It’s that time of year again. No more beer for me for the next 5 weeks; just hot wine with cinnamon and rum.
Our internet is fixed so now our hot water system is broken, which is good considering that we are coming into winter and the hot water system also controls our heating. This is going to cause a major problem for Alex, but not for me, as I will be filled with… hot wine!
I would have logged in and made my own post but the computer in the hotel in Nice has not enabled cookies, making word-press inaccessible; so i will just hijack Alex’s post.
I just discovered Word is also unavailable, rendering me without a spell check…unless I use my web-mail…success. Now no one need be subjected to my atrocious spelling.
I am back in Nice after out three hour jaunt out to Monaco and back. Compared to many cities I have visited, Monaco is very clean and the wealth is evident in the European muscle cars and the 60 meter long yachts.
I went with my mate Colin and after a short stint of being lost, managed to make it down to the harbour which is very impressive. We walked most of the Formula One circuit and bought some souvenirs in the tunnel the cars are always shown racing through.
Monaco and Monte Carlo are very beautiful,
but in the short time we were there, I felt we had the place pretty well scoped out and really don’t feel the need to return again.
Nice on the other hand I would definitely return to. The place is beautiful, but not in the perfectly manicured Monacan way; more a ramshackle elegance; the city equivalent of a faded southern belle.
The nouveau Beaujolais was released the day we arrived and so we got to sample it in its primal form; a description I think the wine makers would shun. But they do talk about it being young and requiring cellaring before it acquires the qualities it is famous for.
The conference has been an mix of interesting, relevant seminars and jargonistic exercises in boredom . I have attended some dynamic sessions that were quite motivational. I have also attended some that were the standard fare, with some of the lingo changed to make it sound new.
A group of us are going to the Gallery in an hour or so to check out the collection of impressionist paintings. It will be interesting to see such art without Alex by my side becoming angrier the further the works progress toward the contemporary era.
Warning: You all know that I’m a bit of a leftie, so here’s something for you to think about.
These days, most people tend to think that feminism is a bit of a thing of the past or only something thing for extreme lefties/commies/lesbians etc.
Now keep this in mind when you have a look at this interesting list of the automatic privileges society bestows upon you as a man. Now I would never actually want to be a man, but this is a long list and I can’t really think of many privileges of being a woman (except having babies, which has lots of associated disadvantages too)*.
I would like to see a day when this kind of list can’t be written. I would also like to see a day when being of a certain race or sexual orientation etc doesn’t bestow privileges automatically on a person. We should all start out on a level playing field. Maybe then I could agree with people who disagree with the welfare system and other things which try to help those which are disadvantaged from square one.
*Nonetheless, I will still probably choose to “sacrifice” my (non-existent) career to have children. This is my choice and it seems the logical choice to me (another reason I wouldn’t choose to be a man). The question is: is it really a choice? Or have we been manipulated into thinking that we have a choice when we really don’t. Many women feel guilty or like they’re missing out on something which ever way they ‘choose’ to go.
I was fortunate enough to get a ticket to watch Schalke play on Thursday. It was a good game and they beat Borussia Mönchengladbach 2-0. The pain in the arse was missing the 10:30 train by 1 minute and having to wait half an hour for the next one, but there was compensation in the form of a sausage vendor outside the train station.
I am no longer a beard with an idiot attached; I shaved off the beard for a fancy dress party… I wonder what that makes me now. Anyway, our friend Kelsey turned 26 on the weekend and organised a big 80s party in what from the outside seemed to be an abandoned building. Inside however it was clear that it was definitely abandoned by Deutsche Bahn, only to be reclaimed by a party entrepreneur to be hired out on weekends.
I am off to Nice on Thursday at lunchtime to go to an education conference. About 40 of my colleagues are going so it should be a very interesting long weekend. Work pays for my flight and accommodation, so it seems I get an almost free Mediterranean holiday and all I have to do is attend a few seminars. Escaping the weather here in chilly Düsseldorf is a big attraction, although I am probably setting myself up for long term disappointment as it is going to get much worse here; probably in time for my return.
Dan has left just yesterday, bringing a long and almost steady stream of visitors to a close. I don’t think anyone (Jason and Cathy are next I believe) is due to visit until June and then we have to go to Berlin to meet them, but Berlin is great so it will be fun. I suppose we could continue with Alex’s plan of befriending the neighbours, but if you get to like them, you can’t feud with them, which can be very disappointing.
Najim and his sister live in the flat above us and are both in late high school. They are Germans of Moroccan descent and have approached us to give them some English lessons; which really equates to Alex helping them with their homework. They are nice kids and their parents seem equally friendly, but it is only recently that we have had more than a nodding acquaintance on the stairs. Possibly they thought we were snobs when we moved in because we didn’t come around and introduce ourselves to everyone in the building. Oh well.
Halloween (which is weirdly popular in Düsseldorf) got me thinking about pumpkins. They are hard to buy most of the year here, so, since they are readily available leading up to Halloween, I bought one and made a massive quantity (approximately 6 litres) of pumpkin soup. Unfortunately, the only type of pumpkin I could get was the stereotypical ‘Jack o’ Lantern’ type (called a Sugar Pumpkin, I believe) and this just doesn’t live up to the Butternut Pumpkin as far as taste goes (but it does make a nice Jack o’ Lantern, for about 5 minutes before it got killed to make soup).
BUT the most shocking revelation of this Halloween is that the Butternut Pumpkin is not actually a pumpkin!!! According to Wikipedia it is actually a squash! This has really thrown my whole perception of my culinary vocabulary… also turns out that in America they call most pumpkins squash! How strange, especially since I love pumpkin but hate squash, which I see as a the pale flavourless, but somehow also bitter, poor cousin of the zucchini.
Happy belated Halloween to all our American and Canadian friends!
We have a bunch of photos up now for Rome and the Vatican on Flickr.com. I listed them all as public, so if you want to view them, I have the same user name that I have here.
It is no longer really Autumn here, temperature-wise at least. Today’s top temperature will be single figures, which I’m not looking forward to being out in. I was thinking of staying inside, but I need to go and buy some static grass for the miniatures I am basing and then I will have to go and refill my grease gland at ‘Balthasar’ or ‘Ab der Fisch’. So it’s out into the cold for me.
Hopefully tonight we get to go to a cool night club called ‘Pretty Vacant’. Its indie rock like Stone (we mentioned Stone a while ago) but they play more obscure stuff like ‘She wants revenge’.
On the topic of music, Rob sent me a link to an online radio station www.pandora.com It’s pretty good in that you choose a bunch of music you like and it plays them and other songs it thinks are comparable.
I am currently thinking of switching to www.last.fm because it has a far better selection of music, the downside though is that when my internet drops out, the next track will not play.
My internet drops out at least once every hour and stays down for 20 seconds, which is enough to lose my connection with game servers, disrupt downloads and cause general irritation. I wonder if it could be called murder to kill a Deutsche telecom employee? I wonder if these ‘people’ really count as human. Whatever the case, they certainly shouldn’t have rights like the rest of us that are able to tell the truth occasionally.