Skype

You know Skype? Probably you do.
I really enjoyed the last hour. Sitting around with my headset and skype-talking with good friends hundreds of kilometres away.
Unfortunately I now have a humming sound in my ear because those freaks screamed into their microphone on purpose several times. I almost fell of my chair.
Apart from that yelling it was good to hear remote keyboard clicking sounds and sentences like “so, and how do you REALLY feel?”.

Garage Doves

An hour ago a saw a dove in a parking garage in Erlangen. It was sitting in it’s nest protecting the young ones. The nest was on top of a traffic light under the ceiling.
Not a very cosy place for kids but they can feel like kings when all cars stop because of the color of their nursery. Probably this is more than any of us can claim of our childhood.
The mother dove was a little bit upset when I disturbed her with the light of my cell phone camera. Well, life is hard when you life in the public.

Crashed Mailbox System

The central mailbox system in our office crashed. All mailboxes are still down.
Oh, I don’t speak of a Microsoft Exchange Server. In our case it wasn’t a virus and Microsoft isn’t to blame. It was simply a car that killed the system.
Usually the terminology of IT follows the real life - sometimes it’s vice versa.

Key to Orgasm

I found a piece of paper on the sideway. Probably it was the wrapping of a key fob - a very special one.
The piece was called “Orgasm Key Fob”. Hard stuff, isn’t it?
Unfortunately I saw only the wrapping and not the actual product - too bad.
I laid down my own key ring beside the wrapping to force my mind to understand how this product is supposed to work - well, my mind failed.
But as long as there are products like that I have hope for Germany.

Closing the Gap

Wallpapering is none of my favorites. Especially the beginning is awful for me. Every few years I miss to chicken around that work - somehow I survive every time, though.

Although I hate gluing paper on walls there are two uplifting moments about wallpapering I enjoy every time.
a) Getting aware that you are about to close the last gap.
b) Cleaning the long wallpaper table afterwards as a kind of ritual last task.

a)

b)

Unfortunately there’s almost always a depressing moment after a) and b): The thought that one has to paint the new wallpaper the next day. But that’s another story with own a) and b).

Cave Music

A nightly visit in one of my favorite valleys - the Ailsbachtal. A small gurgling creek, steep green slopes, a wonderful castle on top of the hills and some caves. One of the caves was the stage for a small concert - Wulli and the Crazy Fiddler. A acoustic guitar, a violin, wonderful music from Irish Fold to Wish You Were Here and little candles everywhere. A quite nice evening - altough the pouring rain outside.
I like caves a lot - with or without soundtrack.

Trust

Kids are great in trusting someone totally. If you enjoy their confidence they really let go.
It’s a great feeling when a person trusts you 100%. Too bad that it doesn’t work that often when it comes to adults.

Mirror Halls

I got a text message with a short poem. Usually I’m not a very lyrical person but sometimes when you’re in a certain mood ,a few sophisticated sentences can bang your head quite hard.
This was one of those moments.
It’s hard enough to write this Blog in English but it’s even more difficult to translate German poetry. German is a wonderful language for poetry with thousands of very small facets.
Naturally all the shadings are lost but here’s my translation (and the original).

In the morning
I watched the sun rising through a cobweb
Adorned with pearls of dew.
The sun rose as often as there hung drops in the filigree fibres.
There should be an order for the few precious things
To live in mirror halls.

Am Morgen
Durch ein tauperlengeschmücktes Spinnweb hindurch
Die Sonne betrachtet.
Sie ging soviel mal mehr auf
Wie Tropfen in den Sprühfäden hingen.
Man müsste dem wenigen Teuren dieser Welt
In Spiegelsälen zu wohnen befehlen.

A few seconds ago I learned that the poem is out of a book called “The Chronicles of the Poodle Ali”.

And now I go for a hike into the forest trying to find some valuables.

Wobbler

Today I bough strange things at the supermarket. They had a special sale for fishing equipment. This is odd enough because fishing is not very popular here and one even needs a license to go fishing. Who the hell is supposed to buy that stuff?
I saw a set of lures in form of plastic fishes. A very strange sight in a supermarket beside food and clothes. I was not able to resist and bought the set. It’s called “Wobbler Set” and I have no idea what a Wobbler is.
This was by far the most useless thing I bought in the last months. I don’t go fishing and I don’t eat fish at all.
Sometimes a real man has to buy useless things and I bought the Wobbler Set because it’s so futile for me.
Maybe I create a mobile out of the fishes - but I have to be careful, the hooks are very pointy.

What was YOUR most useless purchase? Or am I the only one buying useless things on purpose?

93-31-4

My grandmother, my sister and my niece.
Three humans, three sets of memories.
Memories of playing with the dog and making chewing gum bubbles, memories of managing the young family and the remains of memories of a youth at the beginning of the 20th century, the terror of World War 2 and the decades in prospering Germany in the 50s and 60s.
Unfortunately all memories of the third human are fading away with increasing speed. Even remembering the own age is a very hard task now.
A few years ago I wanted to record as much memories of my grandparents as possible with my small dictating machine. I never did it for some reason and now everything is lost - at least from one of my two grannies.
I really hope that I’ll have the power to save at least some small parts of the experience of life from my other grandmother. Theres not much time left but it isn’t too late yet.

