dark - darker - the dark knight

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 ...

And I also hope I won't be watching this one with somebody who gets embarrassed when I cheer at the end of the trailer just like the guys watching it in the youtube video.

PS: I know I am hopeless and I JUST DON'T CARE :-)

say NO to pie and YES to paella

just when you thought the British would be silent during the European Cup in June ...

free ride

I am going to Vienna tomorrow for the weekend so it is time for a quick review of the last couple of days.


I spent the weekend taking pictures attending a photography course on the basics as a follow-up to the portraits course I attended a while ago. We went through the basics on Friday night (aperture, shutter speed, focal length, ISO) and then talked about a couple of affects we can do. Similar to the last course I had one of those mind-blowing experiences when they explained how to use my camera - another RTFM classic - I could have read the manual instead of spending 83 Euros on the course but this was much more fun. The course was a lots of fun as usual - despite the constant rainfall the whole Saturday. We shot raindrops, ghosts, bridges and ghost trains. And much more. You can look at all the pics here.


Saturday night we had another party in our flat - to celebrate Estelle and my 29th Birthday - it was her first and my not first... And I got more presents!!!

Also I am happy to report that not only have I completely rearranged my room but had a little experiment with my camera and a small Sideshow Bob figure.


Last but not least a small tip on how to earn a couple of Euros when travelling. I wanted to buy a ticket for the underground but the machine decided to take my money but keep the ticket. I ended up buying a ticket with my cash card after loosing €1.10 this way. The friendly ladies gave me back my €1.10 without any proof that the above happened on Hauptwache. All I had to give them was the registration number of the machine and when it happened. No identification asked. Good to know ...

PS: I am currently reading this book. It is pretty amazing so I have to read it slowly. I got the idea of reading it after watching this presentation by Al Gore

oscar is sick

somehow this video is funny and sad at the same time. just to put things into perspective ...

kater ist nicht gleich kater

I went jogging yesterday. I did a 4 km circle around the Eiserner Steg on both sides of the river and spent the evening at home as I was too lazy to go to the sneak preview afterwards.
Of course my legs hurt like hell today. Of course I went jogging again. Of course it didn't help. There is an old saying that goes something like "the best way getting rid of a hangover is to continue drinking". Obviously this does only work with hangover, but not the pain after an extreme jogging exercise...

Anyways, we had nice Lebanese food at the diversity Stammtisch near Bockenheim. Much better than McDonalds of course - I am only comparing so that I can have a reference to this video...

the running man

I just found this video on MC HAMMER's blog (yes, he has one - haha) - I need more of this!!!

don't look at me!!!

I am finished with cleaning the kitchen. Today I successfully made "Pulpo De Gallega". But it wasn't easy. I bought a pulpo yesterday at HIT after basically bumping into it and thought - let's give it a try ...

So I asked the guy at the fish counter if the octopus was ready for cooking and after a confirming YES I was ready to go. I picked up the ingredients after having found a recipe on the internet. This was yesterday. We were playing wii at Jack's place yesterday night and so today afternoon was Pulpo time.

I opened the package and wanted to start when I discovered, the octopus was actually looking back at me!!!! I thought it was ready to be cooked and so but it actually had the head and everything!!! I mean it was cleaned and so on but those eyes!!!! And so I began cutting off the legs and I had to hold the head and it was the size of a lemon and hard and slimy to it didn't feel nice. But I managed. And so 4 hours later and with a little help from my friends we had a wonderful dinner. I have to remember to fill up the kitchen with things like potatoes for next time so when I invite a couple of friends over for dinner they don't have to bring and cook half the dishes...

cool

maybe I will get one of those in the end ...

preparation preparation preparation

it is the second evening of walking through the city with my camera trying to capture the luminale and at the same time trying to improve my photography skills. After yesterday's lesson which focused on how to keep my camera dry in pouring rain, todays lesson is called "preparation preparation preparation". Therefore I compiled a list of things to do before going out to the city the next time to take pictures. Some of them are obvious (you would think ...)

