Kobe: International Relations Textbook Fun

So, I've decided to take international relations this semester. Turns out it is quite a bit harder than I expected it to be. The book itself does not pose too much of a problem, because I can look things up, but listening for 90 minutes to a teacher trying to explain realism and other political-philosophical concepts is not that easy. Luckily, there is no final exam, just a single report. Good times...

Kyoto: Billy's Bar

Japan always appears clean because there's always someone that will clean up right after somebody made a mess. In bars, clubs and other estalishments you can see that Japan is just as dirty as other countries. And the Japanese, too, forget to flush when they are done it seems:

Kobe: McDonald's

The McDonald's near my dorm is amazingly well lit. I only ate there twice so far, since I really, really don't like McD's food. Today I went again, just to take some pictures.

Beat the Devil

This time on Art and Sausages: Beat the Devil. An interesting short film with an interesting cast. James Brown? Yeah, he's alright. Clive Owen? I like him. Gary Oldman? Awesome! And as a special bonus Marilyn Manson just to top it off.

Heal me!

I'm currently a bit ill. Fever and a cough. Great stuff and so much fun! You should try to catch it too.

I heard Vitamin C is good for your health:

Kobe: Rough Rare (Club)

So, yesterday I went out around Sannomiya. Well, probably shouldn't have with my broken foot and all, but I was just too damn bored to be staying in my room on a Saturday evening. So after scouring around for a while and getting slightly pissed in two bars, we decided to go to a club called 'Rough Rare'.

As an indie/alternative fan, I found the mix of Japanese rock-ish music and Coldplay, The Killers, etc. quite nice. I tried to request Linda Linda by The Blue Hearts, but they either didn't hear or deliberately ignored my wish. Ah well... The club itself stretches over three floors. Each floor has it's own DJ and dancefloor which makes it quite easy to escape crappy music by just going up or down a floor. One thing I especially liked about Rough Rare were the drinks. They weren't that special, but when you use your best sad puppy-eyes-look on the barmaid she'll make them double.


The Blue Hearts - Linda Linda

Kobe: Yeah, right!

If you ever thought about getting somebody a really ridiculous and heavily overpriced present, why not consider a telephone-shaped bag for just over 3000 €?

Kyoto: It's been a while

I can still remember
When your city smelt exciting
I still get a whiff
Of that aroma now and then

(The Last Shadow Puppets - Calm Like You)

Still alive

This is just a short post to tell everyone that Yes!, I am still alive. Since I will have internet in my dorm supposably from Friday on, I`ll upload some pictures and some more interesting news then.

Goodbye

Well then, tomorrow is (finally?) the day I will fly to Japan. I cannot say I am terribly excited, nor am I really that happy I am going yet again. However, hopefully this time will be more interesting, easier to survive and more exciting than last time.

One of the reasons I did not enjoy Japan the last time is that I was expecting something which it turned out not to be. Accepting one's dreams and hopes were maybe severly misguided isn't quite easy to accept, but - しょうがない - it can't be helped.

There are some things I do look forward to do in Japan, though: Meeting my old friends I had to leave behind last time, going to sentou, Japanese cuisine...

Well then, let's not look back. Japan!, here I come!

Berlin: Never Forget

German history has seen a lot of ups and downs, but probably no one period has had such a profound and horrific impact as the extermination of the Jews under the Third Reich. Every once in a while there is much discussion in Germany about how responsible the current (i.e. my) generation is for the terrible actions of our ancestors. This discussion essentially misses the point. It does not really matter, whether we - the Germans - did it or we - each individual - did it. The Holocaust is a part of German history, our history, my history. Of course it is necessary to find the last war criminals alive and put them to justice. However, the current generation of Germans' responsibility is never to forget what we have caused. We have killed six million people because we regarded them as inferior, as tainting our blood. Six million innocent people. It must never happen again!

The Berlin Holocaust Memorial is a place to remember what happened. The field is made of 2,711 concrete stelae, which seem like graves. None of them is completely straight and the walkways inbetween are sloped up and down, which makes walking inbetween them genuinely confusing and disorienting. It is worth going with a friend to see how easily you lose each other inbetween blocks. Looking up you can see the sky being obscured by the slightly tilted blocks. It is a depressing sight and rightly so.

