America Day

  IIASA likes to party.  We've got celebrations of various cultures, including Asia Day, Africa Day, Canadian Pancake Breakfast, the Midsommar Day party I already posted about, and so forth.  Last Friday it was America Day, coinciding approximately with the 4th of July.  Carl set the tone with his hat:

  We had not one, but two, barbecue grills going full blast:

  We had watermelon, and people getting messy eating watermelon:

  We had A&W root beer (I'm amazed they found that in Austria!):

  Sheila got into the spirit with a popcorn burger:

  Stefan got filthy handling the charcoal to keep the grill going:

  We had games, including the water balloon toss; the winning team:

  We also had a three-legged race, in which Sheila and I came last by a substantial margin (nobody else realized it was a slow race, so the joke was on them).  There was also "dizzy bat," apparently an American pastime I've never encountered; it was a sort of relay race in which each runner had to spin in a circle six times around a pole, with forehead pressed against the top of the pole, and then run back to the next runner.  It is aptly named; I got so dizzy that the world came up and smacked me, and my nice linen pants now have a large green smudge on them.  No photos, sorry, I was preoccupied.  Likewise with the frisbee; I was too busy having fun to take photos!

  Let's just finish with Carl again:

  Because you can never have too much of that hat.  Happy 4th of July!