1.) bring a towel
2.) bring a small flashlight
3.) check lens settings - especially if the "automatic focus" is properly selected
4.) check all other settings of the camera. Especially the sensitivity settings and the ISO level
5.) charge all batteries

Points 1 and 2 were the learnings of Wednesday evening. Point 3 became obvious to me after 2 hours of taking pictures and then checking the results for a change. Point 4 about 15 minutes later when asking myself why the pictures are so dark when taking them with manual settings. Point 5 joined the others on the list about an hour later while reshooting all the pictures taken earlier with proper settings.

Nevertheless I am happy with the results.

for Alba

I don't get it ...

bad joke

my April 1st joke didn't really work out the way it was planned. I guess my blog should be more alive in order to shock people by not blogging any more ... Still Alba and Petero - got you!!!

32!

It was fantastic to have brunch at my place for my birthday. We were 20 people and it turned out to be pretty fantastic - it was a very happy day and as I am writing these lines, I am listening to some music on my new AKG K141 STUDIO headphones. Thanks everybody!!!

blog no more

After seeing another disturbing movie at the sneak yesterday I have decided to go on an internet diet and stop blogging. Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!

lot's of things to do ...

- check out how to get to the company wintergames next weekend
- check which day we can go see "A picasso" in the English theatre until April 6th
- check if I can get tickets to Jean Michel Jarre for April 15th in Frankfurt
- invite people for the birthday party on the weekend of April 19th
- check out how to get to Budapest / Vienna on the weekend of April 26th
- check out how to get to Nancy&Tom's wedding the weekend of the May 10th
- check out how to get to the Radiohead concert in Barcelona on June 12th
- think about my vacation plans for this year

All these things are rather urgent still I am not in the mood of doing any of the above. Still I feel very satisfied with the list actually. So I will leave it at that and will go back watch TV or something.

One more thing: here is a video I found on youtube that made me smile. If you don't know why, you are probably too young ... or simply haven't seen it ever on MTV in the good old days when MTV was still playing music clips

snowing in amsterdam

Just realized I haven't written on my blog since two weeks. Weird. I am in Amsterdam for the long weekend with my brother and it has been snowing all day. I arrived late last night in pouring rain, today it was sunny and snowing. We are renting a car tomorrow and go somewhere - we still need to figure out where, we will see. We are watching Amelie on TV and as I told me brother that I totally don't remember this movie although I saw and liked it he told me: "Actually you are lucky with your shitty memory - you can relive things twice, hahaha". Hahaha - so here is a quick recap of the last two weeks before I completely forget.

The sneak preview used to be an exciting place to go to. The concept is to go see a movie that is new so nobody in the audience has seen it before and the best part is that you can actually enjoy the movie without seeing anything before. So basically without having seen the best scenes already in a trailer or having read in a magazine about the ending. Two weeks ago the sneak preview was just perfect from this POV. The movie shown was "DEFINITELY, MAYBE" and it has the cheeeeesiest poster of all times. A tipical chick flick, but I loved it somehow. (it's not bad to have really good looking actresses play in a movie).


The other good thing happened to me was stumbling upon a movie called "Battle Royale" on youtube about a class of 15 year olds who are forced to kill each other off on a remote island in a futuristic asian state. I thought the movie was new and so I ordered to book to be ready for it when it hits the movies. The book turned out to be 600 pages long, really readable and graphic, and I spent a couple of days (and nights) reading it. Then Ute told me the movie actually was old and not new and I checked it on wikipedia - it was true. It's also pretty interesting why the movie was never shown in the US or Germany - and after reading the book I am not sure I want to see the movie. Not the fact that 15 year old people are killed off, not even the fact that they are killed without reason, but the fact that they are murdered by their 15 year old friends is the part which makes people nervous. I totally understand, still can totally recommend the book - not for the beach but for lonely winter nights at home.


On Thursday we played football and for the first time in my life I felt I played really good. I actually scored a couple of goals - Ok, I also let some in, but that is normal. And about 40 minutes into the game my feet started to hurt like hell and I had to stop. I have these pains since I played football in Brussels a while ago on a weekend. Since then from time to time my left leg hurts like hell (after a day of snowboarding or a long run in the fitness center. But of course I never went to a doctor. So I ended up in the hospital on Friday morning to figure out what the hell was going on. After a quick touchy-touchy by the doctor and one x-ray which took 3 hours I was let go with a "heel spur" diagnose. (I figured this out via wikipedia by looking up Fersensporn - which is the same in German) So I got some little pillows to put into my shoe and an appointment with the doctor for the 1st of April to go back for a checkup. We will see ...