Walking through the field, you will eventually come to the museum, which is located underneath the field itself. Some of my previous entries have shown pictures of the inside of the museum and the horrible pieces of information it holds. The Room of Names is the one installation that stuck with me the most. It is a dark room with a couple of white blocks to sit on in the middle. Projectors show a name, year of birth and year of death on all four walls. Then a short biography for that person is read in German and in English.

Zvi-Otto Schuster
1933 - 1942

Zvi-Otto Schuster was born on April 4, 1933 in Rosenberg, a small town in the North of Slovakia. He began school just when Slovakia had become a sovereign country and started to disown and prosecute the Jewish population. From 1940 on Zvi was not allowed to go to school any more, like all other Jewish children. In June 1942 the Slovakian authorities deported him and his mother to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where the SS suffocated him with the poison gas Cyclon B. Zvi-Otto Schuster was nine years old.

Jakow Ajzensztadt
1927 - 1942

Jakow Ajzensztadt was born in Warsaw. Together with his younger sister he grew up in the Polish capital. In September 1939 the German Wehrmacht invaded the city. In 1940 the 13 year-old Jakow and his family were forced to move to the Ghetto with all other Warsaw Jews. They were deported to the extermination camp Treblinka in 1942. Except for Jakows Sister, the whole family was poisoned with exhaust fumes by the SS. Jakow Ajzensztadt was 15 years old.

Source: Berlin Holocaust Memorial, Room of Names, my translation)

Adam Buxton: Sausages

Today on Art and Sausages:

Berlin: Childhood

31 July 1942
Dear father! I am saying goodbye to you before I die. We would so love to live, but they won't let us and we will die. I am so scared of this death, because the small children are thrown alive into the pit. Goodbye forever. I kiss you tenderly.
Your J.

(Source: Holocaust Memorial Museum, Berlin. Copy by Soviet soldier. Original missing. Written by 12 year old Judith Wischnjatskaja.)

An: Kurt Beck, SPD-Problembär

Lieber Kurt,

leider musste ich kürzlich durch die ach so gemeine deutsche 'Presse' erfahren, dass man Dich entmachtet hat. Was für ein Eklat! Eine hundsgemeine Intrige war das! Ein Komplott! Hinter deinem Rücken ohne Skrupel geschmiedet. Man hat Dich ja - ohne Vorwarnung oder ohne jemals wirklich offen konstruktive Kritik an Deiner Person zu üben - hinterrücks erdolcht.

Nun möchte ich Dir natürlich nicht nur mein Empören über dieses wirklich unverschämte Vorgehen deiner Parteigenossen mitteilen, sondern Dir auch ein wenig Mut für die Zukunft machen. Auch wenn sich die deutsche Wirtschaft langsam der Stagnation oder eventuell sogar der Rezession nähert, so sehe ich für Dich keinen Grund zur Sorge. Ich bin mir sicher, dass du alsbald einen neuen Job finden wirst, falls Du Dich rasierst, einen neuen Anzug kaufst und ein bis zwei hundert Pfund abspeckst.

Alles Gute und viel Glück für Dein weiteres Arbeitsleben.

Viele liebe Grüße,
Dein eggsnbacon

Awesomeness...

Kim Jong-Il about his father Kim Il-Sung on the website of the embassy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in Berlin:

"Our leader is indeed the greatest leader of the working class. He personified unusual intelligence, outstanding leadership and lofty communist virtues, which nobody has ever possessed, and opened up and shone modern history with his profound revolutionary theories and great revolutionary practice. He is a benevolent father of the people, who brilliantly covered the whole distance of the prolonged revolutionary struggle with boundless devotion to the revolutionary cause and with warm love for the people."

Terrible News

Something horrible has happened at work today - MURDER! I am still shaking as I was the first to discover the slashed remains of my dear friends. The urinal cakes had been viciously attacked - possibly from behind - and had suffered fatal wounds. Their green blood...splattered all over the urinal! When I came to pee on them, I found them in their last death throes...I tried to resuscitate, but it was too late. 'Avenge our deaths' was the last thing they whispered before fading away into oblivion...

