We left on Wednesday with the illusion to be able to reach the capital within 4.5 hours. As I said, an illusion – we needed 6 hours in total. I was overwhelmed by the size of Berlin, which actually becomes really apparent, when you pass by a sign already 10 km away from the motorway saying „City Centre 35 km“. As I wrote before, we stayed at Mathieu‚s place in East-Berlin, where lots of, well, alternative people live. However, we learned not to judge a Berlin house by its outward appearance. I had my first Indish meal in the evening at the „Neu Delhi“ – it was a great restaurant, not only because they sell Weizenbier there for 2?. — Next days we did the typical tourist’s roundtrip. WE SAW EVERYTHING ;) Most worth mentioning however is the Berliner Dom (simply a overwhelmingly incredible and beautiful building), the Reichstag (queuing for entrance to the rooftop is really worth it!), and Potsdam with Sans Souci. Amazing is, that you do not notice at all where West and East once used to be on first glance. It really requires a closer look, because all signs of the divided city have vanished by now. We also visited the house where my grandmother grew up and has lived until Berlin received heavy bombing during WW2. Finally, on the last evening, we had the best pizza in the world in the Tiergarten. Later, we took advantage of the „Long night of musea“ and visited the famous Pergamon Museum and two other more for only 8?! Unbeliveable, how they managed to put a complete antique temple into a building! — Concluding, I very well can agree with the German saying „Berlin is worth a journey“! When we left on Sunday, we were glad that after all the walking around we had some feeling left in our feet. The trip was exhausting as hell, but has resulted in the strong wish to come back and have some more time to enjoy the things that make this city what it is. Although Mathieu did his best to lead us to cool nightlife locations, we were way too tired to actually enjoy Berlin’s nightlife. — When I finally get my photo-section to work, you can all have a look at a selection out of the 150 pictures I took….
So much for now – take care!

Hi there! Just back from Berlin – it was a long day on German highways… After 700 km and 4.5 exhausting, amazing, funny, interesting or simply great days in this fabulous city I am badly tired! My thanks belong to Mathieu for being our host, offering us a place to sleep and his tourist-guide skills, and simply for being great company in this crazy city (or was it the other way around?!). ;)
I took around 150 pictures and will provide a more intense elaboration of the past days in the upcoming days [<– strange sentence…]. Hold tight!

Where on earth did the time go? Today in a week university will start again, and with that my (hopefully) last year of studies. This is crazy! — As you can see, everything is back in place: My page loads fast again and the commenting system works. I kicked Enetation for it was not worth being used and installed HaloScan which seems to work in a different manner. We will see for how long. — It has been quite a while since I last updated what was going on in my life, so I will need to compress everything a little in order to put the most important things here. — There was „Kirmes“ in Burgsolms, my home-village, and traditionally we drank lots of „Bosskopp GT“ (?ppelwoi and Cola) all night and left the fareground at 4 in the morning. Not bad, you say, but last year we were the very last ones leaving the place. Amazingly, Alice behaved like she grew up in Hesse: She did not fail on her dose of ?ppelwoi! — The month August is really the month of accomodations, housing, and moving. I visited Lena’s new place in Giessen Central, very cool, old building and terribly central to everything. Ren? is also almost done with his appartment, and we picked-up a cool 80′-porn-style sofa from one of these give-away-everything gals. It is still unbelievable what one can do with colors and paint. Two months ago, his appartment looked like grandparent’s place and now the methamorphosis is almost complete. Thomas and Kai are still searching for an appartment, if I am up-to-date, after they were screwed by the last landlord they almost had a contract with. Alice is busy with accomodations for Dublin, too. Browsing hundreds of ads every day and getting only negative response is not really a truly motivating activity. Maybe someone reading this has a hot tip? — After almost two weeks at home I had to leave for my own four walls – I simply can’t manage to stay longer than 10 days at my paren’t place without missing my own style of living, including eating, cleaning, and sleeping. I stopped by in Krefeld for the weekend and we went to D?sseldorf („warum ist es am Rhein so sch?n?“) to see „Warphotographer“ and have some Altbier in the city center. — Back in Maastricht, I researched internships and found a very cool one, an exact match so to say. It’s at Porsche and concerned with e-Commerce and motorsports. People who know me, say it: Is this my kind of business? ;) I will send my application as soon as I have my papers ready. It’s a shame: There you are, having a digital camera, but too lazy to put on a shirt and tie in order to make a photo for your application letter… — Talking about digital cameras, I just found a firmware update for Canon S30. — For all of you having asked me about blogging and how I did it, and all the ones who will be asking in the future, I have created a tutorial and put my sourcecode online. Check it out in the FAQ-section. — So much for now, I have to phone Mathieu about a trip to Berlin and I am working at three. See (or read) you soon!

