June 28, 2004
Visitors
We have a couple visitors here in Dortmund from old times right now. Yesterday morning Gosia arrived from Poland. She'll be staying one week and working on a project she is doing for her studies involving the Dortmund harbor. Although it's officially a study trip, I'm sure we'll be able to find time to socialize some. I spent the afternoon yesterday over at Maja's place catching up and Mikko joined us a bit later. A little while later we went up the street for some Italian ice cream and back to Maja's for a film.
It's really nice to have Gosia here, but we knew she was coming. The second visitor was a total surprise. This morning at 9:45 I (admittedly a little grumpily) struggled into my rubber duckie pajama pants to see just who was buzzing my doorbell 15 minutes before my scheduled waking time (Mondays start late for me). I opened it to see Maria, Ana's sister, on a surprise two-week visit. She was the last person I expected to see there, but it was a very good surprise. She didn't get much sleep on the bus so she's gone to sleep, but she wanted to stop by to say hello and surprise me, and it worked. I haven't seen Ana, but I'm sure she is delighted.
Our guests have come at a great time; we're in a bit of a lull in between the beginning of the semester with the new exchange group and the sure-to-be-busy last days of exams, final arrangements and travel before we scatter to our respective homelands. Their presence will help make this time a little more interesting.
June 26, 2004
Passing the Biertest
Last night a group of 25 or so went on an outing to the Hövels brewery in Dortmund. The idea had come to our German professor during our beer presentation last semester to organize such a trip. The brewery (As I have stated before, makers of the best beer in Dortmund) features a special "Biertest" that can be booked for groups such as this. It is composed of a meal, a few glasses of beer, a small brewery tour
Checkin' out the brewkettles. Or maybe just chatting while waiting for the presentation to start.
and the test which works like this: Every person is given four samples of beer in small brown glasses to prevent the color from being seen. They must then fill out a form stating which beer they thought was which (the beers are listed on the form). The three winners are then selected at random from the correct forms. To make it easier, there were only three correct forms. The waiter solicited the help of a random patron in the group (Alexia) to write 1,2 and 3 on the back of the forms, thereby selecting first, second and third place. Third place went to Mikko, who took home a gift-wrapped bottle of Hövels and a glass. Second went to Louic (France) who got a two-glass box set. And the winner of two liters of the seasonal Maibock brew in a fancy, refillable container:
You guessed it. Ich bin der Biermeister. To buy one of these costs almost as much as the whole Biertest package, so it was definitely worth it for me. I also have a lot of very good friends who want to spend some time with me in the near future.
After the dinner was over several of us went directly to a going away party for Laura, who will be returning to Spain next week.
June 25, 2004
Light it up
This afternoon Mikko, Maja and I went to a museum for light art in nearby Unna. The museum is the only facility dedicated exclusively to art with light in the world. It, like many other cultural installations in the Ruhrgebiet, is a new use of the dying industry of the region, it is situated in an old brewery. We arrived just in time for the 19:00 tour and were the only ones who did. The reincarnated brewery was far from polished; we had to pass through a fenced off construction area just to get into the front door. The exhibits, however, were pretty cool for the most part. We passed over a bridge with a wall of water droplets on either side of us being frozen by pulsing strobe lights, stood in an all-white room lit with blue and red with rounded corners in which we could not tell how far we were from the walls and saw several other displays of light and form. I have pictures, but I am not allowed to post them because I had to sign a form promising I would not put them into the public domain. Long story short, it was a pretty refreshing and different thing to do on a Thursday afternoon.
June 18, 2004
Dear Strong Bad, do you like techno?
I've still been having fun making techno with this music software; yesterday I threw together a piece based on the comedic gems of Strong Bad.
You can find it at the new website I created just to host such things, which I affectionately have called my 'vault'. You'll have to look at a couple ads, but it's the easiest way to do it.
June 17, 2004
DJ Dave
I've been playing with some music software lately and this is my first dip into homemade techno. It sprung from a street performer in Munich and is called I Am Not Your President.(3.1 MB mp3 audio)
June 13, 2004
I didn't find him, but I did run across this guy...
Maja was a little nervous about her public nudity, but the real little guy around the corner was decidedly more modest, albeit Scottish.
The kindly tailor left a whisky escape hatch in the Mr. Pis' manskirt.
The Brussels trip was fun, but the weather there was terribly frustrating. It seemed to alternate every 20 minutes or so between lovely sunshine and driving rain which prompted me to dress my camera in its rainsuit.
I chose to ignore the age-old wisdom of not putting your head in plastic bags in favor of the age-old wisdom of not getting your gear soaked. Photo courtesy of Tuomas.
We checked out some of the local attractions, mostly buildings and a park or two along with the center square at the Grand Place.
Ana said she had wanted to touch this statue ever since I showed her a picture of it after my last trip to Brussels. Touching it is supposed to bring good luck, so I made her go back and touch it again after this one.
One of three statue mimes we saw yesterday. The little kid thought he was pretty cool, but was not too enthused about shaking his hand.
There were several groups of young men taking part in pre-wedding rituals of embarrassment for their friends in the old square, compelling the future grooms to perform silly stunts and enlisting the help of any young ladies they could find to help torture the boys by writing messages on them:
and taking them for walks:
At the end of the day we stuffed ourselves with those devilish chocolates and waffles and picked up a couple bottles of that wonderful Belgian beer to take back to Germany (Or Finland, in the case of Tuomas and Tero, who left this morning and made it back this afternoon).
June 12, 2004
Back to Belgium
This morning I and a multi-national three-car caravan will travel up to Brussels in search of a man who is six-foot-four and full of muscles. I heard he might speaka my language. I'll let you know if I find him when I get back.
June 8, 2004
And you thought there would be no more Finns
Mikko's got visitors again. Tuomas is back with a new haircut and he brought a new Tero with him. So that should make for another interesting week and I'm sure to learn some more Finnish.
Eine Flöte für Ana
On Sunday a group of Ana's friends from the music department organized a performance in Westfallenpark to raise money to buy her a new flute. As most are aware, musical instruments do not even start out cheap and an instrument for a player of Ana's caliber is prohibitively expensive and not even available for purchase in Romania, so this group of talented musicians volunteered their time to play in the park and collect some Euros. I showed up to help out, take some photos and listen to the music. There was what seemed to be an organic health fair of sorts going on which seemed to attract many well-off elderly people who along with others were very generous and tossed over €800 into a violin case over the course of a few hours, which will at least cover the majority of the cost. It was great to watch this display of generosity, both on the part of the musicians and the donating public, and an afternoon of music in the park on a lovely day is always nice.
It also helps to have some gods on your side. Sorry I don't remember names (except Ana on the right)
Simon's got a squeezebox...He might not be able to see, but Simon can play anything with black and white keys like a madman.
