I know what you did last weekend

No, frankly I only know what I myself have done this weekend. Friday evening was not spent alone, I've had one of the new colleagues over at my apartment for dinner and watching some movie or something on my laptop. Finally we decided on watching the newly acquired episode of Heroes, but first I had to explain everything that happened between the pilot episode my guest saw and the newest one - it was a quite tiring talk, but at least I had my own recap with it. The show was okay, nothing too special, interesting as usual. After the show somehow the topic of our final university projects came up, which led to me having to explain mine in great detail, up from the basics. Which was an interesting experience, since I basically did not even think about that work in detail since early last summer. Strangely enough I managed to come up with new examples, some of which were not even that bad. Even though it was a very long talk, about one and a half hours long of me speaking and answering questions, it was somehow quite worth it. But then I really had to get my sleep so I threw my guest out :D
Saturday... nothing special, around noon I decided to go out to the Sony Center on Potsdamer Platz to check if there really is some free wireless internet as I figured. And there was. So I spent there some time answering emails and reading news, in the middle of the usual crowd of tourists, but at least here there's a more comfortable place to sit than compared to the wall next to that cafe I visited a few times before. I even saw some people from Aachen, the first German town I was to in my life last year, they were there for a football game between Hertha BSC of Berlin and Alemannia Aachen. Of course I did not know the Aachenese people in person, but it was fun to see them. BTW Alemannia was beaten 2:1 :) After lunch in a cafe I headed back home, and even later my guest from the evening before and his newly arrived girlfriend came up with the idea of finding some nice bar in the city. So that's just what we did, we hung out near Hackescher Markt, a place where quite some bars are. Our's wasn't particularly good or bad, it was a bit pricey but beer was good. There was even some classical music playing nearby on the street, so it was quite comfortable. One of the waitresses even stopped at our table when she heard us talking, and spoke to us in broken Hungarian - I even asked where she learned the language that well. Quite embarrassingly she was originally from Hungary, she was just here in Berlin for like 4 years to study and make some good money. She was a nice person, and I think we made her eve a bit better simply by being Hungarian :) Of course we could not stop laughing later, realizing that we got a real Hungarian service: slow and with mixed up orders :) But it was nice nevertheless, and made me sleepy enough to just fall unconcious the moment I entered my room again.
Sunday was also slow, as all weekends, the other guys left for some general sightseeing I've done already before, and I went to check out the East Side Gallery. This would be the longest original portion of the Berlin Wall, I guess I even mentioned it in one previous post. Well, this was supposed to be painted all over wit graffities, which it surely was, 15 years ago. Now the "historical" side is pretty run down, but the other side looks good, with very new paintings. I even photographed some Spanish speaking tourists there, since they asked me to do just that. I think they were glad I at least pretended speaking their language :) Then I crossed the rive Spree on the lovely red Oberbaumbruecke, made a picture of the Molecule Men in the distance, and headed home again, since it looked like it was going to rain soon. Which it of course did not. But I had a short walk in Eastern Berlin before getting home, well, that part was pretty run down, especially compared to the Western part where I live. And I had to give directions to a local kid :)
In the evening I had dinner at my colleagues place, his girl cooking and us watching TV :) After dinner (basically the same sweet-sour thingy I had last week just not as good :P ) we watched the School of Rock movie on TV...well it had good music, but otherwise, not a very complicated movie :) I like the part where Jack Black's character hands out the "home work" CDs to listen to, and mentions some of the greatest bands I listen to, Rush, Pink Floyd and the like. Good movie in this aspect :) Actually there were only a few other parts that actually made me laugh, which is not much for a supposed comedy :)
Monday...as usual, first day of the week, people who went back to Hungary arrive and are sleepy. The special event of the day was that one colleague finally received his laptop he ordered here in Germany. I also did some shopping online, smaller things though. We'll see how that goes, seemingly German post has less sticky fingers compared to the Hungarian. Of course I have to wait for all the items I ordered to be in stock at the same time, so it's gonna be maybe 2 weeks for my stuff to arrive. That's fine with me.
The only thing I miss is some good books...it's just series on my laptop all the time. Since I've finished the magnificient Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. I guess I should get some other book to read...I might dare to buy something in German :) We'll see...

(Some pictures might follow later)

And on a sidenote: my time here got extended until the end of January :D But of course I will spend end of December at home.
Exit, stage left.
M.

Leaving work ain't easy...

...at least it seems so since I spent here a lot more time this week than I usually do. I managed to correct the mistakes that this other guy made, and then some. All this code I'm looking at makes me want to scream, it's ugly and hides errors well. The least I can say that it's not the style I would work :) So I do my best to get the most out of it, without breaking anything or changing too much stuff I'm probably not supposed to touch. Next week, of course :)
Weekend will be fun. I hope. New colleagues are going to stay here, one of them is the silent guy from our office, the other is someone who looks more like friends material. This second guy is going to have his girl from Hungary over here for a month beginning this weekend, and I he asked me to show them around a bit. Hope it's going to be okay, or even better. Maybe the girl can make a better dinner than I usually do in exchange :) We'll see.
One other thing I've done this week was eating some exotic fruit :) Tuna, to be precise, which is the fruit of one kind of cactus. I carefully checked on the Internet in advance how one should eat it, but it's easy, you just have to be careful of the small hidden thorns. You have to cut it in half and then you can eat the flesh of it, including the small blackish seeds. It's not a bad taste, but nothing too good either. Maybe I will try something else next time. Maybe not. This stuff's not cheap here either.
Well, that about wraps up my adventures this week. Who knows what the future brings? :)

Bye
M.

