Fishfail

Two weeks in a row now, someone has been sabotaging my fish. Not happy.

So now I have to do my overnight incubation during the day. Which means... Shopping! Yay! Silver lining I guess. Just not so much for my bank balance.

So nothing happens on a Sunday. Apparently you're not even allowed to mow your own lawn in case it disturbs the neighbours! BUT, it's a Tuesday morning and I can't believe how dead it is. I started work at 7am. Apparently shops (or coffee shops) don't open till 10am! What is going on? Does anybody do anything around here except for kill my fish?!

KölNO

Very almost went to Cologne this weekend, but transportation difficulties and general exhaustion meant that home was the better choice.

Well, that's what I thought on Friday.

This weekend's been a bit jumbly. I don't really know what I'm doing any more. My to-do list is growing rapidly, but I haven't even thought about working on it yet. Odd.

I went to the local market on Saturday! I thought it never existed, as every other time I've gone past there, there's never been anything there. Apparently it only appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays for select hours.

Oh did I mention, I managed to lose my bike lock last week. Bike LOCK. I didn't think that was humanly possible, but apparently it is! Luckily I had a friend who could come with me to buy a new one, and afterwards, we ate at the most amazing Chinese restaurant, ever, and of course had a nice beer at Bellini's. Bellini's manager is awesome. Such a flirt, he gives us free drinks.

I guess it's nice to integrate with the local community!

Also, my supervisor bought me some bread!!! It was just the sweetest thing ever! It was a few weeks ago, I'd just asked about grocery shopping in general, and explained to them my woes. And then last week, she turned up and presented me with a loaf of her favourite bread from her local bakery! So nice!

That's all for this weekend. Weather is much cooler, perhaps too cool. I'm really cold now! Heat stroke last week, shivers this week. I miss predictable England!

I killed the awkwardness monster

So win.

We first went to Bellini's and had an awkward dinner where again, everybody was talking to German. I somehow understood the sentence when my supervisor said that she'd left me with the morpholino injections because they're bloody difficult to do.

Afterwards, my lunch group (so supervisor, technician and PhD student) then went to the Neckarwiese and we actually had fun...!

Volleyball and badminton, it was mental! Probably the first time I've understood them whilst having fun, in a mixture of German and English.

Lab ist nicht so gut. The crazy temperatures and making the oocytes go crazy, and the fish aren't in the mood for making babies either.

I'm also sleeping 13 hours a day and still feeling tired. I guess I just can't deal with heat at all.

OH, big news - I've adopted a new mum. It's amazing. She cooks me Chinese food, and is the loveliest ever. YAY!

Colleagues

It's just difficult. Especially with the language barrier. Everone can speak English, everyone still chooses to speak German.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I raised the point to one of my colleagues about whether or not all groups are like ours, as in lab is lab, personal is personal, and no one says anything unless it is totally lab related.

She said no, it's just ours.

Afterwards, we decided we should try and start some "social activities" for the group. Today is the first. The very first, ever, for this lab. I just can't believe it's taken a PhD student and a weird British girl to finally motivate people to actually hang out. Now my issue is, it'll all be in German, as always. Anyway, if it's good for them, it's good for me.

We'll see how this goes...

Every cloud...

...seems to be followed by another cloud.

The most useless week at the lab was followed by the most unluckiest weekend ever imaginable. I mean, it started with a tree obstructing the tracks, obstructing Matt and Liz getting to Stansted. I didn't think it could get much worse than that... I guess you learn something new every day.

We did the usual Heidelberg tour and Philosopher's walk on Saturday. Only, I decided to get heatstroke.

On Sunday we went swimming in a lake... Much needed in 40 degree heat.

Long days again at the lab this week. Melting still. And the temperature is really messing up the results.

I need to find my silver lining.

Christopher Street Day

Christopher Street Day on Saturday! I headed to Mannheim to do some shopping (fail) and check out the parade (win).

Plenty of free condoms and stickers - the perfect souvenir.

On Sunday, I toured around Heidelberg again with some sort of Oxbridge meet-up, although we only met at the Dresden conference. Small world, eh?

Forgot to buy food though, so got home and realised I was dinner-less. Finished lab at 10pm on Monday, so again was dinner-less. Finished lab at 8pm on Tuesday, so dinner was pizza. Not cool.

Today, I went to the supermarket and paid 99 cents in 1, 2 and 10 cent coins (with only about 5x 10 cent coins.) There was a massive queue behind me. I got so much hate.

Karma soon came around when the next cashier gave me 98 cents in change.

So I have new Haribo stock. These two new packs are shaped as rats and frogs... Just need some zebrafish to complete a science experiment!

I'll let you know how the results go next time.

Phone-no-more

After being caught in a storm, my phone got totally soaked, and then I dropped it on a lot of concrete. Not cool. When it finally woke up, it was 1980, the SD card was dead, I couldn't receive calls or texts, and the screen looked like this:

I then got a piece of broken glass in my thumb and it hurt.

