Archive for April, 2005

Picking up the threads.

Tuesday, April 26th, 2005

There is a lot of stuff that should have been posted here. I’ve seen several movies – the new Woody Allen Melinda and Melinda, Willenbrock starring the down-to-reality Axel Prahl, and Million Dollar Baby by and with Clint Eastwood. All of these movies are worth a visit. Another thing which is always worth a visit is the beautiful city of Hamburg. I was lucky and had the opportunity to be there last weekend. The weather was absolutely perfect. I visited several friends, strolled along the Elbe, met Kerstin who was able to leave Kopenhagen for the weekend, together went to and enjoyed Anja’s, Anke’s and Heike’s 90th birthday, made a gorgeous two hour revival bicycle tour through the spring-blossoming western vicinity of Buchholz, spent a few hours in a school sports hall watching kids play handball, and did my share of sauna-ing. Perfect weekend, indeed.

Last Saturday, I went to a party in Tini’s and Andi’s house in Kreuzberg (happy birthday Tini!) which had a pretty scary motto: Pimp your Kopf. Inspired by the idea Marc gave me, I took out scissors and cardboard paper to cut myself a Mitra. Mitra? Yup, and thats why I was greeted by a crowd of drunken Erasmus students shouting “Paparazzi!” It took me more than a few minutes before I overcame my confusion about the fact that I did not carry any cameras with me but people still kept on saying “Paparazzi!” to me and enjoyed themselves tremendously. Could they interpret the white hat as a cook’s hat, perhaps the cook of the excellent Italian restaurant here in Prenzlauer Berg that is called Paparazzi? Finally, I figured it out: they were saying “Papa Ratzi!” – and quite correctly they did. After this obstacle to mental relaxation on the part of yours truly was overcome, the same had a very good time…

Proud and tired.

Sunday, April 10th, 2005

The conference is over. Preparations for the conference were the reason why I didn’t have any time to post during the last week. The conference was quite a success: people from all over the world (literally), people from a wide range of academic disciplines, and people from different non-academic backgrounds. And in spite of all these differences a very relaxed, friendly and productive atmosphere. It was even better than I would have hoped – all the work that we invested in the plannig and organization was definitely worth it.
Again, thanks again to the Studentischer Filmkreis Darmstadt, who made it possible to even offer a free movie for the participants of the conference!
*turns computer off to take a nap*

Balcony and basketball.

Sunday, April 3rd, 2005

Yesterday Olli and I enjoyed our first breakfast. Complete with a wide selection of Greek cheeses, boiled eggs, a new cereal bought at Lidl around the corner. They are called Nougat Pillows – not as bad as I feared, but not convincing either. What I am really looking for is a cheap version of Toppas. Erm. Back to topic. Today we had another balcony breakfast, enjoyed the newly planted flowers, and the first sprouts on some of our long-time balcony inhabitants. Olli then insisted that we should play some basketball on the sports yard across the street. I was somewhat disinclined to involve myself in physical activity and hoped that we don’t have a working pump to bring the basketball into shape. However, Olli didn’t let himself be irritated by my lack of inspiration, found a pump, and off we went. Good decision. We had a fun time, I think I got a small sunburn in my face, and we met Esther, an FU direct exchange student from the Twin Cities with whom we played basketball for a while. This is what sports are for: Völkerfreundschaft! Now, I have emptied a big glass of banana shake, took a cold shower, and feel a bit creaky in the joints but nonetheless quite swell. A promising season has begun.

Zweiter Zwischenbericht.

Saturday, April 2nd, 2005

Nachdem ich im vergangenen Monat meinen zweiten Zwischenbericht inklusive Verlängerungsantrag für das letzte Förderungsjahr beim Kolleg eingereicht habe und selbiger Antrag am 24. März auch bewilligt wurde kann ich den Antrag jetzt im Internet veröffentlichen: Dissertation ‚Einhüllende Normalitäten‘ – Zweiter Zwischenbericht. Rückmeldung ist wie immer willkommen.

Well visited and clicked at.

Friday, April 1st, 2005

This month all records were broken: My website had almost 1500 visitors performing more than 2200 clicks on my site. Check out the development as shown by SiteMeter, which I am using to analyse the visits to my site:
SiteMeter graph displaying the amount of visits and page views on my site for the last yearNeat, isn’t it? Although I guess the trend as visible in this graph will not continue – April traditionally is a weak month traffic-wise.

Well fed and educated.

Friday, April 1st, 2005

Back again from the land of classic profiles. We had a great time, met many nice people, saw a few piles of stone, and got to know quite a few new and delicious dishes and beverages. Want to hear an anecdote? Let me think… Kerstin made an observation that has good anecdotal value: Here in Germany, dogs usually do live their lives accompanying the humans they belong to. They walk around with them, they sleep in the same houses, they eat food that is served them personally. In Greece, there is not only a human population in settlements, there is also an almost independant population of dogs. They hang out with other dogs, they eat with them, sleep in packs, trot along the trottoir with other dogs and generally ignore humans (except for trying to pay attention to cars and other dangers). Funny to watch them be dogs that are different from local dogs. Doggier, I would say. I also felt less threatened by those dogs and I saw fewer piles of dog shit in Athens than here in Berlin.