Cambridge, UK, April 2017

It’s a reasonably sunny day. The museum town of Cambridge, which exhales the thirst for education and the quest for knowledge from every pore, is bustling with life. Well-dressed-and-groomed students mix with tourists of varied origins and families on a Sunday outing. Everyone has time, part of what makes for such a stark contrast with London 2 days earlier. 

I sit in front of a small café right opposite King’s College Chapel, enjoy the rays of sun and a cappuccino and wonder whether the elder gentleman at the next table might not be an incredibly famous professor, perhaps the man behind a major scientific break-through. I wouldn’t be surprised, after having learned that the pub where we went for a pint last night is the very same location where Watson and Crick celebrated the discovery of the DNA molecule, and that Stephen Hawking is still teaching right down the street at the Department of Theoretical Physics. 

It’s an impressive town, beautiful and slightly amusing, seemingly very much at ease living inside its own bubble while having the eyes of the scientific world on it at the same time. 

St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada; August 2016

Newfoundland is a rough place. I visit in August, the height of summer. Granted, there is 1 sunny day, when temperatures soar to 25° C. For the rest of the week though, it is rainy, chilly and unpleasant. Hard to imagine winter here.
By the way. It is not "NewFOUNDland", but "NEWfunlan". People from here are "Newfies", and the native alcohol is called Screech. If you want to become a true local, you should get yourself "screeched in": say a poem in incomprehensible Newfie dialect ("Say something from here"); eat a piece of SPAM ("Eat something from here"); have a shot of Screech ("Drink something from here"), and, the best part, kiss a frozen cod ("Kiss something from here"). Did I do it? This will stay my secret for eternity...

Some more impressions:

Jetlag-induced early rise: Sunrise over Memorial University, St. John's

 

Newfoundland, home of the puffin, the cutest thing since birds came sliced

I settled in quite quickly, and soon ran a local business.

Downtown St. John's

Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky...

Man and the sea, an old story

Humpback whale right next to the boat

 

...and gone

Puffins, this time for real

See you later!

This unassuming piece of land is Cape Spear, North America's most easternmost point.

Whales, seabirds and fishermen all feeding on the same, finger-long little fish, which congregates here in summer by the millions to spawn

Oh, the colors!

 

Some more little boxes

Why hello there! Blast from the past.

Last sunlight on the campus and Signal Hill, where the first transatlantic radio signal was received. So long...

 

Zanzibar, June 2016

Last night in  Zanzibar. Last night of our large conference. It's gotten late, and only a scattered group of my colleagues and some of the event's participants are left at the dinner tables near the pool side, overlooking the sea. The band is playing something more upbeat, we all start dancing. One of the quite senior, very well respected participants takes the microphone and sings a capella. We have all had a few drinks already. After this, the band starts to pack up. We are disappointed, and with all our charms, convince them to continue. Now they really turn on the heat, we shake everything we got, our group is as diverse as our dance styles, originating from Kenya, Morocco, Cameroon, Madagascar, Germany and so on. After 3 songs, we request yet another encore, and they play "Hakuna Matata", which we have all learned is the "inofficial national anthem". We dance in a circle , pairs of 2 people move to the center and have hip shaking competitions. When the music is finished for good, some of us just look at each other, remove our watches, and with a running start, jump into the pool. One after the other, people join us in the water, each displaying their personal jumping style, under lots of splashing, laughing and cheering. The music continues in the pool as we start singing. As we get cold, we come out of the pool, and give big, hearty hugs to the only one of us who hadn't jumped, making sure he gets properly wet after all.