Steve’s Blog

The summer in Berlin has been on the way out for a few weeks now, but we’ve still always had very good weekends.

Until now.

It’s finally starting to get colder and rainier here, and I’m told it will be getting a lot colder too. Apparently it was minus 30 for a time last winter.

About two weeks ago there was a barbeque in Berlin for couch surfers. Two guys from the US living in Prague were in Berlin for the weekend, and myself and another couch surfer ended up in a bar with them until the small hours. They had hitch-hiked from Prague and had a blast doing it, and they invited us down to visit them there. We off course explained that the weekend coming didn’t suit, but we’ll definitely be down after that at some stage in the future.

Much to the surprise of Austin, we actually meant it. On Friday I took a half day from work and took a Mitfahrgelegenheit to Dresden where I met up with Andrea to start some side-of-the-road hitch-hiking.

Like everything in life, hitch-hiking used to be much better years ago, before all the tourists started doing it. The good places to thumb a lift around Europe are the on-ramps onto the Autobahn, and the petrol stations along it. With a couple of signs for Praha/Prag in hand, we started smiling down the road, and 20 minutes later got picked up by a guy driving into Czech, but not as far as Prague. It sounded like a good start, so we went with him to Teplice. After an hour driving we’d reached Teplice, but the political discussion hadn’t reached a meaningful conclusion, so we joined our driver (his name escapes me) for a beer. It was already getting late, and given the kinds of people who live in and visit Teplice, we thought it would be prudent to not try to stop cars there and go the rest of the way by big slow train.

Throughout the year, there are couch surfing events, and a larger main annual event in the big cities around the world. I missed the Berlin Beach Camp because I was in Dublin at the time, and I missed the Dublin event because I was in Berlin. It just happened that the Prague party was on this weekend while we were there, so there were a tonne of different events on for the whole weekend. By the time we arrived, our host Vinny was already out with lots of others at a pub. We met up with him and Austin there, and eventually got food, dropped our stuff off at his place, if I remember correctly, and headed out to the Cross Bar. The walls and ceilings of the place are covered with moving mechanical parts like engines and gearboxes.

The next day we did a tour of a few beer gardens around the city and the Palace, again put together by couch surfers, and then after a power nap, went out again to a faraway hotel function room where they had food, music and karaoke. I kept my singing voice off the stage with great success.

Plans to get up early and do some more touristy stuff didn’t come together after a late night, so we instead only had time for a breakfast bagel before starting the afternoon trip back north to Berlin. After finding the the right petrol station it was about 30 minutes before a passing German man and wife picked us up and brought us as far a Dresden. Not exactly an exciting drive. A Dresden tram took us to the exit point to the Autobahn, and on the side of the road there was already another hitchhiker just ahead of us. My understanding of the "rules" is that newcomers are supposed to go past any hitchhikers already there so as not to steal a seat, so we walked up to the next corner and started to wait again. The other guy got picked up about 5 minutes later. Great! We just have 5 minutes to wait. Just before the rains came an hour and a few waiting songs later, we got picked up by a woman driving a van back up to Berlin. That was another 210km or so, so it was evening time when we got back to the Big Smoke.

Next trip will hopefully be to somewhere in Poland.

I never got around to writing about the last days of the ‘no plan’ trip, so here it is.

After arriving back in Frankfurt, I met an Illinois guy called Josh and we were hanging out for a few days seeing Frankfurt. He was on a transatlantic flight at the same time as me, so both of our inner timezones were out of whack by the same amount. A friend of his gave him a rabbit for a travel buddy and he’s been taking photos of it in all the places he went to. I had a rarely seen Matilda with me, so we took a photo of the two of them.

Kid and Matilda hanging out in a cafe.

Even though I had booked a flight to Stockholm for a Scandinavian leg of my journey, I ended up rerouting that flight back to Dublin after I accepted a job in Berlin. I had a few loose ends left to tie up back there.

