Hamburg, again

This time no longer a business trip, but a vacation of sorts. Initially we planned to stay there for one night but later extended that another day so we have a little bit more time. This was more or less our Christmas “vacation” for this year, since we didn’t manage to go anywhere else.

The weather didn’t really cooperate but at least it only rained 50% of the time. Surprisingly enough, it was slightly warmer than at home. Even though it wasn’t enough time to visit much, the city is nice and it gets our approval. Some pictures, made at night:

Indian Summer

A 3-week vacation started at the beginning of September – during which, for various reasons, we didn’t go anywhere unfortunately – just ended and we both started working again and we both got swamped with stuff which backed up during our leave. I guess now we could use a real vacation where we could get away and relax for a bit ;-) Well, maybe in the Christmas vacation or next year.

After a period of colder weather, it got surprisingly nice outside and we have now what they call Indian Summer. It’s very nice outside, no clouds, blue sky and temperatures above 23 degrees. A bit of mini summer at the end of autumn. Bit foggy and chilly in the mornings but after that quite nice. It’s supposed to last until at least end of next week or so. So today we got out and we went to two Flee markets, one in Esslingen and one in Stuttgart.

Freya is a big fan of flee markets. I was slightly skeptic at first (didn’t really go to flee markets before I met her) but I have to admit that among the impressive  quantity of junk she did manage to find quite a lot of nice things. Or things she restored and made them look a lot better than simply nice. Like the table below, for example. For the table itself we drove all the way to Frankfurt but the 4 chairs we got cheap from one of the local flee markets:

After putting quite a lot of work in it, now it looks like this and it replaced our living room table:

It’s actually a heavy wood old english table and the whole set, nicely fixed as it is now, would sell for quite a bit should we want to. Which is not gonna happen, we like it and it’s gonna stay in the living room.

Unfortunately we didn’t find anything at the flee market in Esslingen and not much at the one in Stuttgart. But at least it was really nice outside and afterwards we lamed around a little bit in Stuttgart. Made pictures too:

The perfect coffe cup (I think …)

Some two years ago I was debating the finer points of those coffee cups you can take out with you. At the time four cups were tested and we found all of them … lacking. Over those two years the quest continued and recently we found another one:

We bought it from Tchibo and it’s supposed to be a designer cup, made by some dude I have never heard of. That’s not so important, the important part is that it works. It’s solid, keeps the coffee warm for a long time, easy to drink from and you can close it via a button push. So far it has no problem with the dishwasher, it does not leak or anything. The only “disadvantage” is that it’s bright green but that’s the only color we could find at the time.

Another slightly annoying thing is that the cup itself does not fit perfectly in the car’s cup holder but that’s not the cup’s fault so I’ll let that pass. Overall, good stuff. Maybe our quest is finally over!

Around a lake

Electronic cigarettes

In case you don’t know, cigarettes in Germany are not cheap. After the last price increase some time ago a pack of cigarettes can now be bought for 5 Euros which is not so little if the resident smoker needs around one carton per week. So we started looking at alternatives.

It turns out there almost no vendors at all in Germany which sell those electronic cigarettes, those that do don’t have good ratings. Eventually we settled for a new British company which sells a product call SkyCig. So we ordered the starter kit. The idea was to see what they are like, if they are reliable, how they taste and, quite important too, if overall they are cheaper than normal cigarettes.

The cigarette itself is made up of the battery (which you can charge), a refill which basically represents the cigarette’s butt and contains the nicotine in pure form (i.e. without all the bad substances present in a real cigarette) and a vaporizer which heats up the liquid nicotine and produces the vapor. They also sell what they call a cartomizer, which is the refill and the vaporizer in one unit which screws in turn to the battery. It ends up cheaper per puff and you just throw it away when it’s finished.

The pack can hold couple of refills and also acts as a charger for the batteries. Once itself is charged, it can charge up to 4 cigarettes. We also bought two of those USB chargers which can charge individual cigarettes, bit more convenience.

You can get the refills in various flavors and they taste not bad at all. While you drag, the tip of the cigarette lights up orange and it also produces a smoke-like vapor which looks very much like the real thing. The difference is that it dissipates very quick, smells good and doesn’t stain your walls, clothes, teeth.

Since it’s not a real cigarette it can potentially be used in places where normal smoking is banned. Which is all over the place in Germany.

We’re still in the testing phase but the results so far are quite promising. From one carton or more per week, our resident smoker came down to only 2 packs per week. Price-wise we are definitely cheaper, can’t say for sure yet but from what I can tell so far at least 50%, if not more. The goal is to stop smoking the real cigarettes but that will come gradually.

The whole electronic cigarette thing is rather new and most countries don’t know what to make of it. There no specific laws about it, or nothing consistent anyway. In some EU countries it’s apparently illegal to buy pure nicotine without a doctor’s prescription, in others it’s ok. We’ll see how it goes.

CoolerMaster

Last week, all of a sudden, my power supply just died. Since it was kinda built-in into the case, I decided to replace both and get something better quality which while not as cheap, should last longer:

Not dead

I am not dead, still alive and kicking even though I let the blog be for the past couple of months. Not sure how many people look here from time to time (if any) but I plan to revive the blog and keep up posting. I even took time today and updated WordPress from the ancient version I was running.

This year the stupid 5-day festival I was talking about last year took place again in our town but this time we were prepared: we took vacation days. We went for a week to Romania, this time by plane so we won’t waste 4 days just driving. We left right in the morning when the great event started and came back one week later.

The vacation itself was nice although a bit too hot, I don’t think there was a single day with temperatures below 32C or so. We spent 2 days in Bucharest, another 2 at Paraul Rece and then 4 days in a tiny village somewhere in the neighborhood of Buzau. On our way back from there we stopped for couple of hours in Brasov so Freya had  a chance to see the the city center and bit around.

We flew with German Wings, a local “low-cost” company. I say “low-cost” because, while cheaper than a normal airline, it’s still not so low after you add all kind of things, like extra suitcases and so on. We also had the dubious privilege of landing and taking off from Baneasa Airport, which still seems ancient and out of last century.

Eventually we came back to lovely Germany where we were promptly welcomed with 18C temperatures and gray weather.  And then we started work so things are back to normal :)

Hohenzollern

Really nice weather today so we took a trip to visit the castle of Hohenzollern. The castle is situated some 50km south of Stuttgart and it’s considered the ancestral seat of the Hohenzollern family, which eventually become german emperors. It’s interesting to note that one of the first kings of Romania, Carol I (or Charles I) was a Hohenzollern. Small world, eh ?

I took pictures, of course :)