Archive for the ‘berlin’ Category

Piccolöchen.

Tuesday, March 30th, 2004

Juchei! Heute wurde das Gerüst im Hinterhof abgebaut. Man glaubt es nicht. Nach mehr drei Jahren eingerüstet-sein. Das dieser Tag noch kommen würde. Haben gleich reinegemacht und das Küchenfenster zum Hof geputzt. Wurde wohl vor ungefähr fünf Jahren das letzte Mal geputzt…

Industrial style.

Saturday, March 27th, 2004

Yesterday I was helping our friend and co-Buffy watcher Olli to get rid of some old furniture and other garbage. We first wanted to bring the stuff to one of the recycling locations where one can deliver bulk rubbish and they take it for free. Alas, they only accept a maximum of two cubic meters and we had about four to five m3
The workers at the municipal recycling location recommended driving to the ALBA Recycling Plant in Berlin Reinickendorf. That we did. And then we were awed. This is a huge place. You drive your vehicle onto a giant truck scale, get it weighed, then go on to drive to the actual plant and now the fun starts: it is a huge building where you drive up to one of several truck-sized gates, and then you can just throw everything you want to get rid of down in to a big concrete basin where mighty machines with claws grab your stuff and dump it into a shredder. Everything! It was exciting. We took the opportunity and tried to bash all the stuff we had onboard into pieces when throwing it into the concrete bassin. However, either we’re too inexperienced in making this stuff crash, or the furniture (including glass panels and everything that sounds like fun) was just really sturdy… Nonetheless, we had a great time. When we were weighed again, Olli had to pay almost 40 € though (it’s 80 €/ton).

Citizen Frers.

Friday, March 19th, 2004

Being a good and honorable member of the residential community living in the Choriner Straße I did my duty today and cleaned the windows. Of course, it was sunny when I started cleaning, and cloudy when I finally finished… thus are the meteorological conditions that we have to live with. Now, if only the first sprouts would be discernible in our balcony plantation I would be a happier man.

Tooth Fairy time?

Thursday, March 18th, 2004

I am not well enough acquainted with Anglo American customs, but does the Tooth Fairy come for wisdom teeth too? I guess not. But that is quite unfair – Kerstin is in a pretty poor condition after the surgeon took out the remaining two wisdom teeth she had. Consoling comments are welcome.

Balcony Day.

Wednesday, March 17th, 2004

Ah, how wonderful – today we had temperatures above 20° Celsius. Kerstin and I had a very relaxing late breakfast on the balcony, then we both surfed the net a bit. (Today the first preview of the Norwegian browser Opera 7.5 for Mac OS X was published – I tested it for while and it is chugging along nicely and has some neat features. If it would be free I might have given more thought to actually using it.) After this trip into virtual space we returned to more serious matters and started to stick our hands into the earth of our balcony vegetation vessels. Now everything is fresh, some plants have already been sowed, and we are eagerly awaiting the appearance of the first sprouts. Oh what a day!

New entries in the pipeline.

Saturday, March 13th, 2004

During the next days you’ll read about at least two movies which I have seen recently: Kitchen Stories (a.k.a. Salmer fra kjøkkenet) and Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken.

I’ve been to Darmstadt for a few days this week and I borrowed one of the college’s microphones – they are of a pretty high quality and I already re-recorded the German summary of my diploma thesis about the Potsdamer Platz. The mp3 file is embedded in the starting page of my thesis. I plan to record more stuff during the next week and put it online as additional content.

Und es hallt dumpf.

Sunday, March 7th, 2004

Gestern habe ich nebenbei (wie man so sagt) die Echoverleihung im TV verfolgt. Man kann Götz Alsmann nur Recht geben, der im anschließenden Interview kritisierte, dass es für eine Preisverleihung unangemessen sei, andere Preisträger schlecht zu machen. Auf Preisverleihungen feiert man die Preisträger, auch wenn sie anderes machen, als man selbst. Es zeugt nicht gerade von Format, nur sich selbst und seinen eigenen künstlerischen Stil als in einem solchen Rahmen feiernswert zu behandeln.
Abgesehen davon hat es mich ja besonders gefreut, dass Wir sind Helden so hervorragend abgeschnitten haben. Es ist ja nicht so, dass ich mich nicht mehr freue, wenn eine solche Band gewinnt, die einen eigenen, nicht rein marktorientierten Stil entwickelt – insbesondere freut es mich, wenn das auch geht, ohne das die Sängerin eine “Superstar”-gerechte saubere Gesangsstimme hat. Ein Hoch auf das sich Versingen und die sich überschlagende Stimme!