I have been wanting to sign up for a course on photography for years but never found a course. So I was very happy to see that there was a remaining slot for a weekend course open on short notice so I took my chance and signed up for a portraits course that started the same day. The course turned out to be about portrait photography in a studio and showed us how to use the flash in a professional way. There were two guys from Fotostudio Baumann, Arno and Robert, the owner. The participants were all kinds of people from around Frankfurt, some annoying, some cool. We spent Friday night with the equipment and got to learn how the flash works, how to measure the light, etc. We also set our cameras to ISO 200, 1/125 and 11 and were more or less asked to leave it like that for the whole weekend. The first thing we learned was how to use a second light (called Streiflicht in German) to create professional looking pictures like this one:


I also noticed that - similar to an experience on top of one of the nice Gaudí hauses in Barcelona last summer - I needed a new camera...

On Saturday we were shooting a model in the same setup and learned all kind of things about different styles to be used, called high-key and low-key, etc. It was a very interesting day and I learned a lot about light and its affects despite the fact that I doubt ever to posess any of the flash equipment we were dealing with in my life. Well you can rent the studio for 25 Euros per hour so you never know. Here is a picture of the setup used to shoot the pictures:


I met up with Jack and Alba for lunch after the course on Saturday, dropped Jack off at the airport and we had Celine over for dinner for the evening. The third day of the course we went to the Shirn Cafe for brunch and final discussion of the pictures. Even though I wasn't very happy with the pics on my camera, the actual paper photos looked pretty good. This was the first time I went for brunch in the Shirn Cafe, for 14 Euros it is a total rip-off unless you also want to have lunch there. The choice is extremely little, the waiters not particularly fast or caring... Later another place nearby, then I managed to use my Barometer vouchers for the first time this year in Teelirium on Berger Strasse with Simone, Mane and Kasturi, who came a little later. I went home afterwards and continued playing on my new Vista computer, that I bought from the employee shop for 333 Euros. I even managed to play C&C part 3 on it. Sueeeeeeet!

The week after went by without major news items. A crappy movie at the sneak (the only good part of it being Marisa Tomei walking around half naked most of the time) called before the devil knows you are dead, some nice Indian food on Tuesday night (really nice), swimming on Wednesday and coming to Amsterdam on Thursday evening. I read the entire "Die Zeit" in the train - though it was more boring than usual. I go back watch Amelie now...

pirate joke of the day

I found this one on palmjokes.com and liked it somehow. Don't know why but I did. So here goes - don't forget to roll those rrrrrrrr-s:

A pirate walks into a bar, sits down and orders a beer. The bartender hands the pirate the beer and notices a steering wheel sticking out of the pirates pants. Rather concerned, the bartender asks: "Hey, did you know you have a steering wheel sticking out of your pants?". The pirate looks up from his beer and says: "Arrrrrrr, yes and its driving me nuts!"

Hope you didn't forget rolling those rrrrrrrr-s in there!

a new week

I am in Düsseldorf again this week – hopefully my last week spent here. It is actually pretty cool to be working face to face with people but I would rather spend my evenings at home than at work or in some hotel at the end of the world.

So last Thursday it was finally time to go home. Having chosen the last train to drop me off in Frankfurt I asked the guy at reception to call me a taxi that can be paid by credit card. To be honest I never understood why Germany lives in the stone age when it comes to paying with credit cards – in the Nordic countries it is perfectly normal to pay with your credit card whatever small amount you are spending while it is almost impossible to get a cab in Frankfurt if you tell them you want to pay by credit card before getting into a car. Try it next time at the airport after landing from a non-Euro country and so having no Euros in your pocket and you will see for yourself what I am talking about ...

