Donnerstag, März 24, 2005

Re-Connected to the online world

Finally...
I'm online again. This night we installed the new-new router to our new-new Hansenet account. This me, my flatmate and his friend only a few minutes. But finally it's done. And it was muc-much quicker than fixing my new IKEA System which costed me all my nerve, a lot of money and at least 12 hrs of my life. I wrote some things offline during the last days, but I'm too tired now to to post them. Later...

Dienstag, März 22, 2005

Working on Stolmen

The next try to document some of the work I did in my new room. And, well - I have to try if my new webcam has more features than only one.


First: Careful studying

A look into the box world:



... and now, four hours later, the first two pillars are standing. I was soaked with sweat...

and enjoyed the view
.

But I didn't give up on Ikea Stolmen...

written & published later

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Samstag, März 19, 2005

Punk Rock

Today was a real "punk rock day" - me, my new flat mate and his friend were drilling holes in the wall - for the kitchen shelves, for example.

So it was spent with cooking, clearing, clearing and clearing...

And: Punk Rock. Because I was testing the impact of my music collection on the two boys, and it worked out fine ;-)

Played, in no particular order and among others:

  • Green Day: American Idiot
  • Foo Fighters: One By One
  • New Order: Get Ready
Only the soundtrack to Kill Bill I they did not stand - I don't have a clue why...

(Written offline, published later)

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To the five Burroughs...

This is an excourse about the different parts of a German city in general and Hamburg in special. Hamburg is divided in seven districts (German: "Bezirke"). The next structure beyond are nearly 100 neighbourhoods/barrios/quarters/whatever you wanna call it (German: "Stadtteile"). I lived in St. Georg for 5 years, before that I lived in Borgfelde for 4 1/2 years. The origins of those names differ - while Finkenwerder, Moorburg or Altenwerder for instance were fisher's villages for ages, Altona was a town of it's own till the Nazis melted it together with Hamburg. Altona was a part of Denmark til 1866 and secured freedom of believe for all inhabitants. Between Altona and Hamburg was a kind of "buffer" - the world famous quarter St. Pauli. St. Pauli lay outside the old city walls, on the west side, and at the harbour - where the hookers and the foreign seamen stayed, where people have to come through when they were on trading business - and where people stayed, who had to hide from parts or inhabitants of the inner Hamburg. St. Georg was the eastern part outside the town walls, here the citizens of Hamburg sent all their folk which was ill or who were too poor - the pestilence quarter, later a kind of early quarantine - but the water flowed first across the shores of St. Georg and then in the old town, well, think about it...

Both parts of Hamburg have still a lot in common. In both parts there are whorehouses in the first floor of seemingly "normal" buildings, there's a lot of prostitutes and a lot of the same problems. Well... But now I'm gone, looking what the other "St." will bring.

Ah, yes, and there's no "five burroughs" of course, but three bigger cities and a lot of smalltowns, villages and else melted together for one big Hamburg.

(Written offline, see date below, published way later...

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Freitag, März 18, 2005

Hansenet

Yes, I live in a new flat. Yes, my stereo and my television are put in. But I don't have a working conventional telephone network at the moment (yes, those old fashioned things with copper-cable in the wall) neither I have Internet access - thank you Hansenet. Well, basically this is a mix between bad luck and our fault, because the little notice we stuck at the door wasn't enough for the bad weather, and the rain did wash the piece of paper away. But it is typical that at this telephone company nobody knows what the other is doing. Nobody could answer me whether the installer of the telephone company was already at our house or not. My flat mate Stefan called up the company several times, and they told him there is nothing that has to be switched manually. Let's see...

Written offline - see date below, posted much later...)

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First glimpse in my new home

The first glimpse in my new room - of course the stereo is the first thing standing. No telecommunication at the moment.

... and my office stuff is in the top box.

Seems like I'm cramming the stuff...


(Written and posted way later...)

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Donnerstag, März 17, 2005

Klingklang

"Hello. This is gorgeous... Kill all Hippies!" Thank you, PRIMAL SCREAM. I thought this might fit to tune my stereo the first time at the new position in the new room, these are the first albums played after I found the cables for my stereo and was finally able to plug it in:

Actually the newer of the two samplers doesn't match my taste this much, the first one was much better with Bands like DISGRACE for example. But I thought it would be nice to say "Tervetuloa" to my new flat after I had the Primal Scream ;-)
And, what a silent day, all-in-all. Because I looked nearly everywhere to find the cables in a hidden bag in my backpack...

(Written offline see date below, posted later...