Short update

I went to the local IMAX theater yesterday with Hungarian colleagues, it was great! 3D at it's best :) Everyone who has access to this and has not tried it, well, do it. Supposedly Budapest will have one IMAX theater sometimes next year.
I'm working late tonight due to someone else's mistake. Great. Tomorrow can only be better. Or worse. We'll see :)

That's all for now :)
M.

Recap on the weekend

This weekend was spent alone again. People left on Friday in the afternoon, and I was almost the last person to leave the offices, due to some problems others had with my work. Of course the culprit wasn't me, even though all the traces led to me. I'm not really fond of how the version and project control software works here :(
So after a long Friday I spent the evening at home (I think, I can't really recall :D but hey, it was 3 days ago! ) All I know is that I bought some tea, again, Ostfriesische Blattmischung (translates to East Frisian Leaves Mix) this time, which is very good, and I chose it myself this time. So I'm kinda proud of myself :)
Saturday in the morning I did my laundry (how exciting) and also bought food to cook dinner on the two days of the weekend. I did plan to do some clothes shopping and stuff during the day, so I went to check out the nearby Karstadt. This is basically a big store with a lot of different branches (clothing, electronics, books, etc.) I did find a pair of trousers that would be second best in any competition, but I think I'm gonna look for the winner in some other store too. I also found some scarfs which were made out of the right material, but I did not like the design. So basically I did not buy anything :) But there was also a hairdressers in the store, which I visited, and even though I lacked the words to explain properly what I wanted, the end result does not look that bad. All my ears are still in place and stuff. And with some promotional price the haircut only cost two times the Hungarian price I usually pay :)
In the end I also bough some South African wine in the store to complement, which was quite surprising - it delivered exactly the taste I was expecting. I don't usually get that from wine. It was only a Sauvignon Blanc/Chardonnay couvee, but still, it tasted like it should, and that pleased me.
In the evening I went to the movies to see the Borat movie, which was quite funny, even though it was very weird :) IMHO it was not Borat making an idiot of himself most of the time, but the people he fooled. Though I'm sure some of the were filled in, otherwise they would have killed the poor guy with bare hands :) One surprise in the movie theather (Cinestar in the Sony Center at Potsdamer Platz) was, that almost everyone around was a native English speaker. Though there were some Spanish and German too :) And my German while buying the tickets must have been horrible, the cashier girl immediately asked if I wanted to see the movie in English :P This may be the reason for not having any subtitles on the movie, which was just fine.
Dinner was nothing special, by the way, I just fried some chicken breasts and had some frech fries and barbecue sauce with it. And of course the wine I mentioned. After dinner and an episode of one of my series, I slept like 12 hours. Not that I had to hurry anywhere in the morning or to do anything at night. So anyhow, I woke up and got ready just in time to catch the historical U-Bahn train to take me to the U-Bahn museum and the Olympic Stadium. The train was nice, it had people opening the doors, and there was even a guide who told us the story of the Berlin underground railway system. I chose a non-smoking car in the train, but still, it smelled like an old bum. The ride was not that bad altogether, just the smell and the heat made it a bit uncomfortable :) The museum itself was quite nice, with free entry, as this weekend was dedicated to Alfred Grenander, the architect designing lot of the Berlin U-Bahn stations. In the museum there were the usual things, old U-Bahn-tickets, old uniforms, insides of old cars, and an old Siemens control system for the complex U-Bahn station of the Olympia Stadion. I also got to know that in the 80s and 90s Berlin had a maglev train, the M-Bahn, which was used for normal public transport for 2 years in the late 80s until the Berlin Wall was brought down. It was also interesting to see how the Wall tore the underground network in two, some line were just used on one half of their line, others simply skipped the stations on the Eastern Side. One exception was Bahnhof Friedrichstraße (German link), the so-called Palace of Tears, which was used as a border station and was the place for a lot of sad goodbyes while the city was split.
All in all, it was an interesting visit. After the museum I still had time before the next historical train went back in the city, so I decided to check out the Olympic Stadium. Well, it's big. And now I've seen it, even from the inside. Surely a lot of sport fans would kill me for being so cool about this :) But it's just a stadium ;) I had a lot of time to walk around, I've even seen a football match on one smaller sportsfield nearby, between two smaller teams. The road home was fine, I listened to the second part of the guide's story (the man must have repeated it like 6 times that day...), and headed home for an early dinner. I had the other half of the chicken breasts, but this time with sweet-sour sauce by Uncle Ben's and rice, and some leftover wine. The candle I lit complemented it just fine, and of course I had my private reasons to light it too. After dinner I watched the movie "Proof", which was quite good, only as crazy as it had to be. It totally deserves the 7 points IMDb lists it with. I think the synopsis is quite useless on the movie, though, but that's because the timeline is quite mixed up in the flick :)

Phew, long entry. I'd rather not say anything about today, it was long and boring anyhow :)

Oh, and next weekend I'm gonna have visitors again :D
Great success!
M.

