Looking Back to Germany, 1999/2000

Over the last few days my niece and I have been having an email exchange. While we covered a whole host of topics, one key theme was travel. She is eager to get out into the world and have new experiences. She's lucky because she has already had the chance to travel with her family, but like all young seekers, she's looking forward to her chance to do her own thing. I get that.

All the travel talk got me looking back over my travel photos, including ones that were actually taken with real film! Yes, that beloved 35mm medium. When I was in Germany over Christmas/New Years of 99/00, I had a crappy point and shoot film camera. And of course I didn't take as many pictures because, well, it was film. But there were a few pics I thought worth scanning and posting. They got me all nostalgic and I miss Ute even more.

Ute at the Kling Klang, a local watering hole in Muenster where we had many drinks.

Ute in downtown Muenster. We were taking an evening stroll.

Me waiting in the cold for our train. It was snowing. Our train was late.

Um, a rather excited me. We are at Cecilienhoff Castle in Postdam visiting the site of the Postdam Conference.

Ute being very patient with me in the woods around Potsdam.

Me and Ute having a coffee break at a fancy Postdam cafe.

Me in front of the Reichstag in Berlin. The line was really long, so we left and came back at night instead.

Just a little side story. One of the main sites I was really looking forward to seeing while in Berlin - blame the history geek in me - was the Brandenberg Gate. I think I was driving Ute crazy with talking about it. Right after we arrived I said, "Let's go to the Brandenburg Gate." So off we went. We came out from the U-Bahn on Unter den Linden and started walking toward the Brandenburg Gate. As we got closer I noticed something seemed wrong with it, though I couldn't quite tell what. We walked closer. And closer. Then Ute started to laugh (I should note that Ute has a great laugh). The dang thing was covered in a tarp! Yes, a tarp! And not just any tarp, but one that was printed with an image of the Brandenburg Gate! With a GIANT PINK PANTHER hanging over the top! Seriously! All the way to Berlin only to find the Brandenburg Gate under construction. Sigh. What's a traveling soul to do? Make the most of it, of course. And suffer the laughs of my friends as gracefully as possible.

View of the Needle Tower in the former East Berlin. I think we went up to the top.

Same area is the previous picture. It was New Years Eve and we were walking all over the place.

Me with Marx and Engels near the Alexanderplatz.

The Tiergarten New Year's Eve, 1999/00. The park was closed for the evening. There were lots of bands, beer and people. It was cold. We had a lot of fun!

So, there it is. A few memories from that trip. I never get tired of Muenster and I loved Berlin. I look forward to going back. I hope you all get to see the captions.

 

Just Some Randomness

I'm in the market for a more advanced camera option to supplement my great point and shoot Panasonic DMC ZS3 and have been picking the brains of my photography friends. This past Saturday my fount of info was Andrew. After getting lots of ideas, an offer to borrow his Canon 50D and a promise of a poker game in the near future, I headed for Slacker's. As I was walking down Andrew's little block to my car I came across this lovely. Painted vehicles make me smile.

Three eyes are always better then two

This afternoon I got home from my deliciously decadent mani/pedi and found a letter from Linda, as well as two postcards: one from Santa Barbara (Ng-Ult), the other from creepy Deer Lodge, Montana (Woodens). The postcards were enjoyed and then put away for safe keeping in my postcard books. Traveling somewhere? I love postcards (hint hint).

Postcards!

I then read, and re-read Linda's letter. I love reading her letters.

Her letter motivated me and I wrote a bunch of cards to assorted loves of mine. Let's hope I remember to get them in the mail in the next day or so. I still have postcards to send from my weekend up in Russian River.

Luckily, I also remembered I had to prep my computer for the SQL & PL/SQL class I'm taking online this week. As I was doing the various system tests, installing necessary plugins and ensuring my login worked, I noticed a detail in my confirmation email I had previously failed to comprehend: the class starts at 8:30 a.m. EASTERN time! Oh, for pity sake. I honestly can't remember the last time I woke up at 5:00 a.m. I got everything ready, though, and all I can hope is that I won't ignore my alarm tomorrow morning.

