Happy New Year

New Years Eve... all over the world it is celebrated, but of course with different traditions. Being in Germany at that time I noticed a few 'strange' German traditions myself... like 'Dinner for One' (original title). Every time there is a native English speaker in our party he/she is asked about this British skit about an old lady and her butler having New Years dinner with 'old friends'. But of course... nobody else knows it except the Germans... a David Hasselhof moment once again ;-)

The next very traditional thing everybody has to do at New Years eve is 'Bleigiessen' which roughly translates into 'lead casting'. You need lead, a candle and a cold water bowl. You are then telling your fortune out of the shape of the molten lead you poured into the water.

Interesting... I got a swan! I leave it up to you investigating what 2009 is having up its sleeves for me... but it could be worse I guess ;-)




And then of course fireworks. Not in every country this is the way of welcoming the new year. In Ireland and even in Colorado fireworks aren't sold in public and you have to trust your city for setting something up. Over in Germany... not a problem. I hope the owner of the Benz didn't have any problems with his insurance too... or that would have been a bad start into 2009 :-)

A Happy New Year to you and yours!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Meanwhile back in Germany... finally I got the chance to see several proper Christkindle markets. It is a similar thing like Irish pubs back in Dublin I guess... we have an own Christkindle market downtown Denver too which again is nothing compared to the real deal back home. So what's so special about them then? Well... lots of people freezing in the cold, drinking steaming hot mulled wine, listening to Christmas carols, also sprinkle some snow on top of them... DONE.

So I spend my time several days before Christmas going from one Christkindle market to the next one. The biggest one I saw this year was the one in Kassel. No snow though :-(

Still plenty of mulled wine and good food!


But that is not what Christmas is all about, right? Christmas is the time of year where we can slow down, relax and forget about our stressful life for a moment. And appreciated that there is something more important in life then work and money... love and peace among all people!

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Real Irish pubs

After several 'dry' months... well, not exactly a drought but you get the idea ;-) I finally made it into a real Irish pub again! Of course we have Irish pubs in Denver and vicinity but it is not the same. Maybe it is more comparable to Temple Bar back in Dublin which is the really tourist area over there with everything a tourist would expect to see in Ireland... including one or two leprechaun a night :-)

And as you can see... my Irish friends were very, very happy to see me. And there was no argument over who is picking up the bill! That is what true friends are all about... but the exchange rate to the Dollar made it hurt more then the bruises ;-)

Once again I had a great time in Ireland! Thanks again to everybody... you really make me missing this place!

Back to the Fair City

Finally I made it back to my second home... the one and only Fair City... where streets have no name... home of Guinness... Dublin. And of course I had time to meet a good old friend of mine, Molly Malone! Still waiting for me at Grafton Street where I left her exactly a year ago... there are not many women on this planet you can pull that one off :o)

And the whole city is already decorated and getting ready for Christmas. But despite being only one more week to go the city and the shopping centers were quite empty. It took us only 20 minutes taking the M50 from Tallaght to the airport on a weekend afternoon! Impressive! That would never have happened on my watch two years ago :-P

And finally after six years my friend Brian told me how to say Halfpenny Bridge like the locals do... ha'penny of course! Try to get that one right after half a dozen Guinness ;-)

Winter horror hits Denver

Well... winter is not always fun and games as we know. Especially when it sneaks up at you like it does over here. One day you can have quite pleasant temperatures, people running around in T-shirts and the next day you have suddenly 6 inches (15 cm) of snow covering the highways. What happened in the meantime you might ask? Colorado has one bis advantage: most of the time the weather happens at night which is great in the summertime where most of the time no cloud is disturbing the sunshine (hence the advertised 300 days of sunshine).

But this has one big disadvantage in the wintertime where you suddenly awake to lots of snow on the ground and lots of traffic blocking the roads which makes up for the perfect winter horror which we had now the second week in a row. I better get a sleigh and some Huskies and leave my car at home ;-)

Crazy Vending Machines II

Revisiting one of my latest posts about elaborate vending machines at American airports. Remember the Rosetta Stone language course vending machine I was on about recently? I found a posh version of it at the Houston airport (which funny enough is called Georg Bush airport, but that is a different story now). This version of the vending machine came with a real but bored looking person! :-)

Every time I see something like that I really wonder what is the margin for selling this product if they can afford an expensive vending machine or even a real person selling that product. Which brings me to one of my favorite topics... Apple! They had an own wending machine for i-phones, etc at that airport as well!

