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.

Xmas. Well, kind of ...

I am at the airport waiting for my flight to Vienna. As i died last night, i had to manage working and packing at the same time today. Not so suprisingly didnt manage to finish what i wanted so that i will have to do some work over the coming days. Which is ok as long as i manage to finish before going to the mountains next friday to board the one-and-a-half meters of snow :-)
What a december, i dont remember looking forward to atoming (I wanted to say bumming but my mobiles T9 dictionary does not seem to understand me too well and i like atoming somehow ...) at home so much ever. So, enough for today - i dont want to shock you with too much new stuff after such a long break.

I'll be back ...

After almost 2 months of silence here and some facebook activity I will soon start blogging again. Here is a self-motivating video to help along the way. See you soon!

moving

Just came home after helping Estelle move her stuff to our new place and having a wonderful dinner on Schweizer Strasse. This week has been a very busy one.

I started going through my stuff at home a while ago and this week my little flat reached a state where I was happy to invite people over and show it. After unsuccessfully advertising in the company and the Austrian mailing list (they never sent out my email ...) I entered the details on www.wg-gesucht.de as suggested by Blanca (THANKS!!!) on Tuesday. The stupid thing was that immediately after entering I had to go to the post office to pick up a book I ordered for my parents and I was stupid enough to leave my mobile at home. I had 5 missed calls and 2 messages once I returned and many more called once I arrived at home. In the end I showed the flat to 10 people - most of them wanted it. And as it turns out, they also want my furniture so I will make quite a good deal on it in the end - well, good enough to buy some new stuff for the new flat... We will decide tomorrow who gets it so I hope to close this chapter very soon. I have loved the time spent in my little flat and I will be leaving it happily now that it has been cleaned and my stuff sorted and lot of it thrown away.

I will write about the new flat once I move all my stuff over and will show some pictures soon. Now I have to prepare for the weekend as we go hiking tomorrow and I haven't even packed anything. After that I go to bed as I am tired like hell. I am sooooo tired the most I could achieve at the moment is similar to what is shown on this video. Good night!

the kingdom

Finally a cool movie at the sneak preview!!! And as nobody wanted to go with me, I went alone. The movie is one of the tensest movies I have seen in a long time. Is "tensest" even a word? I am not sure, but what I mean is similar to what happened to me when I watched Match Point and got completely angry. Only this time I stopped breathing for a while, put my fingers in my mouth and started chewing my nails off - which I never do! It kind of starts crazy - you hold your breath for a while then it slows down and then it speeds up. And even as the end of the story is very American / Hollywood style, the last sentence of the movie manages to make you think and summarise the f***ed up situation we are in at the moment.

I absolutely loved the opening credits - I found them on youtube so you can watch them here. Of course I don't know how much of this stuff is true but it is certainly well made.

sometimes you have to see a movie twice ...

... to really like it. I just finished watching gladiator and I must admit I enjoyed it a lot. I remember going on the first night it came out in Vienna many years ago to the Haydn cinema and being really disappointed. It starts kind of boring but becomes very passionate and the music is simply amazing. It is interesting to see how soundtracks get re-used as it has the same title melody as pirates of the caribbean - which was shot three years later (Hans Zimmer this time). Plus I guess it influenced also 300 - which just came out last year. Very cool.

What else happened today? I finally checked out facebook and went to the Städel museum. Now I am going to bed to start the week not too tired. It is a strange feeling to have probably spent the last weekend in my current flat.

I am finishing this entry with a video I found on youtube that will only be understood by my Hungarian readers (so basically my parents as my brother never remembers the address of my blog). It's very funny because what happened is that there is a song from Scandinavia that is basically of course not in Hungarian but it can be read in Hungarian in which case it consists of small Hungarian (well, more or less) sentences - of course completely bullshit if read together, but the sentences more or less make sense by themselves. Very funny in a geeky way. Good night!!!



Oops - almost forgot. An orangutan called Sibu prefers tattooed blondes to female orangutans. Read here. No Joke!

lazy saturday

The party at Leire's place yesterday was a lots of fun. Excellent food, excellent wine (unfortunately not only excellent but also too much ...) and a lot of old songs. I also managed to push my bike home after the party - which was a real effort with all the wine circulating in my veins. Spent the rest of the day going through my stuff for the move, checking out hotels in Athens and this new tool called twitter.

Now I am going to have a short fiesta before going to 6ixty2 to meet the others. Enjoy the weekend!!!

weekend :-)

It's Friday night and I am very much looking forward to the weekend after a busy day. Believe it or not, I did a lot today. Now I am off for a very nice Spanish dinner.

Check out this video - I think it is hilarious - turn up the volume to catch the full impact of the hunt!

find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it

a fascinating talk on happiness and terrorism that made me put "The Selfish Gene" on my amazon wish list.

quick update

No updates in the last month although lot of things have happened - or maybe this is the reason ...

