The Fog

Woohooo....what a mess this film is! In german called "Der Nebel" (engl. "The Fog"), I expected it to be a remake of the famous horror movie of the 1980s by John Carpenter. But this was something completely different.

The story: A village suddenly surrounded by a thick, eery fog and people in a supermarket trying to get along with that situation. Whenever they try to get out, there is some oversized insect coming out of the fog and killing them. Not really much of a story you may think...and you are right. But..okay okay...only very few horror movies have a good plot/story, but to me the arts of a good horror film is to keep the tension high and constantly up.
But this film is only bad. It has good animations but that`s all. Flat dialogues and a predictable, implausible story, - not enough for me. The only thing that you may call remarkable with this film is the end...it is really insane and unbelievable. I would not call it a Happy End...

good and bad

For some reason, I had some days off of work last week and now was thinking about what has happened and what was overweighing: the positive or the negative?? I still did not come to a conclusion...make up your own mind:
1. a new notebook...finally, since my old notebook not only broke down but also broke into pieces
2. time to finally put some old videos on YouTube that some friends were constantly asking for
3. time for good and intense discussions with far away friends
4. time for extended visits to the sauna
5. a flat tire on the back wheel of my bike
6. thoughts on missing perspectives in life
7. pain pain pain

The Turkish Gambit

The last book took me about 2 months to read through. Not because it was so hard to read but because I simply had not enough time for it. So I had to re-read a several chapters to get back into the story.
The Turkish Gambit is another novel by Boris Akunin starring his already famous observer/detective Erast Petrovitch Fandorin. It is another historical detective story, this time playing during the war between Russia and Turkey in the 1870s. The whole story is playing at the frontline of this war and the subject is a treason that leads the Russians army to defeat...nearly. It may sound like a war book but it is not like that. Fighting or any other cruelty has no real place in this book. It is all about finding out who of the protagonists is the traitor. And again, like all "Fandorin" novels it is nice to read. Akunin writes in a stylish and vivid way that enables you to imagine about that historical scenery.

The book has "only" 245 pages and a surprising end, what more can you ask for? If anyone can get along with a puzzling, historical detective story and is not afraid of facing a several diffcult russian names, I can really recommend this book.

Winter

A view out of my window now....

Who would have guessed that winter will be back on March 25th?? Over here it is now 0°C and we had a lot of snow during the last 24 hours. It is not really cold, but it is enough to cover everything around with a thin white blanket. Nice!

HAPPY EASTER everyone

Good friday

I was thinking today about the meaning of "karfreitag" (german) or "good friday" (english). I know the meaning of the day but I was stuck in finding out why in english it is called "good friday".
Wiki says: "Good Friday, also called Holy Friday or Great Friday, is the Friday preceding Easter Sunday. It commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus at Calvary."

Ok, ok, got it...but why GOOD friday? This friday was not really a good friday for Jesus some 1975 years ago.

Twitter II

Earlier on I was mentioning that I wanted to try this "Twitter" thing that everyone is talking about. I did it and found out that for me it makes no real sense so far. It is fun somehow to just drop a (senseless) line, but if you do not have an active network of friends, if you have no real conversations going on, Twitter can get a bit boring. However...active networks and friends of monologues will have their fun with Twitter.

Snow

In the morning...

in the afternoon....9 hours later

My way to work was somehow an adventurous trip today. I was on my bike for 3 minutes maybe when dark-grey clouds covered the sky. I had to switch on the lights and pull over my rain clothes. And then it began to snow. Not just a little but heavy snowfall...remember - it is March 18th today!!

With +3°C it is much too warm today so all snow melted away immediately. I looked a bit like a snowmann riding a bike through a snowstorm...what a pity that I could not take a propper photo of myself.

Cloverfield

The pain was getting more and more yesterday and when I came home from work I immmediately went to bed. I watched the film "Cloverfield" and I liked it even though it was announced being some kind of "Monster Action". The story itself is simple. It is beginning with 20 minutes of a party which is interrupted by a heavy ground motion...as everyone thought. It was no earthquake but some kind of an Alien/Monster/Whatever... and this creature was attacking New York now.
As I mentioned, the story itself is not really spectacular. The ingenious move (in my eyes) is that the whole film was being filmed from the merciless subjective perspective of a handheld camera. So, if you wanna enjoy "Cloverfield" you must be able to stand those hyper nervous wiggly recordings.

All in all this seems to be the perfect movie for the "You Tube" Generation....where every amateur on earth can make his documentation about more or less important things going on.