In my humble opinion the saddest thing about dying is that all the experience and the memories of the person passed away is lost. What a wastage.

Sink Pink

A flower pot in an back yard in Berlin.

Codes & Leonardo

Did I like the movie? Not really. I’d rate it 5 out of 10.
Did I like the book? Yes, kind of. I liked the idea a lot with the Grail and Mary Magdalene but I’m not a guy for a thriller. Car chasings bore me. So I tried to read the chapters with the chasings real fast and looked forward to the next historical part.
Well, the movie consisted of chasings and chasings and very little Grail parts. Furthermore the movie made me aware that some aspects of the plot were already quite ridiculous in the book.
Want an example? Take this one:
“Oh Sophie, it’s dark, we are in the middle of nowhere somewhere in France and we are searching for the Holy Grail. But don’t worry, the world’s most famous Grail scientist lives just a few miles down the road. Isn’t that a coincidence? And if we have to get away - he even owns a Lear Jet”.

And although I really worship Audrey Tautou I hated to see her makeup being absolutely perfect even after a 24 hour speed race across Europe. Yes, I know, I’m a nitpicker.

And now I tell you what I hate most about The Da Vinci Code: Last summer I’ve been to Scotland and planned to visit Rosslyn Chapel (one of the possible hiding places of the Grail according to Dan Brown) which was only 50 kilometres away. Because I was out of time I had to skip it. Damn.

Blessing

Another picture of New York.
It’s amazing how reckless porn and god are used together on this façade of a Sex Shop.

Wait Here

They asked you to wait here for further instructions.
You always do what they told you. Your body switched to standby mode and your eyes have that infinite stare that indicates the absence of any thoughts. You work perfect. No instructions, no actions, no problems.
Are you one of those wait-here-persons, too? I am.

Here is your long awaited instruction: Don’t wait any longer for further instructions! Instruct yourself!

German

A former speaker of the german government recently said in an interview that a person that doesn’t look caucasian might risk his life when visiting some cities in the eastern part of Germany.
Xenophobia is still an issue here - especially in the cities of the former German Democratic Republic. Sad but true.
Germany hosts the Soccer World Cup which starts very soon. We expect hundreds of thousands of guests from all over the world so the timing for that interview was very delicate.
Apart from the fact that I don’t like that speaker guy I think he is quite right. I don’t want to have black skin on a hike through some parts of Leipzig for example.
I really like my country but it would be much nicer without that racist assholes. In general Germany is a very liberal and modern country but some ghosts of the past are still present.

Foreground Beer

The light behind the glass of wheat beer made beautiful reflections. Really appetising - even for me as a non alcoholic person.
Believe me or not, the girls were supposed only to act as a kind of blurred background (at least in the beginning).
Ok, ok, I have to admit that the balance of foreground beer and background girls is a little bit uneven and I even missed to blur the girls.
Too bad that I didn’t focused on the girl and used the beer as a blurred foreground - that smile is really amazing, isn’t it?
No idea about her name - hints are appreciated.
By the way - the beer I’m talking of is in the lower right corner.

Under the Hood

Trying to keep incognito or hiding from the spring time sun?
The old woman wrote like hell and from the distance it looked like a demonic plan for conquering the world.

Portrait

A short excursion to the city park in Fuerth. The task was to play around with aperture and with portraits.
I ruined most of the images because the daylight was already almost gone and I forgot to raise the ISO value. As a result almost every pic was blurred.

CHK was not only a good source for hints but also a very handsome model, wasn’t he?

Collecting Youth

I bought a sweet snack from the little snack box in our office. One can take sweeties out and has to put 60 cent in the box. Well, at the end there’s never enough money in and the company providing us the snack box is always close to revoking it from our floor. Poor country. But that’s not the story I intended to tell.

There was this snack consisting of two chocolate bars called Hanuta. Because the soccer world cup is starting soon there were little stickers in it with pictures of the German team.
“So what”, I hear you say.
It’s not a big deal but my friends and I collected exactly the same kind of stickers from Hanuta 25 years ago. I never cared much about soccer (except on international tournaments) and therefore I didn’t know most of the players. But sharing the little pictures while eating lots of Hanuta and Duplo sweets was great.
The best thing about my little soccer players was that they didn’t smell like sweat but like milk chocolate.
Today I’m 34 years old, I don’t collect soccer stickers any more and I’m far away from the friends I used to share the stickers with when I was a child - far away in every sense.
But I tell you something: I was not able to throw the stickers away immediately. I catched myself red handed on storing the pics under my keyboard.
Well, in the end I threw them away but I thank all heavens that some things seem to stay the same forever - thanks to little soccer stickers in my Hanuta.

