Having the worst headache of my life today. I don't understand why because there was nothing special about yesterday night, except the bottle of Newcastle I had in the Anglo. Maybe I should sleep more. Aaaaanyway - finally had an appointment at the hairdressers. Last time I tested someone new as my regular cutter Xiomy got pregnant and so she is not working there any more. I was not very happy but this time they got it right - so I rode my bike home smiling after running into a Catalan party in the city. The rest of the day was very well spent sleeping most of the time. Ah, yes - plus I booked tickets for a San Sebastian weekend and purchased some stuff from Amazon.
I used my bike for the first time properly. alba invited to "zur sonne" to celebrate her promotion. amazingly she actually managed to be there first - I came second and then Jack. Had a Schnitzel and it was good. But they kicked us out around 11 so we went to Sachsenhausen, where everybody knows your name (for some of us at least ...)
Proper night out, met all who we expected to meet and had fun.
wanted to go to the 2raumwohnung concert in cocoon - but somehow i am working too much again and am very tired. so no concert for lazy me ... (i know - excuses over excuses)
remember the times in high-school when people asked you the time and you looked at your wrist where your watch should have been and answered something along skin hour, hair minutes or It's ... now!? Well now there is a watch you can buy where this is not bullshit any more!
Talking about geeky stuff, here is an interesting article on sex & intelligence. Plus a pretty cool wikipedia explanation of the Tourette Syndrome.
And the best at last - here is a cool geek talking about really cool stuff - with a very geeky laugh. I WANT THIS STUFF!!! Enjoy!
There is a god. Or at least some entity that makes sure I get lucky from time to time. It seems that I found a mountain bike on ebay for 32 Euros and it turned out to be a really nice one. It used to belong to a girl that left for the US and so does not need it any more – she only used it 4 times (according to the seller of the bike of course). Some minor parts of the breaks are a bit rusty but it doesn’t look like that would be a problem. The coolest thing is the gear shifts. They are circular and kind of built into the handle. So shifting is like on a motorbike. Really cool stuff.
Still to do:
- Put the seat into a higher position
- Get a proper pump for the wheels
- Check the rusty parts and eventually replace them
- Get some protection against the dirt being thrown up from the weels (optional but very useful if using the bike on wet or dirty streets
I am very much looking forward to using the bike in the city.
I watched the Simpsons movie in the Haydn cinema in Vienna. The movie was very funny, totally worth the ticket - I am a bit frustrated that it did not have some of the classic characters playig bigger parts - Skinner, Marge's sisters, Willie, Mrs. Krabappel, etc. So I can only hope what Maggie said is true ...
Having said that, I am for sure buying the DVD the day it comes out - hoping for a director's cut or similar. And here comes the poetic end of this post:
Spiderpig, spiderpig, does whatever a spiderpig does.
Can he swing - from a web?
No he can't, he's a pig!
Look Out, here comes the Spiderpig!
There are situations where I become a bit sentimental - like when we go for a round with my ex-dog, Köpeck. Sniff ;-)
we have said once, that once all of us finish our studies, we would go to Schloss Obermayerhofen for a wonderful dinner. And so we have finally managed to find a weekend that fit us all and had our fantastic dinner. Plus there was a wedding celebration including huge fireworks! Too bad that the weather was not the best - but the food was pretty amazing - the highlight being a piece of "Rind vom Angus" ...
From left to right: Frau Diplomingenieurin Jankovic, Herr Diplomingenieur Deri, Frau Magister Fabian & Frau Doktor Koch
According to this article we can save a lot of energy by having websites with dark background colours versus white ones. Therefore some company created a new google called:
I will be spending quite some time in the next weeks going through my albums and checking the access rights and the tags before you will be able to see all the content. Coming back to the story around Blackle I will be wasting a lot of energy doing that as Flickr is still a white-background website :-)
Now it's official. People with fat friends are fatter than others. Apparently you cannot blame this one on your family or your neighbours, not even on "society". No, it is your FRIENDS that make you fat. Fascinating ...
Click on the Meatloaf picture below for the article (no relevance of course - I just like this picture somehow)
I am soooooooooo looking forward to watch my yellow-skinned idol and his family in their newest adventure in an air-conditioned cinema Monday evening in Vienna :-)
I stumbled across this website called TED. It is full of amazong little clips called "Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers" - some of which are totally eye-opening. As there are more than a hundred clips, you cannot watch them all at once - today I watched this one on ageing. It is pretty cool - and worth waiting for the Q&A section in the end. Watch and Enjoy!!!
