Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Quiche

I've been pretty busy catching up with work and such since I got back from South Africa, but everyone needs to eat, and if you are going to eat, you may as well eat well! This is a favorite dish of mine, which I only started making about 2 years ago - I wanted to make a quiche, but the only vegetable I had around the apartment were onions (I always have onions and garlic floating around - they are bare necessities in my kitchen), and I happened to have some goat cheese in the fridge. So, I looked up a recipe for onion/goat cheese quiches and found a LOT of them - so this is my blend of several recipes scattered across the internet.  As a bonus, this is a good vegetarian meal! 


Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Quiche
1 standard pie crust
2 red onions
1 tbs balsamic vinegar
4-8 oz goat cheese (depending how cheesy you want it, or how big the packet of goat cheese you bought happens to be... I'd tend towards more than less, but it's really up to you. I usually just put in the whole chunk of goat cheese I purchased.)
3 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cream
nutmeg
salt and pepper
cayenne pepper (optional, to taste)

Onions: I put this step first because it takes the longest, but while the onions are cooking, you should deal with pre-baking your pie crust, as well. But to get a nice caramelization going on your onions, you need to cook them slowly, over the course of about an hour. First, french your onions. If you are not familiar with this term, that's OK, I wasn't either when I made this recipe for the first time. What you are going for is long, thin strands of onion. So, chop of the top and bottom of the onion, and peel it. Next, slice the onion in half, down the length of the it (from the top to the bottom), like an orange splits. Then, in the same direction, cut thin slices off of the onion, so you get nice long slices - see the picture to the left! Once your onions are all frenched up, put some olive oil in a pan on medium heat. Add the onions, sprinkle some salt over them, and cook for 10 minutes until they're starting to become soft and translucent. At this point, reduce the heat to LOW, and cook for about 30 minutes more (moving them around occasionally) until they're becoming brown and very soft. Add the balsamic vinegar and mix well, and cook 10 minutes more on low until they're caramelized and delicious! Then remove from heat and set aside.

Honestly, these onions are delicious by themselves, but take a while. So if you think you'll have use for them, you may as well cook some extras up while you are doing this. They're really good, sweet, even,  and consider that they're basically onions and vinegar. Mind, it IS balsamic vinegar, the most delicious vinegar ever! Silly though it may be, I still remember the first time I had it balsamic as a salad topping, at a German restaurant in DC - I was just amazed at how tasty the stuff was, and insisted my parents buy some right away for the next time we had salad at home. But then, I do tend to have a memory for food -  seriously, I can completely forget a face I've met only once, but take me to a restaurant I've been to once before, and I'll tell you exactly what I ate and how I liked it. Ah well.

Pie Crust: Preheat your oven to 400F. Make up your pie dough. Now here, I admit I cheat a bit. I don't actually make my own pie crust very often. I've made it via a mix, and I've made it when baking with friends who have their own recipes, but when I'm just cooking for myself, I generally cheat and buy frozen Pillsbury pie dough - it's pie dough, NOT pre-baked (as those tend to get dry), which you can cut up, or pre-bake yourself, or whatever you want to do with your pie crust. I pretty much always have a box in my freezer for spontaneous pie or quiche. Very useful! Anyways, once you have your pie crust dough, fit it into a standard pie pan. If you don't have a pie pan, I have, in the past, improvised and used a 8-inch circular cake pan, which will work just fine - however, I generally use my grandmothers pie pan, much easier to deal with. At this point, if you happen to have them, you can weight the crust down with pie weights. Alternatives include dried lentils, or beans, or whatever - the point is to prevent the bottom from puffing up and deforming while the crust bakes - I generally skip this step and it works out fine, but it certainly doesn't hurt to do. Pre-bake for 10-15 minutes (or whatever your pie recipe calls for) until its a nice, light brown. It will be going back in the oven later, with quiche in it, so don't over do it or the outer crust will get a little too toasty. (Mmm... toasty.). Let cool.

Onions and Goat cheese on the bottom

Filling and Baking: Preheat the oven to 325F. Blend milk, cream, egg, spices, and up to half the cheese until liquified and homogenous. Take your onions, and spread about half of them on the bottom of your pie crust, and crumble some more of the goat cheese on top of that. (In this particular pie, I was using 4 oz of goat cheese total - 2 oz in the blender, 1 oz on the bottom, and 1 oz sprinkled on top. I generally use a little more, but that's what I had around today.) Then pour your filling into the tart. Top with the rest of the onions and goat cheese (it will sink into the pie as you bake it, but you want it layered a bit). Bake for ~45 minutes until starts browning on the top - it's a good idea to check on it every so often, as you don't want it getting overdone, either.