Aaaanyway – I got into the taxi and left for the train station just in time to catch my train. Needless to say, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut so I asked the driver if he had heard that I only have a credit card because I have no other means of paying. And of course he didn’t have a machine in his car for that. After a 5 minute discussion and a 2 minute lecture about the most recent swear word additions to the German language I promised him to transfer the money the next day and off we went to the train station. Good to know that either I am good at bullshitting people (which I know I am – at least sometimes) or that there is some good out there left in this world. Or both – whatever. Not only did the guy drop me in time at the train station without getting so much as a single cent but he drove so fast, we were there 10 minutes before the train would leave.

I wanted to do some more work on the way home but was too tired so I ended up watching a movie I got from my brother called CASHBACK. It is a wonderful movie – at least to the point where I stopped watching it and fell asleep. I woke up in time to get off the train and headed home. I still had no money so I couldn’t take a taxi and so I took the U-Bahn. The frequency is not the same after midnight as during the day and so I ended up at Willi Brandt Platz with a frustrated face staring at the sign saying “next train in 19 minutes”. There was a girl waiting for the train also and so we ended up sharing a taxi. It turns out she was from Venezuela and worked at O’Reilly’s as a graphic designer. Interestingly enough I now know that O’Reillys is owned by three brothers. She also told me some more stuff but I forgot already. I arrived at home shortly before 1 and found an apologetic message from the guy at the reception about the credit card incident. Apparently the guy forgot to order the proper taxi with the credit card capability and he got told off by the taxi company because I made such a mess about it. Me so sorry …

I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday mostly working, sleeping, walking around town and doing some stuff around the house – among other things I got rid of that stupid thingie that is supposed to get rid of all the smoke and bad smell when you are cooking underneath it but because of security reasons it never worked when it should have. Now there are three small holes in the wall but it still looks better than ever. I felt like SELFMAN (the guy that used to repair everything himself years ago on Austrian TV). Plus I slept around 14 hours on Friday night. Don’t remember the last time I did that.

I dreamt of a donkey and a monkey and some funkey music. It went something like this ...

found some money

A small update to my beggar situation. Found 110 Euros in my pocket yesterday evening which came in handy as the hotel did not accept my credit card. I only had to borrow 10 Euros to pay the full bill. I have 6 Euros and 40 cents for the rest of the week.

On completely unrelated news - the new Germany's next Topmodel starts tomorrow evening. I hope to be at home on time so I won't miss it ...

no money but sneezing

so my cash card stopped working this past weekend. I was shopping for a 31 size jeans (yeah baby - I am on my best way to the perfect surfer shape) in P&C on the zeil when it simply stopped working. It stopped working so much that not even the cash machines would accept it. so I am in Düsseldorf this week on business trip and try to pay everything with my credit card - and by 'everything' of course I mean taxi and hotel because as usual I am not doing anything else than work sleep and eat (plus the minimum bodily functions to survive of course)

I also started to sneeze like hell yesterday and it doesn't look like it would stop any time soon. But it's ok - I just hope to be up and running for the weekend.

We are just finishing up for today and I will go back to the hotel in a minute so I have to stop here.

Ok, just one more video from youtube - good night everybody!!!

up and down

wow - just realized that it has been almost 2 weeks since I wrote a couple of lines on my blog. Alba was so kind and commented yesterday (instead of enjoying Paris ...) but only today I am writing something new. The reason for the long break is work of course - since two weeks I work like a horse - at least looking back this is pretty much how it looks. I had to cancel the Spanish class as I am never here, no football, etc. This is getting pretty frustrating to be honest. But first things first.

So what happened since last time? Last week Tuesday I went to Munich to work on our project and have spent the rest of the week there until Thursday evening. Nothing special happened, no police people with guns or anything similar this time. Friday I stayed at home and went to play poker to Giulia's place in the evening. On Saturday I got a long needed haircut and somehow ended up at Alba's place in the evening for some very nice food. Even though I didn't have too much alcohol of course I ended up totally embarrassing myself by first pouring half my drink on my t-shirt seconds before going on stage to sing some Robbie Williams song with the others and afterwards by poking out Irem's eye. We put Alba to bed at some time after 3, washed the dishes and went home.