Another spanish cinema night in the Malsehn cinema, which is only 5 minutes away from where I live. Last time I went to this cinema was to watch "walk on water" and before that "Transamerica" - both pretty weird. Good but weird. And so it wasn't a big surprise that azul oscuro casi negro was a bit weird also. A very good movie - funny, with a nice music - almost like a musical. A wonderful movie about family values, friendships, life, love and what's important in life.
Let's see if this motivates me to (a) go learn spanish and (b) go to this cinema more often. Vamos a ver ...
I spent the day reading the new Harry Potter book. As I don't want to spoil it for anybody I am not going to talk about it - just so much, that J.K.Rowling is a genious. I am thankful for her for having written these 7 books - if only I knew who borrowed the first ones from me, I could ask for them back soon - there is some space left on my bookshelf right next to my precious Lord of The Rings books :-) 
I guess Japan must be a really birong place - I cannot explain the wierd TV shows they have over there otherwise ...
Here is an excerpt from a science show - it is an experiment that would make every physics class cool ... enjoy!
I am finally connected to the world again. No more boring evenings reading or staring at the wall!!! The World-Wide-Web is now pouring into my humble home with an amazing 6000 things per second! I am currently downloading the last 3 months of podcasts that I have missed and updating all the security software on my PC. Wireless is also working.
If only the weather would be better, I would be smiling even more.
Hasta pronto!!!
wanted to take the early train but couldn't. had to go home because i thought i left the water running. of course i didn't. in the end i catched the last tain to amsterdam. looking forward to a lazy weekend ...
I managed to run the 5.6 kms through Frankfurt yesterday with some 67270 people and shot some pictures while doing so. Everything hurts today, but it was totally worth it. The retarded picture of me should give you some idea of how glad I was to have made it at the end ...
And by retarded I mean happy, tired, dead, hungry, thirsty, glad to have been there, etc... Click on the picture for more ...
just heard of this new tool from xuuk.com which can check where people look at and how often. it was originally developed for advertising posters to see how many people actually look at them (so to transfer the pay-per-click advertising model into the real world) but I have much better ideas.
the most obvious geeky idea would be to mount one of these on my t-shirts to see who is actually reading the stuff that is written on them. a less obvious thing would be to test the theories about where guys / girls actually look when they first meet each other. oooh - the fun of connecting this thing to some loudspeaker and announcing where people looked ...
Go check out the website here
ps: I have uploaded some pictures of the last couple of days in Spain (mostly the wedding pictures) to my flickr website. I will write some stuff later when I have more time, in the meantime you can check the pictures by clicking on the image below.
today has been a fantastic day. We were out last night until 2 in the morning - had some wine and a gin-tonic at bideluze - no headache, lots of fun. This morning woke up at 7, practiced a bit and went to school to write a test. It was actually better than expected, still I need to focus focus focus - so from now on I will try to say things in spanish when we are out with friends.
The afternoon surf class was amazingly cool - the best waves we have ever had next to a sunny beach - I did not feel tired a single time, catched waves, even stood up 3 times (twice fell big time, once actually stood for like a second before falling amazingly fast). IT IS SOOOOOO MUCH FUN - I want to do this more often ...
Now I am kind of getting tired as instead of the siesta we went eating and in an hour we meet up to go out (pretty early for locals, but who cares) in Bideluze and then we will head to the city for some pintxos and "vino especial"-s. I didn't manage to upload more pictures but will try on the weekend.
Hasta Luego!!!
hola chicos!
Todays surf lesson teached us to have respect. Respect for the surfers. This has been my fifth lesson and although I managed to stand up and stay there for like 2 seconds it was a complete coincidence. I think for me to successfully surf it would take months of training (swimming would be a very good idea) as after about 10 minutes of paddling in the water my arms feel like when that spell goes bad in Harry Potter and he looses all his bones. But I still love trying it and I will continue to try because it is a very nice way of exercising and the people are fun. I now have two remaining classes, one tomorrow and one on saturday. I don't expect to stand up and stay like that but in case it happens I will be very proud of myself and will tell everybody I meet that I did it :-)
I am now off to Bideluze to meet with the people from the school and party!!!!
ps: I have found another SD-card with some barcelona photos that I totally forgot about - including pics of parque guell, one of the gaudi houses and his unfinished church, the gaudi museum and more barcelona city pictures. And of course the picture of the half-naked faceless girl sunbathing that you can read about on alba's blog for you perverts :-)
I will try to post them tomorrow. Hasta Luego!!!
