui our entire lab will move. The idea came up about 12 months ago and every since it was a “we gonna move to CH”/”we’ll stay in SLC”. But it was finally decided beginning of the year and in a few days it will be time to leave.

This coming Monday, the moving company will be here to pack up the lab and our private move will follow soon after. Most of our contracts are canceled (today is the last day with internet access at home), the cats are ready to leave and in 7 days the four of us will be up in the air on our way to Germany.

Since shipping the lab will take about 4-6 weeks we’ll first go to Germany to stay with my parents for a little while. That gives us enough time to relax, to organize everything and to drive to Switzerland every once a while to find a nice apartment in Fribourg.

A little bit about Fribourg: Marc, Janni, Rainer and I went there for one day in December to check out the lab and the city itself. From what we could see it looked quite nice. With a population of 34000, Fribourg is much smaller than SLC but everything is much closer, much more crowded and much more European. I really liked the old city center and also the lab space looked great. The lab is located in an old train manufacturing building with very high sealing and big glas doors facing the botanical garden. The official languages in the entire Canton Fribourg are French and German - and I’m really excited about the French. Finally a great opportunity to dig up what I learnt in school ages ago.

So that’s it for now. We are pretty busy finishing up work and selling our furniture. Tomorrow night will be our big fare well party at Makiko’s house with many people from the U and everybody invited their friends. And tomorrow morning we will pick up our rental car, which we will have all next week. It’s time to do some shopping and we want to go on some hikes. There are only 7 days left and we better enjoy them.

We will really miss SLC a lot but it’s also nice to open a new door and be closer to our family and friends…..*think pink*

The conference was only two days, but very interesting - as far as I can tell. Most of the talks were given in Japanese (not quiet my first language) but at least the slides were in English. However understanding people’s work by only looking at their slides is kind of hard. Before going to Japan, I didn’t really believe that Japanese students/scientists would not be able to speak English. Now I do. I was shocked by the fact that most Japanese do not speak English, especially the younger generation. According to our host, our generation has no urge to go abroad and learn another language. They are plenty of jobs available anywhere in Japan, which makes them want to stay instead of discovering the world. Luckily, the organizers invited some international speakers from the US, UK and Switzerland and those talks alone were worth coming to Japan. They were telling some pretty amazing stories.

From Nagoya we went to Kyoto, the place I was looking forward to the most. And it is really amazing. Most Japanese neighborhoods don’t really fall into the category I would describe as beautiful. Houses are not built for live, they are supposed to stand there for a couple of decades max, and recurring earthquakes don’t make it worth putting lots of money into architecture. At least that’s how the Japanese explained those cityscapes to us. (This might also be different in other parts of Japan, Nagoya and the cities we went to are more industrial regions). But what is really beautiful are all the historic temples and castles. And that’s what we got to see in Kyoto. Actually, Kyoto has more temples and shrines than one can possibly visit and we only saw a handful. When we went there it was out of season for Western tourists and it was basically only Japanese people and the two of us. So we had plenty of opportunities to watch the Japanese do their rituals and it was a completely different world we experienced there.

A short train ride from Kyoto is one of the first UNESCO World Heritage sites in Japan: Himeji Castle, the “White Heron Castle”. It’s pretty plain from the inside but really beautiful from the outside. Himeji Castle dates back to 1333 but its architecture is mostly from the 17th century - so it was a nice piece of traditional Japan we got to see there. On the very top they have a little shrine and I was amazed to see all the people climbing those narrow wooden stairs to get up there - even the oldest grandma. And believe me, it was really hard, especially wearing those Japanese slippers (you were not allowed to enter with regular shoes). But that’s a different story - shoe culture in Japan…very fascinating but very hard to practice (a different pair of shoes for the lab, for the office, for the bathroom, for some historic sites, no shoes in the dining room, in rooms with tatami mats, in some temples,…seriously, it was very hard not to make a mistake).

Finally, we spent the last three days in Tokyo. An impressive city but to be honest…we were kind of lost ;). Of course not literally, but Tokyo is not like Paris, London, Berlin and other big cities where everybody can name tons of tourist attractions. And since we were not really prepared we probably missed lots of cool stuff. But we went to the famous fish market (even though the tuna section was not open to the public) and tried to have some sushi there. Well TRIED is the word. We were there at 9am ready to wait in line for some sushi breakfast but the hostess told us right away that we would have to wait more than 5 hours (and the place actually closes at 2pm). So no sushi for us. But we found another awesome place in a different neighborhood later on. And to be honest….sushi for lunch was more my style anyway.