Sunday started quite late - with a headache of course and ended quite nicely. Estelle and I signed up for another speed-dating event. It was the second time for me (I went once in July 2005) and this time I didn't have any expectations. Last time it was such a desperate forced atmosphere that I was really hoping for a nice evening only. I arrived with a headache totally on time as the last person. They told me to sit at a table with another 3 guys - the "Warteschlange" - table as I started referring to it as - surprise - there were more guys than girls. At first sight the girls were incredibly good - looking and I basically couldn't believe this was the same kind of event as last time.

Anyways - after a - thank God - short ten minutes chat with the guys I sat down at the first table. Hello, my name is Gabor, bla bla bla. After 30 seconds I realize, that I am sweating like a pig sitting there wearing a shirt and a jacket so I had a decision to make. Either keep smiling and spend the rest of the evening in my private steam bath or taking off my jacket and thus destroying my chances with the first girl. I mentally said goodbye to candidate number one and took of my jacket. The rest is history...

I guess somewhere between girl number 2 and number 3 my sweating disappeared and after the first 3 girls (all working for Lufthansa - having unlimited access to cheap flight tickets!!!) girl number 4 seemed really nice. She was blond, studied law in Germany and France and had some Hungarian friends in Vienna. Sounds good enough for me :-)

Candidate number 5 was an economics student who worked as a hostess when she wasn't studying. It is probably not the best translation of what she was really doing, so I will not try to explain here. She was also very nice and we spent the regular 7 minutes plus the break talking. Girl number 6 was a bit scary - with dark black color around her eyes, girl number 7 was a nice French girl with some cool stories to tell about the other candidates. Girl number 8 was British with the most professional "Hochdeutsch" I have heard in my life. Girl number 9 was the summary of my past speed dating experiences. After 1 minute we both knew the thing is going nowhere but we kept talking.

I ended up leaving the place with putting a total of 4 crosses on my sheet of paper...

I spent another fabulous week in the NH hotel in Munich from Monday to Friday. Originally they asked us to be there until Thursday but things changed so that I had to cancel my trip to Vienna also. (Which cost me a phone call to Renate and singing Happy Birthday for her on the phone - sorry, Renate - most for the singing than missing your Birthday).

Anyway - to finish the speed dating story - they sent us the evaluation forms on Wednesday at midnight. I got 3 matches!!!! I was in heaven. I wrote some emails a day later but no replies until now so I am kind of down after a fantastic Wednesday. Too bad for the girls to miss the fantastic opportunity of going out with me ...

I am now finishing my work and will pack my stuff as I am heading to Düsseldorf for next weeks marathon - by marathon of course I mean work. Oh, almost forgot - the Oscars starts in 10 minutes. 'Till next time ...

(nothing) special

Today was a nice day. I have sent in two expense reports that should catapult my bank account balance back to zero once processed, did a lot of work, enjoyed the afternoon sunshine and had a wonderful dinner thanks to my favourite flatmate :-)

I have also decided to watch less TV. I have these phases from time to time. They come and go and it's good like that. Did I mention it's LOST season 3 premiere on Pro7 while I am writing this and I am not watching it? So today I have been listening to www.klassikradio.de the whole evening and it's goooooooood. That reminds me of this clip I found on the internet proving how you can have special effects without all the fancy technology. It's really cool and I cannot say how I would have reacted had I been there. We will never know ...



On other totally unrelated news - I am going to Munich tomorrow on business and will return just in time for the weekend. Servus!

Ich Kann Einfach Alles

Zürich was nothing but a business trip - didn't see too much of the city but on the plane back to Frankfurt I met an Australian guy who happened to be travelling around Europe for business. He was looking for little gadget-like thingies for men for distribution in Australia. What a cool job.

On Thursday I stayed at home working, for lunch I had something spanish that we won at Leire and Jorge's at the Tombola on Tueasday and went to play football in the evening. It was fun, we won, everything hurts - basically the usual routine :-)

Yesterday night Estelle and I finally managed to put some doors on my PAX - Kleiderschrank in the corridor. It looks cool - there is a slight problem though as some elements conflict with the door hinges so that further engineering is needed. By engineering I mean of course heavy wood - cutting and similar destructive activities. This is the first time IKEA furniture does not behave like it should ...

step by step

I am doing this new step by step programme. It includes creating a list of things to do (done) and then doing one activity every day. I registered for the Spanish course on Monday and called the facility management company of the flat today to organise the keys for the basement. Tomorrow is going to be tough as I will be travelling to Zürich and back so that I will have to use the evening to do something. I am thinking of buying the new Aldi-PC that is available as of Thursday. I have to decide until tomorrow evening if it is a good deal or not. Hmmm - maybe this is the task for tomorrow. We shall see. I am now going to bed as I will have to get into a taxi in a bit more than 5 hours from now to make it ...