One of the first touristy things I tried to do on this trip was to visit the Casino in Marino. When I was there in February it was still closed for the Winter, so I eventually made it back around to visiting it in May.

There was a good quote on the wall from James Caulfeild on his Grand Tour: “Italy must with justice always claim a great share in my regard and affection. Many of the best years of my life most agreeably spent in that delicious country renders it by one degree only less dear to me that my Native soil (Ireland). Nay, perhaps my affection to it may be even warmer. I may love Italy as a mistress while my native country claims from me the proper and just regard due a wedded wife.”

Now that I’ve moved to Berlin, I’m considering keeping up the blog, so I’ve started a new category, ‘A Rock in a Toy Town’ to put them in to.

Getting an apartment here was a joy of its own. All property seems to be owned by rental agencies, so if you want to rent something, you rent through one of them. Even if taking over an apartment that someone else is leaving, you still have to deal indirectly with the rental agency. They’ll require from each applicant a SCHUFA- which is a membership of a private organization holding records of the debts of private persons. The problem is that you can only get a SCHUFA if you are a German citizen, so any applications I made would already be one point down. Eventually I dealt directly with a rental agency and they were happy enough seeing that I already had a work contract. Really, the people working there only have to be able to be somewhat sure that you’re going to pay the rent if they let you in the door. After a few appointments and meetings I finally got the contract signed. Later that day I registered my residence with the local government (Anmelden).

Yesterday I got the keys to the place and started to move in. There were a lot more forms to fill out and sign, but eventually we got through it all. The only thing that comes with the apartment is potential- No furniture, almost no kitchen, and plain white walls. They’re required by law to have a sink and a cooker, and that’s exactly all mine has. Apparently the germans like the freedom (and hassle, in a masochistic kind of way) to have their entire place the way they want it. Sandra back in Dublin told me she moved apartments in Germany three times in a year, and took her kitchen with her each time. The end result is that I have to build up a furniture collection myself too. I’ve been looking into getting second hand stuff, but the problem there is that I don’t have any way to get stuff to my apartment. The oblivious solution is to rent a van, but I’ve never driven a van before, never driven on the right side of the road, and don’t know Berlin well enough yet to do both at once for the first time. As usual though, IKEA delivers, so I’ll go with the more expensive option and see if I can get a few bodies to help get the stuff in the door.

The bureaucracy continued into today. I registered at the electricity suppliers for a direct debit to come out of my bank account, and then set up a standing order for my rent to go out every month, and a once-off transfer to a holding account for my rental deposit. I get the full amount back including interest when I leave, which is nice. All that remains on the auot-money front is to get the job to put money in there (mui importante), and to sign up for some kind of internet package.

From Saturday was checking out some more of San Francisco for the week. I started out going to Dolores Park. It was a nice day, so it was full of people just hanging out with dogs and such. Also went to Haight and Ashbury which is where the hippy movement started and is stlll the hippy part of town. Josh drove me around some other areas in the Bay, and we went and got dinner with Alex later in Oakland.

Dolores Park.

On top of Buena Vista hill.

Sunday was Easter, but there were no Easter eggs in any of the shops, so I just got a few chocolate bars instead. Went back to Dolores Park with Josh and Alex where there was a drag queen festival and parade. For the day that’s in it they also had a ‘Hunky Jesus’ contest.

Garda influence is far reaching.

When I got back to the hostel, they were rounding people up for a trip to Ocean Beach for a few beers and marshmallows around a fire. About ten of us went from the hostel, but it took about an hour and a half transport each way.

Spent the rest of the week checking out other spots around San Francisco. Went to Fishermans Wharf, Alcatraz, Golden Gate Park and Hippy Hill, Golden Gate Bridge and North Beach.

At Hippy Hill.

The funny thing about Alcatraz is that they offer to take your photo before you get on the boat, and you can buy a print when you get back. That’s not the funny part. The funny part is that the photo is with a fake backdrop of Alcatraz painted on a wall. Naturally I didn’t buy one.

