Greetings from Innsbruck!

The next several blogs will probably be from Innsbruck, and after this one I'll try to have some pictures to share. I just arrived and got checked in to my hotel room. I'm so tired!!! I need to stay up until it's time to go to bed here in Austria, so I can start getting over the jet lag. I've been up just over 24 hours now though, so I'm not functioning all that well. I only slept an hour on the (9 1/2 hour) flight over. If I could ever sleep on planes, I've lost the ability. And the flight from Frankfurt to Innsbruck was too rough to sleep. I don't know whether that's standard (we were flying alongside the mountain whose top was in the clouds above us), or we just had a rough day. Several poor people on the plane were getting sick. It didn't bother me, but then I didn't eat the snack they served. Not because the plane ride was rough. Because it was 2:30 am Dallas time and my stomach was totally uninterested in having anything on it.

The trip went off without a hitch. All planes were on time. Not only did I make my connection in Frankfurt, but my luggage made it also. Pretty remarkable since I had less than an hour between flights and I went through Customs, etc, and my luggage made the transfer from American Airlines to Austrian/Tyrolean Airlines. It was raining in Frankfurt. I mention that because we rode a little bus out to where the connecting flight was parked and semi-dashed through the rain to board the plane. The woman sitting next to me on the leg to Innsbruck says that it's supposed to rain every day while we're here. I'm glad I brought a raincoat.

The trip to Innsbruck was in a twin prop plane and I think the whole plane was full of people coming here for EuroMedLab, which is why I'm here also. I actually met some people in my field whose names I've been familiar with for some time. This is going to be a fun and interesting meeting I think. I do have to remember that in this part of the world, especially Germany so Austria is probably the same, you are not called "doctor" unless you are a medical doctor. Us PhD types are referred to as "professor". I need to be sure I refer to my colleagues that way also. Which reminds me. I need to switch some units in my talk from American units to SI units.

More later.