Treasure

Every Sunday there is a flea market here in Koszalin right around where I live. Besides some shops selling regular goods, it is mainly a place for people to sell their useless junk.

Although it might be garbage to some, it can still be awesome stuff to me. Scavenging through loads of old computer hardware, video tapes, power supply adapters and giant cable balls, I unearthed myself a little treasure: A Canon Canonet Junior camera, built in 1963. Except for some discoloring of the top plastic and a non-working selenium electric meter, it is in a good condition. It still needs some cleaning, but I am convinced that it will work just fine for some experimenting. Quite an amazing find!

Even more to my surprise I noticed there was still a film inside. I rewound it when I got home. As soon as I am back in Germany, I will get the film developed. How old is that film? Does anybody know when AGFA-Gavaert produced CNS2 135-36 (ASA 60) film?

Sanctimonious

As I had been ill last week, I was not able to go to Gdansk. This weekend I caught up with my plans and spent a day in the old part of the city with a friend.

Gdansk is definitely a nice town - old buildings, relaxed atmosphere and around this time of year the number of tourists is diminishing. Nonetheless, there were many tourists - in particular elderly Germans - who loved the guided tours. One of the tour guides we passed by sounded very familiar. I listened in for a second and, yes, he did sound a bit like Hitler doing one of his infamous speeches...

A favorite of mine was St. Mary's Cathedral in the heart of the city. Although the white painted interior was not to my liking, it had some impressive art work and a beautiful organ. However, putting all that energy and money into 'a house of God' seems very stupid to me. Couldn't that money have served better purposes? Couldn't the church have helped the poor? The church remains one of the richest institutions in the world and in the middle ages, when the Cathedral was built, it also must have had an almost unconceivable amount of wealth. So why waste it on the glorification of God, if God is supposably so just and merciful and good and helpful? This is probably one of the reasons I never really got Christianity or religion in general.

We were starving when we arrived in Gdansk, so we hurried down to the old town and looked for some touristy restaurant. We ended up in some small bistro near the Cathedral. It wasn't too bad, but I would recommend searching a bit longer for a nicer restaurant if you have enough time.

On another note, the trains here in Poland are somewhat uncomfortable and make my ass hurt...

Military Idiocy

About 2 months back - shortly after I had arrived in Poland - the local AIESEC chapter invited me to a military parade in a town called Darlowo. Boy was I in for a surprise.

Walking to the city center I quickly realized this wasn't really an army organized parade, rather it was a bunch of amateurs who - dressed up in army uniforms and all kind of medals - paraded their gear and vehicles around.

The first 30 minutes or so were quite enjoyable and fun, but then I saw the first guys in Nazi SS uniforms. Swastikas and Totenkopf symbols everywhere. I was quite shocked. Why anybody would want to look like a mass-murdering bastard is beyond my imagination. Also, it is quite illegal to sport these symbols of destruction and genocide in Germany and I have therefore not seen these symbols around - except in movies, theater plays and other art which normally serves as a reminder of the terror and bloodshed we have caused.

There were Polish Nazis, German Nazis, hell knows where else they came from. On every corner was a Nazi. Nazi symbols and uniforms were on sale everywhere. It was despicable...

Work: five days left

Yesterday, I mentioned the greatness of my company's urinal cakes. Although these are clearly the highlight of my daily work routine, there is one more thing that gets me excited: our coffee machine.

We have an Astoria coffee machine which makes delicious coffee from real ground beans. Since I had been stomach sick last week, I stayed away from coffee for a while, but before that blow of fate I enjoyed a fresh, nice smelling cup of coffee, espresso or latte macchiato every morning. Perfect to turn the zombie-me into loyal, obedient worker-me. I've added a new entry to my things-I-have-to-do-before-I-die-list: 'Buy a high-quality coffee machine for your everyday oral pleasure.'

Work

In my last post about Poland I mentioned I have been living in Koszalin for the past 2 1/2 months. Of course, I've not just traveled around, but most of my time I spent at work. Not just any work, no!, the most mind-numbing and idiotic work I've had the pleasure to do so far in my life.

