Polly wants a cracker...NOT!

Well, travel and flying is always an experience. Time between my last entry and now was spent as usual, no virtual rainforests should be cut down for the reason of archiving those events. But today...I got to the airport early as always, and the gate was changed 3 times in 10 minutes, we were basically just running up and down in the airport :) And while I was waiting for boarding to begin, I was trying to phrase a polite mail of complaint to the operators of the airport, as I noted that the security checks were quite sloppy - airport personnel was checked at the gates, but they were free to go in spite of the gate *BEEP*ing. At Berlin-Tegel, for example, also the personnel is carefully checked, and well, that's the way it should be. So anyhow, I was thinking about this subject, and was interrupted by some girls who asked me if I wanted to fill out a "How satisfied are you with the airport" form :) Hell I did. So now they know :P
Then, we got on the bus that took us to our plane, which was operated by Augsburg Airways (nice historical reference :) ), and was the first turbo-prop plane I've ever flown with. It was a Dash 8 Q400, where the Q stands for "quiet due to installation of the Active Noise and Vibration Suppression (ANVS) system designed to reduce cabin noise and vibration levels to nearly those of jet airliners", which translates to "feels just like the inside of a coctail shaker". The other problem was that we did not get a sandwich for breakfast, but chocolate crackers. They were good, but too little, too late :) And the plane was of course slow like a paralyzed snail, so we were just able to catch our connecting flight. All in all, that part of the trip was pretty bad :) The other leg went just fine, got me to work, where I'll try to sleep stay awake for an hour or two more.

For dinner I will try the sandwich maker I brought with, I hope it tastes good :P Or that at least the sandwiches will.
Take care,
M.

A Hard Day's Day(s)

Catching the minibus to the airport at 4:50 am was just the beginning. The flight, which should have taken off at 7:10 was stranded at BUD for 45 minutes, because the weather was quite foggy in MUC. At least we got an extra orange juice during the wait. Our connecting flight was only 20 minutes late, at least that was written on the board, but the take off only happened like 30 minutes later, again, because of the fog. When I looked out the window while we were on the runway, I did not even see the wing of the plane. That's a reassuring sight, I must tell you :) Going a few hundred kmh with virtually no visibility is definitely a lot of fun :) The layer of fog was only like 10 meters thich though, and the weather was fine and sunny above :) Strangely enough basically only the Munich Airport (name after the late Franz Josef Strauß, minister-president of Bavaria) and it's surroundings were still covered with fog whe we were already airborne, which is either very unlucky or a very bad choice of place for an airport.
So anyhow, the journey ended well, we had a good lunch (lasagne and canelloni at the usual Italian restaurant), and a very exhausting day of bugfixing for me after. I had a good dinner, and just chilled out in the evening for a few hours watching Desperate Housewives, Dead Like Me and reading Good Omens. Terry Pratchett + Neil Gaiman = tons of fun. My colleague, who stayed here for the weekend to get visited by his family borrowed my camera for the weekend, and after work he dropped in to return it, he was quite satisfied with it. I might have convinced him to buy a Kodak :)
Today...Maybe even worse than Monday? :) Crazy bugs, crazier fixes, but it's more or less over for today. Oh yeah, and I guess I did not even mention that on Friday there was not ticket waiting for me at the airport, as promised, so it took a few minutes to sort everything out for my trip home. These last 3 days were not that good for work :)
One good thing might be that I was asked if it would be okay to work on a project in March from here...We'll see how that turns out :)

Well, enough of me for today!
M.

The way to a man's heart...

Yesterday was just one like all the other days. We did play a few games of pool and foosball after work, though, and ate a great Turkish dürüm again. So it was fun. No real reason to blog about it, though :)
But I had a reason to start this entry : Passendale cheese. (The web page is in French, but you can also check it out in Dutch :) ) Passendale is a Belgian cheese company, and they make the greatest cheese I've tasted here until now. Their product is so rich in flavour, it's quite surprising, and still, it does not dominate with it's taste, but perfectly complements the taste of any of the sandwiches I used it for. I have no idea where it is sold in other countries, but I'm lucky enough to have a shop nearby that sells them :)
Oh yeah, the other thing is Rote Grütze, which stands for "Red Groats". It's just fruit with vanilla sauce, but it's very tasty, the ingredients make a perfect combination. That's another thing not to be found in Hungary, that's for sure...
I hope you are hungry now :) Bon appetit!
M.

The weights of the world seem lighter...