Spring waiting and ready to go.

Thursday, March 4th, 2004

Yesterday was a fine day with lots of sun – it was the first day of this year that allowed me to sit on the balcony and let the sun shine on my face. Well, things have changed again. Today the sky is cloudy, and temperatures were freezing during the night only reaching levels slightly above 0° C today. However, life is slowly finding its way back into the pots on our balcony and the first sprouts can be discerned. I am looking forward to the first real gardening activity of this year!>

Tsk. Forgot my ticket.

Saturday, February 7th, 2004

Just a moment ago the train attendant came by to check the tickets. It seems I left mine on the table in our office in Darmstadt. Bad Luck. We’ll see what happens… And we’ll see if the DB staff will handle it’s bahn.comfort customers in a different way.

I’ll probably update this entry in a while ;-)

Well so far we already had a change of staff, but the second team of attendants somehow seems to have overlooked my lacking of a ticket. Hehe.

Now back in Berlin. No further ticket hassles. Good Luck!

Sick.

Thursday, January 8th, 2004

Hello, hello. The day after I came back from our new year’s trip to Finland the flu got me. Therefore I have spent yesterday and today in bed, and I am looking forward to changing my diet from “Zwieback” (dried bread for small children) to something more exciting in the near future. Today at least I am able to look at a screen for more then a few minutes without being exhausted – which enables me to pick up blogging again! Look out for more entries in the nearest future.

Visitors.

Saturday, November 15th, 2003

I am back in Berlin again. This weekend my father is visiting, so I prolly won’t have time to post much. Instead, I will do things like eat excellent duck, like we did today (self-prepared, of course) and take a sip or two from a nice glass of Armangnac. Like it did before writing this post. Skål! Or better: Santé!

Mehrwert zum Buch.

Monday, November 10th, 2003

Gestern Herr Lehmann im Kino geschaut. Der Film hält sich sehr nah an die Romanvorlage. Die Umsetzung ist gelungen. Wenn ich mir Herrn Lehmann auch nicht wie Christian Ulmen vorgestellt hätte, finde ich doch, dass er die Rolle gut spielt. Zu Beginn des Filmes hab ich mich mehrfach daran gestört, dass die Dialoge und das Spielen der DarstellerInnen manchmal sehr theaterhaft waren – nach einer Weile ist mir das jedoch nicht mehr negativ aufgefallen. Der schöne Leander ist halt ein Theatermann und das hat auch seine guten Seiten. (Wenn mir im Augenblick auch nicht einfällt, welche eigentlich. Aber man sdarf ja nicht schlecht über’s Theater schreiben.)

Sorting screws.

Sunday, October 26th, 2003

The last days I made some slow progress in the sorting-of-screws-project. Sorting-of-screws-project? Kerstin and I are currently tidying up our small storage room and a multitude of screws showed up during this tidying up. I think I have now about 20 different categories of screws lying at the table besides the keyboard I am typing on right now. Some of these categories should be merged, I think. Especially those with less than five specimen total. At the end of this process, the world will be a much better place.

Skin Cancer risk now dropping again.

Wednesday, August 27th, 2003

I’m back in Berlin again. The sky is cloudy and the temperatures are perfect again – around 22 °C. The vacation has been long enough to produce some longing after the city, the balcony and dear friends. It has also been long enough for me to get a real sun tan. Haven’t had such a tan since I worked on the island, I guess. Come and visit me, before I am a pale academic again.

Had a lot of fun and time for relaxation, reading, musing and playing croquet (see this entry).

*sigh*

Wednesday, July 30th, 2003

It had been time. I’ve been away from Choriner Strasse, away from Berlin for almost three weeks. As I’ve realized, this is pretty long, especially if one spends most of the time in Darmstadt. It is quite refreshing to be back and watch the capital crowd moving through the streets and flaneuring below our balcony.

