June in San Francisco...first of all, there are many other places which provide better summer weather! Especially you have to get used to the cool foggy nights, but sometimes it can be very nice to have a cool night (13-18C), e.g. to sleep well...hm...if you have to sleep in this city ;-)
Work became more serious in June, so that I did not find the time and motivation for longer trips outside SF, but I had some fun time.
One weekend was governed by the Pride 2012 in San Francisco, a festival to honor the city's homo-, bi- and trans-sexual community. The streets around the city hall were filled with people checking out the information booths, shops and music stages. The biggest event of the festival was the parade along the Market Street starting from the piers and going up to the city hall. It was quite fun, to watch the parade, but the quality and size of the marching groups was not as high (colorful, creativity, music) as I experienced during the parades in Paris and Berlin.
Another big event in June was the European Soccer championship, which was due to the time shift with Europe a very pleasant noon-distraction. I had the pleasure to see the game of Germany against Portugal at the place of a Portuguese colleague, who had invited about 20+ people. The atmosphere was great, and during and after the game we had nice conversations, good food and cold beer!
After a short break, social live continued at the beer fest of the UCSF brewers guild topped by some nice music tunes to which you could dance to.
My friend Kripa from Davis came over for a couple of weekends, which was a good occasion to cook and to go to some Jazz or Blues concert. One very nice one was in a club called Yoshi's and featured a jazz combo of drummer, bassist, piano player together with three blow instruments: alt-, tenor sax and trumpet. They played a great set of jazz classics decorated with elaborated solo parts.
At work, I discovered Zumba as a new dance activity which helps me to stay in shape and to relax from the day to day work. This is basically a blend of South-American dance moves ranging from Rumba over Salsa to Raga-ton taught in small sets of three to for steps per song- a great way to get rid of additional energy! Another nice routine became the indoor soccer games Tuesdays and Thursdays at lunchtime.
The next blog will come from the East coast, where I will be at Woods Hole as a teaching assitant at the Marine Biological Laboratory...