Filled, not baked, and topped with
the remaining onions and goat cheese

This is friggen' delicious. My department has 'morning coffee' twice a week, with people rotating to bring in snacks to go with coffee, which I like to volunteer for every once in a while. Of the various things I bring in, this is definitely one of the most popular. I also like to bring in homemade bread with my bread machine, since usually one quiche by itself wouldn't be enough for everyone (and it tends to disappear FAST). On this occasion, however, I made it all for myself (and for my roommate, who made up a nice salad to go with it), for dinner and a nice lunch tomorrow.

Travelogue: Stellenbosch

This will be a short entry, covering just my last weekend in South Africa, for completeness. In other news, I've gone back and added a few pictures to the previous travelogues.

After my week and a half in Cape Town (and surrounding area), I decided to spend my last weekend elsewhere: WINE COUNTRY. Stellenbosch is a bit more than an hour outside from Cape Town, and is one of the larger towns in South Africa's wine country. I am, of course, a big fan of wine. So last Saturday, I took a tour run by my hostel, which drove me (and some others) to four separate wineries, each of which gave us tastes of 5 or 6 wines. This would be a grand total of 20, but since I was with a group, we also traded some sips with each other - plus, at one winery, I was being indecisive and the woman who gave out samples was kind enough to give me an extra two (small) tastes. At one location, we also had a cheese tasting (ALWAYS fun). So over the course of the day, I bought one very tasty red (Shiraz, from Fairview winery), one excellent sauvignon blanc (from Boschendal - yes, one of the wineries was in fact the location of the conference dinner, but since I really liked the sauvignon blanc we had that night I was happy I could go back and purchase it.) And of course, I'd previously bought a dessert wine at Delheim (which we stopped at during the after-conference tour). So I brought home a total of one red, one white, and one dessert wine, all three of which are delicious!

Regarding the rest of my time in Stellenbosch, I spent most of Friday just wandering around the town (in and out of shops, a local botanical garden, and finished with a delicious dinner from a culinary arts school's restaurant). On Sunday, I rented a bike and biked 10 km (each way) to Jonkershoek Nature Reserve, a nice little park where I found a picnic table and had a nice little spread (previously purchased for this very purpose). Just some cheese, crackers, figs, juice, and zebra pate. Yes, you read that right, ZEBRA PATE. I found this at an AWESOME little store in Stellenbosch (which allowed no pictures inside, alas) called Oom Samie Se Winkel (Uncle Samie's Store), which had the most amazing things. Like ostrich and peacock feathers, all sorts of spices, wine and odd spirits, random and obscure food items (like zebra pate), old books, and a full miscellany of old fashioned trinkets and oddities. If you ever go to Stellenbosch, go to this shop, seriously. Anyways, the zebra pate was interesting, but didn't have a strong taste (I could kind of imagine it was a little horse-ish, from the one time I tried horse in Europe, but I might have been imagining it, because honestly, it wasn't very high quality pate). So know I can say I've eaten zebra! But I had a nice picnic in general, before biking back. On my bike trip TO the nature reserve, I was cursing my lack of fitness, because it felt like rather a struggle at times. It wasn't until I biked back, however, that I realized that the REASON I was having so much difficulty on the way there was that it had been almost entirely uphill - even the parts that seemed flat were gently sloping up. There were some exceptions, but it was only REALLY downhill close to the park itself, when I was already tired. So on the way back, the uphill parts were the first thing (when I was well rested) and the rest was generally down, and so the trip back was an absolute breeze and felt like it took no time whatsoever! I spent the rest of the afternoon by (and in) the pool at the hostel, enjoying the sun for a bit more before returning to chilly New York the next day.

Not much else, my flights back to the United States were uneventful, taking 24 hours including the 4 hour layover in Munich (NOT enough time to leave and come back again). Just read, slept, watched movies. I was again impressed that Lufthansa gives complementary wine and after-dinner drinks to folks during the in-flight dinner. Watched "Wreck-it-Ralph" (I'd seen it in theaters, and enjoyed it a lot, REALLY fun movie) and Pretty Woman, read and played some games on my iPad mini. Normal in-flight stuff. I'm still not quite on my normal sleep/eating schedule, even 3 days after getting back to NY, but a 7 hour time difference IS a bit to adjust to - and it just means I'm waking up early and going to bed a bit early, which, while unusual for ME, means I'm actually on many people normal Eastern Standard Time schedules, where as usually, I feel I'm somewhere on like Mountain Time. So, back to normal now, and back to work!

Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa

Travelogue: A Week of Cape Town Tourism

More snippets!

SALT/Sutherland tour: The after conference tour was an outing to the site of SALT and other telescopes, in the Sutherlands, a few hours north. Such an AMAZING view of the sky, I don't remember the last time I had a sky that nice - there was no moon out (always a bonus) and although the clouds had been hovering about all day, they disappeared as night fell. Plus, we were at a telescope, near no towns, and with all local lights off, so there was pretty much minimal light pollution. So I was able to identify the LMC, SMC, Milky Way, Southern Cross Orion (Upside down), the Pleiades (again, oriented the wrong way round), a satellite, and a lightning storm way to the North. Plus, honestly just enjoyed laying on my back on the ground staring up for a while. The telescope tour was also pretty cool, got to see the giant mirrors and domes moving about.

Peninsula tour: I purchased an all day bus tour to see the peninsula - it seemed like a good idea, as the only way to get down there is by tour bus or car rental, and I'm NOT ready to rent a car for myself for a day, and drive on the wrong side of the road. This was much simpler. So we went to Hout Bay, and took a boat ride to a small island where seals flock; then we went to a beach where there are African penguins galore (including, I might add, a few babies, and I happened to chance on a mother lying on an egg, which I was happily able to photograph - AWESOMELY ADORABLE!). This was followed by a drive down the coast, and at one point, we got out and were issued bikes and helmets, and so biked a few kilometers to our lunchen spot. After that, we hit the Cape of Good Hope, where we were able to hike out and about the point, a nice little walk. Throughout, the helpful guide gave background about the area, of course. A nice day indeed.

Climbing Table Mountain:  Of course, I had to hike up the picturesque mountain that provides a backdrop to Cape Town - Table Mountain. I got an early start, arriving at the mountain by 9:30 (Hey, I'm no early bird, that's PLENTY early, considering the bus ride there....). I was a bit paranoid about water (it being a particularly hot day) and thus brought 1.5 liters with me - but realized as I climbed I forgot to bring a snack. However, it didn't take me the trip up the mountain to realize I had more water than was strictly necessary to get to the top, and when another girl (hiking with friends) revealed she was running QUITE low on water, I was happy to offer her some of mine. Which we turned into a trade as she gave me a Cliff Bar she didn't need. But she was so grateful for the water, she bought me a bottle at the top as well - which was unnecessary, but nice of her - I offered my excess water outright with NO offer of trade initially - not having water on a hike like that can be killer. Anyway, at the top I bought a piece of pizza, and ice cream for lunch, then hiked down the back of Table to the botanical gardens on the other side. I also discovered that the way down was a bit more challenging on the way up. It was a more difficult hike in general, and rocky and steep enough that I had to tread quite carefully to prevent slippage. But beautiful. And it ended in the botanical gardens, which I hung around for an additional hour or so until my bus was scheduled to arrive. Very nice, though not as fully in bloom as it might be in other parts of the year.

Sunset: After climbing the mountain, the day ended with a bus tour, up Signal Hill, to watch a lovely sunset over the Atlantic Ocean. I admit, it was odd watching the sun set over the Atlantic... that's supposed to be where it RISES! The bus tour also gave commentary about the area - I was particularly amused by two factoids: first, that they were recently delighted when a pair of black eagles returned to nest in the area. Second, a fact stated much later in the tour, was that, alas, the population of a certain rabbit-like (?) creature (small and fuzzy, anyway) has recently been in decline - this is suspected to be due to recent fires, and the return of their natural predator, the black eagle, to the area. You win some, you lose some, I guess!

