Bisamberg 2: Bisamberg Harder.

Having waxed lyrical about the Bisamberg in a previous post regular readers of this blog (and are there any other kind?) will be familiar with this easy to reach but nonetheless very out-of-the-way-feeling hill just outside Vienna. Never being one to turn down an opportunity to go for a walk or to show off Austria, I went back to the Bisamberg relatively soon after my first visit to lead my friend Ash and some visiting acquaintances of his on the winding route through the woods and vineyards.

The weather was a great deal clearer than my earlier visit, which made for some good views of the distant edge of the alps and the shiny towers of Vienna's transdanubian districts. However, even more notable was the abundance of wildlife, especially wildflowers. Having discovered that the Bisamberg is in a slightly different biological realm to the Wienerwald it wasn't a surprise to see a bunch of interesting plants that I definitely don't recall seeing before.

Other wildlife encountered on the walk included MASSIVE queen ants, after seeing one we assumed we had been extremely lucky until we came across many more in quick sucession and realised we had merely chosen to go for a walk on some kind of swarming day. Frankly the shape of the queen ants was just that tiny bit disturbing, the really thin body and distended abdomen just screams 'not normal' even though of course the things still come from earth like everything else. Probably.

 Not the largest of these freaky creatures we saw...

Final 'wildlife' spot of the day were a field of ostriches. Not known for being natives of the area, one can only assume they came for the pleasing combination of the words 'Austria' and 'ostrich'. Interestingly, ostriches are called 'Strauss' in German, and I do wonder whether fans of the late great Waltz composer Johann (he of the ludicrously golden statue in the Vienna Stadtpark) ever associated him with these decidedly ungraceful looking birds.

 Strauss & Strauss. Can you tell the difference?? (thanks wikipedia for the photos)

At the end of the walk I finally managed to make it to a particular wine establishment I had had my eye on for a while, and we were rewarded by a man talking in thick and unintelligible dialect who sold us wine from the vineyards around his house for the princely sum of €1.10 a glass...

A few pictures, mostly of flowers and vineyards, can be found as usual hiding behind this green text.

Till next time

Der Tom

Eeee-jeeee-ewe

Due to my relentless obsession with publishing things about my life in chronological order and an enjoyable but pretty exhausting visit to the UK last week (7 towns/ cities in 12 days...) we are still mired somewhere back in the middle of April in blog time. At least we have reached the sunny part!

EGU is the european geosciences union, where 10,000 (yes, actually not a hyperbole) geoscientists roll up in Vienna each year to exchange knowledge and knock back free wine/beer. The whole thing includes disciplines as widely separated as atmospheric scientists, plasma physicists, sedimentologists seismologists and anything else in between, and all in all, it was pretty good fun.

This year was the first time I gave a talk. I was apprehensive beforehand, not really about the talking in front of people, more about the fact that I was worried there weren't going to *be* any people, as my session took place on a Friday afternoon. Thankfully, and a testament to the interesting things said in the first installment of our session earlier in the week, a big bunch of people turned up and my talk went over rather well

Outside my own talk, I enjoyed this year's conference a lot more than last year's. Somehow an extra year in the PhD business has allowed me to relax a little bit. I no longer have the idea that I am somehow failing if every microsecond of my day is not filled with interesting, high quality and relevant discussions about my project.

Exploring poster sessions outside my own discipline was great fun, and great scientific discussion practice. Perhaps the high point of my conference was attending a poster session on deformation of ice where I was able to help someone bridge the gap between the literature on the phenomena from their research area (materials science) and the work done on similar things in geology. It was a brilliant moment when the person replied to my email a few weeks later to say that what I had said had encouraged them to try some new and useful stuff!

Ah yes, and I mentioned the sun... During and immediately after the conference I got some pretty great (if I do say so myself) photos of the long awaited sun setting over Vienna.  I hope you enjoy them half as much as I enjoyed taking them!

Der Tom