Good bye St. Georg - hello St. Pauli

Now it's done - after nearly 5 years (only a few weeks are missing) I left St. Georg and have now a new flat on the other side of the lake Alster. Now I'm living in northern St. Pauli - at least I stayed true to the saint...

I'll tell you next time what the districts of Hamburg are about - call it barrios/quarters/neighbourhoods - it's different, and it matters. It matters for different reasons where you live. But back to the move, because it actually was one of the easier and better ones, thanks to Larry and Knut. Thank you Benni & Ole. And good to have the "Kleine Pause directly around the corner.

(written offline - see date below, posted later...

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Mittwoch, März 16, 2005

The ten year MeMe

The Ten Year MeMe Ten years ago I was probably preparing something for my German Highschool degree (the so called Abitur) at Gymnasium Bad Nenndorf. Well, surely not in March. The last exams were in May, so around this time there might have been Easter holidays. Or parties. We really partied a LOT. We had different groups in our class - I was among the party organizers. Two weeks ago I occasionally met one out of my class in a night train - was was travelling from Kiel to Hannover, I was going home to my parents. Nice. Greetings to Lutz!

Five years ago I was looking for "my first own flat". Well, I was living in Hamburg for more or less exactly four years by then. The first half year I was living in a beautiful flat in the district called "Barmbek" - but it was only for half a year because the original inhabitant was studying abroad for half a year. Then I moved into a student's house with 5 people on my floor. After 3 1/2 years I was so sick of it. And my boyfriend even more. The bed was small, everything was tiny, there was no space for a television, the house was ugly...
Me and my upcoming flatmate Katharina had two criterias for searching - enough space and within reach of the Alster and St. Pauli. The football stadium as well as the surrounding city district. Yeah, and then we found a seemingly nice flat in the street called Koppel, close to the Alster, nice old house which has survived General Harris - and 3 fine lads in the fifth floor from where you could watch over the whole water area and have a top view on the Japanese Fireworks celebrating the cherry blossom.

Three years ago - I don't fucking know. 2002 started with an new efford to finish my studies, I choose economics as an additional field of study. But that might have happened sometimes in 2001 as well. But we got a new lecturer in Turcology, and in March 2002 we finished his first course. Not much rock'n'roll around that time, as far as I remember...

One year ago I was busy with studying as well. Just finished my first "Hauptseminar" in history, fixed a lot of things at the website of the Derboven family because Lee Myrthe has won the title "Miss Schau der Besten". There were a lot of concerts and interviews around this time (Monster Magnet, for example!) - and my sweetheart Bobo was on tour with Morbid Angel. Same procedure as last year, James?

This year has started. Did it? Yes? Already in the third month? Really? University's a bummer, I don't fuckin' remember anything, I might have just gathered a little rest of consciousness at the end of february when they closed the library for the rest of the holidays, but the rest ist fog and mist.

Yesterday I was helping my new flat mate Stefan cleaning his old flat and re-organizing our new kitchen. Stefan came to me like the "deus ex machina" - after I got really desperate with searching for a new flat I received his email on last wednesday. He answered me on thursday, we visited the new flat together, slept it over and agreed - and on saturday, sunday and yesterday I was already helping him painting the walls and doors and moving in. Everything changed in minutes. Crazy and true. At the moment it looks like a very nice place to live in and it growed with every little bit we did.

Today the same, we emptied and cleaned my future room. I visited Larry in the Markthalle to check who's gonna help me tomorrow. Plus I visited Joey, Erin, Rob and all the other poor guys stuck in a Metallysee tour. Well, they have No Mercy...

Tomorrow I'll move into my new room. Yeeha! What a kickstart. Last wednesday I was thinking gloomily about moving back to my parents for a while, being homeless, or, the worst option, moving into a suburb quarter in the east of Hamburg. And now I'm going to move to St. Pauli/Altona. But the districts of Hamburg are a topic of their own, more about this next time...

found at ButtUgly and D/k

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Sonntag, März 13, 2005

Blackmetal & Microsoft

Puh! Now that I eventually found a new home I decided shortly to use the marvellous infrastructure of this old house and completely de- and re-installed MS Windows. Originally I wanted to try and get Windows XP on my laptop, but I only have Intel Pentium III and 128 MB memory space - so I consulted Benni, thought about it carefully and re-installed Windows ME. Next time you need somebody to Format your C-drive? Call me! That was the funniest part of it. But the re-installation was one of the tyical marvels of Microsoft - sooner or later are bad things invading the computer, and you don't know, which button you might have activated...