Round about the City: Whenever you travel, there must be time for some souvenir shopping - little markets abound in this city. Admittedly, most of the souvenirs look the same where-ever you go. But I was able to pick up a few nice items for myself and others. Most notably, and I hope that it gets back to the States in once piece, I got myself an ostrich egg, carved carefully so that you can use it as a lamp, of sorts (if you get a small tea light or similar), with a simple design of a giraffe with the moon and stars upon it. Quite pretty, and very neat, I thought. I also discovered in the harbor (or rather, had been recommended) a food market, with lots of samples, where I had lunch. The rest of the day, I simply wandered around - I had a bus tour pass (I'd gotten a 2-day one, which entitled me to the sunset tour, the busses to and from Table mountain, and a few other tours) which I took around the city, trying to absorb history and local info with - and ended up by the bay in a lovely sea food restaurant where I had a delicious seafood platter for dinner. Yum! By that time, it was too cool to lay on the beach, but I had a table with an ocean view, which was plenty for me at that point.

Safari: On my last day based in Cape Town, I decided to try and actually see some wildlife. While I saw penguins and some ostriches on my peninsula tour, those AREN'T the animals one thinks of, as much, when you think of Africa. So I booked a tour to a local game reserve (well, 2 hours away, but they provide transport), where they give different sorts of animals a lot of space to run around in. Not a fully free park type area - the lions, for example, are in a separate (large) enclosure and are NOT fed live prey - but sufficiently large that they can't guarantee you see any particular animal - we didn't see the leopards, for example (which do feed on the springbok running wild), as they were up in the hills somewhere and tend to stay away from the jeeps in which people take tours. However, I did see 2 elephants, many zebras, ostriches, rhinos, water buffello, wildebeests, springbok, eland (a type of antelope), lions (in the separate enclosure), and waaaaaay off in the distance, a giraffe one could barely make out. We also stopped by the animal rescue center they hosted, where we saw some encaged animals which they were trying to rehabilitate before releasing - a leopard, two cheetah, three lions, and some decidedly non-local crocodiles that a local farmer had been keeping as pets, before they grew too big. The leopard, for example, had been rescued from a cage hunting factory - people raised big cats so that people could 'hunt' them, after tranq'ing the cats and putting them behind bars (hardly sporting). They're going to release him on the game reserve as soon as he gets a little more used to people (and doesn't actively go after them, as he was NOT treated well), to mate with the two females they already have. A really interesting experience overall, and the animals were all gorgeous and super cool.

Travelogue: Random Moments from Conference Week

Cheetah Encounter: Sunday afternoon, heading towards the harbor, I was walking with a few other people and we decided to take a bit of a shortcut, that they had taken earlier. It was early enough in the week that we didn't actually know the long way around, in fact - I was just following the crowd. But our way was blocked off, by, of all things, a Cheetah. Yes, there was a live cheetah blocking our path. Sitting on a table, on a leash, held by 2 handlers, looking quite bored, and possibly tranquilized somewhat. Apparently there was another conference going on, and they had a live cheetah as some sort of entertainment, and they were holding an event right in the hotel plaza where we wanted to cut. They eventually let us by, holding the cheetah back, but I got within about 2 meters of it. NOT what I expected to encounter in the Cape Town harbor...

Kicked out of the Aquarium: The conference reception was held Sunday evening at the aquarium in the harbor, and we had a great open view into the shark tank, and around the lobby. There was also a set of unlocked doors that led into the rest of the building. So I, and several other astronomers including my advisor, naturally wanted to explore the rest of the aquarium. And it was super cool - the lights were all dim, including in most of the tanks, and we could wander around the floor looking at giant crabs, jellyfish tanks, and so on. Until we were informed that no... we weren't actually supposed to be in there. Oops! Who knew a closed door meant "do not enter"?

Local Cuisine: There has been a surprising lack of distinct South African cuisine around here, though I've had a few things that are apparently local. The dried fish that I've mentioned, a couple desserts (a gingery pudding, brandy sticks), something called Bobotie, which is like a shepherd pie only with a egg custard top. Probably the most different thing I've tried, however, is a local meat that has popped up several places. It's generally not cooked in any particular style, but the meat itself is local: Springbok. I'd never HEARD of springbok, so naturally I ordered it at first opportunity. Its a (very cute) type of antelope, which are very common in the area. I haven't seen any live ones, but they're pretty tasty. The meat is a little tough, so they tend to be braised or roasted for long periods of time. Kind of like a tough venison, is the closest taste I can describe. Not bad, certainly worth a try. Hopefully I'll find some other local cuisine soon - there are some local curries, for example, which I've been wanting to try... but haven't found any place that serves them.

