Unlike my expectations, the Belgian Railways indeed managed to get me to the airport on time and without any trouble. I got airborne with no frills, meaning no disgusting air-food, no rediculously small cokes, no comfortable seats, and most important no space for my legs. Yeah, you gotta pay the price for cheapness. Remember one golden rule when flying to Ireland in the early evening: Sit on the left, for you are about to witness a beautiful dusk with increadible light over the sea! — Upon arrival in Bail ?tha Cliath (or Dublin, in English), Alice picked me up and she introduced my to the Irish capital, where actually 1/3 of the Irish population lives and works. Well, at least the southern part of the city, where also Alice resides, works, the north is criminal, run-down and unemployed. Roughly… The easiest way to the city is the Aircoach, a bus dropping you right in the middle of the city at Trinity College. From there we took one of Dublin’s busses, and one does good to have a great deal of patience with the rather random arrival of busses and complete ignorance of schedules. — In the following days we explored the city till our feet hurt. I saw everything! Well, almost. I will not cite the tourist-guide for what to visit and what not, but just to make sure I do not cause people to think that culture for me is not solely included in „Kulturbeutel“, the interested Dublin-visitor should definitely go see St. Patrick’s Church, Christ Church, The Book of Kells, and Trinity College. You can find more information here. Make sure you take a walk along the cliffs. We went to Bray and took a long walk along the coast following the „let’s see what’s behind the next corner“-system… Since the weather was not always really astonishing, Alice and I decided to pay a visit to what is Dublin known for worldwide: Guinness! We started our really academic excursion with a market analysis (we went to a typical pub), followed by an assessment of the quality of the product (pint of Guinness). The absolute highlight of our research of locale-specific „wines and spirits“ was the Guinness-brewery. As a student you still pay 8 Euros entry, but a pint of Guinness above the roofs of Dublin is included. Be sure that you will never get a fresher Stout than in the brewery itself! — Talking of prices: Ireland is extremly expensive. One pack of cigarettes is 5.30, a pint 3.60, a BK meal 6, DVDs 35, fruit and veggies double the price than over here, rents skyhigh. It’s said that the country got wealthy 5 years ago, and as Constance, the landlord of Alice, puts it: „People spend the bloody munney hea, where else would ya go?“ True, when on an island. So Constance did not fail to reward my work of installing a broadband router and linking every room of the house to the Internet with a gift voucher for a meal for two at the best Indish restaurant around. Really cool move since the food was outrageous. — All in all it was a fantastic trip made possible by the low fares of Ryanair, although the landing on the flight back felt like the first parking tryout of a Belgian drivers-license aspirant ;) I also did not mind the 40cm-share of Alice’s matrace, though it was, well, crowded in the beginning. I expect Ireland to be even more beautiful when everything is as green as always said, so I might fly over again and have a look at the countryside then. — So much for now, blog on regularly and take care!

I will blog intensive information about Dublin tomorrow, but for now I simply need a proper medium to express my deepest feelings to you… No good news on a otherwise perfect day in Dublin: Some jerks smashed the rear-window of my car! Right, the rear window… the expensive one… the 440 Euro window…. THIS IS NO FUN ANYMORE! Sadly enough that my vocabulary does not know enough expressions for hate, disgust and non-understanding, so that I could provide you with a colorful picture of what my feelings are about this kind of people, smashing the next-best window of a German car for their grandpa told them once that Germans are bad, and then not even stealing anything! Do these people have the slightest idea how a soaking-wet backseat smells and how long it takes to dry that? Do they know how much hazzle it triggers when you have the worst weather on the whole planet of the last 12 years and a broken window, all that while not even being in the country? Do they care one bit about the financial damage they cause? -I really try to be open-minded and not to make prejudices too soon, but after stolen license-plates, tons of spit on the windows, chewing-gum on the alloys, peanut-butter (!) on doors and windows, scratches in the finish, stolen antenna, and now this topper of a broken rear-window I really begin to hate! „Hate is mine“, or like in Gladiator „I will have my vengeance!“ … or better „VNV – victory, not vengeance“? I dunno yet, but should the day come when the certain drop causes the vat to spill over, then I will put a great deal of creativity in it! — Luckily, there are people like Nina, Christoph and Kilian, who help you out in these situations and take care of your problems while you’re on holidays. Once again, big big thanks to you, IOU!