Approaching well deserved rest

This week was just another one in the row :)
I finally finished my last work package, which included solving a lot of crazy problems, but I get more and more confident in my work. One reason for this is that by bumping into these problems I also have to check a lot of code to see how and why stuff does not work. But now most of the problems are gone, and I can start my next activity - we'll see how that goes.
Right now I seem to have another guy assigned to me, and he's a lot better than the one before. First of all, he can speak proper English. Second, he knows I speak German, so he tries to communicate in German with me. Those to combine in us switching between the two languages without hassle, which makes it very easy (for me) to practise my German and be productive at the same time. This is a very good change. This guy is also better professionally, so I can learn new small tricks while working with him.
Apart from work, I did not do much during the week. I've watched a few new episodes of the series "Heroes" and the 2nd season of "Prison Break", and spent basically all evenings with my colleagues. This of course led to me not getting enough sleep again :) So tese guys are a good gang, all in all, we usually have lunch together too. This week it was basically in a different restaurant each day, I've had chili one day, some German food the other day, I've even been to this good Thai restaurant. I will want to go to one of the Italian places too, but the others are hard to convince in this regard. We'll see. I will also have to figure out what to cook during the weekend...
The new guy in our office room (I mentioned him before) does not really fit in the group of colleagues, but well, his bad. He does not seem to be wanting to interact with us. We are not at all negative with him (even though he makes our office room crowded :) ), we do help and give hints on how life works here. But if he does not open up more, he will make his own time more bitter here... We'll see how that goes, probably I shouldn't be the person criticising someone else being closed like this :)
I don't have any plans for the weekend yet, but I might visit the "East Side Gallery", if it does not rain. That's the longest remaining portion of the Berlin Wall, and it's a graffiti art exhibition currently. The U-Bahn Museum is also open all weekend, that also sounds like something to do. I'll definitely report on all this :)

Good bye,
M.

I think I wanted to post this....

This is the huuuuge sushi plate plate we had at the project dinner. I was not quick enough, so some pieces have already gone missing, but still, look at the shear size of it! :) It was for 4, though, but we were 7 and had 2. We did not manage to get rid of it all :)

One way ticket to Budapest and back

My trip back home and the return to Berlin went smoothly, I think there are less passengers in these months as before, so it's less likely that the standby ticket will make me miss a flight. Time at home was fine, had a nice evening out with a friend, having a tea and watching a movie, and the team building excursion on Sunday was fine too. Though I would have enjoyed the included wine tasting better with some better quality wine.
All these things I've been doing in the weekend led to me sleeping less than I usually do, so I had to take a nap before the gig I went visiting on Monday. It was a show by Mike Patton's new band, Peeping Tom, which plays a quite unusual style of music. Unusual for me, that is. You can check out their whole first album at the link. The gig was fine, Mr. Patton is truly an extraordinary frontman, and both the female vocalist (Imani Coppola) and the "Human Beatbox" guy (Rahzel) were great for what they had to do. The actual musicians were Dub Trio, the band who played before the main act, and they were quite good too. One thing that was strange about the venue was that they had plastic cups which had to be returned at the end, and you even got 1€ back if you returned the cup. In Hungary you would get disposable cups, that's for sure. After the show I got back home at around 1am, so I'm still a bit tired right now :) I will have some catching up to do this evening :)
Work is as usual, today is just wasted because I have to wait for one operation which started 6 hours ago to finish. Oh Joy. We have one change here though, a new guy in our room, so now we are 3 here. This new guy is a bit strange, but we will get on well with him - even though the room is now very crowded, it was more comfortable before.

Hmmm. I know this is not my most interesting entry. I better finish it :)
M.

Another weekend at home

I did not really have the time yet to write about the project dinner we had this Tuesday, but to put it short: it was good :) We had sushi again, I will have a picture of the plate for 4 persons :) There was not much else I can recall, I'm almost finished with another work package so I'll have my well deserved rest this weekend. Which, for one part, will consist of a team building with my colleagues.

Maybe I'll write more when I get back :)
M.

Visiting the countryside

One of the lucky aspects of having had my guests here was that we were able to visit places outside Berlin easily using their car. So we used the opportunity on Saturday, and took a ride to Potsdam, to check out the Schloss Sanssouci, or, translated from German and French, the Castle of No Worries :) This was the summer residence of Frederick the Great, and it is an amazing place. The castle itself is only one of many in a huge garden, though most probably this is the most decorated one on the inside. At least this was the only one that was open to visitors, as the main season is over now. So we took the guided tour inside this one castle, which usually happens in German, but in our group basically no-one spoke that, so our guide kindly switched to English. It was a bit embarrassing though that since she believed I spoke both languages, at some points when she did not find the proper English word, she was more or less expecting me to translate it from German... Of course I explained that my skills are not quite on that level yet, but still, it was strange :) The guide was good, nevertheless, and she gave a good insight on how the rooms and the castle was used back in the time. The rooms were decorated in rococo style, and despite this some of them did not lack good taste completely :) Of course every possible surface was gold-plated or painted with very bright colours or decorated by animal figures, but it looked nice anyhow :) Strangely enough there was no mention of Frederick wanting to spend more time in the Rheinberg Castle instead of Sanssouci, as the Rheinberg guide had told us :)

After the castle tour we went walking in the gardens, and checked out a few more buildings from the outside, including the pretty disgusting Chinese Teahouse. We were told before that in that age rich Europeans loved to copy Chinese style or use Chinese elements in their art, well, this house the worst example of this habit :) Though I guess under certain circumstances, like during a carnival or something, this still could look a bit less strange.