Other than that we went to Hama Rikyu Gardens (a nice park with fields of blooming canola in the middle of the city), the international forum (nice, modern architecture), Asakusa and the Sensō-ji Buddhist temple, Ryogoku (the former (?) center of the sumo world with the sumo stadium and many sumo stables), we took a water taxi and our highlight was definitely taking the elevator to the top of one of the skyscrapers (and in Tokyo you don’t have to pay for that) to look at Tokyo from above.

13 days in Japan - quite an experience and we are ready to come back for the next International Flagella Meeting in 2012!

]]> http://www.not-a-blog.de/?feed=rss2&p=465 http://www.not-a-blog.de/?p=426 http://www.not-a-blog.de/?p=426#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:38:05 +0000 Hanna http://www.not-a-blog.de/?p=426

Finished books:

• Breaking Dawn (engl.), Stephanie Meyer
• Schmitz’ Katze: Hunde haben Herrchen, Katzen haben Personal, R. Schmitz
• Die 13 1/2 Leben des Käpt’n Blaubär, Walter Moers
• Balzac und die kleine chinesische Schneiderin, Dai Sijie
• Flammenbrut, Simon Beckett
• Verblendung, Stieg Larsson
• Odd Stockings (engl.), Elfie Donnelly
• Hiobs Büder, Rebecca Gablé
• Harold and Maude, Colin Higgins
• Under the Dome (engl.), Stephen King
• Ein König für Deutschland, Andreas Eschbach

Here’s a final Hawaii post. Unfortunately, our trip ended after 7 full days on Maui. You read plenty about the first five days, so to close this chapter I have a little something about day 6 and 7 for you. Even though we didn’t do very much at all. Well, we went Geocaching and even found a few. One of it was my personal nightmare. I actually found the cache hidden under rocks but when I was just about to grab it I realized that it was hidden inside a plastic bird spider. Uarghh.. As you probably know I’m terrified of spiders and for a chicken like me it doesn’t even matter whether they are alive or not. But what are guys for if not to get logbooks out of plastic spiders!? The cache was actually dedicated to one of the local spiders that live in the sugar cane fields….luckily I didn’t meet those!

My grandma would have loved the little trip we did on day 6. Maui is famous for it’s locally grown fruit and we went to one of the plantations to look how those fruit and crops are grown. And they had a lot…. mangoes, pineapples, coconuts, papayas, star fruit, ginger, avocados, coffee, apples, bananas, guavas, and macadamia nuts.

Parts of Maui could have been the set of the TV show “Lost” (which was actually filmed on Oahu) and we went to one of those places called Iao Valley. Even though we didn’t go on any long hikes it was pretty amazing: steep mountains, awesome rock formations, everything covered by rain forest. Being there makes you understand Maui’s second name, “The Valley Isle”.

Then - of course - there was the last mandatory trip to the beach. My dad will probably picture me standing on a surfboard twenty minutes before the airport shuttle leaves. But no, this time we actually went there in time and since there were no surfboards around we also made it back in time for our flight Monday night.

So that was it (or at least part of it). Seven awesome days and definitely more than just another pin in our world map.

We were introduced to Ote’a (drum dance of Tahiti), Kahiko (ancient hula), ‘Auana (modern hula) and a lot more. And it was really amazing how fast those dancers could move. The food was great as well. They showed us how the meat was prepared in the beachside “imu”, the Hawaiian underground oven where it was steamed for 12 hours. And during the feast, we could taste all the different kinds of food, like Kalua Pua’a (pork roasted in the imu), Ahi Poke (fresh yellow fin tuna), sweet potatoes, Pulehu steak, Island style chicken,….

Assuredly hula is the most breathtakingly beautiful and popular of Hawai’i’s performing arts. And yes, every hula does indeed tell a story. Listen to the oil (chant) and mele (song), to the implements and instruments, and take in every move the dancers make with their feet, their hands, their hips, their eyes…

Day 4 was again reserved for another exciting trip. It was time to drive the road to Hana, famous for its waterfalls, its winding and narrow roads, stunning views, tropical rainforest, awesome beaches (one of it is famous Black Sand Beach) and more beauty one could possibly absorb in one day.

So we grabbed a lunch box on the way for our picnic at the end of Nahiku Read, had some fresh papaya-ginger smoothie at the Huelo Lookout, enjoyed some traditional Maui candy (chewing on a sugar cane stick), were adopted by a little puppy that jumped into our car as soon as I opened the door and just had an awesome time.