February 2003

Ticket To Vienna

28 February 2003

I don’t really have a proposal ready for my BlogTalk paper on warblogs for Euro-weenies, but since today is the deadline for proposals I threw together what I had and sent it in. I was heartened to see that Jörg Kantel submitted “a bunch of unconnected notes”, which I bet I can match in unconnectedness. [...]

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Time Shift

28 February 2003

Christopher has apparently decided he doesn’t like staying up late anymore, and has unilaterally changed his sleep schedule. His routine has now shifted by 90 minutes, so instead of going to sleep at 9 and waking up at 7, he now goes to sleep at 7:30 and wakes up at 5:30. It’s like he’s now [...]

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You’re So Vain

26 February 2003

Yesterday I left my car at the garage for an inspection and tune-up, and took the bus and train to work. On the way back last night, in the S-Bahn line S3, 4 teenage girls boarded and sat near me, talking and giggling the way teenage girls do, making it impossible not to overhear their [...]

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Hast du etwas Zeit für mich?

23 February 2003

It’s probably a sign of my age, or least of when I started taking a interest in German popular culture, that I noticed the 20th anniversary album by Nena, consisting of new versions of most of her ’80s hits, and thus entitled ‘Nena feat. Nena’. She still has the unique voice I’d follow almost anywhere, [...]

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At The Circus

23 February 2003

Our entertainment today was the Circus Rogall, a small family circus that was playing in Jesteburg. Christopher was skeptical at first, but he did enjoy the clown and the horses, as well as the popcorn. I was impressed by the admission price (double the price of a movie ticket), but also by the versatility of [...]

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Mr. Christopher Goes To Town

22 February 2003

The adventure for Christopher and me today was a trip to Hamburg. We parked at Berliner Tor and took the U-Bahn to Landungsbrucken, the gateway to the Hamburg Harbor. There I treated Cristopher to a harbour tour on the Louisiana Star, and we drank capuccino and hot chocolate as we looked at the big container [...]

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German Practice

21 February 2003

(My apologies for the German posting, but this joke made the rounds on our office E-Mail this morning, and it’s better than most. My attempt at a translation is here.) Ein Ratespiel im Flugzeug Ein Rechtsanwalt saß im Flugzeug einer Blondine gegenüber, langweilte sich und fragte, ob sie ein lustiges Spiel mit ihm machen wolle. [...]

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Long Weekend

21 February 2003

It’s a men’s weekend at home. Mama is off to the Alps until Monday for a ‘team building’ ski holiday organized by her boss, although given her injured ankle and weak knee, the only winter sports she’ll be participating in willbe those that require the butt to be firmly planted on the ground. Can one [...]

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Lost in the Translation

19 February 2003

Sloppy editing at Deutsche Welle is turning a domestic budget and turf dispute into an international incident. The oppostion is asking the health minister why she is stockpiling smallpox vaccine (and outdated vaccine at that) when the interior minister says there is no threat of a smallpox terrorist attack . DW-World reported In the interviews, [...]

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Hamburg-Amerika Linie

17 February 2003

Christopher’s favorite picture right now is this poster of the steamship Deutschland, which we have hanging in our hallway for obvious sentimental reasons. Every evening on his way to bed, he has to sit on the stairs for 2 or 3 minutes and admire the big ship, with four smokestacks and an anchor. The Hamburg-Amerika [...]

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Duct Tape for Weasels

15 February 2003

According to this Business Week article (via Ministry of Propaganda), duct tape sales are up 200 to 300% since being recommended by Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge. And the market leader for duct tape in the US is a subsidiary of the German company Henkel. So is anybody calling for a boycott of German duct [...]

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Transcontinental Media War

13 February 2003

Fellow expat Adam Curry wonders how he missed the “growing anti-americanism in Europe”. It seems to exist only in the media. I’m not so prominent as Adam, so the media never asked me about it, but I to agree. I have never personally experienced any sort of anti-Americanism at all here in Germany. There’s no [...]

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Discontinued Merchandise

12 February 2003

The following entry from WorldWideKlein Live, a German journalist based in Washington, DC, is worth translating here in full. “Before they were impossible to find, now the German embassy is giving them out by the handful: the German-American friendship pins with the German and American flags side by side. These days they’re probably no longer [...]

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Warblogs for Euro-Weenies

11 February 2003

I’m now listed at the home page of BlogTalk – A European Weblog-Conference (to be held this May in Vienna) as having submitted a proposal for a talk. That’s not quite correct… I’ve submitted a title and a promise to flesh it out. But I do (in my humble opinion) have a good title: “Warblogs [...]

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Guillaume Affair

10 February 2003

Is there a mole in the Chancellor’s office? Only an enemy agent could propose releasing to the press a supposed Franco-German plan to send UN peacekeepers to Iraq while the US Defense Secretary is in Germany, without informing the Americans, or the French, or anyone else in NATO, or the Defense Ministry, or the Foreign [...]

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Moving the Chips Eastward

9 February 2003

I’m glad the Amiland reads the German papers so I don’t have to. He mentions a report from the Welt am Sonntag that the US Dept of Defense has halted investment at US bases in Germany, in particular planned construction at the air bases at Ramstein and Sprangdahlen. A hospital planned for Sprangdahlen will likely [...]

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Forty-One

9 February 2003

As happens year after year, today I turn another year older. We’re spending the afternoon baking muffins, since my co-workers will be expecting treats from me tomorrow. Update It was not really my intent to fish for birthday greetings, but thanks for all the well wishes! In appreciation, here’s our muffin recipe (my apologies for [...]

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Undesign

6 February 2003

I was taken by the new clean design at From the Orient, and I decided to adapt it for myself. Since I hate editing CSS, I really like the fact that the stylesheet is very minimal.

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What He Said

5 February 2003

I’m feeling a bit under the weather, so I’ll just point again to Ralf Goergens (who must be very happy about the SPD’s recent defeat, since he’s been writing a lot lately . He explains why that despite Franco-German unilaterialism and the Aznar letter, the EU isn’t going to be weakened by the Iraq issue. [...]

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Columbia Lost

4 February 2003

I haven’t mentioned the tragic end of the space shuttle Columbia, since so many others have and I don’t have much to add about how I feel, other than what I already wrote about the Challenger anniversary. Christopher is of course too young to understand, and he gets excited when the news shows yet another [...]

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More Ami Bloggers

4 February 2003

After assuming for the past three years that I was the only American blogger in Germany, in the past few days I’ve discovered two others. One is Amiland, by Anonymous (though I’d guess from the content (s)he either writes or translates professionally). The other is Ground Plums & Gun Smoke, by Rick Wallace from the [...]

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Elections in Lower Saxony and Hessen

2 February 2003

Five years ago, the local elections in Lower Saxony were a resounding landslide for Gerhard Schröder, his crowning as the Chancellor candidate who would eventually defeat Helmut Kohl. Today, the election was a resounding defeat for his successor and protégé Sigmar Gabriel, and a victory for Christian Wulff, the quiet CDU leader who twice lost [...]

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I Can’t Tell You

1 February 2003

We had a privacy issue crop up in regards to PapaScott, and I took the archives down until I could think of a good solution. Now they are back up, and I’ve made a subtle change so that certain people looking for a certain thing won’t find it here. I won’t tell you what it [...]

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