I have finally managed to find a really nice internet place in the city where I could burn my pics on DVD and upload some to flickr - so here we go. I will try to fill the past entries also so that the blog looks more colorful again. Also there are some pictures of me with a surfboard (on the beach only unfortunately but it is still more than nothing) but I don't have them yet so they are not there - but they are coming :-)
Also I broke with a tradition and did not upload all the tousands of pictures I have taken here because every minute costs money here so you have to only look at a small selection of the pictures ... I know it's hard, but that's life :-)
Here are the Pics of San Sebastian and here are the ones from Bilbao and here the ones from Barcelona. Or you can look at all of them here. Enjoy!
otherwise there are no real news to report - today the weather is back to normal (no sun, a bit of a rain here and there) so that we paddled for an hour this afternoon without catching a single wave as the waves were also not really there. Next lesson is on friday and we hope it will be fun - according to the tides it should be a very nice day for surfing. If only the weather gods were on our side :-)
tomorrow we go on a boat tour in the afternoon with the school and on the weekend I will probably stay here and enjoy the beach and the bars in the evening.
Hasta Luego!!!
Today has been a great day. After yesterdays weather fiasco today it was sunshine all over the place. School has been great, finally I am getting the feeling that we have built some structure and all I am missing are the words (that's why I will keep it short and go home to practice ...)
After school I went home to sleep a bit and headed back to the city for the surf lesson at 5. The surf course is now fully booked - there are two full courses running more or less in parallel. My new instructor is called Josecho and speaks mostly Spanish. He is much stricter also than the other one - Iker - as he did not allow us to take waves before showing him that we can duck a wave in a secure manner. So we mostly spent the class today paddling around so that when I finally managed to take a wave I did not have the energy to stand up - but I was kneeling for some seconds!!!! So I am very sure that one day I will manage to actually stand on the board for more than a nanosecond. Actually if everything goes according to plan, tomorrow could be the day.
I am also progressing with my Spanish. After the surfing lesson I bought a pair of shoes utilizing only my spanish skills (asking if they have half a size bigger, then asking for the other of the pair and the prize, if I can pay by credit card, etc) - so I am very proud of myself and also motivated to go home and practice, practice and practice.
The only thing missing here is a nice way of getting the pictures from my camera to the internet so I don't have to write so much and can show things with pictures.
AAAAAnyway - I am now going home to do my homework (remember - I am still a Streber) so that's it for today. Please keep me updated on the Frankfurt front by either leaving a comment or dropping me an email or an SMS at my espanish mobile...
Hasta luego!
hola chicos! finally the rain is back to san sebastian and my fingers are frozen from the mega-photo session on the beach. But first things first ...
Barcelona was really great. The Gaudi stuff is simply amazing - church, house, park - he knew what he was doing. Barcelona is - contrary to Frankfurt not a city to look at in one day - in fact, not even a city to look at in two days. So there are more than a couple of things left for my next visit. The only thing I missed during the weekend was the fantastic food of San Sebastian and the even more fantastic prices. In Barcelona you can easily spend 20 and more Euros for one meal - I have not managed to do this in San Sebastian so far. In my eyes pintxos easily win over tapas (contrary to googlefight).
After two days of basically walking at least two marathons in Barcelona (I need to remember to buy a little gadget that actually measures the distances I walk in the future - preferably one that has GPS data that connects to my photos ...) I got on the bus at 23:00 to go back to San Sebastian. We were supposed to be able to sleep on the bus but somehow this did not happen - the seats are numbered normally so people can sleep and are waken up perfectly - as the seats did not have numbers the driver simply told everyone to take any seat - with the consequence of then waking up everybody at every stop. Plus we arrived in San Sebastian in pouring rain ( wearing my flip-flops and bermuda shorts) which made me even happier.
Other than this the day has been pretty cool, spanish lectures are still fun. Surfing did not take place because of the storm outside so we headed for some drinks to a nearby place full of american girls, some local surfers and an immense smell of joints ...
At some point I went for a walk to take some groundbaking shots of the water and the kite-surfers flying around the area - it is now two hours later and my fingers are frozen so I thought I would slowly warm them up by blogging a little. And now as I get tired I will stop and go home to catch up on last night´s sleep ...
a week has gone since I left Frankfurt to come to Spain and learn Spanish and it has been one of the best weeks since a long long time.
