Chocolate Festival

A chocolate festival in Denver... oh my... in a country with Hershey's "so called chocolate" my dreams finally came true! The whole downtown Expo center filled with the finest Coloradan chocolate? And Willy Wonka and Denise Nickerson completing the spectacle with their appearance!
Who is Denise? Well... the girl from the 70 s 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' movie... I am disappointed that you asked ;-)


Also count Choco, who seems to be a well known character with his own cereal products, was there too. Funny is that he was impersonated by a well known news anchor of the channel two news over here. I really wondered how much they had to pay him to get into that funny suit. The lack of TV cameras proved to me that he didn't want to get remembered for his performance though ;-)


But this day wasn't about the 'stars ' on the stage. No, it was all about the chocolate... and plenty of it. After sampling for half a day you really felt the hard work and I also felt with the judges of the various chocolate competitions :o)

Next year I'll be back... you can count on that Count Choco :-)

Primaries update 2

Wow... who had guessed that the primaries are continuing like that? It is only one more month to go and still non of the candidates has the required numbers of delegates to get elected at the Democrats convention here in Denver in August!
In the meantime both campaigns are producing large numbers of T-shirts, banners, badges and all that... keeping the tumbling American economy going ;-)

What might seems quite confusing and a bit annoying for European eye (can you not decide now for crying out loud)... for the American media it seems to be something like a 10 month long football match to report about... even though most of my American friends seem to be sick of all that too.

In my humble opinion there is only one winner of all these ongoing Democrats primaries... McCain from the Republicans. While Hillary and Obama are fighting to the blood for their nomination McCain can enjoy traveling the country and is getting his position strengthened for the "real" election... oh well... but what do I know? I am not even allowed to vote here anyway... thankfully :o)

Cinco de Mayo Festival

Fun, fun, fun at the weekend! We had 'Cinco de Mayo' street festival which is the Mexican independence day downtown Denver. Normally this day is celebrated at the 5th of May (thus the 'cinco de mayo') but as it is not a weekend day we have celebrated it already. America is moving fast, man :-)


Speaking with a Mexican friend of mine who was living over there for most of her life it is interesting to hear that this day is much bigger celebrated over in the States then it is over in Mexico itself. Most of the Mexican federal states doesn't even have a holiday for it.
I wonder now if they celebrate the American Independence Day bigger over in Mexico in turn of the not celebrated Cinco de Mayo...

But that seems to be the beauty of America... every ethnic group seems to have their very own festival over here... Germans have their Oktoberfest, Irish their St. Paddy's Day, Mexicans their Mayo Festival, Chinese their Dragon Boat race and so on. In America it is always a good reason for a celebration and plenty of beer... just try to avoid the light beers and go for the ethnic beers too... Oktoberfest-beer, Guinness, Corona, Tiger beer... ;-)

Blizzard fun... in May

When I moved over here I heard so many stories about the Coloradan weather. Or maybe I just picked the things I wanted to hear? Like 300 days of sunshine and those are really amazing, don't get me wrong. Or the fantastic snow up the Rockies which makes skiing so much more fun then being stuck on some other mountain. But the blizzards are still confusing for me...

... especially those like we had today! Yesterday night I came back from a party at around 11 o'clock at night. It was a very pleasant spring night and I didn't even have a jacket with me. Fast forward 8 hours and not only am I stuck in the rush hour traffic but also in a (small) blizzard on the first of May!

Anyhow... the weather in Colorado is never boring and I really enjoy every minute of it. But I really prefer sunshine without snow for a change :o)

Soldiers calling home

What I am still enjoying over here are the little differences in daily life you wouldn't notice when you're over here for a while. Things Europeans would find strange or amusing and most of my American friends wouldn't spend a second thought about... like this envelope I found together with my Amazon order, for donating your old cell (ehem... mobile) phone to soldiers. Their mission is to help 'the troops call home'.

I still think it is funny to donate my old crappy phone to any soldier of the world strongest army to give him or her the opportunity to call home. Don't they have stealth bombers, satellites and even more we don't know? Does my mobile phone really help anybody? Especially taking in consideration that American mobile phones are not working in most parts of the world... so what is left to do for my old mobile phone? Ending up as a piece of modern art on a generals desk? I like this idea though... :-)

The Beginning...

Only in Colorado you can have a Blizzard on Tuesday with lots of snow and temperatures around 0 C (32 F) and on Friday 25 C (77 F) and sunshine, all in one week. A perfect opportunity to start officially the BBQ season. Not only with one BBQ on Friday but also with a party on Saturday and leftovers BBQ on Sunday!

After so much red meat at the weekend I'll need a seafood diet or something like that I guess ;-)

The beginning of a fantastic BBQ season!

The End...

...of an amazing ski season. Well, my very first one to be more precise. A season with valleys and hilltops, like those I was skiing :-) Valleys like the utterly destruction of my brand new pols after the first run with them, falling on my wallet a dozen times leaving a big bruise (I think I should carry more paper then plastic money) or breaking one of my falls very skillfully with my chin leaving it glowing red for an entire week.


But there were some bright sides too... first of course mastering the green (lowest difficult level) marked slopes of Eldora and finally... finishing my first blue run WITHOUT crash at the end of my last skiing day of the season! I still can't believe it... it is amazing how pain is helping you learn things much quicker. I wish I would have had this knowledge back at university... doing advanced maths while sliding down a mountain. Oh well... there is always another season I guess :-)

Dental piercing

Oh man... what a fun week I had: A busy conference week at work, a blizzard pulling in on Thursday morning and to top it all off I got a tooth implant on Friday! Some of my friends were already predicting that I am in terrible pain for the next few days (I don't want to say any names and point fingers here :-) but... knock on wood... I am fine so far. It is even a bit disturbing... they drilled a screw in my jaw and it doesn't hurt???

Now I am not sure if I should feel like the Terminator with screws all over me or really trendy with my brand new metal mouth piercing! ;-)

Going mad in Boulder

You might be interested to hear that I got my singing carrier finally started. Some of you might say now that the world was missing that like global warming, but I did it anyway. I was doing my fist little steps in a small bar downtown Boulder at a Karaoke night. Believe it or not, I never did it before so it was quite exciting for me... and even more for the audience ;-)




As you can see I had some help of a friend of mine who was doing the female version of Mike Jagger. And what better song to sing then 'Satisfaction'?





And the crowd (here my friends from Ireland) went totally wild listening to this great song. Then mad... and finally... angry ;-) Just kidding... they had a great time, at least that was what they told me!

What can I say, a new star is born! Watch out for my first CD coming out soon :-P

The Lobster Vending machine

Last night we were out in Golden for some drinks and I saw one of the strangest things ever... so far: A lobster vending machine! Well... not exactly a vending machine more like a gambling machine you would know from fun fairs and carnivals. But instead of having teddy bears and other stuffed animals there were real living lobster sitting in a tank. So while people had their drinks they were trying to grab one with this robot arm thingys which always seem to conveniently loose your catch half way through. And having a living and fighting lobster as cargo didn't help either, so I never saw even one lobster leaving the tank all night long.

And if you thought of saving your catch of the day from this harsh environment of drunken people starring at you... unlucky... these lobsters would have been boiled for you in this machine too. But the idea of a freshed cooked lobster in a place like that seemed to me even more disturbing ;-)

Bon appétit.