...after such a great morning trip. I think today on the BUD-MUC leg our flight took a route slightly to the South compared to the usual, and thus I had great view on the Alps! There were only very light clounds, the sun was shining, the top of the mountains was covered with snow... The fog/clouds was trapped in some of the valleys, and in a turn of one river the fog was just trapped over the water and flowing with it... Amazing sights! I wish I had the equipment to make good photos of this kind of stuff! (Of course I did not even try this time with my camera...The results would have been too much of a letdown :) ) On the second leg from MUC to TXL the weather was very cloudy, not offering much to look at, and I was too occupied with solving the Sudoku in my USA Today newspaper anyhow. There was also an article about the new "No Child Is Left Behind" educational program, and it's criticism: kids have to do to much math and reading, and even have to write tests! Well, when I was in primary school, tests were quite usual, and I guess they payed enough attention to how well us kids individually improved. If I remember correctly. Strangely enough, the Hungarian primary school system is changing currently to put less emphasis on tests. As if the praised (by us :) )European education model would get substituted with the American one, and vica versa. Interesting.
So well, I woke up tired but smiling, and the day started fine. This is going to be a nice week, in spite of the rain, I'm sure :)
BTW the week has a basketball game and a Dali exhibition in store for me, I hope I can visit both! But I will definitely blog on those...

Well, time to work :)
M.

Back in business

With a well deserved time out spent in Budapest behind me, I'm back to Berlin for a while. I will definitely head back home for the weekend and return on Monday, but after that everything is rather uncertain. Well, most important would be to have nice weather throughout January, that would bring the mood to do some quality work and decent thinking :)
This morning started quite early, I was at the airport at 6am already. With everything going fine I arrived in Berlin at around noon, to have a great lunch and start fixing some things that were left unfinished last year. After work I've also found the apartment tidy, luckily nothing crept out of the fridge while I was away. So I just made a quick trip to the store to fill my rations for the week, and started typing this after a nice dinner. Sleep will come swiftly, that's for sure.

Bye-bye und auf Wiedersehen,
M.

Taking a break

I spend Christmas and New Year's at home...so probably no new entries before January.
This last weekend was spent with movies and shopping, and I guess I've never seen that many people on the streets in Berlin before. It was okay though. I gave directions to people again. It's my city :) The Christmas decorations in town were very nice, the best part was in the KaDeWe shopping center with Santa, elves, a huuuuge Christmas tree, people on stilts...It was very nice :) But the prices were very steep, I had to search for a different store.
During the weekend I've seen the movies Hard Candy and Lonesome Jim, both were very good in very different ways. Though Lonesome Jim is very slooooow, it's very interesting. Well... you would have to see them yourselves... :)

So, I'm closed for the holidays, see you next year! I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!
M.

Of Ice and Men

Wednesday seemed a great day for science...erm, ice skating, I mean. There are 4 different places in Berlin where one can go skating, and we went to the one in the Wedding district. For some reason we got discounted tickets, a very good start :) We rented skates, quite uncomfortable ones, and went on the ice. One of the colleagues did speed skating for years, so he felt quite at home on the ice, and the other one was also quite confident even with the ground transformed in such a slippery material. So it was just me who fought with the elements and tried to stay standing with great effort :) After a few minutes of torture I adjusted my skates a bit, and suddenly everything became a lot simpler, and as the minutes went by I was better and better each round. As this was my 3rd time on ice, I had to re-learn everything I once almost knew, but at the end I think I reached at least the level I was at the last time I tried skating. It was very good, and it costs around the same price as it does in Bp., just without the crowd. I think there will be a next time too, but then I will have to try a different type of skates. Probably that won't make me a better skater, but they definitely seemed more comfortable :)
After skating we decided to head out for a beer, and on my suggestion we went to the place with the free foosball, Baiz. For some reason the bar was filled with gay and lesbian people (and no, it's not such a bar), which would be quite a strange sight in Bp. It was quite strange for the Eastern European eye :) We played quite a few games on the kicker table, they call it in German, and even met a Hungarian guy living in Berlin! He's Hungarian on behalf of his dad, and he spoke perfect Hungarian, of course. He was quite happy to meet us, and it was nice to meet him too :) Afterwards we played with an Irish guy too, but he was speaking such a flawless German that it was hard to believe he was from elsewhere :) All in all, the night was very good, meeting nice people and playing quite a lot. The nigth bus was easier to find this time, and we arrived home at around 3am. That left 5 hours to sleep before work. Great :) so Thursday was just a killer. Literally. I was quite annoyed all day, but the day passed well nevertheless. In the evening we went shopping to one Karstadt mall, it was okay, people are a lot more relaxed here than at home. And I bought a great Dredg CD at Media Markt for just 6€! I was quite surprised they have that kind of music on sale here. There were some other good CDs, some which I would not see at a Hungarian Media Markt. Strange. There also were a few DVDs on sale, with both German and English dubbing, I might buy one or two good movies next time I go there. Which probably will happen on the weekend.