It was not that easy to find our way back to the car, but when we did, we headed back to the town of Potsdam, and had a delicious döner for dinner. And, more importantly, we spent an hour at the Cafe Laila, having a delightful cappuccino and some tasty dessert. I was quite satisfied with all this :)

We left Potsdam, and headed for the town of Brandenburg, though our book on Germany did not mention anything special about it. It was a very good idea to visit it nevertheless, since it has a very nice and big old part, with lovely little streets, nice buildings and old churches. It was a nice walk in the town, even though it was quite cold. After our walk we just did some shopping, and headed home to have a nice dinner and a few beers :)

Sadly, my guests had to leave this morning, and what's even worse, they had to leave at 7... So we were up quite early, they were packing and I was paying attention so they don't take any of my precious crystal vases by mistake :) It was fun not be alone for a while, and it was a bit strange that they are leaving and I am staying here...even though I feel quite like home in my small apartment by now :) But, all in all, it was a good experience, and I'm really looking forward to the next time someone decides to take the trip and visit me :)

Sunday was very dull, it rained all day so I did not take a walk outside, just took a rest and spent the day at home. I was actually planning to go to the movies, but my monthly ticket for the public transportation expired, and I was not able to buy a new one :( All the vending machines refused to accept my Visa card, a 100 Euro bill was too big for them and on Sunday I did not find any shops which looked like they could give me some change for my bill. Of course I could have bought a single ticket or something like that, but that would really have been a useless expense, especially with the movie ticket being quite expensive itself. So I just came back home to watch TV, I watched a show on farm vets and one on why chili is so strong... An afternoon well spent, eh? :) I also figured out how I'm going to get my monthly ticket tomorrow in the morning. Actually I'm not in a too good mood because of this, since my company basically left me out of this month's “extra cash because you are working in Germany”-payroll. It's just an administrative hell, and probably I did not shake the hands of one of the devils in this hell firmly enough. So I will have to get some Euros from my Hungarian bank account, which of course will cost me some extra money and extra hassle. And of course nobody told me I'm left out of this, I just know because I asked someone to get my Euros for me (it's handed out in Budapest), and he was told there's nothing there for me. Well, I know I will get it next month, but it's a bit unnerving :) (BTW I know this story is almost incomprehensible, but that’s just life transcribed :) )

And now, being quite sleepy, I'll probably check if there something on TV about the exciting secret society of postal workers or something...Not that I'd need help falling asleep :)

See you!

M.

Short report

I'm having my first visitors here! They arrived on Wednesday at 3am, after a long and tiring drive, and will stay here until Sunday. I took Wednesday off (it's a national holiday in Hungary, so it would have been free anyhow), and we visited the Schloß Rheinberg, castle of Prince Heinrich in the late 18th century, where we had a guided tour just for the 3 of us, with a guide speaking a quite strange German. But it was fun, after the repairs going on in the castle insides are finished, it will be a very beautiful building - now it was "only" very nice :) It's strange somehow that this was my first trip outside the city limits in the past 6 weeks, but it was definitely worth it. My friends did some sightseeing yesterday and today, and we're going to check out Postdam and the Sanssouci Castle together tomorrow. So it's going to be an interesting weekend again.
Oh yeah, and it turned very cold this week. I will have to buy a scarf. Which will probably happen next week, since nothing is open on Sunday, the only day I'll spend in Berlin this weekend.

That's all for now :)
M.

Another weekend passed

This was the first I spent here not being completely on my own, as one of my colleagues stayed too. So after a shared dinner we decided to check out some bars or pubs on Friday, and this time we at least knew where to start looking for one. So we headed to the Hackesche Markt, an U-Bahn station which is supposedly surrounded by all the places young people visit on a typical Friday night. Well, it was not really like that, they were again those restaurant-like places, but we managed to find some nice bar with live jazz music and a nice atmosphere. It was decorated with memorabilia from the German Democratic Republic, as Eastern Germany was called when the country was still separated. So we had a Berlin beer under a Russian flag and pictures of Lenin, Marx and Fidel :) It was good, though the music turned out to be just too loud for that small place, and the crowd a lot less crowd-like than we expected. But anyhow, at least I know of some place which at least resembles what I would be looking for.

Saturday was planned to be a day spent in museums, at the Rembrandt-exhibition, which I was really looking forward to see. The morning stared slow as usual, and my colleague was even slower than me...so I had to do the shopping for our dinner which we planned to cook together. Well, at least it got done in time. So we checked out the exhibition, which had paintings, drawings and prints by Rembrandt and his pupils. It was just as I expected, the man's portraits are just great, and I also like the way he plays with light and darkness. I've already seen some of his paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam earlier this year, and I'm glad I was able to check out some more. For example, there was a smaller copy of the original version of the “Night watch”, which is interesting, as about half a meter was cut off from the original picture to make it fit some room of one of the previous owners. So the “original” can only be seen on a copy made by one of the master's students. Funny. There were also some copies by students, sometimes next to the originals, so one could see how they tried to redo Rembrandt's paintings and how they failed at it :) They were not that bad, though. Of course it was not allowed to make photos, so you just have to believe what I say about this :) The museum which has the exhibition is the Kulturforum, which has a huge collection of renaissance paintings, and surely more of different eras too, but it was just too much of it after the Rembrandt exhibition, so we just left without seeing about half of what the building had to offer. For dinner I planned to fry turkey and some French fries, and I also bought some spices to make it at least taste like something. The preparations and the cooking went fine, and the result was not that much less pleasing compared to what I wanted to make :) Of course, I did the cooking all by myself, especially because that colleague guy is quite slow on doing things, and he did not seem really be able to do things on his own – and I'm not that much of a cook that I could say what someone else should do, I'm happy enough knowing what's going on in my own hands. Anyhow, the dinner was good, and I left the dishes to him :)