Hey there! In two hours from now, I will be sitting in the train to Charleroi where Ryanair is going to pick me up to bring me to Dublin in exchange for Euros. If everything goes smoothly, I will have plenty of time at this big and interesting Charleroi airport (h? h?), but would you trust Belgian public transportation? See, me neither! So I take one train earlier in order to avoid any stress since I am forcing myself to look at my trip as if it was holidays. I really need „Tapetenwechsel“ as we would call it in German, some odd feeling of not being able to feel well in one’s 4 walls anymore. Especially after the tests, which went quite ok I think. Weather forecasts are bad to really bad for continental Europe in the next days, so hopefully the weather in Dublin will be the complete opposite. I really wanna see the ‚green‘ exposed to phatt sunlight. Must be marvelous. Another thing radically removing barriers to travel nowadays is the Internet. I was really astonished to find myself with really ALL information I could possibly need for my journey in less than two hours. I even have a map of the arrival area in Dublin, and therefore know where the toilets are… for example ;). The website of the Belgian Railways turned out to be really informative as well. But they didn’t bother to put travel-related information like maintenance-work, which apparently is the no. 1 reason for late trains in Belgium, in languages other than french. Really handy. Apart from that, there is still one variable left, namely, whether they speak Dutch or English at the Vis? train station, where I need to buy a combined, reduced ticket, including a roundtrip Vis? – Charleroi and the bus transport to the airport. Nice, and only 22 Euros. — My suitcase is full, and full here means a level where I think I would not be troubled by the nice ladies at the boarding desk who will weigh my luggage. Last time we managed to trick them and save Alice a fortune for her suitcase was almost double the weight she was allowed to carry, but I am not sure if I can lift the tablet of the scale again without someone noticing. By the way, I tried this trick also in the supermarket yesterday and got 3 apples for the price of one. Drie halen, 1 betalen! Yes, this is the only effective means against price increases. — I am getting nervous here. Dunno why exactly. Simply a certain, let’s call it respect of air transport will always remain. I am not afraid of flying, surely not, but you can never be sure that everybody contributing to such a flight has done his/her homework, if you know what I mean. After all, you are in the air, and if shit happens, you can only blame Newton for inventing gravitation ;). — Anyways. I am really look forward to seeing Alice and having some nice days in Dublin with broadenig my horizon. Should I not return, you know, I love you all. — I will blog you upon return!

I worked a little on my photo-section: ‚id‘ and ’03-02′ are finished by now. Take a look if you like and tell me what you think. — Tomorrow, no today, will be dedicated to studying for the exams. I really don’t feel like it. But it is a simple choice: not to study or one week more of holidays in January…. — Take care!

I helped my father with the apple-harvest and we came up with 330 kg. However, my father said that he expects the same amount still to be on the trees. Anyways, when we buy applejuice or St?ffche next year, we can be sure that our own apples are in there. — Later that day, we went to the house of my grandmother. I basically spent all the afternoon between old books and was amazed about the richness and diversity of my grandfather’s literature collection. Especially documents and books that go back over a hundred years now captured my attention. Those are really quiet witnesses of happenings that shaped the world we live in today. — Fall has really started, no doubt about that. The clearest sign is not the colored leaves everywhere, stormy and rainy wheather, the coat you wear or whatever else. No, the number one reason for that it must be fall is that my mother made Zwiebelkuchen (onion pie) and we had Federwei?er (don’t ask me what that is in English) with it. Phantastic! From that perspective, it should be fall all year long! — Saturday night I went out with Lena, Thomas, and Ren? to meet Kai and a friend of his in a very cool lounge in Giessen called Zentralbar. Really worth going there! We had one hell of a damn good time there! Especially worth mentioning is the custom shot we were served as a specialty. Kai and Jan refused to tell us what it consisted of, and what in particular the red-shaded stuff in the middle was. The only instruction they gave was to swallow all at once, not to slick in between for that we surely would need to throw up. We did as told, and the red stuff turned out to be a teaspoon of Tabasco, swimming between one half of Sambucca (on the bottom) and one half of Tequila. Damn, how did my throat burn! Besides getting a fine and warm feeling in the stomach, and sweat shooting out of my forehead, this stuff boosted my alcohol level dramatically. Or, as Dennis would put it, I was suddenly two hours further in time. After a couple more Lichers, someone wanted to go to the worst club around, the Change. Well, nomen is sometimes omen, and therefore our mood changed into going home and leaving that terrible place after 15 minutes already. Expensive decision, since the „Extrance“ was 3.50. But I learned two lessons that evening: First, I will keep in mind this stuff we drank to offer it to my worst enemies, and second, I will never ever visit a club in Giessen just to check that everybody else is right telling that it is indeed grottenschlecht. — The result of fall and the weather that comes with it, is, that I again feel a bad cold or even flu coming up. But since I am done with the courses and ‚only‘ have to prepare for the exams, I can more or less stay in my warm chambers all day and get rid of illness sympthoms. I just bombed my body with tons of vitamins and other pills to once again dead-punch the cold. I will not start to envy people who’s trouble is to find catchy bathing-gear for the upcoming weekend, where to book diving-lessons, or haven’t seen no rain for months – nooooo! — Enough for now, take care!