Robben Island

Robben Island: Of course, I had to go for a bit of the historical side of Cape Town and South Africa, definitely a region with a lot of it. Wednesday afternoon was given off to all of us, and we were given the option to take a tour of Robbin island, the prison island where Nelson Mandela (and other political prisoners) were incarcerated. This was a boat ride across the water to the island, followed by a bus tour around it: stopping at a scenic overlook where we had a great view of the city and Table Mountain, one of the prison yards, the quarry where people were doing their hard labor (as well as secretly teaching and talking with each other). And finally, one of the ex-prisoners there gave us a tour of the prison itself, pointing out Nelson Mandela's cell and the garden where he hid his writings, and telling us about details of prison life (for example, that your food rations depended on your skin color/ethnicity). Overall, a very interesting trip.

Countryside in the Winelands

Boschendal: For the conference dinner, we went out about an hour outside the city to the wine country, to the vineyard/restaurant Boschendal.  Beautiful countryside, lots of tasty food, and some VERY excellent sauvignon blanc  - I may have to buy some at some point before I leave, if I see it again. But most awesome of all - I hadn't actually thought much about what kind of sky I would see in the south as far as specifics go. I don't know the southern sky very well at all, in fact, so I just thought "oh, I'll learn some southern constellations" and didn't think much more about it. We'd been to tour the SAOO (South African Optical Observatory), but we had to leave before it got truly dark, and that was much closer to the city anyway. But when we went to Boschendal - that's over an hour outside Cape Town, so you could actually see some LOVELY night sky - the Milky Way, for one thing, which is a baseline for how good a sky you've got - if you can see that, it's got to be a pretty decent sky (at least, that is what I think, having lived in NYC and Baltimore). But I ALSO discovered how Large and Cloud-like the Large Magellanic Cloud actually IS. It hadn't crossed my mind, but of course, it IS in the southern sky, and it was known before there were actual telescopes, so it's quite visible by eye down here on a sufficiently dark night. It had to be pointed out to me, because it is very easily be mistaken for a cloud, but it was a little taller and at least 3 times as wide as the full moon would be (though happily it was a moonless night). It's undoubtedly even larger on a darker night, as it gets even more diffuse around the edges. Super cool. I also had some other constellations pointed out to me, most notably the southern cross. I commented it looked more like a small square than a cross (since I'm used to the northern one, which is quite a bit larger and has a central star which serves as a crossing point), but I can pick that one out now. The only constellation I could recognize myself was Orion, which was upside down to what I'm used to seeing! This weekend I'm going to be going on an after-conference tour to SALT (South African Large Telescope) in the Sutherlands, where I hope to see even more of the southern sky, maybe even the SMALL Magellanic Cloud. It will be a lot further from the city, so I have high hopes for a clear and dark night sky.

Actual Astronomy: Of course, I'm at this conference for a reason, not just to play tourist. It's the first all-novae conference in a decade - one of a series, this is the 4th such conference in ~40 years. I'm meeting scientists from around the world, all of whom work on the same type of object that I do. I'm introducing myself and my work to the community, meeting people who may become future collaborators, exchanging ideas, and absorbing all the science I can. And of course, it's my first international conference - I gave my first ever talk at a conference, on radio observations of the nova V1723 Aql, which seemed to go pretty well. I even got several compliments on it! Certainly an interesting topic (in my completely unbiased opinion!). This is an object which by all appearances, when it first went off in 2010, was a completely typical classical nova (at least in optical observations). In fact, the reason our group (see blog post "The Astronomer's Day On") started observing it was in the hopes of getting a good "baseline" for radio behavior. While the late time observations fit predictions pretty well, there was an early time 'bump' in the light curve (here this means the brightness of the nova over time, when observed in radio at various frequencies) which one can't explain at all with the simple model. So my talk described our speculation about the nature of the bump, in addition to the late time fitting to models which estimates the total ejecta mass and showing off our observations in general. Our radio group had quite a good showing at this meeting, and in fact I met people who I've been collaborating with but hadn't physically met before. In addition, I got to talk to many new people, from people whose papers I have read, to those working on topics I didn't know much about at all. About 90 people, from 22 countries, were in attendance; the various venues, activities, and schedules were all well organized; and the talks were by and large quite interesting - all in all, a very good conference!

Me, giving my talk (taken by Allen Shafter!)