Hey people out there! I appreciate the fact that you are eager to read about what I did in the last 15 days (gosh, 15 days without an update! Damn!), but I am afraid I have to disappoint you. Current loading time of my weblog simply drives me nuts! Either it is Blogger slowing everything down or Enetation – to find out about that I just got myself a new commenting provider which is said to be much faster than Enetation. I will install it in the upcoming days – we will see how fast this can be accomplished, viewing back to the Enetation installation days…. Anyways, this is the reason why I will not update unless this issue has been solved. Please be patient. Thx.

My valued site visitors! I am really sorry for not being able to report some amazingly interesting stories or exiting summer experiences again, but life is simply extremly boring these days! One could almost feel depressed sitting here in Maastricht in the airconditioned CAC building while the weather is rather indecisive or inconclusive on the outside. In the morning, it looks like it was fall already: If I can see the church on the Emmaplein faintly, it must be either the fog or my tired eyes. — Nevertheless, I enjoy reading Shorty’s latest news from Dubai, where he is really living grand, as he does not fail to pronounce and emphasize in every single mail he sends to his homestaying friends. I admit that I envy this great time and experience no one will ever be able to take away from him. If I had a gold-shitting donkey in my garden, be sure that I would contact the next travelling agency for a flight to Dubai! — What else? -I am still quite busy with my current webprojects, and I finally put the new website of our virtual reunion GPW Abi 97 online. The galleries are still missing, but at least this thing is online! Secondly, I launched the second beta for mein-burgsolms.de, which will go online soon. (Here ‚soon‘ stands for a time period no longer than a month from now.) It is really amazing and incredibly interesting to see how much dialect material my grandmother has collected in the past 15 years. If you have any picture from the amount of text I have to put in typed format, you understand why this is taking so long. Nevertheless, I already worked on the meta-tags and search engine entries to give this site a good start when I finally launch it. — That’s it for today, I get back to work now, which means that I continue sitting here and staring into my 19″ Eizo waiting for the next patient to ask for council ;)

Soooorey for the dalay. I intended to write on a regular basis, but you all know how it is…. — Well, my last judgment about this year’s summer was not really correct, at least not for the last days. Here in Maastricht we witnessed two incredibly hot days after a nice weekend with fade-in temperatures. But we get the receipt for mournig about the heat right away: a thunderstorm invited himself for dinner. But: My chances for a night with some sleep increase with every cloud that darkens the sky over Maastricht! Last night I had a maximum of 4 hours – not counting the endless insomniac minutes of to-and-fro as a result of a room temperature of 30+ degrees, insects and mental rampage. But what does not kill us….you know?! — At the moment I am putting very limited resources and effort in this site, what you, my dear visitor might have noted already. But the thing is, that I am heavily developing photos.martinwetzel.com of which a first teaser can be found here. It is incredible what one can do with Java – I really need to get more practice with it. — Whether at work or at home, I am still researching internship offerings. I found one for Southafrika, where they explicitly warn you of crime and murder in Johannesburg. Additionally, they only recommend it to male students, since the chance of being raped is significantly lower than for women. I think I will check this out. No risk, no fun – no brain, no pain. Only the payment of 280? seems rather poor, but I have been told that 3000 Rand monthly DO make a proper living in the RSA. — Regarding internships: Shorty is doing fine in his shaikhdom, Eva is partying in Australia, Esther will leave to Curacao soon, Jan is working to finance California, Mathieu is managing in Berlin, and Alice has a couple of weeks left to prepare for Dublin. -I gotta get started with that internship-thing soon! — Enough for today – my soda is empty again, I need to drink! CU sOOn!

Writing from work: MercedesBenz Portal is again malfunctioning, which is upsetting me bigtime! If only they would put me in charge of this! Man, this could be done so much easier and -more important- way more efficient. What I apparently simply don’t get in this business is that in 999 out of 1000 cases a predefined and preset outcome that is to be achieved by any means is more important that the process that leads to the output. I have the impression, that the mere setting of a certain target does not lead to creativity with respect to creating a process. It makes people only focus on the target and do whatever pops up their minds to achieve it, but no thought what if the process would have been designed in the most efficient and economic way possible and then see how much output can be achieved. But ok, this is my unimportant opinion resulting from unapplied university knowledge. It simply hurts to see stubborn thinking, „pay-me-and-leave-me-alone“ acting, and wasting of resources. Plus: I appreciate the fact that I am paid for rather undemanding work, but staring at a screen waiting for the next error-message to appear is not even worth being called ‚work‘ and is frustrating me to the max. — Enough of this, let’s talk about the more enjoying things: On Saturday the weather was just perfect enough for a trip to Frankfurt where „CSD statt CSU“ was the day’s hot toppic. I didn’t go there because of the Christopher Street Day, hell no, but it was interesting to see how political it all was this year. „Stoppt Stoiber“ was omnipresent and I bet my left hand that everybody there will not vote for ‚Ede‘. On the way back we stopped at the Saalburg, an old Roman castellum I last visited with my family during primary school time. It was cool to see it again, no doubt! — Closing now, another 45 minutes of brain-on-standby and I am free again, at least for today… ;)

