Wed, 14 Mar 2007
You know what's creepy?
Traveling to a country you've never been to before, walking into a random cafe and being recognised by someone.
Something like that happened to me when I was in Barcelona. We didn't have much time to look at things when we were there, since we were mostly either in the meeting or at the hotel. So, when we had a few free hours left before getting on our flight back, we decided to take a little walk around the city. However, shortly after we had left it started raining cats and dogs, so we took refuge into a nearby starbucks.
When I was ordering my hot chocolate, a girl walked up to me and
asked me
"Do you by any chance study in Hildesheim?"
"Yes ..."
"IIM?"
"Yes ..."
"You're Meike, right?"
"Yes ..."
Turns out, she was an IIM student as well and recognised me from a seminar. I must confess, I didn't recognise her. Shame on me! I was also totally surprised though. Who would have expected ... :)
Posted at: 23:52 in /english/travel
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Tue, 06 Feb 2007
Second and third day in Luxembourg
Right, back from Luxembourg and here's how the other two days went:
I woke up pretty early on Friday. Damn sportsmen, seems they all jump
out of bed at 6 am, to happily (and noisily) engage in their
respective sports. Horrible. I've never heard so many people be in such
a good mood at such an early hour.
Breakfast was great though!
I spent the rest of the day at the LinuxDays site. It was situated in the ground floor of the Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor and consisted of two rooms for talks and workshops and a tiny exhibition area with tables from Lilux, CAcert and a book shop. (Oooh, the temptation!!) It was also possible, to sit in the nearby cafe, which was right next to the exhibition area. Unfortunately LinuxDays.lu don't provide any kind of hacking centre (read: chair + table + power plugs), but the friendly people from CAcert offered me a seat at their booth/table so I could do some work.
My talk went quite good. I didn't feel as comfortable giving it as I usually do, since it weren't my slides. But I still think it went quite well and there were some interesting questions afterwards. There aren't any recordings of the talk, but the slides can as usually be found in the talks section of my homepage.
The third day started as the second one, but this time I stayed in bed and watched the Sendung mit der Maus instead of getting up at such an inappropriately early hour. I had actually planned to travel back to Hildesheim by train, but the very nice guys from quintessenz.at offered me a ride to Mannheim, which made my journey back home a lot more pleasant and also much more comfortable, since I could then take a direct train from Mannheim to Hildesheim.
Concluding, I'd like to thank the organisers of LinuxDays.lu for the really good service! (I've never before been at a Linux Day where speakers were provided with such a lot of stuff. (Free hotel, travel reimbursement, free food AND a book from the book shop! Yay!) It's been really fun, speaking at this event and I can recommend it to anyone. LinuxDays.lu may not be the biggest or most popular Linux Day, but it's a really nice local event and very professionally organised!
PS: So, where are the pictures I promised?
They are in a
directory on my home machine, and this will remain the only place
they're at until I've found a simple script to generate web galleries
(such as album, galrey, jigl, shalbum ...) that manages to generate a
gallery that doesn't use tables but CSS or I found the time to rewrite
or produce an according template for any of these scripts. Grrr.
Posted at: 20:26 in /english/travel
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Fri, 02 Feb 2007
First day in Luxembourg
- The train to Frankfurt is agreeably empty but, as usually, terribly cold! My fingernails are blueish!!
- Yay, Chinese food from a paper box. (I love those. They're classic!)
- Book recommendation of the day: English as a Second F*cking Language (Eek! Bookzilla is down!)
- The next train was an IC. I even got a seat with a power plug.
- The power plug was broken though.
- I noticed when my laptop suddenly went down without warning
- Mental note: Fix acpi!
- The train ride to Koblenz is really beautiful! The steep Rhine banks, the castles, the barges ...
- Mental note: Go there for holidays!
- I took pictures, but don't get them off my camera. Forgot the cable. Damn.
- There are pictures of the event at the event's site though. Also Sven is here, so I trust everything will be documented most exhaustively ;)
- The last train did an "unscheduled stop". Engine trouble. They fixed it rather quickly though.
- Using public transportation in a foreign country is a real challenge. Extra points for doing it in the country's capital, at rush hour, in the dark.
- ... and in French of course.
- WLAN at the Centre Henri Tudor works! only http and ssh though.
- Thank god for tunneling
- Favourite question of the day: "Are you a punk or a hacker?" Answer: "That goes together."
- I met some people and went for a pizza afterwards. Pizza Rucola. Hmm!
- F***ing HUGE hotel.
- It's a sport hotel. It has rubber floors and looks very much like a gym in some places.
- Some of my worst and most humiliating childhood/youth memories feature gyms. Urgh!
- WLAN costs 5 Eu for 24 hrs. Ts!
- The wall is decorated with a reprint of the poster for the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Tasteful. Apparently every room has an Olympics poster. Maybe they should've left this one out.
- There's a sign saying you shouldn't smoke, and another one saying you shouldn't smoke in bed. Heh.
- Good night.
Posted at: 12:16 in /english/travel
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Fri, 26 Jan 2007
LinuxDays.lu anyone?
I'll be going to the LinuxDays in Luxembourg next week. As far as I know, there won't be an exhibition, so, no Debian booth. But I'll be giving a talk. It's not on one of my usual topics, but on security this time. The reason for this is, that I am giving this talk instead of Lukas Grunwald, who originally registered the talk but then couldn't give it.
I am really looking forward to going there. I've never before been to Luxembourg and I am curious what it's going to be like. I am also looking forward to giving the talk, since it will be something very different from my usual ones and I am curious to see what differences there will be.
If anyone of you is going to LinuxDays.lu too and wants to meet for coffee or a beer, drop me note!