Oh, one more thing. I heard this saying today - it is a bit vulgar as Germans normally do not use the word "fuck" in everyday language as much but I thought I would write it anyway: Ich brauche keinen Sex, das Leben fickt mich jeden Tag. It was part of an email that was sent to a friend and the email contained pretty bad things about this person. Makes me feel so much better about life ...


more at http://xkcd.com

recovering

The weekend was a catastrophy. I went to Krakow last week for work. Then on Thursday evening we went out in Krakow and partied like hell. First we went to a local restaurant and had some nice local food - I don't have to mention but I still do - we had waaaay too much of it. Salad first, some local speciality called Pierogi afterwards (translated as filled dumplings according to the menu), a nice fatty soup with a sausage, a potatoe and half an egg - then we ordered the main course. I ordered the main dish with the most fat and garlic possible - I don't remember the name but it was very good. And it was our lucky day - being FAT THURSDAY we got some Berliners on the house! We had to wash the whole dinner away with another local speciality of course. And another - and another. And the fun began!


we headed to the city afterwards and went to 3 places if I have correctly counted them. the party scene in Krakow is amazing. Being a student city it is rumoured to house about 50.000 students - the clubs / bars look pretty much like in Berlin - most of them can be found in normal flats on the first or second floor - or in the catacombs. We went to a place called pauza and later to a place called Lubu Dubu - which was not easy to find but we managed. I put Krakow on my list of cities to be visited as part of my trip around the world, should it ever happen. Plus it was cheap. If you ever happen to be there - try a Tatanka, which consists of apple juice and vodka. It’s a special vodka that has a bison grass in the bottle (see picture above). It is referenced in the movie Dances with Wolves where the bison is called Tatanka I think. (I found this reference on this blog also mentioning another cool thing I have been hearing of for a while - couch surfing. gotta try that at some point!!!


After a relatively short night (2 hours of sleep) I got up to travel back home. I wanted to fly to Vienna, change planes and be back in Frankfurt at around 1 in the afternoon. Unfortunately the second part of my flight was cancelled - for strange reasons. The ladies at the Lufthansa ticket office should align their stories before telling people the reason as one reason given had to do with the bad weather in Frankfurt while another one was the bad weather in Vienna. Hmm - strange. Aaaanyway - they rebooked me for a later flight and I went shopping for a costume as I still hadn't given up going to the carneval party in the evening. Bought a perfect pirate outfit including a jacket, boots, hair and a very nice looking revolver. Of course the revolver was not allowed to board the plane even though it looked pretty ancient - but somehow I didn't feel like arguing with the nice friendly people at the airport so I gave it back. I have also bought some nice little monkeys for a necklace. The plane was full - I counted 3 people with a dress - I figured it was the Opera Ball the night before in Vienna and so I ended up sitting next to a nice lady with an extravagant hat sitting next to me. Of course we didn't talk as I slept the whole flight - only the last 5 minutes before landing did I wake up and we started talking. Turns out she was a family therapist. Well, you never know ...

I made it to the pirates party in the evening - which was great for a while but the tiredness got hold of me at some point and the long sleepless nights of the last 2 weeks finally caught up with me - or it can be that I simply didn't like this kind of parties as I always wondered. We will see next year. The rest of the weekend was spent at home - sleeping, cleaning, going through my stuff and simply relaxing.

And today I have finally enrolled to a Spanish course in the nearby Sprachcaffe. the class will be every Wednesday at 19:00 if I like it so that I can play football on Thursdays and go to the sneak Mondays and for Tuesday evening there will be something else to do. And if not, it's ok anyway. the main thing is that I can return to San Sebastian and won't have to attend the absolute beginner's class ...

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