I'll be in Berlin, Slovakia, and Hungary for most of July and a bit of August as I begin field research for my new project, tentatively titled My Gidget. I'm looking forward to visiting a tropical beach paradise built into a former zeppelin factory, seeing Forced Entertainment at the Foreign Affairs Festival, discovering what contemporary beach culture looks like in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, visiting Prešov, Slovakia (my grandparents' home town), and reading Frederick Kohner's Gidget over and over while I dream of surfing, salt water, and California.