Alps adventure

My host professor here in Czech invited me to go along on a collection trip in the Austrian Alps. I'm not sure if I know anyone who could refuse a trip like that, so I very happily acquiesced. It was a very early morning for me. Waking up before 5 is not really my style, but gorgeous sunrises sure are, so it was worth it. It was a horrible day for taking pictures, so I don't really have any good ones to show you, but you will have to believe me that it was amazingly beautiful.

One of our stops was this little Catholic retreat, with an amazing pastel church (even inside. most Catholic places are all somber and gold, but this one was pastel and gold, interesting).
It had lovely views
And our botanizing walk took us down this 'holy way', a path studded with religious shrines and artifacts.
Now, I may be buff from setting up the common garden experiment, but my lungs are so pathetically out of shape. Stupid cough. Nothing like hiking the alps for your first activity in ages!

Anyways, I really felt it on this trip. But luckily I was with a couple of botanists, so we stopped a lot. In the meadows, there were more flowers than grass.

This is Honza, one of the students in the lab. We were collecting plants for his project.

This is Milan, my host and an amazing botanist. He knows everything!

We were in search of this elusive little bugger. Didn't have any luck until the very end (where we found it right next to the car after a 3 hour hike in the mountains). Found lots of other really cool plants though.

And one last thing, that I didn't get a picture of, but was possibly the most beautiful thing of the entire day. You are going to have to work with me on this one... We were driving home, it was getting late. The sun was setting. On top of one of the foothills of the alps, with blue mountains fading off into the distance, a brilliant sunset filling the sky... the hills were covered in crops in narrow strips. thick rich green of newly planted wheat, yellow gold of canola, soft chartreuse of maturing wheat, and rye - the surprisingly amazing crop. inconspicuous under normal circumstances, the rye caught the pink of the setting sun, transforming the seeds into a glowing halo of pink and gold while the lower stalks turned an iridescent blue. All these colors together almost made me weep, it was so beautiful.