Friday, July 06, 2007


Ok, there hasn’t been a proper post for a long while. I could use a variety of different excuses, e.g. work, german learning, TV, playstation, beer, etc. I have to be honest, though, laziness should probably be at the top of the list. It seems to be monsoon season in Germany, so it isn’t like I’ve been working on my tan. Let’s just call that break a summer blogging holiday, and get on with this post. Ok?

What the heck has gone on the last couple weeks? The biggest milestone for me is that I handed in my PhD thesis. Yippee! Unfortunately, though, that yippee still has an asterisk next to it. The thesis needs to be reviewed, revised, and then defended before I’m Dr. Benesh (or Dr. Dan as Ines’ friends favor). Also, I’ve been going through the usual cycle of manuscript submission and subsequent rejection, so I can’t claim that my professional life is without disappointment and failure. Ines has also made some big career moves lately. She got a job working for the TV show “unter uns” (not the soap, but the talk show) finding guests and more or less keeping the whole thing organized. Right now, it is part-time, but in the fall it’ll be a full-time gig…pretty cool.

Other stuff…last weekend Ines and I had holiday. It was not a proper holiday, i.e. 2-3 weeks away from work, like a typical summer vacation in Germany. Nope, we just took a 4-day weekend, but it was nonetheless cool. We visited the Rhine Valley, saw the Loreley, tasted some fine German wines, and went inside the world’s largest wine barrel (Dürkheimer Riesenfass, toll). Perhaps the most memorable part of the trip, though, is one of the places we stayed, a village called Frankenstein. How awesome is that? As you can see from the picture, this simple fact kept us amused (ok, more me than Ines). After visiting the wine region, we drove to Kassel to check out the Documenta in Kassel, the biggest art exhibition in the world. One of the more famous “pieces” at the exhibition was from an Asian artist that planted rice fields on a hill in front of an old palace. When we saw it, the ground was completely dry and the rice plants were dying. At least these misplaced rice fields were somehow more artistic than the paintings of black lines on a white background. Yeah, I don’t understand art at all.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

great picture dr. dan!

NEno said...

Good luck with ur PhD thesis, Dan! I really hope that in few months we will read a posting titled "From now on you may adress me as Dr. Benesh / Dan"
;o)))

NEno, Bulgaria