Anyway - I have taken some serious progress toward reaching a borg-like status by purchasing a GPS tracker device so I can start geotagging my life and the pictures I take along.



Also there are some cool new tools on the net that I am playing with - so there might be an update soon...

Update

I am in my hotel room in Basel and have some time to write this update. The weekend was great - the second wedding of Jasmina and Jack was quite a cool experience - I took off Friday as we had to be at the Airport at 12. We used the time waiting at the gate to make some phone calls to some of the flats we have found on immobilienscout24 - and got an appointment for Monday night for our future flat (we didn't know at the time of course). The plane was pretty much delayed half an hour - as expected with Alitalia but other than that no complaints. In Milan we met Alba and flew to Skopje together. There we got passport-checked and could enter the country more or less quickly (Alba and I more, Estelle less) and picked up the luggage of Peter, which Alitalia conveniently lost on their way. We got picked up by a taxi driver, who brought us to the car, let us in, switched on his CD-player with some techno music and we left. It reminded me of a couple of years ago in Hungary when everybody was listening to this kind of music and in the next hours I hinted to the driver that I want that music - but he didn't get it so I didn't get it ...
We arrived late around 8 and went for some food, which was very much to my liking. They have a cucumber + tomato + cheese salad that is amazing. I had a kind of cordon bleu in the form of a moon. But first we met Blanca and Maria in their winter outfits, Jack, the sister and Jasmina - all wearing their winter outfits. According to some rumours there was summer only 2 days before than it started to rain and got cold. Yeah, right! After dinner I went to a club with the Spanish group and had a beer called Skopska.
The next day we woke up to an absolutely dream scenery - the sun was shining!!! We went on a city tour, met Jack and his dad on the way to the hill and I was back in time to shave, have a giant pizza and get ready for the party. The party was fantastic, starting in Jasminas place in the city and continuing in a monastery 30 km away from Ohrid city - next to the lake and the Albanian border. Great food, great drinks (rakja), great dancing, etc. a perfect wedding party basically.
Sunday we went back home - first by car to Skopje, then by plane to Milan, then a quick race through the controls so we would not miss our connection to Frankfurt.

All in all the weekend was totally worth it - even if the travel was quite heavy. Click on the picture below to access all pics - including similar stupid ones inspired by a very nice alcoholic drink called rakja ...

home sweet home

I am back but am very busy as I am going to Basel tomorrow for business. Will only be back on Thursday evening and am going to Brussels on Friday for the weekend. I will upload the pictures from the wedding celebration soon as I find some time. In the meantime another classic moment - I heard this on the radio this morning. Herr Stoiber explains the advantages of the Trans-Rapid for München and the airport. It's in German - don't worry if you don't understand it, it's not your language skills :-)

@home

At precisely 22:00 we left the airport, took a taxi and i am now at home. Und aus!

sauna

In the bus ... Which means we got our connection :-)

Slight delay in Milano

... of 35 minutes. Sports exercise to follow to catch our connection ...

Goodbye macedonia

Just boarded the smallest plane ever (except the one i flew in to stockholm years ago) with 500 denars in my pocket because they only sold shit at the gate. Another country taken off the todo list :-)

Going home

We had a nice breakfast today,went to the city for a tonic and some shopping and are now in a big car in direction skopje airport. I wish i could stay here longer in Ohrid - its a beautiful place and it reminds me of hungary.

sunshine

Deep discussions on apple pricing. I started it so i cannot complain. Another nice day outside. Too bad we are leaving.

Game over

Going home a bit tired after a great party. I hope the ride is smoother than on the way to the place. There are thousands of stars out there. Good night!

I love

I am dptmj g thmj. G am gatgmg tn mtag dtm tn4t. Gnd m4t amd gnd jtaj.

Rakja? Rakia?

Dont know how to spell it but it warms you up :-)

Officially blessed

Its done. They have been blessed and we moved into a warmer place. We need a bigger church next time.

First act

In the car on our way to the church where ze ceremony will take place. The reception at the summer house overlooking the ancient arena was cool. The food good according to the people who had some - i was still busy with the pizza in my belly...

Liveblogging continues

Half an hour to get ready after a large pizza. Should have taken the medium one (as always)

Mahlzeit!

Pizza time :-)

Back at the hotel

Just came back to the hotel after the city tour. I must say that they really take care of the place. The view at the lake is superb, only a few stray dogs - all in all a cool place, just too bad there is no easy way of coming here (except from amsterdam with some cheap airline as our guide told us). I didnt want to go shopping because I would only buy crap anyway. Except sunglasses - I really need sunglasses! Now i go shave and have lunch after.

Hello Jack!

The city tour is cool!

695 meters above sea level

Now we go touristic.

Looky looky it's a mirakel!

The sun is shining! Really! Not only above the sky but everywhere! And the view is beautiful. Beautiful! Estelle says hi. Its a nice contrast to yesterdays weather. Now i go exchange my bedcloth against some proper clothes and go have a huge breakfast! (no lunch planned today - like yesterday actually)