After that, we watched the movie “Crash” at the apartment, and I must say, I was quite disappointed by that flick. All I knew about the film was that it depicts the racial tension in the United States, which of course I can't really imagine. But the movie turned just plain stupid in the end, it had such a happy end which did not really suit the neither the topic, nor the first 80 minutes of the movie. I t was not that bad, it's just that they did not manage to come up with a proper ending. Well, at least now I know what movie I was putting off for a few months now :)

Today was a very ugly rainy day, but luckily not from the beginning. We wanted to check out the free (with a Berlin travel pass) sightseeing bus and some fountain in the eastern part of the city. Well, before we got on the bus we checked out the liquid clock in the Europa Center again and we did quite well in figuring out how it works – and we even got to see the biggest “show” of it, at 1pm, when all of it's parts are animated. The same happens also at 1am of course, and it might look even better if it's well lit, but this was enough for now. So, during the bus ride the rain started pouring and the wind also turned quite strong, so my colleague decided to go home and I started for the Museum of Natural Science. The museum was quite good, though I guess this is about as much stuffed animals I can take in a day. There were some panels about how this stuffing process is and was, it was quite interesting. There is also a mineral collection, which holds some very nice pieces, but, as always, it was just too much in the end. And that with a third of the museum closed for renovation... But it was a good choice nevertheless.

For dinner tonight we're going to visit the cheap pizzeria nearby, it's called Don Corleone. I hope we will get along well with the local Mafia :)

G'night,
M.

Sushi - a first encounter

Yesterday I had dinner with all the Hungarian guys who work here at the company (The Company, even), in Berlin. One of them had the idea to go to this sushi place, which suggestion I was more than happy to accept - I've never eaten sushi before, and I was very curious about it, but I just needed someone more exprienced to show me how it's done :) So we went to the Sushi Express in the Sony Center on the Potsdamer Platz - they also have a homepage but it's ugly enough not to link to it. The place is nice, I'm not sure how usual sushi restaurants look like but here there were a few small and high tables and one could also sit at the bar. So we sat there, since we were too many for the small tables, and placed our orders. I ordered sake, because I've never tasted that before (it should be drank while it's warm :) and it tastes like a strange boiled wine), a Japanese beer of the Asahi brand (nothing special), and a Set 4 sushi plate :) I think this is not even listed on the not-linked homepage, as it's a Happy Hour offer. BTW all the opening hours are covered by the Happy Hour thingy. Strange. So anyhow, I got some ginger (Gari) and wasabi to it, as well as soy sauce. And I had to eat with sticks. First time ever :) It was fun though :) The sushi tasted nice, I liked the rolled little thingies (Makis) a bit better than the big fish-covered thingies (Nigiris). One of them was even called Unagi :) If I didn't know it was raw fish, the taste wouldn't have given it away either - not that I knew how raw fish should taste :)
After the dinner, we had a walk in the city, went to the Brandenburg Gate since it has a nice colourful lighting these few weeks (like a lot of other places in Berlin, this is some kind of event), and then took the train back home. Of course first in the wrong direction :) but it was fun nevertheless.
So what I learned yesterday that sushi is a good food and one should not be afraid of eating with sticks :) It was a good lesson, though a bit pricey, sushi is definitely not the cheapest food around. But who cares, it was a nice evening!
Tonight we are going to check out some pubs the locals suggested. We'll see how that goes :)
Oh, and I was told today that I'll stay here at least until the end of this year. And I got my name put on my postal box. I'm happy about both :)

Over for now. I try not to eat anything strange until next time!
M.

Back in Berlin

Well, on Friday I had my first trip back to Hungary. Things went quite well at the airport, though it was quite unnecessary for me to be there so early, as I only got my boarding pass 10 minutes after the checkin desk was supposed to close. Of course this is because I had a so called standby ticket, which means that I can only travel if there is an unsold place on the plane or somebody cancels in the last second. Some colleagues were less lucky than I was this Friday, and had to sleep in Frankfurt in some 4* hotel :) That could be considered luck though, too, as the company pays for these nights spent in hotels :)
The weekend at home was nice, it was good not having to do everything for myself again :) But it's also good to be back. The trip back here also went good, tha landing in Berlin was a bit shaky because of the strong wind, but I liked that too :) And with this trip behind me, I can say from experience that it's better to travel on bigger planes. I was expecting a bit more form the 50 and 80 person planes I was flying to and from Budapest, I mean I kinda thought I'd be able to feel what's happening with the plane a bit more. Au contraire! It was only uncomfortable. Not only the plane is smaller, the seats are too :)
I also started my new assignment today, which should be a bit more exciting compared to the previous one. The guy who is supposed to be instructing me has no idea why and how stuff works. Ain't that fun. So I will have to do a lot of figuring out in this task too, and I hope that will make it a bit more interesting. We'll see.
This evening I'm planning to buy another dose of tea, and I tried to look for something that would suit my taste online. That is not an easy thing to do. I mean I have no idea how stuff that tasted good for the reviewer, having a taste resembling this and that and a partridge in a pear tree would taste for me... So I will have to just go by the shopkeeper lady's taste, and maybe this time she'll give some better advice. Tea-shopping reloaded.
Oh, and one of my colleagues got sent back to Budapest apparently. There seem to be no more assignments for him that would need him to stay here in Berlin. And that only after one month :| I hope I can stay a lot longer... This was quite a surprise for him too.
And I also broke my keychain today. The door here in the offices is just too heavy, and when I unlocked it and tried to pull it open holding on to the keychain, one aluminum part just broke. I will have to ask for a new one, as this would be my badge holder if I would have to wear a badge like in Hungary.

