i am that girl

last weekend my boss frank and i went out to a little island off the coast of germany, called helgoland, to retrieve some cuttlefish that the group had left at a research station out there. we went out on thursday morning on a giant tourist boat (the island gets a lot of day-trippers as it is this weird tax-free place where liquor and cigarettes are really cheap) and arrived a little after noon. we had packed these huge transport drums and a bunch of equipment for moving the animals back, and decided to start by dropping it all off at the research station so we could stop lugging it around.

walking around the island, we found ourselves enjoying the first really gorgeous day in a long string of rainy dreariness. it was absolutely gorgeous. sun shining, water flat as a mirror, not a cloud in the sky. and the island, which was probably less than a mile in diameter, was gorgeous too. it really resembled a mediterranean city, with cobblestones and whitewashed houses and huge sloping streets leading up into the cliffs. gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous.

we arrived at the research station and found that one of frank's old college buddies was the assistant curator there. sweet. he gave us a tour of the place, taking us all around and showing us his experiments and all these cool creepy creatures. he took us through this big alarmed door and we went into the aquarium that adjoined the research station. tourists were wandering through, complete with khakis and cameras and big floppy hats, and we were standing there obviously devoid of bags and carryings, with frank sipping occasionally out of his mug of coffee.

after touring around a bit more and enjoying a beer in the employee lounge, we made one more stop before we left.

i swear it was in slow motion. i thought it might happen, and i saw it happening, and then it was happening, and it left me speechless.

when we were walking around, i noticed on a map the seal exhibit in the aquarium. i thought, aw, cute, seals, that would be neat to see on this little tour. but then we were sitting and chatting and leaving and i thought oh well, maybe next time. and like he had read my mind, when he was walking us out frank's friend just quietly took a turn, unlocked another door, and stepped through it. then i watched frank step through it. and i honestly stood there for a moment, staring back at the seal who was staring at us walking in, and could barely breathe.

we went into the seal exhibit. stood on the little fake rock platform. the seal, a little overwhelmed by two new people, didn't come out of the water, but instead just hung there, about two feet from me, bobbing and staring. and after a little while he got bored and started swimming in circles and showing off for the people behind the glass in the aquarium.

and we stayed there. watching from the platform. in the exhibit. 'cause we were the aquarium people. the ones in the seal exhibit.

and i thought to myself: holy crap, i am that girl.

we stayed the night on our little mediterranean island, and had dinner with a bunch of really nice grad students who live and work there. we woke up early the next morning and loaded the animals into our big barrels (which involved reaching into a completely inked up opaque black tank and feeling around until we caught all of the beasties by hand. so cool).

for the way back we hitched a ride on a research vessel sent out by the awi for a survey of the local sea life. that week was a special week at the awi, where the magazine geo (the national geographic of germany) sent a bunch of writers and photographers out to do a piece about the populations in the north sea. so our goal was to find as many individual species as possible in this trolling expedition to show off to them.

it was really something else. we pulled up a massive amount of sealife, the likes of which i had never seen before. hundreds of fish, thousands of crab, a pile of starfish the size of a minivan. and the whole time these photographers taking pictures. (frank and i kept joking about the amount of press i have been getting recently, and how i will likely become famous before i leave at this rate.) it was really great. and after a hard morning of work, we spent the late afternoon sunning on the front deck and chilling and chatting as we cruised back into bremerhaven.

life rules.