Travelogue: First Days as a Tourist

My first day in Cape Town, I arrived at 10:30 in the morning, exhausted, went through security, took a shuttle to the hostel, and took a shower and a nap. A seven hour time difference following a 36 hour trip (12 of those hours, admittedly, spent in Munich) did not leave me feeling much like a tourist. By the later afternoon, however, I was feeling much better - and, more importantly, hungry. Not knowing the area, I just looked on the hostel board for what might be a good place to eat. And the first place I set my eye on was an Ethiopian restaurant (Addis in Cape). Now, I'm a HUGE fan of Ethiopian food: the Baltimore Washington area (and I'm originally from B-more) has a lot of very good Ethiopian restaurants, and New York has a good number of decent ones as well. Indeed, my go-to local takeout place is the Ethiopian restaurant not 2 blocks from me. So, when I saw the local Ethiopian restaurant in cape town, which seemed to have good reviews, I figured, 'Hey! I'm in Africa, lets give it a go!'

In retrospect, I guess going to South Africa and expecting the most amazing Ethiopian food would be like going to Germany and expecting awesome spaghetti. It was... fine. The mains were well cooked, nice and spicy. But the ijira didn't have the lovely tangy taste that one usually gets - I was informed that they used rice flour rather than the usual teff that traditional Ethiopian generally has. But I love injira, so this was rather a disappointment - like I said, the main courses were tasty, but every bite you take of Ethiopian food, you use the injira to take it to your mouth - so I couldn't avoid the teff-less bread. Ah well. It's not like I didn't enjoy the meal - even mediocre Ethiopian is usually pretty darn delicious. Not the best first meal in South Africa, however.

However, my second days lunch and breakfast more than made up for it! Every Saturday, there is an open market at the Old Biscuit mill in one of the local suburbs around Cape town - and this was the only saturday I'd have a chance to go. So i got up bright in the morning, went to the market via taxi, and was delighted by the numerous free samples, which pretty much made up my breakfast. Most notable was a local honey wine, which they were serving in tiny chocolate cups (ok, that one wasn't free, it cost 10 rand~$1.20) - you took the honey wine as a (tiny) shot, then ate the cup immediately after. Yum! Also notable was traditionally dried and spiced fish, fresh lemonade, various dried sausage, pestos and spreads galore, and I bought some of the popular local curry powder for future use (named "mother in law" - the spiciest curry they have around here!). So that, (and lots of chocolate samples during my tour of the local chocolate shop - which showed how they made the chocolate and let me taste the beans and chocolate at various stages) was breakfast, admittedly stretching into my lunch.

But oh... lunch...my mouth drools just thinking about it. As readers of this blog may have noticed, I rather enjoy food. So when I travel to a new place, I always let myself splurge on at least one really nice meal wherever I happen to be traveling. So I happened to be looking at a list of the top 100 restaurants worldwide (seen here), and noticed that one of them was in Cape Town. Now, while it's not a goal of mine to try to eat at EVERY awesome restaurant in the world, I certainly wouldn't mind increasing my count from "zero" to "one." And the lunch tasting menu looked like a pretty decent deal, giving you 5 courses - especially considering it looked pretty hard to get dinner reservations. And the restaurant was walking distance from the strongly recommended Saturday morning market. So, I thought I'd try to get a seat for lunch, and, happily, they had room at the counter for one!

A delicious salmon sashimi with three preparations of cabbage (a powder, a gel, and a crunchy salad with horseradish emulsion). Lightly seared beef with pears and walnuts, garlic and nutmeg. Garlic roasted sweet potatoes, with jellied beets, and a goat cheese mousse. Perfectly cooked fish with the most delicious saffron foam, and a tomato ragout with calamari. A dessert caprese, with tomatoes soaked an almost sweet black pepper sauce, frozen yogurt snowballs, and basil sorbet. Amazing! I was sitting at the counter, so I could watch them prep some of the food right in front of me, which was also pretty nifty.

After lunch, I went for a nice long afternoon on the beach (the days are so long here!) in which I fully submerged myself in this side of the Atlantic exactly once, just to say I did it, and hightailed it out of the water because it was freezing. The rest of the afternoon was spent lying on the sand in the sun, reading and relaxing. It got a bit windy, but was otherwise lovely. Even took a long stroll from beach to beach, so I could see several different ones!

That's all for now, I'll post about the actual conference itself at a later date - but right now, I actually have to go practice my talk a little bit, which is tomorrow (Thursday) morning!