A clean desk to aid my learning

 

Russian River Weekend

Some friends and I went up to the Russian River area for the weekend. It was supposed to be a weekend with Dad and Adele, but because of Dad's health they had to cancel their annual March visit. Sadness.

It was a nice and relaxing getaway, although I came down with an irritating cold. I'm still congested. Colds suck. Really. And why is it that only one side of my nose is stuffed up? Is there some sort of weird body physics that causes that to happen?

Anyway, I made the best of it. I read City of Thieves, the book I mentioned in my last post. It was an engaging read. The story is about two young men who are forced to undertake a dangerous quest during the siege of Leningrad, during which they become unlikely friends. Given the time period, it wasn't a very happy tale. Nazi's trying to crush Mother Russia, in the dead of winter, just doesn't inspire uplifting images of new friends hiking in the forest and learning about each other as they romp through a field of wheat. Despite it's dark setting and equally dark humor, I couldn't put it down. Some might think it should have illicited a more emotional response, that certain events in the books should have brought tears to my eyes. But I'm glad that wasn't the case, as I would have felt manipulated. I liked that the story was told in the voice of one of the boys, Lev, and that throughout he is trying to find his own strength, though he believes he lacks such strength. This was one of my favorite passages:

I nodded. Despite what he said, the arithmetic seemed very bad for us. They hadn't lifted a hand for Zoya, but what could they have done for Zoya? Six Germans and eight bullets in the Tokarev. I hoped Kolya was a good shot. Fear coursed through me, electric, forcing my muscles to twitch and my mouth to go dry. I felt more awake than I ever had before, as if this moment, in the farmhouse outside of Berezovka, was the first true moment of my life and everything that came before was a fitful sleep. My senses seemed amplified, extraordinary, responding to the crisis by giving me all the information I needed. I could hear the crunch of jackboots on packed snow. I could smell pine needles burning in the fireplace, that old trick to perfume the house.

I liked that the scenes didn't always pan out as I expected them to, and I liked the pace of the story, the dialogue and the descriptions. I say, give it a go. Myself, I've moved on to the new Tracy Chevalier novel, The Last Runaway.

Other then lazying about reading over the weekend, we also tasted some champagne over at Korbel. You'd think after all the times I've gone there I would remember why it is they get to call their champagne "champagne" instead of "sparking wine". It's not an exciting explanation. They were grandfathered in.

The Trio

We looked at the river.

View from our porch

We enjoyed Baxter's cuteness.

We also had a very nice drive up on Saturday. We all met in Point Reyes Station. I took Lucas Valley Road and then drove through the Nicassio Valley. It's one of my favorite drives. It's always green and fresh and beautiful.

In Point Reyes Station we walked around, visited the shops, had a coffe and chatted.

Not sure what to make of Peanut Butter graffitti

Too bad Baxter can't read

Cowgirl Creamery cheese

The two Michael's

Then we drove north to Marshall and Bodega Bay, stopping for lunch at Nick's Cove. Raw oysters and a crab sandwich. Yum.

Bold seagulls - fodder for Hitchcock's The Birds

Bodega Bay

A nice drive through the country. A nice weekend by the river. To my cold I say, pish-posh. To my friend's I say, thanks for putting up with my nose and all my tissues.

 

Bored at Home

I'm home sick today. Annoying headache and my stomach is bothering me. Plus I'm bored. Whine.

I watched last night's A.I. Candice and Kree blew all the other performances out of the water.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day in the city, so I took a few pics from the Lone Mountain patio looking north and east. I never get tired of this city.

On Monday we had our work-place "Almost Annual Chili Cook-Off". There were ten cooks this year and the competition was fierce. I thought my chili was good, but it wasn't good enough. I didn't even place. *Sniffle.* I voted for my favorite and apparently most others agreed with me as she won. Business & Finance took 1st and 2nd place, their first wins, and ITS took 3rd. Even though I didn't win, I thought my chili looked lovely. I'm going to have to work on my recipe.

Speaking of food, the Ng-Ult pair are back from Hawaii and they brought presents! A jar of Passion Fruit-Orange-Guava preserves. Insanely tasty. AND a perfect selection of mochi from Two Ladies Kitchen. Oh. My. Goodness. The picture doesn't do these lovelies justice. I think my favorite was the one at the top right - brownie inside. Yum.

