Between Mystery Spot & Salsa

Hey, somehow my camera broke so I couldn't provide any pictures of the Oktoberfest yet but I will resume asap. Besides that Arielle came over again last weekend to make my weekend. Well I assume things getting serious once you take dancing lessons with your girlfriend...and so did I :) My office mate Henning from Germany is quite into Salsa dancing with his girlfriend, so they invited us over to our first steps in this unknown field of impassioned and pulsative motion.

Actually it is my former office mate since we moved to a new building where I luckily have my own office with Zeus (a cool guy from Mexico), right across from a whole bunch of managers who supposedly placed us in reaching area intentionally to supervise us better. Even our foosball table moved with us and we are already well known throughout the DB2/XML team for having constant battles.

Anyway, back to Salsa, as mentioned we checked out a salsa party somewhere downtown. We started quite successfully as rookies, we even performed some twists. It is really fun and as soon as you know how to dance properly, girls will be at your feet.

And Sunday we finally took the chance to visit the -Mystery Spot- somewhere near Santa Cruz, apparently a place with distorted gravity and physics. Frankly I don't believe in this stuff but it is all about fun, so just pretend being a believer.
According to the guide, this place lies directly on a longitude. One theory says that flying saucer have secretly brought cones of metal here and buried into our earth as a sorta guidance. An other theory says the spot includes carbon dioxide seeping out of earth , the "highest dielectric biocosmic radiation" known anywhere in the world. Well that sounds kinda utopian but I better don't say a word anymore and just let the pictures speak.



Arielle totally believed in it, but me, Henning and Jasmin were constantly questioning and investigating the scenery. Hilarious. Anyway it was a welcomed weekend. Here are some pictures of me and Arielle, they originally weren't intended to be shown on this blog but I wanna keep precious memories as well, simply for myself :)

The BEERend

Hey guys, it has been a long time since I wrote my last words in here and it isn't even easy right now since I have the worst hangover ever. It started all with a steady and decent beer on friday. The two Sebastians and Frank made a kinda going away party at their house. Sebastian Schaer is from Dresden as well, he was literally responsible for me coming over here. His forward of my request was caught by Susan, my manager, which in the end led me to California. He became a regular but somehow they screwed up his H1 visa application so he is forced to go back. As well as the other seb whose time has simply expired. Frank is an American, really friendly and quiet, but so not on Friday :) I went to this party around 10pm with 2 cases of beer that I still owed these guys. It originated from the world cup game where I, like always, couldn't shut my mouth and claimed the english team to loose. Apparently they turned the game in the last 5 minutes, can't remember precisely. So arrived there, the house was already crowded and people quite tipsy. After making some Caipirinhas for the girls I was finally able to enjoy my first beer...Tecate, kinda mexican beer and extremly nice to drink. We played a couple of drinking games like beer bong...easy job. Once you grew up in Cottbus with oettinger and sternburg, no beer in the world could ever threaten you again. Some time later I switched to some hard vodka like in good study times (cheers Falk). Well I woke up around 11am next morning and was still drunk. So why did I wake up that early. Suprisingly Stefan called me to tell me he is gonna pick me up for the Oktoberfest in San Francisco in around 20 minutes. Right...more beer. Awesome. Somehow I was still capable to prepare myself in record time....means brushing teeth, taking a shower, swallow 2 pills of vitamin C, one Aspirin fizzy tablet, one coffee plus 3 McChicken at McDonals and one Red Bull and was ready for the next. I felt so bad. We arrived in SF around 1pm, the hall of the oktoberfest in the bay was right between the Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman's Wharf (famous for fishy shopping). It was already crowded and poeple enjoyed the first pitchers of good old German beer. They even sold Budweiser in pitchers, but hey, who's gonna drink that water once you have original Oktoberfest beer. By the way, I was equipped with an "Deutschland" shirt which my parents sent me for my birthday. Honestly, I had a lot of fun cuz people were watching and starting talk with everytime. The more pitchers I drank the better I could talk. It was so packed and people, no matter where they came from, were toasting and singing to german folks songs. "Hey baaaaAAAaaabbbby, I wanna know..." ok, thats not german, anyway. And a sweet and wet "sigge sagge oi oi oi" damn...these americans, I guess they tried to say "Zicke Zacke..." Well let the kids play if they wanna. It was a lot of fun. I could even see the "Preussen" flag somewhere among all the other country flags of Germany. So far away from home I was able to catch up a little bit of German athmosphere which made me feel kinda home. Thanks Oktoberfest.

It Never Rains In Southern California....

WRONG! It did. I was never craving for rain as much as I did over here. It is barely 4 month ago since I set over and it literally never rained. But that also means the summer is finally over and the winter starts threatening. We are still talking about 60F which is much better than any other German winter, especially the last one. Nevertheless, I am also looking forward to winter sports like snowboarding in the mountains of lake tahoe, a really nice place near the border to nevada (gambling oje oje). Guess it is time to take off another week. Ok guys just wanted to let you know the latest breaking news.