Learning a new language is a lot of fun - especially being the Streber that I am. The school is very friendly and the people are fun. Every day or so there is some activity organized by the school so that I got to know people very quickly -even if they hate me for not speaking e-Spanish with them at these events ...(they should teach me quicker if they want this to change :-)
The city of San Sebastian is simply amazing - it is beautiful, the food is unbelievably good and the whole way of eating pintxos is ingenious so that I have been loosing weight constantly without feeling hungry.
The surf classes are another highlight - I actually managed to stand up twice on Thursday (even if only for nanoseconds before plunging into the wave itself) and I can already feel getting addicted to it - I an now booked for the whole next week to have an hour every day so that I hope to satisfy this newly found addiction easily.
On Friday I took the bus to Barcelona to meet Alba there and spend the weekend in a non-Spanish speaking part of Spain...
It is now Saturday evening, shortly after 12, Serbia won the Song contest and I am going to bed to dream of Gaudi towers. Hasta Luego!!!
I finally managed to buy a SIM-card!!! My new number in Spain is +34 638 90 56 60... I am now going home as the internet place is about to close very soon. Good night!!!
ps: ok, just a quick update - the school is very good, there are only two people with pure innocent beginner skills, the rest of the people already can have a proper conversation that goes beyond the "what's your name", "where do you come from" and "what do you do for a living" subjects. Also I figured counting from 1 to 100 is not the best way of getting to know people in bars. So I have to practice, practice and more practice my e-spanish skills.
The city is still exceptionally nice and the weather is finally amazing - I hope it stays the same. I also booked my first surfing lesson for tomorrow afternoon - in full body armor - eh, suit I mean.
I do not even attempt to describe how the food is over here. Let's just say it is a miracle that I am still loosing weight and I simply do not get it, how this happens.
I also have an update on the flatmate front - the swedish girl is still not back. Oh well, having the place for myself is not bad either! Vamos a ver ...
The learning of today happened in the evening on the Bus from Bilbao to San Sebastian. I boarded the bus next to the Stadium in Bilbao (AC Bilbao) at 6 and was on my way to San Sebastian. I had the Streber-Seat right behind the driver and so got all the action directly. The bus driver was pretty cool, he was listening to the radio all the time, driving above speed limits and between the lanes - very Italian actually (ok, like Italians in Germany actually ...) anyway - about 5 minutes before San Sebastian people started shouting some stuff in Spanish from the back seat. Then silence followed, the driver pushed some buttons and the side door of the luggage compartment seemed to be opened and slowly closing. We have been driving with an open side door for a while!!!
Some cars started overtaking us and pointing in various ways in the form of a luggage - so we guessed some must have fallen out. At this point all I had with me in the bus was the book on photography I got for my birthday from my parents and all my luggage including the camera and everything was in the trunk. So the driver got out, called some people on the mobile and then we continued the trip in a deadly silence to our final destination.
Once arrived, he opened the compartment, people actually stormed down the bus and all the trunk was kind of half empty and all the remaining luggage chaotically lying around. thank god my stuff was all there but only because I did spend some extra time putting it exactly in the middle of the bus. So, children - what do we learn out of this event? NEVER PUT YOUR LUGGAGE ON THE SIDE WHEN YOU ARE TAKING A BUS FROM BILBAO TO SAN SEBASTIAN. punto - end of story. I know it was boring but there is a slight learning so stop complaining.
Oh yes - one more thing - the music the bus driver had been listening to sounded like "German Volksmusik" - with the harmonica and the yodelling part :-)
What else happened? I took like 500 pictures of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao that I have uploaded in the meantime so you can check them by clicking on the one below. Ok, it is only a selection, but you get the feeling ...
The building is very impressive, totally worth a visit and it is much better than the stuff being displayed on the inside. Although the Anselm Kiefer exhibition was quite good I must say. Plus that little doggie in the front is just adorable ...
In the end I arrived at San Sebastian totally on time shortly after 7 and walked to my new home for the next three weeks in the Gros area of the city. The Spanish girl I would "share" the flat with is very niiiiice - she works for some bank and looks very spanish and speaks a perfect English - and has very cool friends that were there in the evening. Only problem is, that since 2 weeks she is working in Madrid so she is never there except on the weekends when I am planning to be away. so much for "sharing". Anyway - my other flatmate is a Swedish girl that has a French boyfriend so she was in France for the weekend to see him and is supposedly coming back on Monday. Vamos A ver ...
I also went for a walk to check out the neighbourhood - I live about 5 minutes from the Zurriola beach - the ones with the surfers and about 2 minutes away from the hotel we are going to stay at during the wedding. The city is extremely friendly and beautiful and I am looking forward to spend some quality time here!!!
