Frag mich nicht, ich bin nur ein Mädchen

Strange thing about March: I had been expecting things to get a lot quieter here, and that they did. But even so, the month has gone like snow off a dyke—not much time left at all! And April looks set to be quite busy, happily so. I'm going to see Flora next week, I can't wait!! An epic traversing of the Alps. Not having seen friends and relatives, apart from Mum, in the flesh for a while, it's been odd, almost like the pictures of people in your mind's eye are a little smudged... This might just be peculiar to me. It happens even when I haven't seen our dog Danny in a few weeks; he becomes a smudgy, waggy, black and tan mass of hair and enthusiasm, how awful. This might speak of inattentiveness to my environment more than anything else. Anyway, proper excited! And then Mum is planning to return with my sister the weekend following, and there's talk of visiting Prague and/or Berlin with the girls here. And, apparently, because I and the Italian biologist Cristiana are both leaving the group at the end of April, and my birthday falls somewhat fatefully then, we have to organise a big party. We'll have a firework show and a brass band, no question. We'll hire the whole Mensa, and Cristiana can cover several tables with antipasti, pasta, gelati, panettone, prosecco, and I'll make... Mince and tatties. I never take long to describe typical Scottish cuisine... Although explaining haggis is a bit of a stumbling block. For expediency, I've taken to describing it as a really fat sausage, filled with oatmeal, fat and a range of organs. But still, I love it just the same. So, you wait for buses, and... an Airbus potentially arrives. But all of it sounds great! I can recuperate when I get home.

Good news on the project front: I managed to isolate a single compound apparently completely purely, its NMR spectra are delightful! Yep, it looked like it would be a piece of Schokoladenkuchen to solve. I'll tell you, I'll probably go looking for a good portion of that when/if we solve it... It´s harder than it looked! We seem to be coming really close when comparing our ideas to predicted ones, but not quite getting there. It´s really like doing a jigsaw—it's addictive, you don't want to leave it until you've tried everything you can think of at the time. Hopefully we're not that far away! And maybe it´s even novel... Isn't it exciting, to think that nothing is actually 'novel', that everything in Creation is known and accounted for but that things are always being revealed to us, and we learn more about the Creator by them?

I'm definitely an amateur in this Lent business (c.f. Nutella above). Some folk give up almost everything 'fun'; giving up sweet things is common. Today after lunch, we went to get some coffee—I went for a hot chocolate, thinking, 'yus, win, nae (or nae much) caffeine!' But, when chocolate is often something people give up, it didn´t seem like I was foresaking much. Guido, fellow coffee-up-giver, had a chai latte without coffee. That sounds a bit better. But I'm a first-timer, mind. I've surprised myself, but I don't think I really miss coffee now, and I seem to be quite alert, even more so, without it. Or, maybe, my standards have been raised so much that the instant coffee in my room isn't so appealing anymore. British readers, we're really quite crude in our drinking habits compared to Continentals! Here, instant coffee is considered the lowest of the low; tea is a delicate business, commonly involving fruits and herbs. Tetley, milk and sugar? Na ah. But I have found decaf black tea which I obviously splodge with milk. But drink out of a glass mug. Not entirely the philistine.

Looking forward to people returning in April: my neighbour Uli will be back from having been in Ireland, interested to hear how she found it! And the other Julia will also be back from 'holiday' (science students don't seem to really get time off here, either having exams to prepare for or practical placements—we really have a fine time of it, having all those months off in summer in Scotland!). Found out this week that I'm going to have to move out of my room here on my birthday, will be memorable in a way! Also, I wonder if I'll have the right to a holiday, even though on foreign soil, when Will and Kate get married the next day. Surely. I'll have Lizzie on the phone to them here, if not.

There are many words and catchphrases from the lab which stick in my mind. When Bayern München lost to Inter Milan last week, Susanne (decidedly not a Bayern fan) periodically sang "zieht den Bayern die Lederhosen aus" (pull off Bayern´s Lederhosen) to the tune of Yellow Submarine. Daniel in the lab next door is a bit of a character. He quotes from the German version of the Simpsons, where Homer says, "Ich bin so klug! K-L-U-K!" (a bit like, "I'm so clever! C-L-E-F-E-R!"). And when someone asks his opinion, he says in falsetto, "Frag mich nicht, ich bin nur ein Mädchen" ("Don't ask me, I'm just a little girl"). I might start using it myself.