Tag Archives: Friends - Page 2

Barcelona day 1

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?

Handrail that suggests the presence of a conveyor where there is none IMGP2312

After I met Ela and got the keys to her appartment, I buzzed off to find said appartment – and thanks to Streetview I did πŸ™‚ 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! πŸ˜€

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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 πŸ™‚ 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.

Sagrada familia 1 Sagrada familia 2 Flo and me posing in front of the Sagrada familia
At the irish pub Dr. Flo Evil - but MiniMe has grown ... and has a beard, too! Siblings, indeed!

Oh and by the way: They have Aquarius here! Yaaay!

Koseki-san, Robot BBQ, Sax, final exams, summer festival, beach clubbing, NRJ in the park…

… well, it’s been a busy time for me πŸ™‚

Last weekend, I finally managed to meet up with Koseki-san who was staying here in Munich for a business trip. It was good to see him again and also to hear that his little daughter is doing fine! Life in Japan seems to be going on quite well πŸ˜‰

Koseki-san in Munich

The semester’s almost over so my colleagues and me have already taken all exams. Right then, everyone was only waiting for the grades to be published and there was plenty of time for barbecue, party etc. Especially at the university’s summer festival we computer engineers openly demonstrated being the biggest nerds at the campus: The grades were about to come out and of course the server broke down in the very moment everyone wanted to see theirs. We literally had three laptops and an iPhone hammering the server with requests like “Gimme my grades, hell yeah!” – on just one Biertischgarnitur πŸ˜€

At the BBQ of the robotics team IMGP2165 After-BBQ-Drinks at the Sax
Computer engineers... IMGP2185 No more exams!

Knowing my grades now, being fully satisfied with the certitude that I’ll never have to write exams again in my life (most likely, I hope), and knowing that all that stands between me and my diploma is the thesis I gotta write about the Ruby on Rails application I developed during the past few months, I happily returned to my parent’s place, where I was taken hostage by my friends and dragged to a beach clubbing event and the NRJ in the park festival πŸ˜€ Oh, and did I mention that the weather’s been awesome lately? Well, it surely was! 😎

After diving into the foam at the BeachClubbing Foodstock at the festival Homemade sandwiches - thanks, mom!
Cheers! I wanna be a hippie :) Being bored to death from Mando Diao

The beach clubbing thing was okay. Well, for a small, off-the-beaten-track city like Bad Aibling it surely was one of this year’s major events. However, I was annoyed most of the time – maybe this is because I don’t drink πŸ˜‰ Eventually, the electronic floor was fun for a while but then the DJ had the biggest, most epic FAIL in history: No music for roughly ten minutes (or at least it felt so), blank-faced morons fuzzing around with the mixers and the players, the MC desperately trying to keep the crowd’s mood up… And when they finally managed to start music again, it was just shitty *sigh* The day after that, some friends and I went to the NRJ in the park festival. The lineup was Jennifer Rostock, Jan Delay, Mando Diao and Franz Ferdinand. Being a person who almost never listens to radio and who doesn’t give a crap about the latest charts, I’ve never heard anything of Jennifer Rostock. The names Mando Diao and Franz Ferdinand were familiar, of course, but I barely ever heard something from them – apart from “Dance With Somebody”. Well well, Jennifer was … errm … okay. Definitely not my favourite style of “music” πŸ˜‰ Mando Diao totally sucked and Franz Ferdinand was pretty cool. Ah, did I mention that their guitarist went to the same school as I did? Anyways, Jan Delay and his band really made the crowd jumping and it was definitely the best performance of that festival 😎

… and now, I’ll have to cancel every other party activities and write my damn thesis πŸ˜€

What a weekend this has been…

Wow, what a weekend! On Friday afternoon, a friend from Tokyo, Tomoko, arrived from Frankfurt where she was visiting a friend. To represent Bavaria and its hospitality, I took up the challenge of being her host and tour guide for the time she was staying here πŸ™‚ We started off with some delicious food at the Paulaner im Tal and some cocktails at the nearby Sausalitos bar.

Tomoko with Schweinebraten Me with Tiroler G'rΓΆstl

After that we just returned to my place and called it a day. On Saturday morning I got up and did some jogging with Andi – who had nothing better to do but to strain his ankle… Awesome, now we can’t go to the gym because his thumb’s messed up and we can’t go running because of his foot! πŸ™ I’m gonna gain weight if his streak of injuries continues like this…

At the time I got back to my appartment, Tomoko was finally awake πŸ˜‰ and we buzzed off to Schluss Nymphenburg. It’s one of the biggest royal palaces in Europe and features a huge park and impressive alleys from the outside. I’ve never seen the inside, actually and Tomoko wanted to take a look at the gallery of beauties in the museum. I’m usually not so much into old-fashioned architecture or arts but this was really impressive! Magnificent architecture, light everywhere and the original baroque stucco definitely are some things to remember.

In front of the castle Hanging out int the guard's box Magnificent paintings on the ceiling
Baroque to the max Impressive style and architecture "One day, all of this will be MINE!" :)

After spending some time at the castle, we returned to the inner city where we took a walk around town. We then met Marcus at the Odeonsplatz, where the rehearsal for the open air classic concert was going on – pretty cool atmosphere there! Oh and San Francisco Coffee Company: Thanks for the great coffee πŸ˜€ (damn I should get paid for doing commercials like this…)

At the rehearsal for the open air classic concert at the Odeonsplatz Lucky nose 1 Lucky nose 2

From the Odeonsplatz we went on to the Marienplatz in order to take a look at the new town hall of Munich and to climb up to the observation deck of the Alter Peter church tower. The view from there is just awesome – one can see most of the city and even into the mountains (on clear days, of course). Before we got there, we had a nice random encounter for which the chances might be even tinier than winning the lottery – let’s just say that maybe I got a first foot in the door at finding a job in Tokyo… Anyways, here are some pictures:

At the CSD Tomoko being typically Japanese View from the Alter Peter church tower

Oh and I completely forgot to mention that I was wondering the whole day what’s going on in the city because many people were there and a slight sensation of party was in the air – it happened to be Christopher Street Day! When we arrived at the Marienplatz, we finally found out about that πŸ˜€ Eventually we were really tired from walking and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Englischer Garten, Munich’s biggest park area.