Allright, you wanna know what kept me from sleeping last night? Kept me out of bed until 4? I worked on my photo-section all night until I reached the point where I could not simply turn off the computer and say, „hmm, I finish that tomorrow“. Noooo way, not so easy. Cruel though, you reach this point always then when you should really go to bed. But somehow you know, it’s only very few things you have to do and then you can even upload. Enough words, here is what the „Strohwitwer“ did: my photo-section. Applaus, applaus. Anyways, it’s only one gallery and not the „final-final layout“ since I would like to ask people to test the scripts and if it works on different platforms, I will soon finish it of. Promise. But, I wouldn’t say that I am unproud of it… — Work for university is done for this block. On monday, Christoph, Nils and I did one fine job of a benchmarking presentation about low-cost carriers, on Thursday I once more did a presentation on electronic payment systems, and on Monday we are required to show our self-running presentation with voice-narration about instant messaging to the audience. I am really looking forward to this session, since Julia and I laughed our guts out yesterday, when we were recording voice to the slideshow. Really cool – two thumbs up for Powerpoint. So, more and more, I develop sophisticated Powerpoint-Skills ;) — I will spend the weekend at my parent’s place, in order to let my eyes rest a little and to withstand temptation of being busy with the remaining galleries all day. Take care!

Wow, finally I take the time I believe to have and update my blog. In fact, this is also my preferred way of communication, since my throat feels really bad, resulting in cough and a voice that should not even be called that. — Tom is out and Nina is in. -This is so to say the short summary of last weekend. I have implemented a decent network in the house by now, based on a fantastic router from SMC (thanks to Clemens for the tip). Our ISP also seems having been busy at our connection problem, since I can download again for all the donkey is worth ;). — Regarding the week before I will take this opportunity to thank everybody for his/her condolences. Besides, I will drop a comment on funerals. This has been my first funeral for a close family member ever, and my 4th in total. It might be wrong to judge from such a small sample, but I definately hate funerals. That’s logical, you might say, but I mean the ceremony itself. Someone totally unaware and unknown to the person at stake holds a lecture on the life of the dead, trying to bring dignity into this cold (yes, cold in any sense) cemetary chapel. The emphasis, however, is on ‚trying‘. A few songs, some handshakes with condolences, some tears, some flowers, some hollow thoughts to unexplained forces of the universe. Right after, morticians are to pick up the coffin, they do not even wear black, not to talk about a tie, just sweater and jeans. Horrible scenario. Must be that your attitude changes when you „work“ with the dead. As the cemetary gardener put it in the mortuary: „I have had 4 of them already this week.“ Nice, thanks for this information. This is all so sick! And yes, right, I did not speak the Our Father and sang none of these horrible funeral songs for I simply do not believe. At least not in this false institution called church. It’s as simple as that. — Elections in Germany: Well, my dearest wish came true, namely not to have Ede Stoiber as chancellor. The outcome is an old hat by now, so I will not elaborate on that. But it is incredibly interesting to visit the websites of the parties now after the elections. Especially Stoiber took his foot off the throttle – it’s even getting quiet around him. Maybe he is ashamed of leaning himself so far out of the window and not making it in the end. Poor Eddie, I will feel pity for you if I have time. — I just came back from the Applepark Hotel where MB Customer Promotions had organized a „teambuilding“ evening with everything you can imagine: Silly games to earn your part of the (very nice and delicious) buffett, music and embarrasments on the dancefloor ;) But it was a cool evening though. Downloading the pictures I noticed that I am shortly about to take my 3000th picture with my S30. And that reminds me that I still owe you a picture-section… Damn. — On monday we have our final presentation for our strategy-course about low-cost airlines. Interesting to dig into these companies which are able to provide customers like poor students with incredible cheap flights. Yeah right, I just booked my flight to Dublin with Ryanair. Now that I have investigated this industry, I should have no doubts about these special kind of airlines. I am really looking forward to my trip, and so is Alice, who by the way would be happy to welcome you on her homepage frequently. Ireland seems to be a country being rather different from ours, so I am eager to broaden my horizon! — That’s it for today, over and out.