Speed

Our team did some Gokart-Racing. Although I’m kind of a whimp I enjoyed it very much and my right foot stayed down a little bit longer every round.
I tried to shoot some photos and to capture the speed. It was quite difficult for me and now I worship the Formula One photographers even more.

It came to my mind that speed is one of the most important goals in our lifes. Being faster on our job, run to the supermarket or gulp our sandwich in the short lunch break.
I think it’s really strange that we try to speed up even in our spare time.
What’s wrong with us?
I want to be slow again but I don’t know how to do it.

Bikes

Biking on your own. High risk, sometimes even winning against gravity, only you and your bike.
On the other hand: team biking. You have to be careful, both have to have fine antennas for balance. The person on the back seat needs confidence for the course of the driver.
Sounds a little bit like life itself, doesn’t it?
I have no clue whether I’m a BMX guy but I do know what situation I like more - it’s not the black and white one.





Both pics were shot in Berlin near the Palace of the Republic. The city seems to be bursting with motives like those.

My Faces of New York, Part XIII

My Faces of New York, Part XII

Central Park

My Faces of New York, Part XI

My Faces of New York, Part X

My Faces of New York, Part IX

My Faces of New York, Part VIII

My Faces of New York, Part VII

My Faces of New York, Part VI

Construction Worker on Ground Zero

My Faces of New York, Part V

My Faces o New York, Part IV

My Faces of New York, Part III

My Faces of New York, Part II

My Faces of New York, Part I

For me a city is defined not only by it’s famous buildings but also by it’s inhabitants. The cityscape consists of thousands of faces.
Old ones, sad ones, thinking ones, happy ones.
Usually I try to capture some city faces with my camera. The last city for me to be given a face was New York. The diversity of different faces was really amazing.
The next days I’m going to show you a small part of my definition of New York. Naturally a very blurred one because I was only 2 days in NYC and I got only a glimpse at Brooklyn and Manhattan.


Lost in Thought

Hard Hats

We still live in a two-class-society.
Folks flying Business Class vs. people sitting in Economy,
guys that love Sex and the City vs. humans that don’t
and finally
construction site workers with proper hard hats vs. the ones with self made hard hats made of an old basketball.

I haven’t seen Sex and the City so far but I know for sure what class I’d be in when it comes to construction sites.

Doggy Bag/Back/Pack

A wonderful sunny afternoon in Central Park in New York. I concentrated on the backsides of dogs. They seemed to enjoy the sun, too.
The dogs don’t even know that I took their backs over the Atlantic Ocean to Germany.
I used the Compact Flash Card of my digital camera as vehicle - a kind of Doggy Back Bag. Although I acted like a backpacker I didn’t feel guilty.

Addendum: Shit, I missed the deadline for my Saturday-posting for one stupid minute. Too, bad and completely unneeded.

Liberty Tram Car

This is an old tram car near the old Beard Street Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY.
The sun was just setting and although there were nice viewes over to Liberty Island I found the rusty surface of the wagon much more interesting. The yellow sunlight of the dying day made it look like ancient ice from a glacier.


But of course Lady Liberty wasn’t completely forgotten. I shot her through the old windows of the tram car.

One Way

There is a really huge cemetery in Brooklyn. It is called Greenwood Cemetery and looks more like a park for sunny Sunday afternoon walks than a place for sadness.
If I would live nearby I would definitely visit it very frequently. A great place for reloading the internal batteries.

There was a sign in the cemetery saying “One Way”. Well, I guess a cemetery is always one way - kind of.
But the sign is there and that must be for a reason. Maybe if the administration isn’t that strict sometimes something would sneak out of the cemetery against the traffic. If that something is a memory of a nice person buried in the cemetery, I think it would be more than ok. In that case I’ll ask my friend in Brooklyn to stealthy remove the signs.

The sign was not the only strange thing in the cemetery. I found an empty bottle with drinking water. The brand of the water was “Life Water”. Too bad that is was only a bottle for half a litre. I think that won’t be enough for such a big cemetery.



Sometimes the world can be very bizarre. I love it.

Back

Just a short message: Finally I’m back in Germany.
After Sharm El Sheik, Austin and New York I really appreciate my small apartment - although I liked my recend trips very much.
On our way to the JFK Airport in New York we talked about our
Top-3-Thinks-When-Coming-Home-From-A-Journey.
I was surprised that my favorite things are kind of boring simple. Here it comes (unordered):
- A piece of stupid simple german bread
- My own bed
- The first deep breath after opening the window in my sleeping room.

I shot a few pictures in the last 2-3 weeks and of course I’m going to share some of them with you, dear world.
There’s a great pharagraph about coming home at the end of the book “The Great Gatsby”. Unfortunately I own the book only in german and I don’t feel like translating right now. If you have the book, look at the few last pages.

For the moment I’m very tired because I’m not used to that Jetlag things. Therefore I’ll go to bed now now now. CU tomorrow.