Posted at: 23:16 in /english/travel
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Mon, 13 Feb 2006
Back from Cambridge
For now I'd just like to let you know that I made it there and back without any problems, the workshop was great and I would like to thank everyone involved. Cheers! :)
PS: I arrived quite late or rather early this morning, I am dead tired, watching Amaya's video of her cats comfortably lolling around on a cosy blanket on a heater does *not* help! *whimper*
Posted at: 10:35 in /english/travel
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Fri, 10 Feb 2006
Off to Cambridge
I usually don't suffer from travel nerves, though this trip is so far foreshadowed by a chain of unfortunate events:
Firstly I scalded my hand with hot oil last weekend and it is now in the state of getting rid of the old burned skin, exposing the tissue underneath that is not real skin but some thin algesic replacement. Ouch!
Secondly my laptop, beloved dropkick, lost its display this week. Well, not physically, but when I booted it up on Thursday the colors where heavily distorted. I tried to fix it yesterday but at some point it just stopped working alltogether. :( Background lightening still goes on and off but nothing is displayed. I am pretty frustrated by this. Not only because I had planned to use the laptop this weekend but also because I really like it and have grown kind of attached to it. Since a professional repair would probably cost almost as much as the thing is worth and I am pretty broke at the moment I'll try to get a used display and replace it myself. (Relevant hints and advice are welcome!)
Lastly, I haven't packed yet, my belt loop is ripped and the prospect of spending long waiting periods with only a book plus pen and paper as means of distraction is not too thrilling.
Anyway, still looking forward to the weekend! (<phlox>Optimism!</phlox>) I'll let you know how it went (and what further mishaps struck me) when I return. :)
Posted at: 15:45 in /english/travel
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Sun, 14 Aug 2005
Long time no post
I left Frankfurt on Tuesday and hitched a ride to Freiburg, we even made a little trip to France to drop someone off at Strasbourg. After arriving at Freiburg I stayed with my sister for two nights and we were then picked up by my mom who returned from France where she'd dropped off my three French stepbrothers (Oh, did I mention I have a "broad" family?)
The next few days were spent around my home town, staying at my mom's, visiting my dad, walking around town and generally being lazy.
Nice time, but oh, the restlesness ...
Yesterday I left for Ulm where I am now.
Aaand, some random bits:
- A picture from Freiburg:
- It is a good thing to be back in Swabia. It's a wonderful place! Great food, woderful landscape, horrible dialect ;) (Naah, I love it!)
- I had a short ride on my father's new motorbike. I SO need a new one!!
- Yes, I like country music. My mother is the mixer of a country band (It's the coolest thing, she can "techtalk" and I don't understand a word :D ) and gives line dance lessons several times a week. However, I shall be taking no shit from someone on whose hard drive I recently found Alabama - Can't take the Country out of me (Mhuahaha!!)
- Yesterday we had King Prawns with a coconut and ginger sauce. Delicious!
- Currently I am sittinig on (yet another) sofa, listening to some (very loud) Propaghandi, watching two nice gentleman prepare tuna spaghetti. That's life!
- Weather still sucks! Is this what you call summer?!?
- I washed! I have socks again!!
- My time is running out, it's about time to travel back North. Also I have almost nothing left to read.
- After feeling like having lots of different people around me, I think I've had about enough of that now and long for some loneliness. Guess I'll stay on my own for the last week ...
Posted at: 21:48 in /english/travel
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Fri, 05 Aug 2005
Next sofa, next post ...
- This time the sofa belongs to Tolimar and can be found about here.
- I am noticing first flaws in my packing strategy. I prepared for ~20°C up to 35°C. So far I've only had about 20 and mostly rainy weather. Very slowly I start running out of clean warm cloths.
- More wood walking: Joggers. So many! And so ... colourful!!
- 12 angry men is a cool movie!
- There is a Weinfest right in front of Tolimar's house. I fail to produce an English word that adequately describes the concept of German Volksmusik! However, we're trying to face it with loud music of our own. (Current playlist features a weird but cool Queen song.)
- Tolimar does not have cookies but makes excellent coffee!
- Further travel plans are emerging. I'll go farther South. (Should you not be German, and planning to come here: The South is the place to go!! *ducks away from Northern German fish attacks*)
- After mentioning them in my last blog post, the squeezes are increasing.
All: Thank guys!
Some: Who *are* you?! - Sorry, no pics this time. Maybe next time.
- ...
- Ergonomic keyboard ... yargh!
Posted at: 21:36 in /english/travel
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Tue, 02 Aug 2005
Still alive (as promised)
- This post comes right from youam's sofa, which is about here.
- I walked through moor and woods.
- I was in Belgium and the Netherlands.
- I talk(ed) a lot.
- I am being squeezed repeatedly.
- Youam doesn't have (hot) coffee, but great cookies.
- I saw Mr and Mrs Smith, great movie!
- I dismanteled my laptop in order to get rid of that funny "dck dck" noise my fan makes. Didn't work out.
- Wireless works now, but unreliable.
- I am looking at a table covered with cups and screw drivers.
- Apfelstrudel is my friend!
- I forgot my laptop battery. DAMN!
- Weather is okay but could be better.
- I got a tiny glass of syrup :)
- Charles Baudelaire is travelling with me.
- I had a really nice Turkish lunch.
- It'll soon be time to travel on.
- IT IS GOOD TO BE AWAY!
Posted at: 21:30 in /english/travel
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Sat, 30 Jul 2005
There are times in life ...
I used to often go on such journeys in the past and this one really has been overdue for quite some time!!
So from tomorrow on for the next ~three weeks I'll officially be gone. No plans yet where I'll go when and how to get there. I'll just see how things go.
I'll try to drop a few "still alive" posts while I'm on the way. Maybe even some pictures if the opportunity arises.
See you some time soon ...
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Posted at: 17:53 in /english/travel
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