Notes from Germany
I am an American expat living in Germany. It's a far away land on the other side of the ocean. It's interesting and often weird here. If you read this and want to comment then email me at nate(the at symbol)chillmost.com. If you find any spelling or grammar mistakes, you can keep them.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Blogger Sorta Sucks
I made some template changes and then republished all the blog entries but when I do that Blogger likes to replace umlauts and apostrophes with wacky symbols and nonsense. Damn. So if you see strange symbols, don't worry. I know.
There is a bar here called, wait for it.....wait....The WunderBar (sigh). It had to move shop recently due to a conflict with the previous landlord. They were supposed to have the grand opening in their new location last night with free music and booze. Unfortunately there were some problems with building permits and bureaucracy so they cancelled it. But what about all the people that showed up? Well they still provided free booze. That was cool.
The place was not at all close to being finished. It still looked like a construction site on the inside. It reminded me of some rave I was at once in an old house that was being renovated except there were no glow sticks, pacifiers, stuffed animal backpacks or cracked-out kids dressed like Japanese manga characters. It was definitely and older crowd.
A long time ago I discussed getting my own radio show. It didn't happen for a variety of reasons:
1. I forgot about it.
2. The guy I discussed it with forgot about it.
3. I didn't have time.
I saw him at the party last night though and he said I can still do the show whenever I want. I just have to call him up and let him know when I have time. Ganz locker Alter. So hopefully I will get that going when things calm down at work.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Oh, Hello There!
I got linked to by BusinessWeek last week. Check it out!: Blogging's Cure for the Expat Blues.
"ONLINE THERAPY. The big question: Is anyone reading Dispatches from France, An American in London, Notes from Germany, and the rest? Apparently so. Quoting the traffic counter at Dispatches from France, Vivi says she gets about 100 readers a day. Other expat blog writers report similar numbers."
100 visits a day sounds about right. Thanks to this article I see I got about 400 visits a day last week and it has slowly tapered off. Those 15 Minutes are up.
I don't really know why I started this blog. I've never considered myself a particularly good writer and I've never kept a journal longer than a few weeks. The website was here before the blog. I had to build it for a course I took at the nearby Uni. It is good to let my family and friends know what's going on. That wasn't necessarily my intention when I started it though. It's cool though that it turned out like that. I started it after I had already lived here for a while. I was already past the culture shock and had pretty much gotten used to the language and customs.
As far as the blog goes I don't care how many hits I get, I don't care who reads it. On the other hand, I am careful about what I write about. Because of my visa situation I can't really risk getting "Dooced". Like most of the other expat bloggers, I have a lot of stuff going on in my life that I don't/can't blog about. It's nobody's business but mine and it would probably interest no one. The concept and thought of family, friends and strangers reading what I write is kinda cool though. It would be interesting if I got thousands of visits everyday, but I don't consider myself that die-hard of a "Blogger" to promote the site and provide the sort of content that would keep that many people coming back.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Goan Smee
I found this link over on Agitpropolis. I have it on good authority from an Irish colleague that this story is indeed true, as it was in her local paper.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Ye Olde Neighbourhoods
Places I have been and lived