Maybe I am getting to old or I am not hip anymore... more likely both... but I still find the idea of buying a several hundred Dollar product of a vending machine somewhere at an airport amusing... I guess I am easily amused at least ;-)

Dallas and JFK

The next stop on my grand Texas tour was Dallas. Two things come into my mind when I think of Dallas: first the well known soap opera about a bunch of rich Texan oil moguls and of course the infamous assassination of John F Kennedy. It is interesting to see how this tragedy is becoming a tourist attraction nowadays. Here you can see me spotting the snipers nest in the window of the bookstore on the 6th floor... unfortunately a few decades too late ;-)

But of course there are plenty of conspiracies around this single event in history and it is nice to see the place with your own eyes. Even after watching several documentaries in favor or opposing the blooming conspiracies, it is interesting to see how small the Dealey plaza really is. A second (or even third) sniper would have been very easy to spot with all the people filling up this place. But that is only my opinion and so I was wandering over the world famous Grassy Knoll a tourist myself .

And of course there is a very interesting museum about the evens of November 22nd 1963. It is located in the very same building and floor where Oswald had his 'alleged' snipers nest including a recreation of it.

And before you enter the museum you are passing this door with three pictograms on the bottom... attention, very bad joke... if they would have had the icon forbidding guns in that building already in the 60s... this would never have happened :-)

Alright... sorry. This place is definitely worth a visit regardless if you believe in conspiracies or not. And don't forget to visit the Reunion tower which was sadly closed for redecoration when I was there :-(

Houston we have a problem

But Houston is of course widely known because of its NASA space center. While queuing for the tour the guy in front of me tried to explain his son where we were. He said (and this is NOT a joke!): "Remember the movie Armageddon? They were calling their base station in Houston. And that is... HERE!" I really had to laugh about that comparison but even I was able to understand that... maybe not such a bad explanation at all then ;-)

But beside the historical mission control center which was basically involved in every maned space mission and of course the new mission control for the space shuttle and ISS missions, they also have the astronaut training facility here. Basically they have a copy of each module on the space station, space shuttle, etc. in a big hanger to train astronauts. Due to the hurricane their roof was leaking that's why most of it was covered up.

And another great attraction here at NASA in Houston: you can touch a real moon stone! Here you can see me (or better my index finger) touching those stone. Remember the big fuss about the contamination by moon microbes in the 60s after the first moon landing? I hope it isn't me know who is wiping out humankind ;-)

Another entertaining element of the tour were the warning signs in different parts of the mission control building. This one might be not that entertaining for my English speaking readers but the combination of the direct translation of 'cell phone' which looks more like prison cells in German and the chosen word for 'switching off' is really funny. At least not everything is perfect even at NASA ;-)

Hurricane over Galveston

As I said in an earlier post, just a month before my trip Hurricane Ike hit the Houston area quite badly. In the direct path of destruction was the little holiday town Galveston... and to make it short, it will take them several years to recover from this devastation.
Galveston is a lovely down directly on the waterfront with a beach which stretches for miles and miles. Lot's of little bars are build right on the beach or on poles onto the ocean.


And as you can see that seem to be the place where you don't want to be when a Hurricane hits. While the devastation in Houston and the suburbs was mostly roofs, windows and advertisement signs over here you had entire buildings getting flattened.
And in between the ruins you had lots of tourists taking pictures and having drinks in the repaired bars around. I guess the first signs of an economical recovery at least.

But I wouldn't worry too much about Galveston. Even with all the damage it is still a great place to see with a fantastic beach and great nightlife. And at least the beach will remain regardless what Hurricane hits next ;-)

For next years summer vacation this is definitely an alternative to Florida! Let's see...

Houston and Beyond

My last weekend trip for this year brought me to the two biggest cities in Texas: Houston and Dallas. The first one known through the infamous words 'Houston, we have a problem' and Dallas known through the most famous TV show of the late 80s. But first things first... Houston which is an sprawling city near the gulf coast with an interesting city center where old buildings meet high rise office towers.

