Back in Baltimore - Mum visiting! (part 1)

It has surprisingly been nice to come back to Baltimore now that the stinking heat is gone. Back in town involves good things like living with Anna again and meeting the friends that I made here before the NOAA cruise. It also involves having to cook your own food, use money, and dealing with the future: what to do (easy) & how to make money (hard)... 

Run ashore in Baltimore... First day in downtown Baltimore after 7 weeks at sea and look what was greeting me and Anna, the US coast guard ship that we met out at sea with Okeanos Explorer just a week back.

 I went to DC for the first time and met Jeremy from OER and his NOAA colleges for a very happy and lively Oktoberfest after work, the NOAA people are truly a good sport I must say and I was impressed by how there was people from all different parts of NOAA enjoying German songs and lederhosen together. DC is only 45min away with the train from Baltimore, and we live close to the train station, so it was pleasant to discover how nice it was there. I even took a short trip to see if the president was home to schedule a meeting with my mum who where due to arrive later in the week. 

Meeting up with Jeremy Potter, who got me the job with NOAA/OER, in downtown DC for Oktoberfest after work together with his friendly NOAA colleges. I was very impressed with their German song skills!

As of future plans to work for NOAA there are talks about having me on the boat when the field season start in mid February so I hope that will come true. In the meantime I am looking for short term projects around Baltimore, if that turn out to be hard to find there might be some more traveling when darkness sets in here... Time will tell, at the moment I am still enjoying having time to do whatever I want and I have some projects of my own to spend time with on rainy days. 

  Mum arrived on Saturday to visit me and Anna for a whole week. Really great to have her here and also have an excuse to be a proper tourist for a week. Its not that often that you get to spend a solid week with your parents these days when you are busy with career and friends.

On the weekend (Oct 08) mum came to visit all the way from Sweden! She has been here for a week and we have been exploring Baltimore and its surroundings together. Anna has been studying around the clock for her final exams yet again, so its been extra nice to have the company. I have discovered things like that there is a great free art history museum across the street from where we live and many other things that I never took time to explore for myself. I let the following pictures tell the rest of the story to lure more friends and family visiting!

Visit to Baltimore National Aquarium in downtown harbor, conveniently close to the cheesecake factory.

Me and mum took the train to DC and rented the commute bikes to get around the beutiful capital. We stopped at a lovely white building and this real friendly fellow Obama took our picture!

Mum met some friends from the sixties and decided to join them for a good cause. Apparently they were living right there on the square, and they also invited us to another festival in NY on wall street. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time.

Then more friends showed up, We had so much fun!

Then there was more sightseeing to do, its really quite pretty in DC with some really big trees!

...and all the great museums are free! I have to come back and take my time to get to know all those guys better.

To make sure mum got a real American experience we rented a big ass Jeep for the rest of the week and went shopping at Walmart! (to our poor moral defense I had booked a compact but they were out and upgraded us...)

All the shopping got me so exhausted so we went "hiking" at Patasco 20 min away from Baltimore, by "coincident" they had just stocked the river with trout. Brian in the background were climbing the trees to try and spot them for me (...and no we didn't catch anything this trip neither if you have to know!)