leaving

just watched a classic episode of cheers - which reminds me of good old university days when RTL2 had cheers and david letterman on every night. i used to watch it until 2 in the morning almost every night. i know, that explains many many things ...

anyways - i still need to prepare some stuff for tomorrow morning before I can go to bed so I will be up for a while. tomorrow I will fly to poland and will return to frankfurt on friday.

I have also managed to grab one of the last slots for the hp wintergames so that i will be snowboarding in the mountains the last weekend of march. we will be staying in the cube and I am not sure how much actual snowboarding will happen. Too bad Andrea will not be there this year.

400

According to Blogger statistics, this is my 400. post! Amazing, isn't it? Considering how often I have nothing to say I would say it is quite an achievement :-)

I am still in Vienna, spent my day at home working, preparing for tomorrow's site visit and for Wednesday as I won't have time to prepare anything tomorrow. I am now going to the airport to pick up my brother and then going early to bed cause tomorrow is going to be very busy. I hope to have time to go to the sneak preview tomorrow evening though. Here is David Lynch on the iPhone. Good Night!

only in Vienna ...

There is a big storm outside. Winds up to 150 kms per hour everywhere. Some roads are closed, the ring is blocked near the Opera because of the "Kinderopernzelt" - a giant tent mounted on top of the opera for children - might fell off. I have spent the day sleeping, eating, reading and relaxing. In the afternoon I met Matthias for a chat at Café Prückel. A wonderful place opposite the MAK directly at the ring. It was so nice to sit there and enjoy a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. There was this old lady - wearing sandals, a cleaning lady's uniform over a long sleeved white shirt and glasses as thick as a soda bottle. At some point she went to the piano and started playing all kinds of songs. My Fair Lady, some Italian stuff, really nice music all in all. She left the piano from time to time and walked back to her table, sat down and started singing also. She must have been a regular at the place. I love Vienna! That reminds me I should go to the theatre...

What else happened today? I watched "Eragon", which was pretty cool; and I have bought some plane tickets from Frankfurt to Vienna to be able to be here for the football finals. It might be a good idea to work in Vienna during that time. I hope nothing will come up to stop me doing this. And I have also found out you can try out climbing in the "T-Hall" in Frankfurt every Sunday afternoon for 7 Euros. Gotta go next weekend!

the devil wears prada

I am spending a very relaxing weekend in Vienna. So relaxing, I have spent the morning shopping (bought a cord suit and some DVDs), had a wonderful Cordon Bleu for lunch, slept the whole afternoon and watched TV in the evening (Criminal Intent with the extremely beautiful Olivia D'Abo who I perfectly remember from The Wonder Years series). A perfect way of wasting a saturday at home with my family. There are two movies running on Premiere day and night at the moment - V for Vendetta and The Devil wears Prada. And I love both of them and could watch them forever. Yes, Alba, I know ... And I have to remember to watch The Devil wears Prada once more in Frankfurt and afterwards throw away half my clothes. It should be a good motivator :-)

This week has been a bit of a madness. Starting with a Sunday afternoon flight to Helsinki, working a bit, staying at the Hilton Kalastajatorppa Hotel, which is not to be recommended (the Hilton Strand was much better), flying back to Frankfurt Monday evening. Wednesday morning train to Munich, flight to Ankara in the evening, flight to Vienna Friday morning. Not too much sleep - a very interesting 5 Star Hotel near the Airport. I am glad to be at home...

Only the week before had I experienced how it feels being at gunpoint. Actually it was kind of funny in the end but it did not feel like that at the beginning. So I was on my way from the office in Munich to the Train station in a taxi one evening when suddenly I could see a blue light approaching from behind. I couldn't bother turning around to see what was happening - probably better - as the taxi stopped, my door and the door of the driver opened. Two guys stood there with guns drawn. There were flashlights mounted on their guns and I didn't know what the hell was going on. I must have said something like "Guten Tag - Bitte nicht schiessen" - I am not entirely sure. Anyhow the one next to the taxi driver said "Your Taxi alarm is on" and they both showed their IDs. They were police. At this moment the taxi started to make loud honk sounds. I put my hands on my legs so they could see I am not doing anything weird and just sat there. The guy next to me told me to "keep calm" while the taxi driver got out of the car, went to the back of the car and then the noise stopped. The guy next to my door closed the door, the taxi driver got back in his seat and we left.
The taxi driver later explained me that he has accidentally turned on the alarm that made the taxi light flash at the top of his car. He has also pressed it again the police showed up as he thought he could switch it off, that is when the honking started. But he could only turn it off in the back of the car. The police men must have seen the light flashing and stopped us - being civilian police, they didn't look like police. I must admit I was scared as hell being confronted by that guy with the gun. That reminds me I should learn karate...

yeah baby

I am writing this on my laptop attached to a TFT with a whopping 1900 x 1200 pixels. I declare myself officially a geek now having spent 370 euros on this thing. Ordered on friday, delivered this morning. hp of course (codename w2408h). and there is a small sticker on the top left that says: High Definition Mutlimedia Interface. Life is good. Here is something funny ...

you may have noticed that we have landed

that's what the stewardess (sorry - I mean flight attendant) said when we hit the ground in helsinki and bounced like 3 times right afterwards. it felt a bit like my neck breaking but apparently only felt like it. people laughed hard at the announcement ...
the hotel night was great. slept like a baby after watching "the sum of all fears" on finnish tv. only problem was, that the finnish subtitles completely covered the english ones whenever the ukrainan / russian were talking. but other than that, quite a good movie I must say. Interestingly I haven't eaten anything since leaving the airport yesterday in frankfurt and I am somehow not hungry. weird.

weather is ok - meaning it is not too cold, it rains / snows like hell and I hope I can fly back home later today ...
ps: just had lunch. very yummie - faschiertes gefüllt mit marinierten zwiebeln

die wissen schon dass wir menschen sind und hören können?

sitting at the airport after a wonderful saturday spent in frankfurt. shopping, talking, eating my favourite potato soup and a too large schnitzel as usual, hanging out with friends, a great party at our place and afterwards at stereobar with a lots of great wine and a lot of talking bullshit (especially after the totally unnecessary gin-tonic at the end ...)

my flight to helsinki seems to be on time. I will be back tomorrow evening if all goes well. funny how they treat a 2.3 meter big guy at the controls - the guys pointing and shouting "schau mal den typen an, der ist ja riesig". Of course he was german and also his friend who then ironically noted if they realised they were normal people with hearing capabilities. everybody laughed - expect the control guys, who just didn't get it. They must have enourmous IQ-tests at these job interviews at the airport security ...

silence

looking at my blog, i have not written for a looong time. I have attempted to write a couple of times but there was always something else. First the stress of moving, the stress of changing jobs, then my first real project where I have spent a week in Helsinki without a single visit of the city, bla bla bla. Had a date, saw the family for X-mas, celebrated X-mas with my friends from Vienna, went snowboarding with my brother and his ex-gf (an exact of copy of him, at least mentally), slept a lot, partied a little. Then my grandma passed away the day I returned to Frankfurt. I went back for the funeral last weekend. It was my second funeral in my whole life that I attended and it pretty much hit me just as badly as the one before and I am really glad I was there. Funerals should remind people on the value of friends and family and what success really means in life - hope I am not too sentimental here ...

Having spent the last week on the road for work, I was very glad to come home and relax before the next wave comes. I love my life and this year is going to be great. I promised myself not to give empty promises any more.