Being that close to the gulf coast has its advantages like a very mild climate with 80 F (26 C) while I was over there... but also has its disadvantages manifesting in Hurricanes. Just a month before my trip Hurricane Ike hit Houston and surrounding areas and left quite a devastation. More about that in my next posts...





But getting to the coast was a challenge in itself already. The traffic is really strange in Houston with lots of big trucks (everything is a bit bigger in Texas) flying past you 20 mph over the local speed limit while you wonder which of the freeway flyovers you have to take next ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving

It's that time of the year again when we gather around to meet the family, have lots of food and drinks... no I am not speaking about Christmas, that's next month. This month we have: turkey day, aka Thanksgiving! This traditional American holiday is not very well known in Europe... or as for Germany celebrated at a different date. Over here it is right up there with Christmas. And Christmas came early for me this year as well... after several month of waiting for my stimulus check (yes... its the one from early this year, thanks Mr. Bush!) I finally got it the day before Thanksgiving! I guess bureaucracy is the same everywhere ;-) But that gives me the opportunity to have a fantastic festive dinner!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Crazy Vending Machines

Well... since I am over here I spotted several crazy vending machines... one of my first posts was about a Sony vending machine where you could by MP3 players and cell phone. The funniest one so far was the lobster vending machine where you could grab a living lobster and get it cooked while you wait. But the most specialized one is the Rosetta Stone vending machine at the Las Vegas airport. Who is deciding at the airport that it would be better to learn the language of your target destination? I agree there might be connection but as soon as you talk about a price tag of $499 I am not so sure if I would use a vending machine at an airport to make this purchase. Anyhow... I still got a blast out of that machine anyway by running the demo for the German class... it was just like home... just like home :-)

Vegas and beyond

As I mentioned earlier... I stayed at the medieval themed hotel called Excalibur which has a signature show... the Tournament of Kings which is basically a jousting (knight tournament) show as part of a medieval dinning experience. So while you are eating with your bare hands, drinking lots of beer and wine you see some skilled sword and axe fights. Really impressive.

To get everybody into tournament mood they are separating the arena in different kingdoms... my king was Hungary and to make it short he sucked. But still a great show though :-)

The next show I attended was Cirque du Soleil's 'Ka' which should be well known all around the globe by now. It is interesting to see how popular those artists are as every major casino seem to have their own Cirque du Soleil show these days.

But after watching this show it is easy to understand why... each of those stunds would be spectacular taken by itself... but having so many people on the stage doing breathtaking things at the same time combined with a simple enough story and fantastic costumes... that makes it astonishing.

So all together a great trip to Vegas... did I mention that I also won $10 gambling? Can you ask for more? ;-)

Viva Las Vegas

Viva Las Vegas... once again ;-) After some rough weeks at work I was ready for a quick getaway. And what better destination then a place full of casinos, bars, pools and shows? On top of all that temperatures in the high 70 F (20+ C) and sunshine... because its in a middle of a dessert, man! It's hard to beet that...

That's what brought me back to Vegas... This time I stayed at the Excalibur which is this medieval themed casino with lots of links to king Arthur and his knights of the round table. And I met them all in person :-) But that's a story for the next post already.

Winter is here

Finally winter made its comeback. After a quite weird few weeks with temperatures in the high 70 F (20+ C) we got back to normality again. Snow in the mountains and the foothills, low temperatures down here in Denver and Longmont. And most of the ski resort are opening these weekends so we are up for a jolly good time ;-)

Bloody (Mary) Sunday Morning

It doesn't happen that often anymore that you go out for some early drinks in the morning. Lucky enough there is the European Meet-up-group of Denver... so we had a Bloody Mary Sunday at 11 o'clock. Sweet :-)

On the picture you can see the hard core of that group after moving to the next bar at 4 o'clock. That brings back memories of Dublin... :o)

Election showdown

Well... finally we don't have to watch all those TV adds anymore, don't have to run into campaign supporters in shopping malls and have to answer phone calls of phone robots. And the winner is... Barack Obama! Even though it looked like a quite close call last week... at the election night everything moved very quickly towards Obama. Already at 8 o'clock it looked quite bad for McCain.