Oh what a day… [Task: Create a sentence with 3 or more hyperlinks.] After voting, the day’s main mission was to get Alice to Charleroi Airport, where she took off to Dublin with Ryanair at 18:40. All in all, everything went smooth, except for incredibly bad weather with pouring rain and thunderstorm on the motorway. I just received an SMS from her, she’s doing fine, she says, and everything is ok. In the future, however, I strongly reccomend you to read her weblog regularly, where she will give frequent updates for all you nosy people out there. (IF they finally deploy Internet in every house ;)) — Having just arrived back in Aachen, I had to hear that my grandmother died this afternoon, which urges me to leave Maastricht tomorrow and take care of things at home and support my parents. Please understand that I probably won’t be able to answer mail or instant messengers. Thanks. — As I said, oh what a day! Under all persitent circumstances right now, I will not fail to drop some philosophical words: Days like today demonstrate, what it means to say good-bye. I have said good-bye a couple of times in the last months, and the lesson I learned is: As soon as it touches your heart when you say farewell, the other person is locked into your heart and will remain there, being even closer than it would have ever been possible before. — Live every day as if it was your last….

Upcoming Sunday elections are held in Germany. In order to make a qualified, serious and most important UNBIASED ;) decision, I checked out the party’s website to gather some latest up-to-date information. The result is really astonishing. Therefore, I have decided to share the best markups with all of you. For example, for the few people among us who are still convinced of Ede Stoiber, I really advise you to check this video first before crossing the wrong circle. This is really cruel intentions… The craziest stuff the interested, politically motivated viewer might need can be found on the pages of Guido’s FDP. Make sure you get your update at Radio Westerwelle… no comment! Ever got an 18 Euro note? Man, how rediculous. Although I would never vote for them because of the infamous eco-tax, the Green Party actually earned my respect for their outstanding ecards. Don’t miss that – way too cool! But, let’s be fair here in this very instance and have a look at the PDS as well. Now, if you don’t have any clue what this party is all about, then you can check out their transparents in order to gain some instant-insights in how to put up statements everybody must agree with. Now, someone please tell me, who on earth will vote for this party?! However, they still believe that they have some seats reserved for them in the parliament. Dreamers! So we finally come to „der Doris ihrem Mann seiner Partei“, the SPD. In order to mobilize voters, Schr?der is actually the only one having a flash-based homepage. RESPECT! Amongst tons of good reasons why to vote for SPD, I found some very appealing feature no other party can offer: The SPD Travelservice. Unbelievable. Crazy. By whom are we governed? I think I will vote for the PBC, the party of hyperchristians that will make Jesus chancellor ;) — People of Hessen, you are in a by far more severe dilemma than all the others. We have to decide whether or not the „Konnexit?tsprinzip“ (I do not write down English translations for words I do not even understand in German) will be added into the constitution. Well, since really NOBODY was aware what the f*?! that is, I have searched the wonderful Internet and found a good explanation. So now we can all make our decision… — I am really looking forward to the elections – I do believe that in either case it will turn out a surprise. — For the last days, I have been busy with Alice’s Website. You better check immediately! She will update all of us about her adventures in Dublin in her weblog. — Now, time to close – sorry for this „click-blog“ ;)

Just some small news for the coders: I took finally care of the many complaints I received about the speed of my website. I replaced the graphical navigation by pure html. It should load a lot faster now. If not, don’t hesitate to tell me.
What else? Well, university kind of sucks because of the workload. Apparently, I am simply not used to prepare the assigned literature for hours. Plus, two courses on the same day can really tie one up at the desk. — Everybody’s leaving. It seems like there is noone left in Maastricht anymore. Only unfamiliar faces at University! On Monday, we had a farewell drink with Jan, who will be off to California by Saturday. Alice is heavily into her preparations for Dublin, and Tom will move out by the end of this month. Either I cut off the roots here as well or wait until people come back ;) Weird times, these days. In addition to that, the season is changing and the signs of autumn cannot be overlooked. I still hope for some warm and sunny days. — That’s all I can say, till next time …. (Jerry Springer watchers know the rest).