The real holidays are almost there (I’ll be gone during most of August). However, actually being here in Berlin can be relaxing too. I would never have believed that I would say that seven years ago, when I was living in quiet Kiel ;-)

The weekend.

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2003

The trip into the Brandenburgian province was worth it. We took a train to Chorin, rode our bicycles to the Parstein lake where you can find a great spot to swim and refresh yourself in the water. *aaahhhh* Then we raced down into the valley of the river Oder and rode on the dike through the southern parts of the Nationalpark Unteres Odertal. Getting somewhat tired and we wanted to go to the closest train station after that. We went to Oderberg. And found out pretty soon that the station has been shut down a while ago :-( Well, it was only a 12km ride to Bad Freienwalde…

There is one more thing to tell you about this weekend:
Olli had his first public gig! He sang the future chartbreaker Kastanienallee in a club called Bad Kleinen. Of course, it was a great success!>

Getting out, getting to a lake.

Saturday, June 28th, 2003

This is the motto for this weekend. After today’s wedding party in the Manzini’s, we’ll need a break from urban space – a break from reflective thinking and discussing dissertation blah. A trip to one of the farther lakes in the Mecklenburgische Seenplate is in order. Some of these lakes are quite deep. Hopefully the water is still somewhat cool and refreshing, even after all these weeks of warm weather. Bathing in lake should of course be combined with nurturing yourself with food from the same, a nice fresh fish! Yum. Yum Yum. And then some relaxation. Cool evening air and a light breeze.
Well, know you know why you shouldn’t be surprised if I won’t blog anything this weekend. It for the weather to decide about this.

Cambridge, my balcony, and Sunnydale.

Friday, June 20th, 2003

This is a selection of the spaces over which yesterday evening’s most relevant events were distributed. After finishing the asparagus season with a fine meal, shared between Florian, Chr, Sofie and myself, Florian left to catch his plane back to Cambridge. I hope that there’ll soon be some time and money for a trip to Cambridge. Haven’t punted through the Cam yet. After Florian left, the rest of the crowd gathered on the balcony, enjoying the vegetation and the mild air. More interesting stories relating to intestinal activities were told ;-) and some more white wine was consumed. As time passed and the sun went down Chr got himself involved in old-school telecommunication while Sofie and I started to visit Sunnydale as it was presented in the last two Buffy episodes (7×07 and 7×08 – to say it again, 7×07 was really scary and definitely one of the best episodes I’ve seen yet. Then finally Kerstin and Olli trickled in too and we saw this week’s episode: 7×09 – Never Leave Me. It’s still not clear what will happen to Giles, and, quite a surprise, it looks like some old fiends from the first season come back into play. So the circle closes itself. It fits just perfectly that Olli bought the First Season DVD – thanks Olli!

Now, what about the space issue? Analysis of this peculiar socio-ficitonal-space is up to you. Any spaces more relevant than others? Why? Fun being back to school, isn’t it?

On the train again.

Saturday, June 14th, 2003

Again sitting in the ICE from Frankfurt to Berlin, I am hoping that the train will be late by about 35 to 40 minutes. In Frankfurt we were only late by about 15 minutes. Only? Wanting to be late?! Yes, yes, yes, yes. Why?

  1. If I am late I might be able to get some compensation in form of a voucher from the DB.
  2. Kerstin works until midnight. If I am late I might get picked up at the train station!

Convinced? I hope.

Slowly getting back into gears.

Wednesday, June 11th, 2003

The trip to Buchholz, the wedding, and the transition back to Berlin got me out of my slowly-establishing-itself routine. So I spent most of the day on the balcony, reading c’t and Le monde diplomatique and surfing the web. I wanted to go play some basketball, alas, there were too many people, and not enough power in yours truly to start playing with them. My stamina is still just above bare minimum and I would certainly have exhausted myself to such a level that I wouldn’t be of much use during the next days. Instead, I am now blogging and listening to one of iTunes internet radio stations (some blues hosted by the ParaDynamic Roadhouse). Later I will probably make use of the fact that today is “Kinotag” and go watch Rabbit-Proof Fence together with Kerstin. Read my report tomorrow!

By the way, what do you think about the most recent addition to this blog? It’s called “ozean’s digest” and can be found in the left column.>