Great… I’ve been spammed with hundreds of comments and so I’ve just re-activated the SpamBam protection. If, however, you want to submit a comment and get an error like “You must have JavaScript activated” etc. blah blah, please let me know as soon as possible.
Boot camp, BMW and the Baltic Sea
Posted by defaude
on September 8, 2009
5 comments
Thanks to Marc, I had a very nice and beautiful BMW 118d for the day. As it turned out, the weather seemed to be unexpectedly pleasant so I decided to do a roadtrip to Kellenhusen, the place where I spent so many summers and even some winters during my childhood.
I’m going to the wild beach, or more precisely what used to be the wild beach. It has been “tamed” a few years ago so there’s no more wildly growing bushes and therefore it’s clearly visible from the bikeway now. The promenade is more modern nowadays, taking elegant curves now and then and the old pier has grown longer and longer and looks very futuristic…
Lots of things have changed and it has become a really nice and beautiful city lately. So many things are different from how they used to be, so many things are still the same. Makes me think about what has changed in my life and also about what hasn’t. Memories, so many memories… Passing by so many places with which I associate so many events. Having sand between my toes, hearing the constant murmur of the waves, feeling like the child I was once again…
I’ve got only one thing to say and that is “Ostsee I love you and I always will!”
Barcelona day 3 – still without enough sleep
Posted by defaude
on September 8, 2009
1 comment
Having had two nights with just a little sleep, I woke up with the firm conviction not to go out so long again in my head. So Ela, Xavier and me started the day with a good long breakfast after which we went to the town center and did the tourist thing. Of course this included a visit to the hilarious Kukuxumus shop and eating great food.
After lunch – which was a blast because it was so good by the way – , we took a long walk down the beach where I also finally could jump into the sea 🙂 The beach is quite clean and the weather was just perfect with lots of sunshine and blue skies. Oh and I love that comic-style keep the beach clean campaign!
Well, well. So far, so good. The plan I mentioned in the beginning seemed to work. In the evening, we went to a Japanese restaurant / sushi bar where we had very delicious food at a decent price compared to some restaurants in Munich where the quality’s usually lower… Before going home, I once again had the absolutely awesome cinnamon and dark choccolate ice cream mix – mmh that’s so delicious 😀
Just as we arrived at Ela’s place, I received a call from Beatriz who was getting the party started with some friends – well, of course I tagged along and so it happened that I was out all night including a short trip to the Tibidabo mountain from where one can see Barcelona at night. Okay, we haven’t been at the peak but rather at a very cheesy bar/club thing that I’d usually never entered if not for the great view from the terrace 😎
Marcus in Tokyo – that bastard :)
Posted by defaude
on September 7, 2009
1 comment
Just a trackback to Marcus’ new blog where he’s reporting about the life I wish I had: Living la vida loca in Tokyo 🙂
Barcelona day 2
Posted by defaude
on September 5, 2009
1 comment
Day two of my stay in Barcelona was rather non-tourist-style. Having returned home quite late (ahem…), I’ve been really lazy in the morning and took some time to relax, recreate and sleep. At lunchtime I rode the train to Ela’s workplace where I had a very tranquilo lunch break with her and some colleagues of her where we enjoyed great crepes and the nice sea breeze. After that, I tried to return to the city center but the train line somehow temporarily stopped working… 🙁 So I had to walk a few blocks (what was quite nice and interesting, actually) until I got to the Urquinaona station where I could change to another line in order to meet with Beatriz for the afternoon.
Starting at the Placa d’Espanya and taking a looooong tranquilo break in front of the Museo Nacional de Arte de Catalunya, we finally took a walk through the whole Parc de Montjuic including the olympic stadium, the palace of St. Jordi, the very very spacy telecommunication tower, a pseudo-greek-looking stonehenge and even a baseball court.
Eventually, I returned to Ela’s place again to take a shower and meet up with Ela and Xavier and also Philip and Sandra (friends of Andrea and Patrick) and their kids to go out for dinner. The tapas place we wanted to go was closed, however, so we ended up in a Lebanese restaurant 😉 After having had dinner and extremely delicious dark-chocolate ice cream, we walked the kids plus their parents to the train station and started our nice walk home. However, we stopped at a bar to have some cocktails and just as we were about to call it a day, I got a call from Beatriz… And again, I did not get very much sleep last night 😀
Deactivated spam protection
Posted by defaude
on September 4, 2009
No comments
Because many people complained about a “You must have JavaScript activated in order to comment blablablah” message when they were trying to comment, I temporarily deactivated the spam protection. Hopefully, my database is not going to be hammered with spam from now on…
Barcelona day 1
Posted by defaude
on September 4, 2009
2 comments
Whew! I landed in the afternoon and thanks to the detailed description of my sister, I could easily find her workplace. At the airport, I found nice oddities like a long tunnel that’s above ground and that features two typical airport-style conveyors – just without the conveyors… Everything’s there: the handrail, the two seperate gangways with converyor handrails, the special road in between them which the cool airport dudes with the electric cars might take now and then but just no conveyor itself! The trains in Barcelona are quite nice and as far as I’ve experienced so far almost always on time. Due to the fact that Barcelona is a big city when it comes to population but not to covering a large area, you always get from A to B in less than 30 minutes. Oh, and the penalty for smoking inside the train is somehow odd… What the heck are those 5 cents for?
After I met Ela and got the keys to her appartment, I buzzed off to find said appartment – and thanks to Streetview I did 🙂 There, I finally could take a rest from the trip, take a shower and relax a little. Meanwhile, I also managed to contact Flo and arranged to meet him and Beatriz in the evening. I could take a look at his ridiculously huge appartment before we went downtown to get some tapas – mmmhhh, tapas! 😀
After stuffed our stomachs with delicious tapas of all kinds, Beatriz, Flo and me walked through the sometimes shiny, sometimes shabby but nevertheless cool downtown until we arrived at our destination behind the amazing Sagrada familia: The Michael Collins irish pub 🙂 Ela was already waiting for us inside (it took us longer than expected to walk ehehee…). We had a few drinks and lots of fun. The guy playing live music was shitty at first but gradually got better and better so in the end at roughly 2:30, we all lurched home after a very funny night out.
Oh and by the way: They have Aquarius here! Yaaay!
And off I go!
Posted by defaude
on September 3, 2009
1 comment
Thesis is gone, my only duty is to wait for the final grades… So why the heck don’t I just travel around a bit? Well, actually I do! 😀
- Barcelona: 09/03 – 09/06
- Hamburg: 09/06 – 09/08
- Chemnitz: 09/08 – 09/09
- Wunsiedel: 09/09 – 09/10
- Würzburg: 09/10 – 09/12 or so
Thesis time almost over
Posted by defaude
on August 29, 2009
No comments
It’s done. Finally it’s done! When I cut out all the days when I didn’t do anything at all but went swimming instead the stats look somehow like this:
- 19 days
- 100 pages altogether
- created my own sexy LaTeX document style based on the great template from Matthias Pospiech
- completely re-written the whole application including all the views
I’ll have it printed on Monday and will hand it in on Tuesday – And after that: Barcelona, here I come! 😎
update: I recieved the two copies today and hand them in tomorrow morning – this is the last thing I’m doing before finally getting my Diploma 🙂
My mom and typesetting programs
Posted by defaude
on August 29, 2009
1 comment
Hey mom, look at this! I’m so totally cool and write my thesis with LaTeX!
Oh! So you’re wearing those strange gloves when you’re typing on your computer?
Love you, mom 😀