I spent most of my time in San Francisco just chilling out and walking around the city and eating different types of food, so I don’t really have a lot to say about it. Except that it’s tasty.

Thursday I flew from SF to Seattle for one overnight stay and then onward the next day to Frankfurt. My flight to Seattle was delayed for almost 2 hours, so I didn’t see much of Seattle apart from the hostel. It ws a pretty cool hostel though. There were two other people on the bus from downtown going to the same place, and when we arrived the owner was running up from the ocean in a wet suit carrying a live crab. Apparently one of the guests had never had crab before, so he said he’d sort him out by going out and catching one. What a leg end.

The last weekend I was in Berlin I met up with about 15 other KDE/Akonadi people. On Sunday evening I left Berlin with a ride-along to Frankfurt, but I had a high fever somehow by the time I arrived. It must have been something to do with some food I had in Berlin. By the morning it seemed to have become a little bit worse, which was a problem because I was supposed to be flying to San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon. I spent all of Monday doing almost nothing and taking on fluids, so by the next day I was feeling well enough to get on the plane.

At 1 am on Wednesday I arrived in San Francisco at 4pm on Tuesday. There was a cool German guy next to me on the plane who had just finished his mandatory military service and was travelling around the world for two months. He was flying out to Hawaii in a couple of days so we didn’t make any plans to meet up again. The bus driver from the airport brought us downtown for free because neither of us had any small dollar change. I managed to stay up until about 8:30pm local time, but I still woke up at about 2 am unable to sleep any more. Stupid jetlag.

When I was in Graz, Austria and visiting Kevin Krammer, he’d mentioned that he was invited to San Francisco to represent Akonadi at the linux collaboration summit. He couldn’t go because of work and other constraints, and neither could the other main Akonadi people. No one has more free time than me right now, so I agreed to attend the summit instead. As it turned out, the organizers wanted a talk from a KDE developer too, so as the only one attending the summit, that responsibility fell to me too. There was an impressive list of names attending the summit, so it was really good for professional networking and I ended up with a load of business cards.

On the first day I met up with a few other KDE people (Alex and Josh who are local to San Francsico and Gökçen from Turkey) and to go over my talk a bit more. Alex videoed me practicing a bit and gave me the videos so I could see it, but then deleted the videos from her camera, so at least I know they won’t be going too far . My talk was the following day as part of the Desktop track and lasted 45 minutes. It was reasonably satisfied with it, considering how inexperienced I am at public speaking. I guess I know more about KDE than I ever knew about the Carnot cycle though so that made it a bit easier.

Went out for sushi and drinks with a few people afterward. I think it was my first attempt at my own sushi meal. All other times I’ve had it I was just trying stuff that other people had ordered. I’m pretty sure now though that sushi isn’t for me though. At least I tried it…

I’ve got another week now to hang around California before flying back to Europe.

Berlin is a really cool place.

I was staying for the first few nights in the Heart of Gold hostel near the Brandenburg Gate. If you don’t know what it’s like to be drunk (’Go ask a glass of water’), or understand why a towel is an essential piece of kit, the decor in the hostel might be pretty confusing.

The morning after I arrived I was having breakfast and talking to a guy, Terry, who was a tour guide, but no tour group had shown up. He offered to take me around Berlin for the day, so I had my own personal guide. First up we went to the cemetery near the hostel which has many famous German artists, architects, and politians. One inhabitant in Johannes Rau, former Bundespraesident of Germany and very established politician. His gravestone doesn’t mention that at all though. It just says that ‘He too was with Jesus of Nazareth’. Very modest guy.

Next up we got a train out to the suburbs in East Germany to Karlshorst. Karlshorst is where the Nazis officially surrendered to the Soviets at the end of World War Two. Today it’s a museum documenting the history of German-Russian collaborations and military campaigns, and occupation and indoctrination in the DDR. Terry had lived around the later 1950s, and again since the late 1980s, and as a former history teacher had a lot of information and explanation about what was in the museum.