So not cool.

The 72hpf embryos weren't as bad as I expected actually! However, they did take a good few minutes to die properly though. What was more off-putting was the fact that they actually smelled fishy.

I bought some new shoes today! Yay! But, not having a bank account here meant that I had to take two shopping trips as no way did I have enough monies for food or drink. I also have a tonne of 1 and 2 cent coins which I have no idea what to do with - I don't think any machines accept them... I guess I can just make lots of wishes. Oh no, they don't do that in the fountains here, they go paddling instead.

Never mind. I'm clearly just rubbish at being continental!

Matt and Liz are coming to visit next week. SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Zebrafish Cruelty

So I just did the most horriblest thing to my little baby zebrafish, ever.

We're working with embryos that are 24, 48 and 72 hours post-fertilisation. On Monday, I paired a male and female fish but of course kept them separated by a clear screen to build up the sexual tension. On Tuesday, I removed the screen and they made lots of babies which I collected and incubated. Yesterday, I took some of them, used pronase to digest the chorion, fixed them in PFA and then put them at -20C in MeOH.

That was all fine.

It was today that was horrible. This morning, it was time for the 48hpf. As only some of them still had a chorion, I had to use tweezers to physically tear it apart as using pronase on all of them would kill the ones without a chorion. As soon as you release them from the chorion, they spaz and swim like crazy. Even when I took them out of the incubator, some of them were already trying to swim for freedom! Anyway, I then used a pipette to choose 30 of the best looking ones. That wasn't easy at all. They instinctively try to swim away from the pipette, as if they already knew what was coming...

So I had 30 reasonably calm fish in my eppendorf tube. I then added the paraformaldehyde, and seriously, they wriggled like crazy. It was like a fishy death camp. After about 10s, the wriggling ceased and they were again just flaccid fish embryos that I'd been working with for the last few weeks.

I think it was the wriggling that got to me. Even yesterday's 24hpf embryos were fine - they weren't quite developed enough to wriggle for freedom. I guess they were totally innocent and helpless. Tomorrow's 72hpfs should be interesting. They must hate me so much!

Lablablabla

After spending the weekend at the lab, I now have no clue what day of the week it is. It's felt like Friday for about 5 days now! I seem to have replaced library with lab though. This week, I'd be lucky to finish at 7pm, which compared to my 2pm finishes last few weeks is a little bit ridic. Anyway, I've made my RNA now and the results are looking good! Hooray! Unfortunately though, with my in situ hybridisation, the sense probe negative control is still giving very positive staining, if not better stained even than the antisense probe. Two absent supervisors isn't really helping this situation.

So anyway, even though lab hours are building up, I still managed to go to the Zoo in Heidelberg on Saturday and then Mannheim in the evening. Sunday was then an evening out in Heidelberg and of course our weekly barbeque on Monday nights. Pretty reasonable weather for about an hour or so, and then the most dedicated storm blew our way and decided to drench us all for about another hour. As I didn't have time to bring any food for the barbeque, I ended up spending the rest of the evening in an Italian restaurant and had the most international medic chat you could imagine. Perfect!

Travels

Berlin

Hamburg

Dresden

Photos Galore!

Schwetzingen

Heidelberg

Strasbourg

Mannheim

Worms

...More to come!

Berlin & Hamburg

So much traveling! I like to think I am quite the expert at German train stations now.

Berlin was genuinely really cool (and hipster-ish). I was visiting two of my Fulbright friends and it was so lovely to catch up with them! I think I managed to see most of the tourist-y things even though it was such a short visit. This city literally never sleeps. We were walking around up until 5am and it was as if it was just mid-afternoon. Perhaps not the safest of cities though.

Whilst I was in Berlin, I found out that another friend was in Hamburg, and that Hamburg was super far from Heidelberg but relatively close to Berlin! So then I took a totally impromptu trip to visit her in Hamburg. Lovely to hear a proper British accent at last! (No offence, yanks...) Hamburg was also a lovely city, but totally opposite feel to Berlin. Very prim and proper

So I had to take a night train home as it was a 6-7-hour journey. However, it was 3 night trains as opposed to one, and included a 1.5 hour stop in Cologne. If it wasn't 3am, I would've so ventured out and done some wandering! Anyway, arrived at Heidelberg at 7am, got home, showered, unpacked, and got to work at 8.30am. Left the lab at 7.30pm for a mad rush to Mannheim but unfortunately, was too late to see Batman! Had a nice wander around Mannheim anyway, and then returned to Heidelberg for a house party, ending up in a club. After being up and about for over 40 hours, I don't think my judgement was too good by that point.

The rest of this week has been super long at the lab. Got to go swimming on Wednesday though. Rookie error - nicest weather we've had all week and so should've known that the pool would be absolutely packed.

4 days after returning from the epic weekend of traveling, I finally feel slightly better rested and settled back to Heidelberg life. I cannot wait to start traveling again though!

Photos are on facebook now. I try put some on here in a slightly presentable way soon.