Posts Tagged ‘travel’

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!

Railway, landscapes and snow.

Thursday, January 29th, 2004

If only I would have had more time to sit back and watch things pass by on today’s railway trip from Frankfurt to Berlin. It has been a constant change of white, snow covered fields, sunny green meadows, grey skies and snowy hills, misty stretches and heavy snowfall, filling the air with a white-speckled light grey. Trees with snow covered branches have always been one of my top favorites visual aesthetic pleasures. I hope the temperatures stay below zero degrees Celsius; otherwise this particular tree-adornment will quickly dissolve into unpleasant wetness.

Hamburger Schule.

Saturday, January 24th, 2004

Es ist doch immer wieder großartig, Jungs aus der Heimat zu hören. Heute während der Heimfahrt hab ich zum ersten Mal mit wirklicher Muße das Album “Blast Action Heroes” von den Beginnern gehört. Nicht nur der angenehm zwischen feinsinnig und krude changierende Witz ist tipp topp (am liebsten mag ich vielleicht die Zeile “dann ist mir das wie Kaffee Latte” – Hey! Ho! muß ich da rufen… ); ich mag auch das Lied über Schily und Schill mit seinem netten pseodobiografischen Versen zu zwei wirklich finsteren Gestalten unserer politischen Landschaft. Weiter so, Dicker! Ich groove mich hier durch die Zeit im ICE Abteil und hab ein ernsthaftes Lächeln auf den Lippen. So soll es sein.

bahn.comfort.

Wednesday, January 14th, 2004

Hmm, eigentlich dachte ich, heute zum ersten Mal in den vollen Genuss meines neu erlangten Status als bahn.comfort Kunde zu kommen und ich Frankfurt am Main in der DB Lounge Zeitungs- und Getränke Völlerei zu betreiben, aber leider hat der Wecker zu spät geklingelt, so dass ich nicht mehr den Zug bekommen habe, der mir einen ausreichend langen Aufenthalt im Frankfurter Bahnhof gestattet hätte. Schade. Einen für bahn.comfort Kunden vorreservierten Platz habe ich auch nicht in Anspruch nehmen müssen, da eh genug Platz war… Immerhin: die neue Bahncard, die ich zugeschickt bekommen habe ist nicht mehr einfach weiss, wie die normalen Bahncards 25 und 50, sie ist silbern wie die Bahncard 100 (alias Netzkarte)! Das ist natürlich schon mal ziemlich cool und hat mich mit großem Stolz erfüllt. Vielleicht war der Schaffner ja sogar deshalb so nett? Man weiss es nicht. So einfach kann man mich zufrieden stellen. Mehr über dieses spannende Thema, sobald ich das erste Mal in der DB Lounge war.

Some summarizing.

Thursday, January 8th, 2004

The last month has been excellent. The trips to Paris, Milano and Finland were all really intriguing.

I was so much fun to be in Paris for the first time and it left me wondering why it took me so long to visit Paris in the first place (expecially since I have been to France at least once a year for over ten years now… ) It is a great city, with a much better and warmer atmosphere then I expected. It also was a lot of fun to venture there with all the nice people from my post-graduate college. Soon I will have a bunch of photos taken during this trip posted to the web.

Milano has some great food to offer, Florian’s and Rita’s place is very nice and the intermingling of Italian and German people at their party was really nice. If you haven’t been to Milano, don’t expect to much of the Scala’s architecture, one could say it is quite modest. However, it is currently being renovated and it is famous for what is happening inside and for its acoustics. The glass-roofed Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. and the Duomo are stunning sights and I thouroughly enjoyed walking around on the roof of the duomo. Look out for pictures and perhaps a movie clip of this trip too!

Though it was not at all cold when we arrived with the ferry in Turku, Finland, the temperatures soon declined to between -12 and -20 degrees Celsius. We had just a little snow which was perfect for our nordic skiing excursions on the lake right in front of the mökki that we stayed in. Timo’s parents also have a seperate sauna mökki which we used quite often. We worked a hole into the ice on the lake and took (pretty short) dives into it to “freshen up” after leaving the sauna. Yes, that was quite cold, but then again, the air in the sauna is quite hot and it is refreshing. Timo also build excellent ice lamps around the hole, so the whole thing was an aeshtetic pleasure too. Kerstin took some neat pictures which she should be able to convert with iPhoto to a nice enough web page for your pleasure too. Finally, let me tell you again that boat trips can be quite exciting! Definitely the best way to travel.

Traveling. More traveling.

Sunday, December 21st, 2003

Dear readers, I have been abroad much this month, and I will continue on this track with a visit to Finland from the 27th until the 5th of January. Before that I probably won’t have much time either, being occupied with pre-christmas tasks…
I hope to post some pictures of my trips to Paris and Milano before Christmas, but I can’t promise anything in this regard.

Le premier fois.

Thursday, December 4th, 2003

This weekend I will be in Paris for the first time! I have driven along the highway around Paris (never have I been so concentrated as in these 40 minutes driving through Paris rush hour traffic) but I have never ever set foot on the city’s grounds. La terre française. The trip is sponsored by the post-graduate college and we will make exkursions to two sites: Le Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers et La Vilette.

Well, we might also visit one or two cafés on the way…

Still in the mountains.

Tuesday, October 14th, 2003

If you wonder why there is another posting gap – I have been on a conference in Darmstadt from at the end of last week and until tomorrow I am in the Harz Mountains in Germany. Yesterday we walked up the Brocken – with 1142m the highest mountain of northern Germany. It was my first time on the Brocken and the view over the northern plains in all directions was staggering.

On Vacation.

Saturday, August 16th, 2003

Just a short explanation and reminder for those who don’t know: I am still on vacation in France. I’ll get back to updating my blog when I come back. Right now I am surprisingly happy with being offline and without mobile phone reception in the French countryside.

Offline until Monday.

Saturday, July 26th, 2003

Another wedding… This weekend Kerstin, Christian, Maja and yours truly will be celebrating the wedding of Jascha and Sabine! Later today we’ll introduce Chr and Maja to one of the local Biergartens here in Darmstadt – at least if they arrive before nineish. There seem to be some heavy traffic jams on the way from Berlin to Darmstadt. Poor them. Hopefully, it won’t take us too long to get to Tübingen tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll drive through the Odenwald. As we all know, the shortest way is not necessarily the fastet…

Productive travelling.

Friday, July 4th, 2003

During today’s railroading from Berlin to Frankfurt I suffered a real outburst of productivity. Being ignorantly creative, I had to hastily stuff my stuff into my bag so that I wouldn’t miss leaving the train on time at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. How could that happen? What did I do? I read all the exposés for this and last week (ok, this doesn’t sound too exciting) and I made an outline for my presentation at the colloquium Space, Place, Power, offered by Martina Löw and Helmuth Berking. But what’s even more astonishing: I also prepared my first presentation via laptop+projector (using Apple’s Keynote, not Microsoft Powerpoint, as you hopefully would have guessed). So, people at the colloquium will witness my first dabblings into digital presentation technology.
Formwise, I will be following established standards. Contentwise, I will try to do a Different Thing™. Stay tuned for more information. I will probably put the presentation online after I gave it. Perhaps in a “Manifesto” style…

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!>

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.>