No more words for now, I really have to do some catching up with sleeping! (As this was obviously written not on Friday just before 11 am :) )
M.

A long time ago, on a Monday far, far away...

The plan for Monday was visiting Potsdam. But of course first we had to have breakfast, so we went to a small Turkish restaurant close to my apartment. And wow, it was a great choice! THe breakfast was very rich, very tasty, we got 3 different kinds of cheese, cold cuts, different vegetables, olive seeds, butter and some great marmelade, accompanied by an unlimited amount of Turkish bread. It was very, very good. And the service! Nothing too special, I must admit, the lady who was probably the owner too, just payed us attention. And we also got a free tea when we finished. She even asked if we wanted another one, while we were just sitting there deciding if we were ready to go yet. All in all, a great experience, and very good to know I have this place so near!
The highway to Potsdam had very good traffic that day, so we got to the Park Sanssouci quite quickly. We decided not to enter the castle again, we had a walk in the park instead. The weather was okay, with just a tiny bit of rain. Then we went over to the town itself to visit the Christmas market, and to try the Glühwein thez had to offer of course :) I also had a very good ham sandwich, with two very thick pieces of ham. It was delightful :) Then we went back to that great place, the Cafe Laila, and tasted their great Apfelstrudel again... We also wanted to smoke a shisha, but as it was just 5 pm, we had to go out to one of the tents of the cafe. Now that tent was the best experience, it was very simple, but it was furnished in an oriental fashion, and we just lied down on the pile of pillows that were there. The hookah was accompanied by some great tea again, so everything was great. But we had to head back to the city so my friends can visit the IMAX theater, which they did enjoy too. After that, we wanted to get to a bar called Morgenrot, I think I did mention that one before. Well, it was quite a surprise, we went in, I ordered beer at the bar and did it quite loud, too, just before the bartender told me that on Mondays they are not open as a pub. Bummer. But we did not give up the hunt for the best pub, and we ended up ata place with okay priced beer and two foosball tables. Luckily we were enough to play amongst ourselves, as the local guys beat us big time when we tried to play against them. It was a very nice place :) The road home was a bit bumpy, to say the least, as the trains do not run on weekdays at 3am :) But we got to the Alexanderplatz following the info I gathered at a Kebab place. At Alex there was a public transport info desk, open even that late, and the lady gave us a detailed personalised way home in print. It was very surprising :) The night bus was good, took us back home in what seemed a second :) It was around 4am, making my waking up at 8 quite stressy. As I had to go to work... My friends left the apartment later that they, and were kind enough to leave my fridge filled with delicate delicacies :) It was a great weekend, seeing my friends after such a long time and exploring the Berlin night life as well! There should be more weekends like this :)

M.

Waaay behind

I know have still alot write about a lot of stuff... But I'm very busy at work! So I will try to do that later.
One nicee thing was, from yesterday, that I got to take the flight from Budapest to Munich in the cockpit!! It was awesome :) Even though it was a small machine. We had wonderful weather, and the pilots even answered a few of my questions :) So it was a nice way to start the day :) Before I knew where I will fly, I was asked if I wanted something to read - but of course as I've found out what's going to happen, I declined the offer :)
Great trip, great day! But today... not so much :)

Back to the treadmill...
M.