Ein entspanntes Wochenende

Samstag/Sonntag waren wir zur Hochzeit unserer Freunde und ich muss sagen das ich die Zeit ziemlich genossen habe. Schwester und Schwager waren auch mit und haben uns freundlicherweise mitgenommen so dass ich dieses Mal nicht fahren musste und somit das Wochenende von Anfang an ganz entspannt geniessen konnte.
Die kirchliche Trauung war sehr schön, harmonisch und angenehm und auch die Feier am Abend war mal nicht so stocksteif und hektisch. Das Essen war.....hmmmm....Klasse, unsere Unterkunft sehr schön ruhig und wie neu...was will man mehr???

Es war für mich persönlich einfach schön mal wieder rauszukommen, andere Gesichter zu sehen und den Kopf mal frei zu bekommen vom Alltag. Wie kann das besser gelingen als bei einer Hochzeit von 2 Freunden die sich scheinbar wirklich gesucht und gefunden haben??
Mission gelungen!!!

Der 240. Cache, Geocaching Wuppertal

This weekend we have been in Wuppertal to celebrate the wedding of our friends Beth & Joerg. Of course we also had the intention of going for some geocaching. Since the time of our stay was very short, I had no illusion and wasn't even prepared. But fortunately I had my sister with me. She had some cache descriptions with her and so we found at least one cache together. That was funny. On sunday, we already sat in the car, ready to leave home again when my sister shouted out: "...only 65 metres!!". So we did this cache in only 10 minutes. Is that already speed-caching??? ;-)

The second cache of the weekend was a cache from the host and the bridegroom. Again we nearly all sat in the car when Joerg gave us the printed cache-descriptions of a several caches nearby. Since it started raining, my sister was not really fond of doing another cache, but Joerg told me that it is not far and I was happy to have the possibility to take a little walk before sitting in the car again for hours. And really...the way to the cache was not long and after some 20 minutes of walking, I was back at the car and we went home.

Twitter

Why is everyone talking about Twitter recently?? Twitter is a site where you can drop messages of maximun 140 chars. You can follow other users and read their messages/notes. People say that it is fun and easy to just drop a line from time to time.

I am also on Twitter and you can follow me at my username _houdini or even the full site with messages of people I am following...but I have absolutely no idea about the sense of this site. I will give it a try though.
Anyone of you on Twitter?

Experience

I really admire people who are able to deal with words, to write.
A friend of mine sent me a slideshow accompanied by her thoughts. It was about a vacation in the mountains, and she simply wrote down her thoughts belonging to that special moments. The fascinating thing for me was not only the composition of words and impressive photos, but even more the very intense way of writing that enabled me to feel as if I was on that trip too.
A great experience for me. Thank you Vika!

Geocaching

Yesterday, directly after work it was time for some geocaching again. A storm was coming up and so it was really hard to go those additional 25 kilometres by bike. The first cache, a micro cache hidden in brambly bushes was an easy found, without any injuries, found after 12 kilometres.  The second cache was inteesting. In one of our favorite parks there will be a new lake in the future. Right now there is nothing to see except green grass and the owner asks all the cache-visitors to take a photo of the progress. Nice.

My efforts on finding the cache box have been somehow extraordinary for a D/T 1,5 rated chache. It took me nearly 20 minutes to find the cache box. Have I been blind? Was it too dark already? However, it was a nice cache, I found it and my bike computer was showing me an over all distance off 34 kilometes for that day.  A satisfying day.

Faule Tage

Mittwoch bis Freitag hatte ich 3 Tage Urlaub und ich habe sie echt genossen. Während am Mittwoch noch vieles zu erledigen war (Rad reparieren, shoppen und ein paar Dinge in der Wohnung "gerade biegen") waren der Donnerstag, Freitag und Samstag sehr entspannt. Jeden Tag 3-4 Stunden im Fitness Studio/Sauna verbracht und so richtig in den Tag hineingelebt. Eigentlich wollte ich mich ja noch 2-4 nicht ganz erledigten Caches widmen, aber neeee....da hab ichs dann doch lieber ruhig angehen lassen.


Zumindest haben wir am Samstag nach langer Zeit mal wieder einen schönen ausgedehnten Gang durch den Bürgerpark unternommen. Es ist wirklich erstaunlich, überall grünt es und der Frühling scheint jetzt wirklich unaufhaltsam zu sein. Gut so, allerdings kommt mir alles irgendwie reichlich früh vor in diesem Jahr.

Nicht nur Menschen geniessen die Frühlings Sonne