a wonderful weekend full of celebrations, lots of eating, drinking, dancing, smiling. Plus an added bonus - Hamburg. Got to go back there some time!!!
I am happy that I finally took the time to tell the world (or at least the ones who read the blog) about the art of cooking a great Hungarian dish called "lecsó". At my last visit to Budapest I managed to visit my grandma and took the opportunity to take some pictures and little movies of her cooking skills. So here we go:
We will need:
I am in Vienna and actually should already be in bed because in less than 6 hours I have to catch a bus to catch a train to ...
Aaaanyways - I took a day off on this historical day. Exactly 7 years ago, on August 15th I moved to Germany. I had a drink in the evening with my friends, went home with Claudia at around 1 in the morning, packed a couple of things and took a plane in the morning to Frankfurt. The rest is history as they say. The plan was to stay 2-3 years and then move on. The first 3 years I was working during the week and traveling to Vienna mostly on the weekends, only after we split up and I started spending more time in Frankfurt have I started liking Frankfurt and meeting people. I changed company once, changed jobs five times, am currently living in my third flat in Frankfurt (not counting the hotel I stayed the first 3 weeks of course) and using my 5. camera to take many many pictures of my life. Only recently am I beginning to get bored with the city but am still reluctant to move and start over somewhere else. Still I am slowly accepting the feeling inside me that there is some kind of a change coming. The feeling reminds me of the matrix movie when Leo asks the oracle about his decision to save trinity - really he is not looking for a decision but for the reason why he has made that particular decision. Ok, I am either overworked or high on some drug they mixed in my tomato juice on the plane - as normally I am not writing about this kind of stuff ...
there is a god.
ok, before I get too philosophical, a couple of really cool things just happened. They showed the new batman movie at the sneak preview and so I am very happy. Plus I went to another speed dating yesterday and had a really fun evening. Got also a couple of matches so we will see. This time there were some really young girls there so I kindof felt old, but only kindof - I mean, 22 is legal, right?
Other than this work is as usual - a lot of the same old stuff. I need to slowly do something about it.
Weekend was great - started going to fitness center again, did a bit of shopping, went to the hairdresser, spent some time on the decks of two beach clubs on top of some of the city park houses, went to Bonn for a birthday brunch, etc. all in all a great summer with friends.
Had two life-threatening experiences with the bike the week before. First I got lost in the woods around the lake in a misty weather, which was really creepy. Then my brakes broke on my way downhill while speeding like hell. I managed to get out of the woods in Walldorf in the end and managed to brake with the front wheel brake without making a triple flip with the bike.
Went to the zoo for a photography course the weekend before - it was fun but didn't learn too many new things.
Have booked a trip to Vienna for next weekend - I will also visit my grandma in Budapest and the parents at the lake. then 3 more days in Vienna - maybe a visit at the Rathausplatz or the sneak preview, it doesn't matter what, Vienna will be cool :)
Now I go to bed and dream about things to come...
Just came back from the sneak preview and thought I drop a couple of lines. I liked this movie a lot - and not only because of Sienna Miller. There is nothing new about showing people around Andy Warhol taking drugs and living on the edge but it is one of the few films that shows Andy and / or any great artist in a somewhat less good light. The movie is very much like Basquiat but this time the story is really not about Warhol but Edie Sedgwick - who is perfectly portrayed by Sienna Miller. The factory, New York, Paris, horses, central park, Chelsea Hotel, etc. It's all there!!!
I haven't posted too much last week because I was working. And was working too much actually. After almost two weeks of working (including the weekend) I started to feel like Ben Affleck in Paycheck (another great movie by the way) only without all the money and the girl waiting for him. Anyways - I stopped working on Friday and we went to see Get Smart - which was just perfect for a Friday night. Then party on Saturday at our place, Clubkeller later on (gotta remember to go back on a Saturday as it was just perfect) and Sunday was spent at the swimming pool, eating good old Sunday Steak at Buena Vista and then watching Mamma Mia, which was just great. The singing is fantastic, especially Mr. ex-Bond is just, well, I don't know what to say. You should figure it out for yourself :-)
And now the hot summer has finally arrived so I am sure there will be more movie nights approaching as our second floor is somewhat hot so that it is not an option to stay at home in the evening. We shall see ...
just finished watching the new batman movie - totally illegally from the internet (didn't download, just watched online). The quality was miserable but at least I got the story. I never did this before and I don't intend to make a habit out of it and I am pretty sure I will go and watch it again in a cinema as soon as it comes out so it shouldn't be soooooooooooo illegal. I just couldn't wait a whole month until it comes officially to Germany just because some smartass marketing person decided there were enough other good movies already in the cinema this summer and this way they could get more money out of the summer movies. end of story. punkt.