After that we went to a pub in North East Berlin to meet some of his friends. Terry had been working with the British in Berlin in the years leading up to the fall of the Iron Curtain, and so had been able to travel relatively freely across the border. All of his friends in the pub were living in the East side of Berlin until 1989 and they had loads of cool stories about living there and the time of transition.

I went around some tourist spots like the Brandenburg Gate and the remains of the Berlin Wall. Also met some Finnish and Czech people in the hostel and went to the DDR museum. That was pretty interesting because Terry had told me a lot about the role of Finland in WW2, and Alena grew up in Czech where life was very similar to that in the DDR. Went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum too.

A random Jumpstyle meetup of people from all over Germany.

The area around the Brandenburg Gate is full of car shops.

If you threw a tennis ball over the Berlin Wall before 1989, you’d never see if again.

I hadn’t booked the hostel for all the days that I wanted to stay there, and when I tried to book it they didn’t have availability, so I had to move to another hostel around the corner. Met some more people there including an Irish graffiti artists who was just here to spread his mark. He showed me around that culture of Berlin which I definitely wouldn’t otherwise have seen.

Now that I have your attention, the second hostel had a pool table.

It was late wheen I arrived in Dresden, and because there was no train to the center for 30 minutes, one of the other guys who got the ride-along from Nuremburg took me to his girlfriends place across the road for a tea. It’s great to get that kind of random hospitality from locals. The hostel I stayed in here was pretty close to the old town where the churches are and the new town where all the pubs are. I spent today walking around the old town with Cathie from the states who’s also staying in the hostel. We saw some of the main sights, but we also had an alternative-ish guide which didn’t show any of the mainstream attractions, but only some less obvious stuff. Everything we followed out of that though turned out to be pretty disappointing.

Adam and David, Cathies friends from the states who are also teaching in Europe, arrived in the evening and we all went to the pub with some others in the hostel. The next day I went to the Dresden art gallery to see the Sistine Madonna, and met up with the Americans again later to go on a trip to a local small town. David took a bunch of photos and I took a copy of them. He has a really good eye for it, so I’m pretty jealous. We tried out some more of the nightlife around Dresden and I went to Leipzig in the morning.

I didn’t take many pictures in Leipzig, but it was a really cool place and I stayed 4 days there. I went to the Bach museum, and the Schumann exhibit. Because it was already such a musical trip I went to a full orchestra concert one of the nights. They played mostly played Mozart, Haydn stuff.

I knew almost nothing about the East Germany history before getting there, but I also went to the Stasi museum (secret service) and the DDR museum. The Stasi museum had loads of equipment they used to spy on people like small cameras to hide in briefcases, audio bugging devices and recording equipment, and also documents about how they were getting schoolkids to spy on and report on their classmates. The DDR museum had lots to tell about oppression, escape attempts, and the downfall of the East and the Berlin Wall. I’d seen some of the media before on tv documentaries, but it was cool to see it all there.

Today I was supposed to get a ride-along to Berlin at 5pm, but he guy sent me a message that his car had broken down and he wouldn’t be able to make the journey. When I saw the message it was a bit late to get on the internet to try and find someone else going on the route. Luckily though there was someone else waiting around to go to Potsdam and the driver had space in his car for me. It’s a short train journey from there to Berlin, so it all worked out pretty well in the end.

I arrived in Regenburg in the evening at about 8 o clock after getting a mitfahrgelegenheit with Maik. There wasn’t a whole lot going on there on the night I arrived. My original plan was to stay one night in Regensburg and then go to Nuremburg for the weekend. I realised on Thursday evening that I’d left my hat behind in Maiks car when he dropped me off in Regensburg. He was going to be passing through again on the Sunday, so to keep it simple I stayed in Regensburg an extra few days and he agreed to drop the hat back to me. I bought it in Munich and I’ve put a pin in it from each place I’ve been to since, so it was cool to get it back. I celebrated by losing my sunglasses. They’re now gone forever.

