Hoog bezoek

Last week, one of my promoters paid us a work visit. I picked her up at the airport on Wednesday evening and then we drove to the hotel where we had a Caesar salad (still one of my favorites and the Americans just happen to make them best) and caught up. Same as when coming here, when I go home I can only have one suitcase, therefore I asked her if she would take some things (winter coat, snow boots things like that) home with her. She was happy to do so, however when she arrived she said that when she left the Netherlands her suitcase was only 15 kg, but after a couple of days in New York her suitcase was 31 kg. Since she was only allowed to carry 23 kg, it looked like I had to come up with some other plan.
The next day work meetings were planned and a short trip to the mall to get some new clothes for her kids. (Turned out that the 31 kg in NY were actually 31 pounds, so we were good again). We went to the Abercrombie & Fitch kids store where we were of course asked whether we needed help and (of course) being Dutch we did not want any, a concept that it not well understood here in the US. We were going through the store, looking at all the clothes (grabbing all shirts, shorts and skirts to check out the prints, measuring them up for their size and going through the piles to look for the right size). Later we understood why the clerk followed us and repeatedly offered to help. It was his job to make sure that all the stacks of clothes looked impeccable. It was absolutely ridiculous watching him fold al the shirt with the help of some kind of plastic mold, to make sure they all had the same size. And the precision with which one shirt was place on top of the other, making sure that all corners aligned perfectly just cracked me up. It made me want to just slightly move one shirt in all the stacks in the stores (I didn’t though).
The day ended with a very nice dinner, with two other staff members of the clinical pharmacology division here. It was good to see that there are still restaurants here that understand how Europeans like to dine. We do not have to be out the door within 45 minutes and luckily the drinks menu did not consist of a list of either Coca Cola or Pepsi products, but actually had wine on them (that I could only taste, since I had to drive home). The food was also very nice. And then all of a sudden, just after we finished our dessert somebody started to rub my back. I could not think of anybody here that would do that so I was quite curious to see who it was. Turned out that it was a local celebrity (a famous architect) who knows the professor of our division here and when he saw my professor, he assumed that I was his wife. I thought it was quite funny, although I think he felt embarrassed. Oh, and we were fortunate to have our Japanese colleague with us, otherwise we would not have a picture to remember this nice evening.
Friday was for some more work meetings and a quick trip to the atelier of the wife of the professor here. Or at least my two professors did (I spend most of my time driving through Cincinnati and receiving directions over the phone to find the atelier). After this we were off to the airport and the trip was over and so were my times with a warm winter coat.