Tuesday, there was a little arts exhibition and a party announced to take place in a very unsual location: the catacombs of an old monument of the Kaiser which has been distroyed in World War 2, I think the statue of which had been removed by the GDR, thanks Bea for pointing this out (see third comment). The great thing: It’s in the very in centre of Berlin, and you would never ever get to see those spooky arches underground, right next to one of the smaller arms of the Elbe Spree (the river that flows through Berlin), and the old Palast der Republik.

So the entrence itself was pretty dodgy, just one small little manhole, and a 5 meters ladder… Down you came straight into the old catacombs, where some artists put up a variety of light– and sound installations.

Unfortunately, the party was canceled on the night itself when suddenly some police men showed up and bascially forbade the whole thing for a number of reasons. It was great to have a look around anyways, and I also got to take some nice night shots…

I became a professional fisherman, but discovered that I couldn‘t live on my net income.

I would never have thought it, but being at the right time in the right city, I had the opportunity last Friday to see Herbie Hancock live and direct here in Berlin.

Although the tickets were fairly pricy (the cheapest started at 38 EUR), in my book, it was worth every cent. Even if this guy is 66 years old, you couldn‘t tell neither by his looks, the energy he radiated, the humour he showed nor the music itself. (By the way, that’s him on the center of the stage with the guitar like keyboard I forgot the name of).

In a single word: it was as massive. No comparison in quality to anything I‘ve ever heard, when it comes to a jazz combo. Of course, this was also due to the other musicians he played with: Vinnie Coleiuta (a particularily famous drummer), Nathan East (an impressive bassist and singer) and Lionel Loueke (I didn‘t know him, but geez, he was a genious too).

Among the pieces they played were classics like Cantaloupe Island, Watermelon Man or Chameleon as well as more recent songs.

Being good at being stupid doesn‘t count.

Not sure if you guys know, but the 11th of November at 11:11am is a very special day / moment. In a few cities / regions in Germany — such as Köln (a.k.a. Cologne), Mainz, Düsseldorf, etc. — it’s the start of the Karneval Saison, the „Fifth Season“ for the people living in those parts of the country..

Being from Berlin (where people typically have a rather antagonistic opinion on all that buisiness) I do not know all that much about this stuff, but make sure you read the Wikipedia article on it ;-)

Why am I mentioning that? Well, purely by coincidence I happened to visit a good friend of mine that particular week end, and when I tried to get some classical breakfast ingredients like Brötchen (a.k.a. bread buns / bread rolls depending on where you from) or Croissants it was simply not possible to reach the bakery because of all the people on the street already getting wasted at 9am. Well, this continued for the entire day, and it actually looked like fun (I didn‘t have any costumes or the like on me, so I couldn‘t really join in), and I‘ve decided that at some stage, I wanna go with it, full time :-)

It just needs a bit of preparation to look as funny as all the other people… On the photo that was one of the many little bands that played some random semi-rythmic noise to celebrate their drunkeness :-)

Eat yoghurt and get cultured!

Friday last week I went to a big party, the birthday party of one of my brothers (Jan) and two good old friends of his (Michael and Matthias), who all just turned 30…

It was a great party in many terms. Nice (finger) food ;-) Nice ladies, loads and loads of dancing (I was all sore the next day, and that rarely happens), so thanks for organising it, guys! Also, this was a great opportunity to only see a lot of people from old times (you always know your brothers‘ friends fairly well too, and I haven‘t seen most of them for a good decade!) and my family again.

As a surprise (even I didn‘t know of it!) my dad drove all the way up from Stuttgart (on the other end of Germany) and my other Brother (Daniel) was there too. I eventually managed to convince my brothers into a little photo with the three of us together, which I like a lot (and it’s the first of its kind in a about a decade too!).

Why is 6 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9!

Since Wednesday this week, I‘ve officially started working here at the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin, in the „Institut für Energie– und Automatisierungstechnik“ or more precisely in the „Fachgebiet Regelungssysteme“ that is Prof. Jörg Raisch’s group.

Right now I‘m still in the process of filling my empty office (pictures soon…), getting to know people, and generally just getting set up. As well as reading. And heaps of it…

In a way it’s weird, I‘ve really finished my uni degree now… I‘ve graduated, I‘ve got some title to officially put in front of my name (that’s „Dipl.–Ing.“). Kind of exciting. Also, my name is already featured on the name table just next to the elevator (see last line in the picture).

Guess that makes it official…

Once I worked in the woods as a lumberjack, but I just couldn‘t hack it, so they gave me the axe.

Once I came back from Trento, it was time for some serious relaxing and — of course — partying too ;-)

I spent most of the time in Magdeburg, the place where I studied for three and a half years. It felt great to have nothing to do other than worryign about what cool meal to fix in the evening.

The photo here was taken at Uwe’s birthday party, a friend of mine from Uni. I think it was Julia (that lovely lady at the back of the photo) who suddenly decided it was time for some Macarena dancing… Somebody took a short video from that, you can watch it here.

Oh boy, those days were days of fun… now it’s back to work, as you‘ll soon read about…

I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the airport.