Still Photograph

Some of my pictures are showing moods instead of objects. These are my favorite pictures. Unfortunately they are very rare among my photos, which increases their value.
This picture is taken during my trip to Florida in 2004. It shows the beautiful sunset sky of Miami Beach. The houses and trees are way to dark, but the sky and the colors are marvelous...

Coffee pictures

A small homage to a friend from the very opposite part of the world, from the beautiful New Zealand. Beside many other admirable skills she's the worlds best photographer of delicious coffee cups :-)
Thank you BD for the interesting and inspiring conversation, I appreciate that.

I had that coffee in Budapest in the famous shopping street Váci utca.

Love Parade Budapest

The Love Parade Budapest is said to be the best of it's kind in the world (beside the original one in Berlin). And it was great indeed. Standing beside one of the trucks loaded with a powerful soundsystem and with funny people dancing on it you cannot help, it moves your body.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Parade

Good Morning

These are the things to start me up this morning. The coffee should be replaced with tea, but I'm not ready for the change so far.
Looking up the effects of caffeine I learned that it increases short term memory and the IQ but also causes anxiety and irritability. Now I have to decide if I would like to be calm but dumb or intelligent but anxious...

After Sunset

 
As the summer in Berlin is starting to turn into autumn, the days are getting shorter. This leaves less time for daylight activities. But on the other hand it adds extra time to the dark hours, which are the recreation period for body and mind.
I have the impression that it increases my overall fitness noticable, maybe also influenced by the slightly colder temperatures.
So at least there is one nice feeling caused by the autumn. But I have to admit that there are many more nice feelings caused by the spring....

Photo: Madrid, December 29, 2004

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Yesterday evening I was able to enjoy a great movie in a great location. It was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the nice open air cinema in the park Friedrichshain. The location is beautiful, between the old trees and under the sparkling starry sky it is not important if the movie is good or not.

Anyway, I had high expectations for the movie. Tim Burton (famous for his strange movies) films a book by Roald Dahl (one of my favorite authors of strange books). Plus Johnny Depp plays one of the main characters, which is nearly a guarantee of a special movie. And it was..

The story was so lovely, strange, funny and thought-provoking, a kind of a children book for adults. And Tim Burton made the movie a visual highlight, with a breathtaking colorful design and many strange but funny ideas. I'm not able to put it into words...
And talking of Johnny Depp, again he proved to be one of the best actors. He added so many funny moments to the movie only by showing expressions on his face, it alone would be a reason to watch the movie.

I'm thinking about naming my personal highlight of the movie, but there are too much. So I name the whole movie a highlight...

Sonniger Nachmittag 2

Hier eine Fortsetzung zum Thema Sonniger Nachmittag. Wiederum sorgte ein leckeres Stück Torte (diesmal Erdbeere) in Verbindung mit einem leckeren Milchkaffee für gute Laune. Fortsetzung folgt....

Unassisted triple play

Some years ago I watched the broadcasting of a baseball game when the commentator mentioned that one of the players has accomplished an unassisted triple play in his career. It was a very average player, but that single play made him famous for all times. Only a very few number of players have ever done it, only 5 in the last 75 years. I was deeply moved that he had done such a rare thing, but never did really understand what it meant.
These days I watched again a game where one of the players hit a triple, which only occured for the second time in current season (with several hundred games). I was very excited in the first moment.
Now, thanks to wikipedia again, I know the difference (triple means the batter reaches the third base after his hit). Anyway, I love sports where it takes years to know all the rules and the wording, like baseball and american football. This adds some intellectual touch to the usually very physical ball games.

How does a player feel who is famous only for only one play? Of course he's proud of it, but I guess it can get very annoying being reduced to that single moment, everybody asking the same question about it. It might become a real burden. Maybe sometime I get the chance to ask him about that issue :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unassisted_triple_play

Days Off

How wonderful to enjoy some days off (a whole week). Watching the bright blue sky above and the busy people on the street below and having a strong and hot morning coffee, there is nothing to worry about. With the exception of a low battery warning which just popped up on the screen of my little companion Q1. Well, there is always something.........

Personality

Once I heard that the well-known comedian Bob Hope tried to participate in a Bob-Hope-Lookalike competition (using a false name). He came off second-best. The story is very funny to me. I never heard if it's true or how he feeled after knowing the results.

(Sorry, I didn't find a suitable photo for this story)

Full moon over Berlin

...as sharp as my small camera can catch it. It's amazing to think that the moon (like the sun) sees the whole world in one day. What did he see in the last couple of hours?

Treasure Island

Right in the heart of Berlin lies the Museumsinsel, an island full of museums and galleries with many famous exhibits of history and art. It takes only a 10 minutes walk from my home to get there. Actually my favorite diner is almost in sight of the Bode-Museum.