There is not much (positive) to say about my company, but as you can see the employees (including me) like to pee on the urinal cakes, melt them to giv 'em weird shapes. If it weren't for the urinal I would've lost my mind already a long time ago. Thank god, it's only six more days until my contract expires. Well, sometimes you just have to fight through the shit yourself, 'til the bitter end...

Ahoi Polloi

It's time for Art and Sausages. The internets - this array of tubes - are full of art-filled blogs. I would like to introduce some personal favorites in this category.

Let's start off with ahoi polloi (German only). Hoi Polloi posts an interesting sketch from her (or his?) notebooks every day. These cartoons are usually commentaries on some political or social news of the day and most of them are witty yet subtle. I especially enjoy ahoi polloi's political incorrectness, something that is not seen often enough these days. If you speak German you should definitely take a look.

Mielno

Although I have been living in Koszalin for the last 2 1/2 months, this is my first entry about Poland.

Koszalin is great in one respect: It is close to the seaside and when the weather permits it, my roommates and I hop on a bus and go to the beach. Recently it has been quite cold and sometimes rainy, but even though the water might be too cold to swim, it is nonetheless enjoyable to sit on the beach or go for stroll alongside the sea.

The water itself is quite cold - it was even cold when it was still summer here and quite nice and sunny. I was told the Baltic Sea is generally quite cold, but 14-16°C is freezing.

The reason why I enjoy the beach so much is probably that I have never lived close to a sea or ocean. People here in Koszalin just see it as something normal, something that is there whenever they feel like going. However, for me this is exciting, I love the sea, the sound the waves make, the seagulls, the sand and the smell of the air. To be honest, it would probably be hard to enjoy Koszalin - a city which is basically void of any entertainment and feels 'dead' most of the time - without the ability to be at the beach in less than half an hour.

Hawaii Chair

Well, now, this is a fantastic invention. You can work out without getting out of your chair. Plus people using the Hawaii Chair look so goddamn sexy! There's nothing greater than sexy, lazy ass workouts.

I wonder if there's a Hawaii Chair fetish porn site...

Here's a Hawaii Chair bonus. O' the humanity

God's Cool Designs

Mostly unbeknownst to us Europeans a controversy over evolution has erupted in the beautiful land of unlimited possibilities, the US. Some people believe that since God supposably created everything, evolution must be wrong and some go as far as calling science evil. The so-called creationists' arguments are terribly flawed, illogical and most of the time downright dumb.

One term that one comes across over and over and over is 'Darwinism' which is strictly speaking more a philosophical concept than a biological one. Such a misnomer might be only a minor problem, but it has probably been chosen deliberately to remind people of Social Darwinism, the notion that some humans are superior to others and therefore allowed or even entitled to eridicate any inferior ones. Obviously, Social Darwinism is negatively connotated and the creationists might hope this negative meaning will 'rub off' on evolution.

Another major problem is that most creationists are not equipped with a proper biological or even any scientific background and/or show unbelievable short-comings in the fields they are trying to dispute or promote. Some of the creationists' 'scientific' arguments are so blatantly and obviously wrong that it is hard to know whether these people are actually or just willingly ignorant. Creationists often state the unfalsafiability of God must be compelling evidence that God exists. It is not hard to show that this argument is flawed in the scientific sense as in science and the scientific community anything that is not (yet) proven to exist must be assumed to not exist.

More next Sunday; now enjoy Edward Current's beautifully satirical video.

R2D2 Multimedia Station

Now that's something. At a price of €2799 ($4320) it's a bargain.

Source: http://www.nikkor2d2.com/

Nikon D40

A couple of days ago I treated myself to something special and bought a Nikon D40 and a 18-55mm lens.

It's very nice and I've been playing around with it a bit lately. It has been a long time since I held a SLR in my hands and it's the first digital SLR I own. Hopefully, there will be time this or next weekend to go out and take some nice pictures. Since I have not yet really visited Peak District, this might be a nice opportunity.

I had a meeting with the brewery yesterday and was lucky enough to enjoy a nice, soft sunset so I just pointed and shot one picture randomly over the river.

BA's Heathrow T5 MMO beta test fails miserably. Ten thousands of inventories lost.