Finally, to those of you who suspect I've given up physical books for electronic ones, I say pish-posh. I happened to find myself in the Marina this week and dropped in to Books, Inc. Of course there were lots of tasty morsels, but I managed to escape with just one selection and a handful of cards. "City of Thieves", by David Benioff. Hope it's good. I'll be bringing it with me when I go up to the Russian River for a weekend getaway.

That's all for now.

 

For Your Viewing Pleasure

I've got a bunch of pictures to share in this posting. Felines. Friends. Foliage. And randomness.

First, of course, felines.

Ng-Ult Feline Horde. From left: Leo, Long, Angel, Wu Mei.

Long stretched along my lap and keeping me warm.

Leo, Katja's litter bro. Notice his different eye colors?

Keiko snozzle. Seriously.

Friends. Sweet Ebru has gone back to Istanbul. Even though the distance is minimized with technology, she's still too far away. The day before she left, Abby, Ebru and I went across the bay to have breakfast at Brown Sugar Kitchen. Sadness can always be softened with tasty food!

Abby and Ebru

Ebru, we miss you!

And the precious Leila, who I babysat last night. We were supposed to party while the parents were at the movies, but she fell asleep almost immediately. I spent the next three hours watching her in between AI performances. She was much more entertaining.

Leila, oh oh oh, oh, Leila.

Foliage. Just a few pictures taken while walking around.

On a fence along Octavia.

Along Octavia.

A blossoming cherry tree.

And randomness.

From a recent ATM withdrawal. Seems reasonable to me.

My friend's birthday cupcakes. I had one of the ones in the second row. Holy crap it was good!

Ending on cupcakes makes me want to go out and find one. I wonder if I could convince Slacker to go on a cupcake quest. There happens to be a Kara's in the vicinity somewhere.

 

Trying Out Blogsy

I continue my quest for a possible new blog service or a decent blogging tool for mobile postings. Text is a none issue. It's the handling of images that drives me. Blogspot/Blogger is fine for now, but I still miss how Posterous handled grouping of pictures. We'll see how Blogsy does.

I'm watching after the Ng-Ult feline horde. Since cats are involved, posting some pics is required. Katja is descended from the Ng cat clan. Angel and Long are siblings to Katja, though not of the same litter. Both of these fluffs dominate my lap when I'm visiting, Long in particular. The other felines, with the exception of Jasmine, eye me with suspicion, occasionally sit near me, but generally just do their own thing when I drop by.

Angel

Long

So far I'm finding the Blogsy interface a little buggy, but as I'm using it for the first time I'll give it the benefit of the doubt until I've used it more. I watched a few of the how to videos and will watch the others.

I'm interested to see how the image sizes post. Adjusting the size is pretty easy in Blogsy, which is nice, though some of the settings are dependent on the image hosting site. I might try playing around with thumbnail sizes to see what sort of flexibility I can get out of the tool. Placing the images via dragging and dropping is convenient, but sometimes it doesn't land where I want it to and there doesn't seem to be a way to move it once it's been dropped onto the page, so I kept having to delete the image and add it back again.

Tulips! I think it's almost tulip season.

Tulips!

As I was looking for pics to play with, I found some old birds-in-the-backyard pics. I can't remember if I ever posted on either of these, but at the risk of repeating myself years later...

SF Parrots!

One Saturday morning I woke to a terrible cacophony. The cats were in a frenzy at the bedroom windows. I dragged myself out from under the covers and peaked through the curtains to see what was doing on. It took a minute, but then I saw them. Parrots. A whole colony of them, rampaging the berries from the yard. And this not long after I had seen the documentary, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. Total coolness.

I haven't seen the parrots since, so that morning is a special memory. But I do see other birds. Like this lovely guy. I tried to find him in my Audobon bird book, but was not successful. Anyone know what he is?

Bad Bird!

I'm chilling out at the Slacker's today, doing laundry and watching movies. Now playing, the 2011 The Thing. Later I hope to see Ebru.