At the outpostish memorial in the Englischer Garten park

Having returned to my place for a shower and a few minutes of rest, we rushed out again to Hieu’s farewell party. He’s departing for his new job in Tokyo today and I ENVY HIM SO MUCH for that πŸ™‚ Unfortunately, my cam ran out of battery then and so I did not take any pictures there… In the end, it was a great party and I wish Hieu all the best for his future and hope I can team up with him in Tokyo soon – this is going to be legendary πŸ˜€

Fichtnparty aftermath and paintball

Yep that’s right. It was about time for a new episode in the long series of birthday parties in the peacful village of Dettendorf. This year’s motto was noblesse oblige and Andrea and me just had to answer that call πŸ˜‰ Big hands to Flo for inviting us and for arranging one hell of a party πŸ™‚

Flo and me showing our awesome hats! Yes, I suited up :)

The next day I’ve basically just been totally lazy. Except for one thing in the evening: After several years, I finally managed to play some rounds of paintball again! Like Barney’d say, it was legendary! πŸ˜€

Bowling during carnival season

I know it’s a bit late, but I completely forgot to post that… This is how it looks like when some nerds go out for bowling during carinval season πŸ˜€

Music Park in Erding

Last Saturday, a bunch of friends dragged me to the Music Park in Erding. To be honest, I was afraid that it’s going to be like that generic countryside-allrounder-discotheque which tends to be quite shitty at most times. Upon our arrival, I found out that it’s actually a relatively new, clean and well-organized club/disco! So eventually, we ended up dancing all night long until the break of dawn πŸ˜‰ It was really great fun, dudes – we’ll have to repeat that!! πŸ˜€ Pix can be found here.

Ah and just by the way; the last post “And if you think I’m going crazy” was the 42nd one in this blog πŸ˜‰

Nomiya

Wow, it’s been quite some time since my last post – sorry about that againz… Well, what did I do? Hmm not too much, actually, but I’ve been hella busy as usual πŸ˜‰ First of all, Andi and me use the free time we’ve got to the max for exercising, running, spinning etc. but my stupid belly still looks like as if I was drawn by the “Gelini” guy. Secondly, there has been a lot of programming going here because I need to get some things straight for my thesis, eventually. And the deeper I dig into Ruby on Rails, the more I love it. Seriously, this might become the no. 1 language for designing websites in the next few years!

Today, I finally managed to test out the Nomiya, a kind of typical bavarian pub which features Japanese cooking done by actual Japanese chefs πŸ™‚ It was soooo cool sitting there, having some very, very delicious Yakitori, Edamame, Sushi, etc. in that Bavarian-looking Boaz’n (which basically means pub)! I highly recommend that one! πŸ˜€ Ah by the way, Japanese restaurant-tips in Munich are always very welcome πŸ™‚

“Ein Fest…” or having fun at the HofbrΓ€uhaus

After having had our last exam, some friends and I went to the always-funny infamous HofbrΓ€uhaus for lots of beer, good food and just having a good time (well, for me there was no beer included, of course πŸ˜‰ ) And because I just desperately wanted to test the new iMovie, I just had to create a movie with some stupid pix πŸ˜€

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Update: Yes, the video quality is quite bad. There should be, however, a “Display HQ video” link to the top-right of the video. If you click this directly after going to that page, the picture quality improves a lot. It’s still far from being perfect, but hey, who’s perfect πŸ˜‰

Isogashii / Busy

Well, well… It’s been quite a long time since my last entry here. Sorry ’bout that. I’ve just been so freakin’ busy ever since my return from Japan. Final exams for this semester are closing in and I should have been studying instead of going to Tokyo but in my opinion, Tokyo was the way smarter choice πŸ˜‰

First of all, I want to present some pictures of my second trip to Japan, however, I did not take so many due to my own stupidity… As you might have read, I’ve lost my small pocket camera, so I packed the bigger one into my luggage. Alright. Got everything with me: the cam, lens protector, SDHC card, batteryd’oh! forgot the battery! So the only option for me to get at least a few pix was to buy a new battery at my favourite electronics store, Yodobashi Camera in Shinjuku…

Tokyo winter 2008/09

I was given the chance to enjoy the nice Tokyo winter, the great food and a lot of fun with many friends.Β It was a great week and I want to thank everyone who could find some time to see me! Hope to see you again soon πŸ˜‰ Oh and Ayumi, he LOVES the shoes πŸ˜€

So what did I do after coming back? Hmm not so many things, actually. Since my final exams for this semester are starting in one week already, I’m basically doing nothing but studying at the moment. Well, at least two pleasant things happened to me: My mom found my beloved Pentax camera and I finally got my new computer *yaaay* but I don’t really have the time to play with my new / old toys at the moment so this will have to wait until February πŸ˜‰

German Museum

On Sunday, Andreas, Stefan and me decided to visit the German Museum. It’s been a loooong time since I’ve been there for the last time and it’s really cheap for students, actually. We were wandering around for several hours and had a look at the departments for aviation, marine, chemistry, optical technology, physics and – of course – electrical engineering. Phew. It was a funny day but I’ve been freakin’ tired because I only had about 1.5 hours of sleep from Saturday πŸ˜‰

Anyways, here are some pictures πŸ˜€