Regensburg is a nice small place, but it has a big university, so there’s a lot of students around and some pubs. I checked out the Rathaus where they have an original medival torture chamber and instruments, the Cathedral and the old stone bridge which is there since the 1200’s. They really know how to do breakfast too. The hostel I stayed in had a breakfast place around the corner serving different types of breakfast from around the world. The house speciality was a champagne breakfast, but I stayed mostly with the continental style.

I managed to rip a large part of my rucksack during the weekend too, so after getting that repaired on Monday, I left Regensburg with everything in pretty much the same state as when I arrived.

In Nuremburg I met up with Will, a KDE/SUSE guy, and some others that he worked with in Nuremburg. Nuremburg has a lot of Nazi history to see too. There were party rallies and marches through the 30s, and trials of party members after the war. I went to the exhibition about the whole timeline of the rise to power and the Nuremburg Trials.

The Nazi documentation center from the Zeppelin Field side.

Met up with Will again and his Irish wife and another friend of theirs for Patricks day at O’Sheas Irish bar. I only found it after asking directions to ‘O-she-ahs’. Gotta remember to use the local dialect for these things. All the Irish bars were full up and there was no chance of getting to the bar, so I eventually went to a german pub Barfusser (means bare-foot. I was thinking Piedescalso) and then home. The next day was sunny so I went to the castle and a couple of the museums around the place there, and on Thursday I made my way to Dresden.

At the castle in Nuremburg.

When I arrived in Vienna, I mostly did nothing at all. Turns out that doing lots of stuff for a few weeks is pretty tiring. I took about a day and a half of downtime and had a good look around the City on my last full day.

There’s plenty of architechture to dance about here, and lots of statues about the place. I went to the exhibition of the Austrian resistance, which was instrumental for the setting up of the Austrian State (http://en.doew.braintrust.at/index.php?b=28&hl=liberation) apparently.

The clocks museum and the Roman exhibition were nearby. They have a bunch of excavated buildings with underfloor heating that I remember learning about years ago.

Vienna: It’s all about clocks.

After that I went up to the Sigmund Freuds house. He lived and worked in Vienna for 50 years before fleeing to London in 1938 (he was Jewish) and dying in 1939 (aged 83). They restored the waiting room of his office, but mostly the exhibit is documents about his life and works. He had some correspondences with interesting people. One with Einstein was published as ‘Why war?’ where Einstein asks Freud ‘Is there a way to deliver mankind from the menace of war? Is it possible to control a mans mental evolution so as to make him proof against the psychosis of hatet and destructiveness?’. http://www.idst.vt.edu/modernworld/d/Einstein.html. The short version is that Freud thinks it improbable that the agressive tendancies of human beings could be overcome because often community cohesion is formed with a basis on hatred of outsiders and that any group includes people of unequal power, which leads to civil conflict. The utopian hope then is for all men to be driven by the dictates of reason, not that that will ever happen. I used to think Freud was a crackpot, but I should really read more of his stuff.

After collecting my phone back from the hostel i went out to meet some of the local couch surfers and went wine tasting with them. Met some interesting people and learned a thing or two about real hitch hiking. Still seems like it’s a lot more hassle, but might be worth trying some time. A nights sleep and a train to Budapest later I was learning to play ‘pick up sticks’ with some girls in the hostel and teaching them how to play 25. I really should play that game more often.

Went on a walking tour the next morning with them and saw some of the sights, and Sziget island (which I’ll have to come back to in August), and then I headed off to the thermal baths which I missed the last time I was here.

The girls were getting an early train and didn’t go out, so I went to a local place on my own and found some Irish guys and Englsh guys to hang around with for the night, and woke up with a sore head. I climbed up to the Statue of Liberty which was put there by the Russians, and spent much of the rest of the day in a cafe.

I got up early the next day to go to Nagykanizsa, Hungary. I wanted to visit Graz, Austria, and reckoned that as it was half way, it would make a good place to stop over. It was really cheap to stay there (e18 for a single with en suite), and the weather got suddenly sunny. There’s almost nothing to do there on a Sunday though.