Continuing the recap

One thing I completely forgot to mention is the abundance of Christmas markets here in town. That's where you can get Glühwein and where you can see people dressed as monsters scaring kids :) All the things you can buy is quite similar to what's generally in Hungary at such a market, though the subtle differences are here. For example there are quite a few Arabic or Turkish people selling their products, generally related to water pipe smoking :)
Sunday started late again, and also at one such market, on the Bretscheideplatz, next to the Zoo. This square usually has quite a few shady characters loitering, but now it was all dressed up for the holidays, and that drove out the dark figures too :) I showed my friends the water clock with the green liquid in it, and after having a snack and some hot wine in the market, we headed for the Victory Column, or Siegessaule, with the public sightseeing bus. And on the bus we were overheard again, this time by an elderly lady, who was originally from Hungary :) She was very nice, though she got a bit confused and used German and Hungarian all mixed up :) But for one living in Germany for 50 years now, she spoke her mother tongue a lot better than that waitress from last week did after 4 years of being away... So anyhow, the Tiergarten park and the Column were both great, again, with wonderful weather, the sun shining brightly in a clean sky. The trees are a lot different compared to early October, when I last visited the park - back then everything was still mostly green, but now it's only shades of brown and red everywhere :) It's very interesting to look at the pictures, for me, seeing the same sight basically in two completely different colours. I did not make pictures of the park, though, because I did not want to climb the Column again.
So when all the others came down, we crossed the park and took the Unter den Linden road to the heart of the East, the Alexanderplatz. It was quite a long walk, with a lot of people nearing our goal, everyone out to do some shopping. Because, of course, the shops are open for a lot longer time now that Christmas is here. One interesting thing was a Peugeot showroom, which did not sell usual street cars, but showed off some of the concept cars they have. Nice. You can also buy the in models or buy a Peugeot-branded salt shaker. The price is basically it's weight in gold :)
So, after Alexanderplatz we headed home to give the possibility for the girl in the gang proove once again what a great cook she is :) And she did just that, we had a very good pasta carbonara for dinner. Of course she wouldn't have been successful without our help in removing all those filthy full beer bottles from her way ;)
Finishing dinner we went out to meet a friend of her's who lives in Berlin. This friend showed us a great place where we had cheap, but good Berliner beer, and the foosball was all for free :) We only had to tolerate smoke, but it was okay. She also mentioned one other pub to visit, Morgenrot, which we put on the sights necessary to see immediately :) We were lucky enough to catch a late (or rather early) train home, she was less lucky, she had to take the bus :( I hope though that our company wasn't too bad for her :)
For me the evening ended when we arrived home, thought the other guys went out to find some nice place to wait for the dawn. I slept so well that I did not even hear them coming home. I just woke up for the snoring an hour later :)
The plan for Monday was visiting Potsdam, and checking out Sanssouci. This is exactly what we did and what I'm going to post about next :) Good to see that I'm a week behind myself :)

M.

This is just a placeholder...

...for the post I promised yesterday, wrote last evening and left home this morning. :)
And to lure my regular visitors back for no real reason, of course :)

M.

As for the weekend

Yes, I know it's Wednesday :) But I was so exhausted after the long weekend that I did not find the energy to write anything here. The three days with my friends went very well, I was a bit more prepared for their arrival compared to the last time I had visitors - though my fridge was still not full enough :) But at least it did not hurt that much to wake up at 3 am to let them in. And is it was the birthday of one of them, we had to have a champagne, and while we are at it we had to drink all the beer available :)
In the morning (or noon, rather) we headed out for the generic "first time in Berlin" walk, including the Checkpoint Charlie, the Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate. And also a Starbucks :) I was quite confused when the waitress asked for my name when I ordered my White Chocolate Mocha :) But it turned out that they yall you by name when your drink is ready. Kind a useless when you are the only one ordering, or the first in the queue. Anyhow, I had that coffee and a raspberry cheesecake, and both were very, very good. Starbucks seems to be a good place based on just this :) The California Coffee Company, which we have instead Starbucks in Budapest, was not so memorable, though of course my company and the occassion was :)
Sooo, after the sightseeing and the first tastes of Berlin Glühwein (with rum, of course), we headed for the Istanbul Grill, serving the best kebab ever (at least in the vicinity of my apartment). There and older man overheard us talking, and when he found out we were Hungarians, he burst out in tears...He invited us for a beer, and praised Hungary for helping to unite Germany and especially his hometown, which he was waiting for for 30+ years...He was a good guy, spoke a bit English, but I sat to his table and we had a small conversation in German too. A very good experience, and of course he had his own beer on us. After this, we headed for a Hookah or Shisha, an Arabic water pipe. This is usually filled with some fruit flavoured tobacco, and I really like the taste, and the tea we had with it was also good. The place it self was very Arabic, there was even a separated are for the category of people which did not include us, which was even nicer :) The Shisha place was followed by Oranienburger Straße, which hosts a lot of pubs - here we visited quite a few, and ended up in another Turkish place, which had loud Turkish music and dancing :) So it was quite fun :) The night turned quite long, and we got home at around 4 am.

At this point I have to break the story, I will try to finish it tomorrow! :)
Stay tuned!
M.

Off until Tuesday

Just a quicky report - I take Monday free to spend more time with my friends, so I probably won't write anyone anything before Tuesday.

I hope you'll survive :)
M.

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.