No blog for the last 7 days… tse tse… this is unacceptable! Well, here’s my update: First, I was quite busy with my car in a two-day action Ren? and I changed the old gum-like shock-absorbers („Haribo-Fahrwerk“) against new ones that have brought my Audi a little closer to the incredible ‚Gokart‘-feeling I had with my Polo. Plus, we changed the ball-bearings of the rear-axis. Well done. Nevertheless, the T?V Hessen was of a slightly different opinion about the springs and wheels of my car which delayed the ‚legalizing act‘ for another day where things finally did work out. Surprise, surprise! — What else? -Ugh, the weather got nasty! First, no rain at all. All was drying out. Then, suddenly, a little rain. Finally, since yesterday, almost permanent rain! People, I assure you this sucks bigtime! It is now mid July and all I got with respect to tan is a little in the face and on the arms. Great! I wonder if this lousy state is going to change in the remaining weeks of my summer holidays… — Ren? is moving. He is renting an appartment as from August onwards and renovating the holy chambers is currently capturing all attention. Most notably is the fact that he is equipped with a bunch of lazy holiday-people to help: Lena and Thomas, Kai and Ramona, Dennis, and myself. Wow! But there is still much left to do… — My parents are back from holidays since yesterday. Judging from their tan, the weather in Opatja/Croatia must have been outrageous, judging from their stories, the trip must have been exceptionally good. I am really happy for them for having had a fantastic and relaxing time down there. They really earned it after what happened in the last half a year. — Closing now. I will stay in Maastricht for the next two weeks – should someone be around, drop by, gimme a call or whatever…

Today I won’t bother you with another exceptionally long blog, but there were a couple of things coming up my mind in the course of the day. — Would you believe me if I told you that there are crazy events like a BBQ championship out there? -Well, I guess I wouldn’t. But not shitting, there are BBQ clubs existing where the members construct specialized BBQ equipment for all different ‚tasks‘ you encounter when calling yourself a professional BBQer. You should, as I had to learn today, never rost your saussages next to steaks because of the mixing flavours and fats. No comment… Anyways, the philosophical rationale of one of the top BBQ clubs in Germany is as follows: „It’s not the result what is important, but the process.“ Hmm, nice. Dream on… — I just saw the GDR’s counterpart of Derrick on MDR. People, this is amazing! Watching this old GDR crimebuster series nowadays once more confronted me with my thoughts about the GDR I already shared with Kilian: I have never ever thought about whether the GDR had a Derrick in the first place, and then, how a hot pursuit in a Wartburg must have looked like. Now, after watching this series, I conclude the following: The glasses Honnecker wore in 1990 (Esther would call them „Balkanbrille“) were exactly the ones a nurse from the series was wearing in this episode from 1973; they DID do hot pursuits in a Wartburg in green and white with a small sign saying „Volkspolizei“; they made subtile jokes about the availability of products; they never said the word „Staatssicherheitsdienst“ or „Stasi“; they had no cell phones (ok, that’s logical in the 70s); PLUS: the companion of the chief inspector was not asked to bring the car („Harry, fahr schon mal den Wagen vor!“ -„Ja, Stefan.“) — It rained today. What a relief. Yesterday night I had to carry 30 Gie?kannen (anyone know the English word for that??) into the garden to at least hamper the plants from drying out totally. This is one example for what I meant by physically demanding activities. But: After weeks and weeks of brain-eating, I really enjoy it! — Time to hang up, otherwise I might get used to 56k connections… ;)

Hey there! I guess I should provide you all with an update. As you might have read in my previous statements, I am currently enjoying the relaxedness of life „auf’m Land“, which basically means that I am staying at my parent’s house in my 13000-souls hometown. What am I doing there? -Well, mostly everything I am not doing in Maastricht: Spending the largest share of the day outside on some physically demanding activity; spending almost no time at all behind the computer; smoking less but consuming more locale-specific beverages (St?ffche or ?bbelwoi); talking German only; taking care of my parent’s house and garden, my two grannies and the dog; and enjoying a simple but hard-to-describe feeling of a certain freedom. Today we drove around looking for a new car for Kai who had to sell his Audi A3 (what a pitty). Later on, Lena called for a phat BBQ in her garden, after which I at home tried to get the pump to work to feed the plants with some H2O. Finally, Lena, Thomas, Kai and Ramona came over and brought dog Nala with them, what of course contributed to the entertainment part of us all, whether the aforementioned humans or my dog Filou. People can tell what they want, I stick to my opinion: Having an own garden where you can BBQ and sit and drink until late at night is simply fantastic! — One thing that pisses me off bigtime is my current Internet connection at 56k… If only I had never started with flatrate! You simply get so damn used to it! — Time to hang up….