End of last year I was living and employed in Juelich and now I sit in sunny South Africa with my German ex-colleagues. This seems strange to me as for the last 3 months I have been living and working in South Africa, yet I am again working with my old colleagues from Forschungszentrum Juelich.

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On 29 January 1833, Charles Darwin sailed on the HMS Beagle through the strait now known as the Beagle channel. Sailing on this ship, Darwin came to his first ideas on evolution – for which he became famous. Nowadays this very channel forms the border between Argentina and Chile. We decided on our day off to retrace his ‘steps’ by taking a sailing trip in the Beagle Channel.

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You will agree with me there is nothing more infuriating than working on a computer and suddenly the blue screen appears, leading to a restart… The infamous “Blue screen of Death”… Most people (including me) are extremely outraged by this and their rage frequently results in a ferocious shout, a slap on the desk or even a kick aimed at the computer box. Now imagine this, except this computer, is the ‘brain’ of your instrument that is worth about 1 000 000 Euros AND has data of 3 flights which you hope to use in your PhD… Need I say more!

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After a brief 2 week ‘vacation’ at home we are on our way back to Rio Grande. You might wonder why do I call it ‘vacation’? Especially since the last two weeks were spent working at Forschungszentrum again…? It seems that I have been spending so much time in Argentina and so little time in Germany, that Argentina almost feels more home nowadays…

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Our time here in Argentina is drawing to a “pause”… The end of the first campaign is within sight and most of our teams are on their way home. We, however, still have 2 weeks left in Argentina, what is work without a little bit of play?? But I leave our holiday plans for the next post, first I will say a bit about the last couple of days…

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Another nightshift… It’s 3 AM and I have to stand outside in the cold to have a mere feeling of being awake. Coffee is not doing its job anymore, I ran out of Mate Tea (for those of you who don’t know, Mate is a local tea from Argentina with half as much caffeine as coffee but with supposedly double the buzz…) and I still have 3 hours of my shift left…

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