Back to School

I had a wonderful week in Vienna with Liz. We visited the Belvedere and Leopold museum, enjoying Austrian Expressionist painters such as Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and Moser. The Secession was a wonderfully unusual building and houses Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze. We wandered around Spittelberg and found many cafes tucked away in cosy alleys. My favourite was probably the Cafe Central, frequented by the likes of Marx, Freud, Trotsky, and other intellectual minds.

We cycled around the Ringstrasse and saw Otto Wagner's pavilions.

Liz flew out of Budapest, so I took the train with her and we spent the afternoon at the thermal baths before having an exquisite dinner by the Danube.

Now I'm at the Max Planck Institute in Seewiesen, about an hour outside of Munich. It's their Ornithology campus, and my room is called "Purple-crowned Fairy-wren" - one of my favourite birds. It feels like September back to school, in the best way possible. I met Paul this morning, and he ran me through his experiences in the DRC. I have a week to learn all the methods, then I'm off!