I just spent Friday and Saturday learning XML and I still don’t understand it. Oh well. I guess I’ll order a book from the English Book Shop at Amazon.de. They can usually hook it up. I ordered a digital camera today finally. I’ll be able to post pictures of German mullets soon. I don’t know if anybody even reads this crap. If they do drop me a line. The address is under Kontakt.

I went into the studio yesterday and I rocked. Du Kannst was pretty easy. A real Angus Young/country solo on the end of the song there. Groh, the engineer, is real nice. I got the impression he’s not into experimentation though. However, it could have been the lack of time available. On “Im Freien Fall” I recorded 4 different guitar parts. Mixing will be interesting. That is my favorite of the 2 songs. Both songs are kinda cheesy I’ll be the first to admit, but Im Freien Fall has the better hook. As soon as they are finished I’ll put them in the media section.

I need to find a second band that likes to get crazy and let loose. More rock, less pop. Richtung Sonic Youth und Yo La Tengo. I’ll have to wait until I’m done with classes at the Fachhochschule before I have time to worry about that. I also want to take an advanced German class. I feel as though I have reached a plateau with my German skillz. It’s very frustrating not being able to adequately express myself. I understand almost everything but sometimes when I open my mouth and try to speak German nothing intelligible comes out. Actually lots of people might same the same thing when I speak English.

Why hasn’t this article from the Washington Post been picked up? The US Arms Team (the ones responsible for hunting for and finding all of Saddam’s nasty illegal weapons) have given up and are going home because they can’t find anything. Holy Crap! Even I thought Saddam had some stuff and we would find it. I just didn’t think it was worth fighting a war and killing, what is the number now? over 3,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. Anyway this means that Bush and his cronies were completely full of shit and lied to the world and just went in and took over the place. What fucking assholes! I’m so ashamed of my government and what they have done. There is simply no justification for what they have done.

“The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath”- Robert Plant

Man there ain’t much new. I played Kickertisch (foosball) into the wee hours on Sat with Jens, Steffi and Anna. Tomorrow I go into the studio to record “Du Kannst” and “Im Freien Fall”. It will be the first time being in a recording studio in about 3 years. I can’t wait. I’m gonna rock that shit yo.

Why does the USA insist on pissing the world off? And Americans wonder why other countries hate America. Well let me tell ya. It’s not because they hate our freedom. Actually, if this were true, with the way things are going with the systematic sweeping away of America’s civil liberties and all, these people won’t hate America anymore in the future because there won’t be any freedom. Ohhh. Now I see how it works.

But seriously folks, not only do we invade oil rich sovereign nations, who don’t play by our rules, but we also make sure they are provided with lots of tobacco so that they get hooked thereby creating a new market. Yeah capitalism! Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

Interesting story about why the Iraqis love American soldiers.

peace out yo!

I biked my ass off today. I went with Jens, Steffi and Sio. First we biked along the Illmenau River here in Lüneburg and then sort of took a detour completely off the beaten path through a field when the trail came to an end. Then we went to a cafè and had a few drinks before we headed back to Lüneburg. I went to the apartment where I used to live, where Jens and Steffi still live, and enjoyed a nice spargel (asparagus) dinner cooked up by Jens. Spargel with potatos, white wine, and hollandaise sauce. Mmm-Mmm. Now I’m going to bed. Tomorrow is Monday:-( But it is also my dad’s birthday 🙂 Actually it is Monday already here but not in Connecticut where they are.

There were all kinds of crazy riots yesterday Hamburg and Berlin. I don’t live in either of the two cities so I didn’t see it. A classmate of mine René lives nearby the epicenter in Hamburg and was scared to leave his apartment. Cars were overturned and set aflame, rocks thrown, windows smashed, teargas shot, water cannons fired, protesters beaten, yada yada yada. There were some viable and serious protests and demonstrations but the headlines were mostly dominated by the assholes causing trouble. Apparently this has been going on in Germany since 1987 and there hasn’t been a peaceful Mayday in those two cities since. WTF? The fuzz in America wouldn’t put up with that shite at all. I suspect that this type of rage will manifest itself soon enough though in America cause people are pissed-off. I am suprised it hasn’t happened already.