Travelogue:Getting to Cape Town

So this week, I'm traveling to Cape Town, South Africa, for a conference on Novae (which, as you recall from blog post "The Astronomer's Day On," is my topic of study). The conference is from the 3rd-8th, and I'll be giving a short (15 minute) talk on 7th. After that, there is a two day "after conference" tour (optional, but fun), and then I'll be bouncing about on my own: mainly around Cape Town, but also in the town of Stellenborsch (in the wine country!).  I'll be flying back on the 18th, arriving in NYC on the 19th. Since I'm writing these on the road, these entries will probably be a little shorter, and possibly light on pictures, until I get back (sometimes I forget to take out the camera when I'm enjoying myself, or what I'm doing just isn't particularly scenic), not to mention more clearly written chunk by chunk.

The flight and layover:
I could love Munich for its airport alone. Seriously, great place to have a layover. Germany in general, probably, but this is the first time I've ever been in a German airport - the last time I was in Germany, I came by train, and the only other time was driving across the border of France to grab a meal, just so I could say I've been. There are little areas you can rent that are a quiet space to nap - an actual cot - plus a little desk to work at, if you want such a thing. But if you don't want to pay, there are chairs - both regular and lounge - and plenty of them, each with their own place to plug in your computer. So I can stretch out comfortably while waiting for my flight (as I'm doing as I type these vary words, though they'll be posted later, due to lack of internet connection). I suspect on my next layover I'll find one of these chairs and just NAP, since THAT layover is 4 hours, and early in the morning, rather than this one, which was 12 hours and starting at the beginning of the day I'm supposed to be getting used to. I think I recall I had the choice of  this or leaving super early in the morning, rather than in the late evening and sleeping on the plane, but honestly, I'm not really quite sure why I decided to book this flight in particular, when I was being reimbursed the cost.. But it was enough time to go into town. Which leads me to the German trains - so fast, efficient, and ON TIME. I traveled in Germany with Benson in 2011, for a bit, and they actually make an announcement and apologize for the inconvenience if the train is - LITERALLY - a minute late. And it's a rarity if it is late at all. I'd love to see the NYC metro do that...

Also, Germans do vending machines RIGHT

So I bought an all day train/bus pass at the airport, and went into Munich. Like I said, I've been here before, with Benson, so my first stop was actually the central station, where I knew I could pick up some VERY tasty sausage for cheap (breakfast!), plus then move on to anywhere else in the city easily from there. The second stop was a museum that we missed last time, the Deusch Museum, which was a museum of science and industry - very up my ally. Not the usual science museum, though - it seemed very focused on the instrumentation side of things, so there was a lot of really awesome old equipment from all branches of science. Astrolabes, old slide rules, tubes of all sorts, telecommunications, musical instruments, old cars and jets and helicoptors and rockets, whole ships, seriously, everything. It was a pretty cool museum, and a good chunk of the signs were translated into English, though not all. So that was a good place to spend my time. I also managed to hit not one, but 2 beer gardens. I'd been to both before, Augustiners for a light lunch (a bowl of liver dumpling soup, after the sausage, and a nice tall half liter of Augustiner Hells), and Hirschgartin for dinner (a half of a pork shank, with a potato dumpling and a pretzel, plus a nice tall half liter of a local Weissbeir.) Both were delicious, and refreshing. In fact, I wasn't able to finish my dinner, but got it wrapped up and through security with no problem, so I'll be having a some very tasty pork for breakfast tomorrow, as well! It was very easy to get through the airport, and security very efficient, so there was hardly any wait to get through again. Anyway, an enjoyable layover, for the most part! And now, an overnight flight (again) which will land me in Cape Town, where I've already booked a nice shuttle to take me directly to the hostel. Hopefully I won't be *too* tired, but I don't have anything planned for tomorrow (aside from working more on my talk!) just in case.

Addition:
Just jotting this down, I'm super exhausted and will be taking a nap shortly - but I've officially arrived in Cape Town, now and the hostel I'm staying at is really nice. I'm staying at a hostel for the first 2 nights before moving to the conference hotel (since while I'm getting free housing provided by the conference people, they're not going to pay for students to stay extra there, either). I'm in an all girls dorm room, which is nice, and it's very clean and seems pretty secure. Right near the waterfront area, so it looks like there are some nice places to walk around near by. But for now, after an 11.5 hour flight, I just got in, got a shower, checked e-mail and whatnot, and am going to take a NAP.  I can hold out until this evening or tomorrow to start exploring, and it would be nice to be well rested if I'm going to work on my talk any. Even if it is a lovely 92 degree (!) afternoon....