Tag: germany

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“Class Reunion”

As every year, my group of friends from studies managed to organise a “class reunion”, this time at Oli’s parents house in the beautiful wine region Pfalz. The first evening we had a nice barbecue at the pool and later went to one of the winefestivals this region is famous for.

The next day we enjoyed the beuatiful weather in and around the pool, just relaxing and talking, playing some garden games (Boule, Beachball, Water-Volleyball, …) from time to time. We even witnessed a partial lunar eclipse that night!

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Taubertal-Festival

“In the heart of the ‘Taubertal’ valley, with the backdrop of the beautiful medieval town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, ‘the Eiswiese’ provides an exceptional site for an open air festival.
As well as the great location, this event is genuinely different from other open air events. As we are limited by the natural amphitheatre of the site, for us, it is a question of: ‘size does not matter; it`s what you do with it.’ Yes, that`s what counts, folks!” (taubertal-festival.de)

Though the weather was predicted pretty bad (a lot of rain and strong winds) we again were rather lucky. It just rained a little bit Thursday night and it got story Friday, but that was it, the rest of the weekend was rather pleasant, not too hot or cold.
Because of the wind on Friday our pavillions mostly consistet of random sticks and fiber-reinforced tape by then. (Hail tape! What would I do without it?)
As I didn’t expect the parking area to be some sort of remote from the campsite, I removed the backseats from my car (which was surprisingly simple, cheers Toyota-engineers) in order to be able to fit my bicycle trailer in there. Arriving at the festival around midnight (the Filderstadt friends had saved some space for me), I realised that this was no necessary. As the concert area and the camping area were on different sites, there was plenty of space and one could just drive the car right to the campsite. With things beeing very well organised and easy going, I could just dive right into the festival spirit and relax. (Aside very good operated sanitary installations they also organised a small tent-supermarket with all the basics)

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Hubert von Goisern, Black Sea to North Sea

Hubert von Goisern “… is considered as one of the most influential heads of the “Neue Volksmusik” …” (last.fm) and of of his specialities is to incorporate folkmusic from various places around the world into his austrian based style. On his latest tour from the Black Sea to the North Sea he and his whole crew are travelling on a barque, which also is the base for the stage. Every now and then they stop at some town along the rivers they travel and stage a concert. At each of these shows they also include local artists with their distinct styles.
After my parents and me spent a day together in Darmstadt, we went down to Hirschhorn near Heidelberg to see one of these shows. Though the forecast predicted rain, we were lucky and enjoyed a great open air concert.

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Burgenstraße and Odenwald

Driving back home to Darmstadt on Sunday, I had to stop in order to check the nuts in the wheels (I lately managed to change from winter to summer tires 😉 ). At the restarea a biker from Hamburg asked me about nice sidestreet routes in the area so I told him about the Bergstraße. Just after this talk I realised that I really was not in a hurry and that there was no need to take the big highways. I left the Autobahn near Heilbronn and followed the Neckar river up north along parts of a route called Burgenstraße. At the Burg Hornberg near Haßmersheim I had a nice lunchbreak with a marvelous view over the Neckar-valley. Afterwards I went on a short trip through the remains of the castle. The climb up some rather old wooden stairs into the keep was quite adventurous.

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Diploma, at last!

The day before my birthday, there was the official handover of our diploma documents. So I left work a bit earlier that Friday and headed down to Stuttgart. After some speaches, during which Martin and I took the small quadrocopter out for a flight, all the former students gathered at the front of one of the auditoriums and got their documents handed over.  Afterwards there was a small barbecue party in front of one of the institutes.
Once this sort of official part was over, people started moving into the city to celebrate, which for me coincided with my 28th birthday as well. As many people came to Stuttgart for this event we were quite large group and partied at various locations (Palast, Schocken, Oblomow, etc.).

The next afternoon, Martin and I met at the beergarden in Leinfelden. After a laid back late brunch we went to Vaihing to get drinks for the party at Flowrider’s garden that night. At the mall we stumbled into a store selling nonsense gadgets like Hawaii flower garlands and soap bubble toys, of course we couldn’t resist and bought a bunch of the garlands and bubble toys for the party.
As things already got late, we drove straight to Flowrider’s party in the fields behind Vaihingen. The usual crowd barbecued and partied all night, getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes from the nearby pond.


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News

Hi all!

I know it has been a while, so let me give you a brief update:
As most of you probably know I moved to Darmstadt to start a postgrad position at the Department for Computer Integrated Design at the TU. I found a pretty nice flat at the southern outskirts of Darmstadt and settled in quite well so far.
603qm, the local uni club
the

The job is just in the field I was looking for, the intermediate area between engineering and information technologies and my project allows me to get around a bit.
So far for now, I’ll also add a few more details about my recent trips.

Cheers
TIm