At that time McCain already had to win most of the swing states as Obama won the most important high density states in the east. But still an interesting night with lots of news network entertainment around that. Most of the stations had again their sports-like view of the swing states where they were drawing strategies on the map... and CNN had even live holograms from all over the country where people were shown in 3D at the studio. Interesting how different these broadcasts are from those in Europe :-)

And in the end I was able to vote too! Just kidding... I just found one 'I voted' sticker on the sidewalk. For a moment I was tempted to get myself a free Starbucks coffee or a free ice cone at Ben & Jerrie's for voters. Oh well... I'll have free pretzels at the upcoming general election in Germany instead ;-)

But in the end I am very happy that I was here while history was in the making. Congratulations to Obama and good luck for his first term. It'll be a though one with all the problems right now which certainly will restrict him from implementing his programs simply because of the lack of money. But I am confident that after several years of stagnation America will move in the right directing now. So much from Ekki's election studio and now back to normality :-)

Election countdown

Things are heading up over here... only 2 more days to election day and both campaigns are using the last remaining hours smearing each other. My European readers will ask now if the race is not decided yet looking at the latest polls. But the strange system over here with the electoral vote making it possible winning even with loosing by the number of voters. This divides the country in save banks for each party and the battleground states where the voters are not decided yet. Either way 100% of the votes will go to one winner in that states that's why it is not over yet.

And there is also the so-called Bradley effect which makes the race even more interesting. Apparently the political correctness over here is spoiling the result of polls in elections like that. So even though the polls are showing Obama's lead right now, nothing is decided till Tuesday. That's why everyone is still keeping campaigning I guess...

...and writing books. While there are several books about Sarah Palin describing her raise from a Hokey Mom to fighting the establishment (I really didn't see that, oh well) I couldn't find any book about McCain. Maybe they were sold out???

Also I found a book about Obama... in the children section!!! I thought that was a bit strange... so if you want to read your children a bed time story, why not about a politicans?! That makes sense to me now... politics, put you to sleep since 1776 ;-)

Happy Halloween

Its again the time of the year when everyone seem to be obsessed with ghost, vampires, monsters, blood, skulls and... candy. What a mixture ;-) Even though Halloween is getting more and more popular in Europe it is nothing compared to the US American Halloween. Even on TV there is nothing else on except haunted houses, werewolf and of course the election... which is kind of spooky too I guess...

But of course it is also the time of fancy dresses and costume partys. After being the German Elvis last year I went for something more serious... a Ghost Buster!

After wearing the costume for a while I realized that this might have been not the best choice for younger people at the party... well the movie is from 1984 which might be quite recent to me but not for everyone at the party :o) But I still had a great time with the young folks ;-)

Wedding time

To make it short... one bachelor down, three to go! My good friend Justin got married to the fabulous looking Dani this weekend... and what a great party that was. The wedding took place in an old mansion in Morrison surrounded by the great looking red rock formations. And as a bonus the ceremony took place right at sunset.




And we also had our friends from Europe calling over for this special occasion. All together we danced the night away and had a great time. Just the morning after was tough ;-)

I wish Dani and Justin all the best for their future together! But the question remains... who is the next Bachelor we are loosing? ;-)

Skydiving out of the blue sky

I always wanted to try skydiving in one stage and last weekend I finally got the opportunity to do so. My friend Richard (on the far right in the picture) is on the best way to become a pro in the short time he is staying here in Colorado. So I joined him for a little tandem jump.


Well... to be honest it was not as easy as that. The night before I couldn't get much sleep I have to admit. There are so many things you think of before the jump but everything is so easy by the time you get on that plane. As you can see on the picture on the left I know exactly which is the way we are going... I am pointing at it :-)


And the landing was as smooth as could be too. Funny is that jumping out of 10,500 ft (3200 m) is over that quickly... after 40 s of free fall and a few minutes of gliding the ride is over, which makes it quite pricey time and money wise. On the other hand you can't really compare the rush you get out of it to anything else in the world. So I might try it again... this time without human backpack though :-)