Well, no more adventures for now...my barbecue sauced dinner awaits!
M.

Ps. I also changed the template for the blog... The plain white background just did not cut it for me any more :) Feel free to tell me if you like it better or not. I'm not really ready to make my own template, so one of the defaults has to be good enough.

A night at the Museum Island

In Berlin, on Thursdays, entry is free to all regular exhibitions in all museums for the last 4 hours of their opening hours. And some are open till 10pm on Thursdays. So I decided I might as well save a few €s and use the opportunity check out some things at the Pergamon Museum, which has a collection of Muslim, Greek and Babylonian art. By the way, the German archeologists were just crazy in the beginning of the 20th century, they dug out and brought almost complete buildings to Germany... And, as at that time preservation was less important then nice looking stuff, they rebuilt a lot of missing pieces on the things they brought back. So this way, the exhibitions are very interesting, but in some parts just not real.
The main attraction, which gives the name to the museum, is the Pergamon Altar, which is basically a set of stairs and an entrance, and a lot of pieces of statues. They actually managed to figure out a complete story of one Greek mythological guy based on the remains of the statues... though to me it sounds more probable that they just made something up :)
There was also a Babylonian gate and a marching way rebuilt, which look kinda swell with the very blue color of it. Maybe I just like blue too much :) And of course a lot of ancient writings on clay tablets and stuff like that. These Babylonian guys were quite good in what they did, and it's amazing that these few thousand year old things just remained more or less intact.
Another interesting thing to me was the Muslim art part. They use colors appealing to me a lot, and I also really wanted to check out how pages from a real "illuminated" Turkish book look like. Well, they are nice :)
I got very, very tired though before I had the time to check out the Greek collection, so I just made a few photos in the first room, and then left for home. Of course this was still absolutely worth my time and money :) But I think I should not go to "boring", passive museums when I'm tired.
Oh, and one thing that was interesting was the density of Spanish(-speaking) people in the museum. There were a whole lot. Strange :) And even though the entry was free, there were not too many people. That was one good thing. And only once did I accidentally made a picture using the flash on my camera, which is of course forbidden - luckily I photographed only a copy of something precious.
And when I got back to the apartment, my colleagues left me a note to visit them for a beer, so in the end I did not go to sleep early, as I intended, but had a fun evening again :)
Also, this afternoon I'm gonna fly back to Budapest for the weekend, and I'll be there till Tuesday. I need to get my warm coat for the coming winter, for example :)

Stay tuned,
M.

Rant on my camera

I would be sooo happy if I'd be able to make pictures with my digital camera in the way I want to... I mean if the conditions are less than ideal, then the photo won't turn out to be the best possible. But, on the other hand, I would not want to spend the time, the energy and of course the money on getting and using pro equipment. Is there some way to stay in the middle? I mean, are there compact cameras that are not too expensive and still deliver close-to-pro quality? I will have to investigate...
Anyhow, I just the above picture to be sooo good... I just had to stop and take that photo. But it got less then perfect, of course... *sigh*

Have a nice evening, y'all!
M.

Sunday happenings

I was only a little bit quicker today as I was the day before :) I think this has to do with the real dark curtains I have in the room, it always seems to be very dark when I wake up. Maybe I don't notice it's already 9am and I've already had 10+ hours of sleep this way :) Not that I had to hurry anywhere...I bought the usual Brötchen for breakfast – I only noticed today they are called Schrippen here in Berlin. No wonder the Turkish girl at the bakery did not understand what I wanted :)

After the usual morning ceremonies I planned my trip for today, and set off for the Platz der Luftbrücke, or Square of the Airlift – a square which is dedicated to the USAF and RAF that supported West Berlin during the Eastern blockade in 1948-49. As some of you might know, West Berlin was completely cut off from the outside world during this year, and the people could only get food and any other materials via this airlift, and this was also the only way to sell their products. The main airport used for these operations is Tempelhof, which is right next to the square. The square itself is basically a small park with a quite ugly statue resembling the 3 aerial routes the allied air forces could take in their support operations (allegedly, I read this on an information board). Actually I was quite curious how this square looked like...well now I know :) By the way, one of the planes taking part in the support flights, a so called Rosinen (Raisin) Bomber is now on the top of the German Technology Museum I visited on Saturday.

So, after checking out the square, I set off to continue my trip according to my plans – which lasted almost 2 U-Bahn stops, when I noticed that I'm quite near to the Jewish Museum, one thing I was told not to miss. So I changed my carefully planned way for the day, and entered the museum. The museum building itself is strange, the architect really wanted to symbolize quite a few things with the shape of the building, but I think even he himself wasn't really sure about what these were :) Inside the building the corridors are not really like corridors in any other place...In the basement, there are 3 axes symbolizing exile, the Holocaust and continuity. There is one tower dedicated to the Holocaust – this is a single wedge-shaped room, with only one narrow source of sunlight about 10 meters above ground, with bare concrete walls. The goal is to feel how abandoned one can be when he can hear the sounds of life going by and seeing the light of day but not being able to interact with anything. There is also one square shaped outside area with 7*7 concrete towers in it, with a tree on top of each. 48 trees are planted in German soil and do symbolize Israel, and the one tree in the middle is planted in soil from Israel and symbolizes Berlin. I have to admit I did really get the point of this second installment.