Yo! Was geht’n Alter? Tag der Arbeit ohne Arbeit. Krass oder? Yesterday we went to this place called Schröders Garten to party. This is the same place we went to 2 years ago to the day went I first moved to Germany. There was a big tent with a sound sysem in it. Attached to said sound system was a bad DJ playing appropriately bad 80’s music. Earlier in the evening I was feeling ill and thought maybe I’d just go home and puke all night. I think I ate a sandwich with some bad tzaziki on it or something. Diluting my stomach with beer did the trick and I was soon after feeling like a champ.

So we danced and drank until 3am. Then we walked into the city center of Lüneburg and looked around in a few of the bars for Lothar, a former roommate who can often be found in this manner. Unsuccessful in finding him we searched for a drink only to be turned away at the Irish pub of all places. So then we walked or rather staggered over to a bar/dive called “im Pesel”. I hate that place. It’s in the small cellar of an old building. There’s no band, no strippers, the DJ sucks ass, there is no ventilation, and the restrooms seem to ooze something but they have the nerve to charge a cover to get in. On the other hand there seems to be no shortage of mullets (on men and women) and attitude. It’s just tough. The owners know it is the last place selling alcohol in town so they take advantage of that. Often though somebody opens up the backdoor and that’s usually how I get in if I absolutely need to. This time however, Dani, talked the door guy into letting us in with a discount. Anyway as soon as I get in some smacked-out junkie looking chick offered me some red pills, which I politely declined. If you are ever looking for a one night stand in Lüneburg and aren’t too picky about who you wake up next to I guess this is where to find it. So a beer and a Jäger and Cola later we split. All in all it was a fun evening.

Yeah. I worked today like every day except for the days I don’t. Tomorrow will be the two year anniversary of me coming to Germany. Hmmm. It has been an interesting trip so far. Tomorrow is also “Tanz in den Mai”. Basically an excuse to party because May 1st is a holiday in Germany (Tag der Arbeit, kind of like Labor Day, but in the spring) so they bring may in with drinking and debauchery. Well, mainly drinking. I will contribute my part to the celebration. May 1st also usually means there will be lots of riots and protests and shit going on in the bigger cities like Hamburg and Berlin. Due to the war in Iraq there is sure to be lots of angry pissed off people. Rightly so. Most of the violence that occurs will be caused by assholes just looking for trouble. We’ll see how that goes.

There was a Carnival nearby on the Sülzwiesen. German carnies (the travelling folk that work at carnivals) are not as scary as American carnies. I wonder why. Anyway they blasted off a bunch of fireworks. Cool.

Bis Später

Set up blog links on the front page. Will redo all links on all pages soon. Thinking about doing whole site bilingual. It would be cool but who cares? Had a gig last night with AMJ. It was all right. Lots of people. Seem to have some sort of inter-cultural miscommunication/spat with Marko going on. I’ll straighten that out though.

So I live here in Germany. I moved here on April 30, 2001. Years before that, during my travels so to speak, I met a girl. She was German. We saw each other off and on for a few years and kept in touch. In early 2001, the Internet/tech/streaming company/dotcom thingy I was working for (they couldn’t decide what kind of company they were either) started to implode. I got laid off a few months before the company went belly up and I split a few months later. I got to Germany, took intense German classes for 6 months (ugh!) and then found a job as webmaster for a small publishing firm near Hamburg. I’m lucky that it all worked out so well and I know it. It is usually much more difficult for foreigners in Germany to get set up and be self-sufficient. I owe a lot to my girlfriend. She helped me out tremendously in so many ways. German bureaucracy is the worst but she helped me wade through it and get to the light at the end of the tunnel. So that’s about it in a nutshell. More to come as I share my adventures.