Hi all!

Sorry for the looong silence but it took a long time to get a new router (more than 2 months) and by then I was either learning for my PhD-defence or visiting Poland (more below).

Anyway, a lot has happened so let’s start.

First of all I want to announce that I survived 5 years of PhD-work and my PhD-defence with magna cum laude. Not bad. So I am a Doctor now, hoooray!!
A big thanks to all my friends and family who supported me through all these years! I am sorry that I could not give you the attention you all deserved and the mess I made in the office at times. My colleagues build me a nice doctor cart (a German tradition) and I had a BIG celebration with my friends afterwards. You can find the pictures here. They are mostly unsharp as I had forgotten to tell the Polish photographer to use the flash

As you all know I like to travel so even during my preparations for my defence I travelled to the alps with my friends Mark and Jeroen to do some ‘’light” mountaineering. The weather was great, the mountains were steep and we did some great hiking near Kruen in the south of Bavaria. We visited the Wettersteingebirge and Karwendelgebirge and because of the loose rocks climbing was at times very tricky. But the views were as always unbelievable. The hardest trip was to the Meiler-Huette as we chose the difficult ascend and it was true. We had to climb almost 800 meters without a track, so it was real rockclimbing. The rocks were slippery and unstable so it was quite tricky at some places and the drop was looong. But we made it to the pass and were rewarded with a beautiful panorama. After we crossed the remains of an old glacier we could enjoy some good Bavarian food and beer in the Meiler Huette at (2374m). You can find the pictures here. More will follow soon…

Afterwards I had a short brake before traveling east, all the way to Tychy in Poland. Magda (my biggest blog fan and more) invited me for the wedding of her brother and I never say no to an invition, especially not to a polish wedding. The marriage was in the Catholic church (a big thanks to Magda for telling me when to stand and sit) and afterwards there was a great party with LOT’s of wodka, delicious food (kloesti, sausages etc, hmmm), wodka, dancing, wodka, funny games and mooore wodka. I had a great time with Magda and her family and I was second in the “carry a lady” contest. It was not that difficult as I had carried a heavy backpack in the mountains a few weeks before. Lady or backpack, what’s the difference

Then Magda and I went to Zakopane in the Tatra mountains in the far south of Poland and had a beautiful but cold time down there. I wanted to do some mountaineering but things turned out different as most passes etc were already closed because of snow. Nevertheless we managed to do some nice hikes and although the pictures are not the best (I need a new camera) they still show the beauty of the Tatra Mountains and the typical buildings from that area. More pictures can be found here. I will go back there for sure If they only had heating in the hotel…

Next week I will visit Magda again and hang around in Tychy so who knows I will make some more pictures. In the mean time enjoy the pictures and the panorama’s I created using Clevr.

So stay tuned!
Marc