As I wrote in my last post, I made it to Burgos Monday evening. My flash hadn't arrived yet, and since I couldn't snatch anything until it did, I wandered around Burgos a little bit the next day. I had a meeting with Dr. Bermudez de Castro (Spanish anthropologist in-charge of the fossil I came here to see), but it wasn't until 5 pm.

Burgos is a pretty little medieval town (well, the old part.) Here are some photos:







The Burgos Cathedral:





I really hope that Melanie checks the blog soon and reads this post. I actually ran into some old friends on the street here in Burgos the other day. (Melanie doesn't know who they are, but she'll find it funny because back when we were in high school, whenever we were out somewhere in Toronto together, no matter where, I unfailingly ran into somebody that I knew. And Toronto is a pretty big city. And we lived waaaaay out in suburbia.)

Anyways, on Tuesday afternoon I was walking down the street looking for a place to get some lunch. Just as I'm about to cross the road, I hear these 2 voices call out, "Jodi???" It was these two Georgian girls that I met when I was working at Dmanisi. It's been 3 years since I was at Dmanisi; Annie and Mariam are at least 10 years younger than I am, and they've grown up a bit since I last saw them -- that's my excuse for not recognizing them immediately. (Well, that and I really didn't expect to run into old Georgian friends on the street in Burgos, Spain.) They were on their way to lunch with some Spanish friends (they all work for the anthropologist I was meeting with later that day), so I tagged along.

It was really great to have people to eat lunch with! Well, until they made me eat blood. It's called "Morcilla de Burgos", and it's a traditional Burgos dish. I don't know if even Bernardo would eat blood. (And yeah, jer, I reverted back to the dark side. It was Tim Horton's chicken soup on a long, cold drive back to Toronto, while feeling like I was coming down with a cold, that did me in. I feel your disappointment. Please still love me. I'll never eat a bunny, I promise.)



Mariam and Annie are the 2 on the far left. I'm (in case it's been so long and you don't remember my face anymore) the second one from the right with the huge goofy grin, so happy to have friends for a few hours again (and drunk on blood.)

Later that evening, after my meeting with Dr. Bermudez de Castro (which went well; he's really nice and super helpful), I went over to Annie's apartment (she shares it with the other girls in the photo) for dinner, and Mariam made Khachapuri. I haven't had khachapuri since I was last in Georgia, so this was just so totally great. Mariam is Annie's younger sister, and she was in Burgos visiting for a week or so. She had brought other traditional Georgian foods with her too, including "tkemali" -- a slightly sweet, slightly sour, sauce made from Georgian plums. Aside from the tomatoes (which taste better in Georgia than anywhere else in the world), tkemali was my favourite Georgian food. It was really wonderful to reconnect with old friends, catch up on all the news from Georgia, and just hang out with great people and have fun. (I even tried out some of the Spanish that Martin and Bernardo have taught me. It got the reaction you'd think it would ;)

My flash arrived the next day in the afternoon (thank you again to Dan and Ben!!!!), so this morning I was finally able to go to the Museo de Burgos to shapecam the fossil I came here to see.

Museo de Burgos:



My (little) French has really come in handy here. Nobody at the Museo spoke any English, but a few did speak French. The woman who runs the biblioteca in the Museo took me out for a coffee this morning and we had a conversation in Franish. (Or Spench?) I spoke poor French, she spoke French and Spanish. I think we talked about her vacation to Budapest.

On Sunday I leave for Paris (it's actually 2 trains, not one.) I hope the flash holds up and nothing else goes wrong. Now I'm totally paranoid. I only had to photograph one small and fragmentary fossil today, so I didn't really take that many pictures. Of course, the majority of the fossils I came to Europe to see are housed in the last 2 museums I'll be going to visit ;)