The other floors in the building, reached via the axis of continuity have an exhibition on the history of Jews in Germany in the last thousand years. It is quite interesting, though I did not learn anything I did not know before – it was just illustrated by things I've never seen before. (Reading “Fogság” (Captivity) by György Spiró taught me a lot about Jewish customs and how they have to live according to religious rules). The exhibition ended of course with the Holocaust and how the Jewish Germans managed to return to normal life after it. The museum is really not about the Holocaust itself but the history of Jews, so this part was not over-emphasized. Not that I would have a problem with that, but I was getting really tired and hungry (Éhes vagyok, fáradt vagyok, segítsetek Vuknak, a kisrókának...), but I hate to leave museums unfinished. Oh, and in the end there were a few voting machines, asking visitors if they have people among their friends who have antisemitic views (~55% don't), if they would mind if their children would marry people from different cultures (~60% would not) and if Turkey should be accepted to the EU (this was quite balanced, and I voted “no” on this one – I'm sure the museum people also know about the Kurdish Holocaust that Turkey does not admit to have happened).

After the museum trip I took quite a detour back home for some hidden reason, and then visited the fence sitting on which I can use the Internet on my laptop. Of course the day concluded in a great dinner, and I still have a beer and some movie waiting for me. Whomever finds out which one was in the fridge, gets invited for the other :)

Time to chill...
M.

Thoughts about the Berlin night (and other things :) )

This last Friday I decided I should check out what the nightlife looks like in Berlin. I did not have many pointers on where to go apart from what my books about Berlin told me. So I figured I'd check out the Savignyplatz (Savigny square) and it's surroundings, as I saw two jazz clubs mentioned in that region, and it was supposed to be one of those places where young people spend their time. I did not go directly to the square, because I wanted to have a short walk and this way I was able to spare a few stops and changes on the U-Bahn. The walk in the evening was nice, the weather was not that cold, and there were not too many people. On the other hand, there weren't many on the places they supposed to be either... All the bars were just full of elderly tourists or families finishing a dinner. Most probably everyone went there because they read this and that about the square in their own Berlin books, but still...You can most probably read about Ráday utca in every newish book about Budapest, and it's full of young locals nevertheless. Here, I only saw a few punks strolling in the area, and some young people who were there with their parents :) And also the bars...Every place is just a restaurant, everything is well lit, and nothing looks like a “proper” pub or bar. Even the jazz places were completely different from the ones I was to in Amsterdam, and it's not that these would have been better. The Dutch ones were smaller, cozier, and let people be close to the artists, to the music... Here, I did not even notice these were music bars, they just looked like all the other restaurants. It might be that I was there too early, but if 10 pm is too early than I don't know when life would at least look like it was starting to happen.

The trip was not in vain though, I've found a grocery store which is open every day, including Sunday, up till 10pm! This is one thing to treasure here in Germany, as in the evenings and on Sundays you can get whatever you need only at petrol stations or small newsstands and the like in U-Bahn stations for example. Bakeries and restaurants are an exception. When we were in Aachen (next to the Dutch “border” in Western Germany) last winter, we had to go to a nearby Dutch town to get some food for our trip back home to Hungary, since we started on a Sunday. So here, I know a place now.

Oh, and about me knowing places...I've already helped tourists find their way twice here in the city :D The first time I tried to help Spanish tourists (in Spanish of course), but I was lucky since the figured stuff out themselves. I mean, I knew how to help them, but they were so happy that I seem to speak Spanish, that they started to speak so quickly, I almost did not notice when to nod that they are right about the way they chose :) The second time I helped an elderly American couple (at least I think they were from the States based on their accent), this was right here in the U-Bahn station next to my apartment – so I knew quite well how to get to the S-Bahn station next to it :) So I'm almost like a local now :D Actually, it was only today I almost got lost for the first time, but luckily I did not reach the metro going the wrong direction :) Not that one could really get lost here with a map :) Metros go everywhere, and with a few connections one can get anywhere.

But now, a little bit closer to the original subject again :) The other thing I wanted to write about is the number of people of Berlin, in general, not only at night. I mean I've never seen a real crowd here since I've been here. I think I travel at around rush hour twice a day, and I still have to see so many people on public transport as I can on the tram no. 6 or the bus no. 7 at home. Or a traffic jam, for that matter. I'm not sure how exactly road traffic is in Berlin since I've only taken public transport until now, but I've only seen the traffic flowing, not stopped in a long row. That's quite surprising knowing how many “Staus”, traffic jams there are on the highways.

Well, no more thoughts for now :)

M.