I have to admit I have been pretty lame lately. No blogging, no more picture uploads on flickr, no more other stuff. I don't know why - the main thing is that I am back in Frankfurt and my PC is up and running again. I have to check the old hard disk for any data that might still be there and then we will see. The weather gods seem to be on my side so there is a slight chance that I will spend some time at home this weekend. Oh, one more thing. I have read this book on the plane to Vienna last weekend. It is a very nice book that I can totally recommend. 
I am back in Vienna again - after flying to FFM on Tuesday evening and flying back yesterday. Wednesday evening we watched Germany - Turkey from our living room stadium. I really need to brainstorm on this idea of turning the living room into a stadium for such events by using the beamer and the TV and potentially my TFT. We are only missing one sofa and then there shouldn't be an issue. Well, we will see...
It was my mum's birthday yesterday so we will celebrate that with a fantastic BBQ today for lunch (well, there go my diet plans...) and I will most likely meet up with some people in the city tonight. Tomorrow I would like to spend some time at the beach, and by beach I mean the "Alte Donau" and then watch the game somewhere.
I just got another email from facebook with another personality hint. This time I feel that I will probably have to start inviting my friends more for dinner and also start making more public speeches:
This email was sent by Compare People. You can disable emails here.
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Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses:
STRENGTHS:
most organized
best catch
most creative
WEAKNESSES:
best public speaker
best dinner companion
So, what else happened recently? It is very funny how people in different cultures have a different way of queuing up. I remember learning about queuing in my English class in Hungary. The first thing we learned was that it was not called queuing all around the world. Of course I don't really remember any more all that stuff so I had to look it up in Wikipedia:
The term "queue" is used more in British English, while the word "line" is used mostly in American English. Most of the United States "get in line," whereas New Yorkers tend to "get on line." Canadians use the term "line up." In the United Kingdom the expressions "form a queue" or "queue up" are most common.
The first queue related incident happened about two weeks ago when Estelle and I were shopping and we did the infamous "queue in two lines at the same time" cheat. Of course a guy behind Estelle felt totally offended by the concept and I couldn't be bothered to explain him that if he was standing behind one of us, he must have arrived after us at the counter so that he should have just shut his big mouth and let us pay first, but anyway. Maybe I learn karate or kickboxing and then go back with Estelle to repeat the experiment.
Then yesterday I noticed there were two cash machines at the airport and both were busy so I decided to form a single line in the middle. Of course the next 2-3 people who followed didn't get my idea and when I went to the next machine, the fight started on who was here first at the other machine and who was queuing properly and so on. People can be such fantastic guinea pigs ...
I just finished reading "Flowers for Algernon" - it shocked me twofold. First because the whole story takes place in New York (is this a sign or something?) and secondly because I knew I read part of the book when I was in school but I only remembered at the last chapter that I have read the whole book once.
Please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.
Just recieved an update from facebook from the "Compare People" application:
This email was sent by Compare People. You can disable emails here.
---
Changes in your ranks:
#6 person who can drink the most (lost 1 place)
#7 most famous (gained 4 places)
#8 most studious (gained 10 places)
#10 nicest smelling (lost 2 places)
#12 most powerful (lost 1 place)
So what does this mean? According to my friends I need to drink more (no surprise there), I am getting more famous (very good) and I study too much (don't know what this means). I also stink and am not as powerful as I could be. I go take a shower now and will then brainstorm on my masterplan to become ruler of the universe. All of them. Good night!
just a quick update again. When I came back from Barcelona I realised that my vista pc won't boot and now there is a message saying that the hard disk is more or less kaputto. So the nice little dwarfs will send me a new one in about 10 days. Oh, and because I never created those system recovery DVDs, I have to purchase them for 40 Euros. Another lesson learned ...
So I am afraid there won't be an update in the next couple of days. No tales of my New York trip, or the weekend visit of Preeti and Sameer in Antwerp. The story of the extremely cool trip to Barcelona last weekend will have to wait a bit as well.
Ok, I admit. The real reason is that instead of blogging I am travelling again (I am in Vienna and will stay here until Tuesday) plus there is the football cup that I am kind of getting addicted to. I want to see Germany vs. Italy in the finals. So there it is, I said it. Good night!
Barcelona is great. A fantastic city with great people, amazing food, fantastic shops and a nice beach to top it off. the last days have been great. The radiohead concert, seeing Mario, meeting Leire and Jorge, getting sunburned on the playa, eating pulpo and more. Now that we are packed, we will go for desayuno and after that I have to find a nice way to spend the remaining day. I am pretty sure something will come up..
The real reason i travel so much is that this way i have a better chance of having my camera checked regularly for explosives. So i am happy to report that my digital camera does not contain any explosives. Thanks for checking, dear security people in frankfurt!