It turns out that I didn’t plan my train out of Nagykanizsa, so when I got to the train station on Monday morning I ended up having to get 4 different trains and go most of the way to Vienna just to go back South.

I arrived in Graz and Kevin (a KDE guy) picked me up at the station, dropped my stuff off, and showed me around the city. European City of Culture 2003, full of Students. Went out for dinner and then met up with some other KDE people for drinks for the night.

The next day I met up with Harold to talk about a Project Neon, which he’s been developing, and I’m going to help out a bit. Got a train back up to Vienna then as a stopover before going west to Regensburg in about 1 hour. Most of my time in Vienna this time was spent trying to get my CV up to date. I’m starting to realize that I’ll need a job again after all this travelling is done.

Travelling is getting Handy in Austria.

When we arrived in Munich there was a pub crawl supposed to start at the Hauptbahnhof. We went down there to try to catch it, but there weren’t enough people to run it. We went to the Hofbrauhaus and Augustiner anyway with the French guy that also showed up. We tried to go to a nightclub too, but it was closed. Munich is pretty dead on a Wednesday night.

We did the free walking tour the next day which took in a lot of the history of Munich, the beer, the religious and Nazi history. (Turns out the Nazi party was founded in the Hofbrauhaus). The free tour is really good, and your expected to tip or spread the word if you think it’s worth it. I’m doing both so, tell your classmates, roommates and cellmates about the New Europe tours. Tried the pub crawl again and managed to get it going this time. Went to a couple of the same places as before, but it was a bit more craic this time. There were a few Aussies on the tour, so now I know what ‘Bottle-o’ and ‘Straia’ mean.

Apparently I didn’t take any photos of Munich, but I’m sure everyone knows what the Glockenspiel looks like by now.

I left the following day for Linz, Austria. While on an S-Bahn to catch my ridealong to Linz I realized I didn’t have my phone with me. After trying to call it and sending a few text messages to it I just gave up. It could be worse. I could have lost my passport… One of the people I met in Frankfurt was Thomas. He’d told me he was a paraglider, and I could visit and go for a paraglide. I arrived at his place on Friday and he showed me around Linz (European captial of Culture 2009 by the way). I tried the mobile again then, and a guy from the hostel in Munich picks up. Apparently I left it at reception and they agree to send it to my next hostel in Vienna.

The plan for the weekend was to go to Wandenwerg ski resort near Salzburg. I borrowed Thomas’ ski equipment and went skiing while he went flying with Evgeny and Dion. In the car, Evgeny gave me some advice on how to ski, because it was a bit late in the afternoon to get lessons. The basic message was that if you french fry when you should pizza you’re gonna have a bad time. I also got a free ski pass from a stranger. It was a seven day pass with just a few hours on it, but so far I was having the cheapest ski holiday ever. After trying a bit of skiing on the practice slope, I moved on to the next blue slope, and saw the snow up close on my first run down. My neck is still a bit sore, but I got up and tried again anyway.

I met the other guys on the top of the hill for a beer at about 4pm. I thought the cable cars would be going down again until about 5 o clock, but turned out to be 4:15. So a few hours after putting on ski shoes for the first time I was going down a red slope to get back to the base. I did half of it on skis, half without skis and half on my ass. Not graceful I have to say, but I had someone helping me down.

After dinner and a few beers at the ski resort we stayed the night with some Hungarian guys, friends of Evgeny. They were mostly all ski instructors there too. After a bit more skiing in the morning, I went back up the hill for my tandem paraglide with one of Thomas’ friends. It was really cool, and we did a ‘Sat’ manouever, pushing a few Gs.

The prep.

Flying.

After the flight with Steve the pilot.

Thomas had a bad take-off and ended up getting dragged through about 50ft of snow headfirst.

The afters.

Had a quick look around Linz again in the morning, but everything was closed (It was a Monday. A bit strange, no?), so I hopped on the train to Vienna. The details of that are coming in the next blog, but at least now I have my phone back . Handy indeed.