Dude!

The weather is awesome. It cooled off a bit there for about a week, but know the springtime is in full swing. The only bad thing about spring are my allergies. Sometimes it’s bad, sometimes I don’t notice.

Tonight I went to the Wunderbar to go see Mama Boom!. I have heard a lot of cool things about them. Hmmm. The band played very well musically. They definitely got the people moving, no doubt due to the awesome drummer holding it down and serving it up. The singer got on my nerves though, or as they say in this neck of the woods, got on my cookies.

I had to bail out early though because I had a sever allergic reaction to something. I started sneezing like crazy and my eyes started watering. It became difficult for me to breath and I started getting a headache. Maybe it was someone’s perfume. Maybe it was a dirty bomb. Whatever it was, I left and 5 minutes felt much better.

Alright off to bed.

okthnxbye

Tag Auf!

For the last few days the weather here has been fantastic. Shorts and T-shirt. I went roller-blading on Saturday from Rettmer to Amelinghausen and on Sunday I ran non-stop for 90 minutes. A new record. I am actually training for a half-marathon sometime in late June or early July. A year ago I would have never imagined I would be doing something like that but I am.

On easter weekend we had some visitors here and we went to Hamburg and pulled an all-nighter consisting of the Reeperbahn and the Fischmarkt. That was a lot of fun.

Now I am going to go check out a beer garden and enjoy the fine weather. Tomorrow the temperature is supposed to dive back down and clouds are expected to roll in.

Couple Fights to Name Baby ‘Metallica’

Although little Metallica has already been baptized, the Swedish National Tax Board refused to register the name, saying it was associated with both the rock group and the word ”metal.”

Dude, Scandinavians take their metal way too seriously but Metallica is not metal enough. They would have to call her “Metallica – The First 4 Albums Only – Tomaro”.

I think I discovered the perfect way.

But first a little background…
In most places in Germany all plastic is recycled. It is all put into plastic yellow trash bags (Gelbesack) and they are hauled away about every 2 weeks.

Last Sunday night I briefly looked at our schedule that tells us when and what kind of trash is being picked up (zum Beispiel) and saw that Gelbesack was being picked up on Monday. I took our one bag and put in in front of the door, locked up and went to bed. In the morning, while waiting for my ride to work, I noticed that a few other houses had put their Gelbesäcke out as well. On my way home from work I noticed that all the bags were still outside. Hmmm. Some houses had quite a few. The hair salon up the street had a huge mountain of yellow bags piled up.

This is funny for two reasons.

1. I looked at the calendar wrong. We just had pickup last week. No wonder I was the only one with bags in front of their door when I put it out there. Silly me.
2. It also means that someone came outside or looked out the window and saw my one lonesome bag and thought, “Oh, heute ist Gelbesack.” Then they got theirs and put them outside the door. Some neighbors saw theirs and did the same. And on it went all the way down the street.

So now they have two choices.

1. They can either leave them outside for 2 weeks, where they will be at the mercy of the elements (weather, wild animals, bored teenagers). They will also have to endure the disapproving looks from their neighbors that actually looked at the pickup schedule (Ha! Only about 4 or 5 it seems). Lord knows we can’t have that.
2. Or they will have to bring them all back inside.

Ha! Ha!

So, there you go kids. Try it out in your local German city and see if it is as much fun for you and your neighbors as it was for me and mine.

If ANS came back from the dead, would that hurt or help her career ?

We were in the city of Magdeburg last night and this morning. I was convinced, against my better judgement, to go see super mellow rockers The 4 of Us play at a music performance series called Songtage. They played well, and they are nice guys, but after driving through the rain and dealing with the Autobahn and Friday afternoon traffic, I wanted to rage and rock out hard. This was not possible with the supplied musical landscape. Was soll’s?

Anyway, Magdeburg is not a happening place, at least not last night. I went in with an open mind, but I wasn’t impressed. There is supposedly a university there. This implies students creating some kind of scene. We tried hard but couldn’t find any action. I know it sounds weak to be hating on a new city after only one night’s experience, but I was warned by others before going. I failed to heed said warnings. I paid the price.

One good thing did come of the trip. We were surprised to find out there was a Hundertwasser building in Magdeburg, more specifically, Die Grüne Zitadelle von Magdeburg designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. That was pretty cool.

….and I hate the Internet.

But today I triumphed. Tomorrow the battle begins anew.

Fuck you spammers.

I posed for this picture last weekend as we were in Hamburg looking around for a couch.

Last Saturday started off at 9am… M and I jogged around the Alster. After that we went out for breakfast with some friends and then went searching for the couch. Couches are expensive. Damn. I wasn’t expecting regular not-crappy couches to be so wallet-reamingly expensive. I’m probably gonna be dropping some serious cheddah on this. Oh well, I have to have someplace for guests to sit and chill. It’s a pain in the ass going to all these stores and checking out what they have. I might get something similar to this. I’m not sure.

One store we checked is called the Wäscherei. It is a furniture store/night club/restaurant/café. They try really hard to be hip. I think there was some special event/party going on last weekend while we were there. Upon entering the 3 story building, we were blasted with high-decibel house music spun by some superstar DJ. The 3 fabulously dressed gentlemen working behind the counter were working it while slowly going deaf and handing out candy.

There is a lot of really cool and interesting stuff there, but we found most of it to be very overpriced. Nice café though. The food looked good as well. As were the waitresses who were smoking hot.

Serving up brew since at least 1486, Pons is Lüneburg’s oldest Kneipe. It is also one of Lüneburg’s best vegetarian eateries. We went there tonight and had a feast for a reasonable price. There are two cool rooms upstairs as well. One has a pool table and foosball table. The other has mood lighting and couches facilitating a chill out atmos. They also have Lammsbräu, a bio-beer.

And for no other reason, other than I like whiskey, and I like Willie Nelson, I give you….

[Editor’s note] This entry has been posted under the influence of whiskey.

Although this video is in Japanese, the same thing could work in Germany. In NYC you’d probably get beaten though.