The only thing that makes me wonder a bit is that i shaved and still they picked me?
Now i will switch off my mobile because i dont want them to check me in any similar way than what the did to my camera:-)
just finished watching the game. italy lost big time - holland played really well I must say. Until now Portugal, Germany and Holland performed really well - Holland & Germany were the best. Also I am pretty happy with the Austrian team, which did surprisingly well in their first game. Go Austria!!!
One more thing: a new iPhone has been announced. It has GPS, UMTS, it can fly and is going to be much cheaper than the current models (199$ for the 8GB one, 299$ for the 16 GB one). It will be available from July 11th. So I need to plan my next trip to the US I suppose.
The hostel for Barcelona is booked - we are flying on Wednesday. As usual, I will be sitting at the back of the plane I hope - because I always suspected this was true. Good night!!!
Another sneak preview - another shitty movie. shame on you, Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler (I didn't realize it was him until I saw the poster - even though the stupid accent was in front of my face all the time!!!)
I don't really know where to start as a lot's of things have happened and are still happening so I will just try to do my best:
so last Thursday I went to Düsseldorf for business which was not really necessary in the end but turned out to be pretty cool BECAUSE this way I went to Brussels one day before it was planned. And met Gabor again, who I haven't really talked to for many years (except the occasional happy birthday Zsugabubus stuff - no comment, if you don't get it, too bad)
So it was pretty cool to catching up and having an honest discussion about how things were going in life.
Two more funny things happened this day. I had a bit more than an hour in Cologne to switch trains coming from Düsseldorf and so I deposited my luggage at the train station to head to the city for a quick walk. They have these super-ultra-modern machines that take your luggage underground like an elevator so basically you have one door where everybody puts in their stuff and then it is transferred to some huge hole underground and thrown on a big pile. When it is time to get it back, the little dwarfs then need to search through the pile and find the exact piece of luggage you deposited. They work pretty fast so normally it is not an issue. Except when there is a big Schwarzenegger-kind-of-guy in front of you who just deposited his luggage and he won't let you put in your card into the slot to collect your luggage because "this locker is occupied". Meaning basically that he wasn't familiar to the whole "one-locker-big-pile-underneath" principle. I tried explaining it to him but failed miserably so in the end a friendly deutsche-bahn-person had to come and help out. I got my luggage back and the dwarfs could continue working.
The other thing happening was not really funny but cool as I had an immense amount of mussels in white wine sauce in one of the touristic restaurants in the Brussels city center.
So then on Friday I worked in the Brussels office bumping into a lot of old colleagues. Was pretty cool. And then in the early afternoon I boarded a train to the city of Gent to attend the wedding of Nancy and Tom. 
It was a real cool wedding - we were so lucky with the weather it was extremely cool. Plus There was Andrea and Rahul and many many more people I haven't met for a long time. ´Plus a wonderful boat ride. The food was fantastic (especially the Fritten on the first night - sorry Alba) but the wedding dinner was the highlight. First I was disappointed that we didn't have big amounts of food but then I thought it was much better this way. We had 7 or 8 different courses and were not dead afterwards. The food was simply fantastic. When I grow up and will be rich, I want this kind of food all the time.
The hotel was nice and I can totally recommend this region for people who are in love - maybe it was the fact that there were so many couples around, maybe the food, the good weather, maybe something else - just take my word for it.
The way back was a bit flat - by flat I mean my ass basically as I sat through the ride in the middle back seat of Jack's car - but it was a lot of fun - thanks again for everybody involved :)
We made some plans for Monday to go to some beach near Frankfurt (basically we never learn ...) but it became pretty clear on Monday that this would not happen. So I took my camera and my bike and went biking next to the river. It was a pretty good track and I ended up at the airport taking some pictures of planes flying by. Needless to say there were other freaks with bigger better cameras than me so it was a little frustrating. Well at least I didn't need a ladder to take my pictures...
the rest of the week can be summed up by this dilbert comic:
well, at least the first two cells - the last part is not really what was important, but I took it as a sign and started to go through my to-do-list with a bit more energy after having slept only 3 hours before my Friday presentation to my team.
OK now I need to speed up because I am going to New York tomorrow and I am not really packed (as usual, which basically means that the last paragraph was bullshit. Hmmm - makes me think...)
So on Saturday Rodrigo & Rosella announced that they were going to get married. Congrats and at the same time this reminds me of course of the clock ticking - tick-tack-tick-tack. Another bike trip this Sunday and as of Monday morning I am below 80Kg for 3 consecutive days! Whoo - hoo!!!
Then yesterday I went to the sneak preview to check it out after a very long time. The movie was surprisingly good - one of those movies I would not have seen if not shown in the sneak so that I am really glad I went. It is called "Leatherheads" and it is the new George Clooney movie - pretty authentic and funny.