It's strange: in the last years I did visit many more galleries and museums outside Berlin than in Berlin, maybe it's too close. So if the bad weather starts after the (hopefully) long lasting summer, it's time for a visit of the exhibiotion places of Berlin. I have to look at the beautiful paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and Arnold Böcklin in the Alte Nationalgalerie, at the famous etchings of Albrecht Dürer in the Kupferstichkabinett and at the remains of other great cities like the Pergamon Altar and the Isthar Gate of Babylon in the Pergamon Museum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_Island
Photos: Berliner Dom (top) and Pergamon Museum (left) in the evening sun

City Night Run

Perfect preparation is the prerequisite for a peak performance. Especially the composition and timing of the final meal is crucial. So I decided to have smashed potatoes (carbohydrates) and scrambled eggs (protein) to fuel the body. And I added king prawns for extra protein and taste...yummy.
Unfortunately it was far too delicious to stop after the reasonable small portion. So it was a slow run with a filled stomach, but a great meal....

Poor Beirut

Poor Beirut. I visited it in 2003 and they were so proud how they recovered from the civil war. There where so many new buildings, the tourists were back and the country was beautiful again.
Now there are bombed back into ruins.

As far as I understand (as a simple mind) the story developed this way:
- first the one side kidnapped three
- the other side killed some in return
- then the one side fired some rockets and killed some innocents
- the other side bombed 50 innocents to death
- the one side sends more rockets, killing again more innocents
- the other side sends the whole army, killing many more innocents and destroys the country
Let's see how far this can get...

And the world is taking part as spectators. Some sell new bombs to the war parties. Thats obvious bad. Some send money to help rebuild the highways and bridges and some are sending ships to help the refugees. That seems to be good. But at all the later ones only pay to to salve their consciences that they do not help to stop the fighting.
An army combined of the major countries of the world is fighting some muslim terrorist in the mountains of Afghanistan, but nobody intends to stop fighting right next to Europe...

Maybe I'm too stupid to understand the profound and sophisticated policy of the civilised world...

Photos: Beirut 2003

Cat in the sun

Sometimes I have the impression there are too many thoughts in my brain. They are talking to each other, changing their look and sometimes changing their places to confuse me. Some of them are very happy and some are sorrowful. Some are very new and some are still waiting since many years to be thought to an end. Some are always in the foreground and some others are only visible at special times, for example when I'm lying on the bed, waiting to fall asleep.
Some are very important and some are only useless waste.
There are so many that it's very hard to separate them. It's like an orchestra is playing...

I remember when I was a boy there where times, when I had only one thought. For example on christmas eve or on the last day of school before summer holidays. I feeled a simple, pure happiness on such days. There where no long term problems or decision to be made.
I never experienced this feeling again when I grew up.

There are some meditation techniques to reduce or shutdown the thoughts, I have to try it. Someday I would really like to be able to switch everything off and enjoy the moment only, like a cat lying in the sun....

Big city life

Life in a big city has some advantages. For example you can buy food and drinks around the clock and there are endless possibilities for culture and entertainment.

But the oversupply creates a pressure to do something and not to miss something else. This, in combination with the ambient noise, the chaotic traffic and the absence of places where you can be alone, keeps the city residents at a constant high stress level. This will shorten their (eventful) lives by many years.

Ok, there are many city residents who don't leave their homes and ok, there are quarters where the life is not as busy as in other quarters, but overall the city life is unhealthy.
I have to think about that...

Photo: Barcelona, 14.01.2006

Fall colors

Every season has it's own interesting colors and light. But the far most interesting season is the fall. In fall the omnipresent green of the summer is turning into many different yellow, reds and browns.
There are many weeks of summer left, but the heat caused already some chestnut trees to change it's color, which looks very nice in the evening sun....

Men at work

I always thought it's a common prejudice, that men decorate their locker with pinup-girls. But now I found the proof, it's true. I'm wondering what might be the reason to do that? Some possible explanations:
- it reminds them of their wife at home (not very probable)
- to enhance the cheap and ugly locker with artwork (much better)
- because they urgently needed a calender and had no other at hand
- maybe it's a kind of a name plate like the ball or the bear in the kindergarten (male workers are sometimes not so familiar with alphabetic characters)

But the truth lies beneath. In the presence of good looking women men start to produce more Testosteron, which immediately improves the energy level and causes them to work harder. That's the result of scientific tests. So the picture on the locker door has only one purpose: to be able to deliver more power to the company.

It was again proved lately as the pro cyclist Floyd Landis attached a pinup-girl at his locker, therefore increased his Testosterone level and won the Tour de France. Unfortunately they call it doping...