PS. I wrote this post on Sunday evening, and this Monday morning there were a lot of people on the U-Bahn... Maybe I should also write about stuff I'd love to happen, it might turn real too :)

A day in the life

Wow, today started quite slowly :) It was at around 10am, when I managed to get my sorry behind down to the bakery to get my breakfast. The honey I bought yesterday was quite an addition to the morning delights, I think I'm in love with these fresh out of oven bread rolls :) (Though I'm sure not with the mustached Turkish baker... :) ) And after I finished the morning ceremony, it took me more than an hour to decide what to do today. I considered a whole lot of things, but in the end the geeky engineer hidden (not too deep) in me lead me to the German Museum of Technology. And, I must say, this was a good decision, and four and a half well spent Euros. I was there all afternoon :) Of course, this one cannot reach the perfection of it's counterpart in Munich/München, but still, having the chance to look at all these old TV sets, a reproduction of Kondrad Zuse's first computer, airplanes cut in half, century-old locomotives...well it's an experience :) Describing what I saw in more detail would be quite in vain, since more or less everyone knows how these things look like, but I'll attach a few pictures about them. You should all come and check it out for yourself ;)

The best part of the afternoon was that my ticket was also valid for Spectrum, the museum of experiments next to the technology museum. This is very similar to the “Csodák palotája”, so I guess you Hungarians have at least an idea about what it would be :) For all others, this is basically a place where the experiments of science classes can be reproduced by you yourself, even such exotic things as high voltage demos or radioactivity measurements. Of course everything is displayed in such a way that even 10-year olds can and will enjoy. Hell, even I did, and I'm just a kid myself :) The only bad part was that I did not even have the time to visit all the floors :( I think the last part was about acoustics, but at least I saw electricity, mechanics and a lot about optics. Maybe it'd be worthwhile to go back again once, but for now this much should be enough :)

BTW, one problem I have with all this sightseeing that I don't seem to find the best things to make a photo of... I get home after a very good sightseeing day, and I have almost no good photos to look at :( I'm kinda disappointed with this, but well, I still have time here to make a lot more pictures, and maybe in the end I'll feel more satisfied about all this :)

In the evening I got home very hungry, and luckily I cooked something very satisfying this time :) Nothing too special, so I'll even keep it a secret :) But I'll add the leftovers to tomorrow's dinner for sure, and I assure you, that'll be a meal you'd be jealous of, no matter how gross it sounds :D

Well, that's it for now... I wonder what I'll do tomorrow :)

M.

PS. I'll have something on the nightlife in Berlin and about my trip on Sunday...when it's written :) And I'll add the pics when I'm not publishing sitting on the street (backdating, as always) :)

On a literary sidenote

Orhan Pamuk was announced as winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. Who is he, you might ask (hint). Well, I was like that too a few months ago, but someone in Spain was reading one of his books, and it seemed quite interesting. So I also bought myself a copy of Pamuk's “My name is Red”. The book has a very good storyline, and also the idea of changing the point of view from character to character with each chapter is quite innovative. It also shows a lot of the life and ideals of the Turkish Empire in the 16^th century. But. And this is a big but. I'm not sure about the original style of writing, as Mr. Pamuk writes in his native Turkish, but the English translation by Erdağ M. Göknar makes reading a bit more difficult than I like it best. With a good book, no matter the language, I can read a couple of hundred pages a week easily, with this one, I'm at page 220-something, maybe two thirds of the book, in almost 2 months. Of course the award is mostly given because of Mr. Pamuk's political stance, but still. These last weeks were quite busy for me, granted, but no matter how much I'm interested in the story, the style just breaks my pace... Well, I hope I'll finish before next year's Nobel ceremony ;)

M.

Wrapping up another week

My washing worked quite well yesterday! :) I even managed to set the drier properly so it did not cook my clothes :) But hey, there's a first time for everything... And now I know why people from the States miss driers so much in Hungary, it's very convenient. Oh, and my choice of liquid detergent and fabric softener (as in "cheapest of each") was quite good, my stuff does not smell weird at all :)
There was not much more happening yesterday either, the evening was again just chilling out with colleagues. Which is quite different from my previous workplace, I don't think I hung out with people there in 2 years as much as I did here in 2 weeks. Of course, here everyone is without the usual friends. Maybe that's why the German colleagues don't invite or join us for anything, as they have better thing to do with people they get to choose :) Which also leads to me spending another weekend on my own, since Hungarian people went back home again, but I think I can handle that much :)
I think it's time to mention the place where I usually have lunch here. Not that I had tested so many places, there was one Italian restaurant, which is more or less okay, but having pasta each day would suck :) And it's not so special anyhow. The other place, which I like a lot, is a small almost-restaurant called Opern Schlemmereien. "Schlemmerei" translates to "gluttony" or "gormandizing", so basically it's to eat a lot of good stuff :) So the name more or less means "Tasty stuff next to the Opera" :) The place is operated by a family as far as I can tell, and they have a different menu each day - 2 kinds of main dishes and a selection of soups and there's always Käsespätzle. I usually take one of the 2 main dishes, which is some meat, potato or rice or pasta and a quite rich salad, maybe even some sauce with it. And there's free dessert with each main dish :) A chocolate bar or some kind of tasty yoghurt, usually. And it's only 4€, which is quite cheap compared to other places. For example, a sandwich can easily cost 2-3€ on it's own at a cafe and a Burger King menu is somewhere between 4 and 5€. I think I've become a regular at this place :) But I'm not sure what will happen if it gets colder, since this place is more or less open, the only part "inside" is the kitchen. I hope they come up with something soon :)
Oh yeah, and one thing which is just a little detail, but a very important detail, regarding all the shops I've visited (also the restaurant place). They always say goodbye properly, and usually wish a pleasant weekend or a nice evening. It's only one second of effort for them, but you leave with a smile.
Well, today I finish another week of work, which also included some stressy moments due to some mistakes on my side. I hope it will get better. I should be able to finish the "boring" part till next Wednesday or so. If I don't spend this much time blogging, that is :) We'll see :) For now, I'm out of thoughts anyways :)

So, I wish you all a nice and relaxing weekend! :)
Mark