Of course I didn't allow Microsoft to do it - but it installed PhoneSync though. I dunno why, because last time PhoneSync messed up my Nokia data set... And it tried at least three or four times to install Outlook and the Outlook adress book, independent from each other. Hey, Bill! I'm not gonna use your virus-alluring mail programm. Thanks, Mozilla Thunderbird is running fine... Windows tried to install MSN messenger, let's say, 5 times, in different releases. Even though I already got the most recent release. And I took care for the latest DirectX Version 9.0c - and I hope it wasn't re-written with some older things.

After a while I was ready to kick the next Microsoft co-worker I would meet, so I decided to fight fire with fire and listened to some black metal - thanks to Bea for Dimmu Borgir.

Freitag, März 11, 2005

Updates on Nevermore

Hahaha. Every one knowing my taste in music will be a little surprised but I'm awaiting the next NEVERMORE album very eagerly. I'm following their steps regularly, and Andy Sneap is so kind to give inside views every now and then. Watch the video he shot on his News page.

Watching Mount St. Helens once more

Since there was recent "volcano activity" two days ago it's already very interesting and rewarding again to watch the Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam. Maybe it's a bit of weird Zen - I have the window open most of the time while I am doing completely different things on my computer, reading or whatever - and every now and then I'll watch what the vulcano does...

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Freitag, März 04, 2005

Big Brother is watching football

Thanks god that there are initiatives like the Chaos Computer Club or the FoeBuD e.V.. They revealed to the press how many and how detailed the organizers of the FIFA World Cup in Germany want to know. In the end it's still quite non-sure that you get tickets, but you have to fill in more things before than you'll ever have to fill out before getting in the German Bundestag or the American Embassy... A scandal. Nothing more.

Live kreation - and music biz politics

Unfortunately you can't mention it too often - online counts. I'm writing for professional and non-professional magazines now for nearly 10 years. And yes, I totally understand that record companies cut down the promotional efforts for little paper fanzines which appear once a year - ok, even here do outstanding exceptions exist as COTHURNUS or CHAOS Mag for example. But where would you look up where the most recent concert of your favourite band will be? Maybe on their homepage. More likely an online music mag. Even verisimilar an non-payed, non-professional mag. Now, SPV have cut down guest lists for online mags. Ok, do it. I'll get in anyway. But I won't write a review about what I saw. Why should I?!?! This is so stupid, anyway. Yesterday Kreator, Dark Tranquillity, HATESPHERE and played the Markthalle. Ok., it's one of the last gigs of the tour, but it wasn't sold out - could have been an opportunity for label and band to say - "hey, have a review in an online mag and get more kids in." In fact they didn't. No guestlist for online mags. I wonder why I got up early this morning to be the first in the world to publish my sermon about the recent album...

As already mentioned, I was there though to see what kind of "Live Kreation" the album will be, and here's what they played:

Setlist Kreator Hamburg Markthalle, 2.3.2005

  • Enemy Of God
  • Impossible Brutality
  • Pleasure To Kill
  • Phobia
  • Patriarch
  • Violent Revolution
  • World Anarchy
  • Renewal
  • Suicide Terrorist
  • Extreme Aggression
  • People Of The Lie
  • Voices Of The Dead
  • All of The Same Blood
  • Riot
  • Terrible Certainty
  • Reconquering The Throne
  • Betrayer
  • ---
  • Terror Zone
  • When The Sun...
  • Ripping Corpse
  • Love Us or Hate Us
  • Flag Of Hate
  • Tormentor
Nice set? yes.

DARK TRANQUILLITY were good as always, but I've seen them even better and longer than 40 poor minutes... Looking forward to see them on all the festivals.

Dienstag, März 01, 2005

Going to a library

I don't know if someone out there knew - using a library is hell of an expensive in Germany. Even little kids pay minimum 4 EUR a year if they wanna use the public library in Hamburg. For a student it's minimum 15 EUR. Plus minumum 50 Cents for every item you borrow. This is the regular price. If you give the books back later the charge you at least 40 Cents a day. No, we don't talk about the University's bib. We talk about the public library with a branch office in every quarter - which is there for people to read. Well, in the village where I grew up there was only the school library - or I could have gone to the next bigger town (but compared with the school library the choice was poor) or to Hannover - hell of a ride for a book.

So instead we bought books. (Did I mention I'm a book snob?) My daddy's collection is awesome, but there are several added that he inherited. But without Benni's girlfriend Jonna, a Finnish girl, I would have never ever thought of this as something special. Of course book are expensive as well, and there is a controlled price but it there are various possibilities to buy them at discount.

Rostocker Straße - Benni ist wieder da!

For whom it may concern:
Benni ist wieder da. Und ab morgen werde ich ihm auch sein Zimmer wieder geben. Adieu, sage ich dem Blick direkt auf die Turntables von International Pony.