The other thing that happened yesterday was, that Köpeck died. My beloved dog (technically he wasn't mine, but I guess a lot of people called him "our dog"). I spent so much time with him when I was still living in Vienna - I remember being left there with him during Claudias visit to Peru only shortly after he started getting used to me when he wouldn't eat anything as he was missing Claudia and I had to play with him for hours to make him eat. And those other times when I was studying and went for long walks almost every day just to be back at home for the "Mittags-Journal" for lunch and he would act like he hadn't watched me eating so that he would get the rests of the food when I was finished. We took him everywhere - to Hungary where people usually don't take their dogs with them; we took him to all kinds of places in Austria and once he even saw the Stephansdom from the inside (yes, we got thrown out).
I am really glad he was part of my life and although I am sad I will never play with him again, at the same time I am happy because I know he had a fantastic life.
Now I will stop writing because (as mentioned before) I am still not packed and it is now almost midnight so I will have to start NOW.
I almost forgot the celebrity gossip news of the week:
- Eugenio and Maike got married last Friday
- Tina and Peter are engaged
- Elisabeth and Peter are engaged (another Peter ;)
- Scarlett and Ryan are also engaged.
Here is a photo of one of the happy couples - guess which one :-)
the winner gets some food or a piece of Sacher-Torte the next time I bring one from Vienna.
I just came home from a last minute shopping before leaving tomorrow towards Gent for Nancy & Tom's wedding. The plan is to go to Düsseldorf tomorrow for business then to Brussels in the evening, work from Brussels on Friday and then take the train to Gent in the afternoon so that I can join everybody for the dinner. I am excited and happy about traveling again, as usual ...
Anyway, what I really wanted to write is that I feel great. The city is full of happy people, the sun is shining and I even had one of those -hagen-dazs-2-minutes-of-pleasure-eternity-in-hell extremely delicious and hopelessly overpriced ice creams.
I am now going to pack and try to go to bed in time as my train leaves at 7AM tomorrow morning.
I always wanted to go to a horserace. It was pretty exciting for the first 90 minutes or so. You go watch the horses, go bet on them, go sit down and watch the race, curse and throw away the betting papers and then you go watch the horses for the next round. The most fun involved is watching the people around or practise your photography skills. Till next time ...
just finished watching Germany's next Topmodel. Sarah is out - finally. They kicked her out because she believed less in herself than the jury did in her. Not because she was ugly. I actually don't think she is ugly. She has issues walking but on the pictures she looks pretty amazing. Also I can't believe they actually dug out Erika Eleniak. The one and only from baywatch and red alert. Whatever way you want to remember her. I don't know how old she is now but somehow her face looks like it has gone through some unnatural upgrades during the last couple of years. She was there to run along the girls on the beach. Hmmm - Interesting. I wonder what she is up to these days. If I remember right from her Playboy video, she has a couple of dogs she likes... I couldn't help but looked her up on imdb and she seemed to have played in E.T! I bet you didn't know that!!! Funny.
On other news we have been hiking today somewhere in the south - it was supposed to be a Weinwanderung where people walk and drink some wine but I didn't drink any. I am currently uploading the pictures to flickr. In the meantime here is a picture. Can you spot my four companions? (Click on the picture to get a bigger version. Here is the answer)
You can find all the pictures here.
UPDATE: of course the batman trailer is no longer on youtube. I will put up a link as soon as I see it becoming available
Just finished watching the new batman trailer. You can watch the original one on the official website and the new leaked one on youtube. I must have watched it like 5 times in a row and I still can't stop watching it.
There was this actor called Heath Ledger. He died last year of some kind of medicine / drug overdose in a hotel room. And I thought at the time - too bad, another one of these young actors incapable of dealing with their successes. I remember my ex-girlfriend watching a movie called "10 things I hate about you" like 13 times within 3 weeks a couple of years earlier and telling me all about how cool that movie was - this alone made me want to not watch it. But in the end I watched it and it was pretty cool. Then there was this other movie called "A knight's tale" which I absolutely loved. A perfect combination of a love story, rock music, some heroic scenes of fighting and humor. Heath Ledger was also in that one. He was also nominated for an Oscar for Brokeback Mountain, married to Jen from Dawson's creek and divorced later. He knew the Olson twins. The whole thing was so bizarre and so Hollywood.
His second last role was Joker in the new batman movie - which was totally ignored by me until I saw the trailer. I know this has been done before, but not this dark. Not this graphic. Just listening to the trailer without the mind-blowing images is great.
Heath Ledger is simply great - and I am sooooo looking forward to watching the whole movie in the cinema - hopefully in a fully air-conditioned one with THX this summer. All I have to do is move to a city where there is one ...
just when you thought the British would be silent during the European Cup in June ...
