madhatter’s coffee.

… are a the most ingenious atavism the the human race still inherits. Especially when it’s raining cats and dogs, and me forgot his umbrella.

I love to go boar hunting. I love they way they grunt and pose with their tusks. I love the significance family has for them and how fiercely they protect their kin from any intruder. The way they charge and the  intimidation combination of power and rage they wield on you.

As long as I play an MMORG.

Now they like my compost and I can’t say I would agree. And it is a bit frightening to get woken up by the grunts of quite a numerous horde of boars which obviously find the remnants of my meals far more interesting than I usually do. And don’t ask me how they made it through two other gardens and across the road at 7 am. There’s some serious traffic on that bloody road at seven in the morning – and I counted six boars without the need to sniff at their trails… the way they wandered off into the woods when they heard me coming can only be described as the ultimate form of Gemutlichkeit.

And if there is one thing I have a greater dislike for than boars, then in is boars that practise Gemutlichkeit. Uncooked.

Right. I’m back in Berlin. This could be a wonderful line if the town I had to leave wasn’t Edinburgh. Not that Edinburgh compares to Berlin in any way, but even then – you leave a lot behind. It might not be the ultimate insight, but one year does not only mark you with all those nice wrinkles that make a middle aged man attractive – you leave marks somewhere as well. And since everything man produces he also seems to see as a sort of possession, I definitely lost some stuff.

(And that doesn’t include the 12-year old whisky bottle those bastards took from me at the check-in. I’d forgotten that one litre of schnaps is definitely more than the 50-something mililitres of liquid you’re allowed to take through the controls. (OK, – since this seems to become a longer story, i’m going to start a new paragraph.)
A n d  I find it ridiculous that just after the controls you’re free to buy another bottle. Unfortunately not one that was as good as the one I just got robbed of. I’m sure this bloody security guy just took it because he knew what he held in his hands. Bloody Scots. And sure, how would a duty-free area survive without a security that confiscates every ounce of alcohol before you enter it.
Excuse me. That had to be said. Stream of consciousness it is, isn’t it?)

Anyways… you leave a lot behind. Apart from so obvious things as friends and my Baby … I left home, for example, once again (this seems to develop into my most favorite subject) and the feeling of belonging somewhere. Security also, because suddenly you have to readjust everything – which is language in my case as well – and the side of the street.

You win: a new life.

Feeling new-economy-like is something that should be old fashioned by now. But who knows, probably I’m going to become old fashioned [grin.] Anyways, I feel quite like one of these new economy guys, sitting here in Starbucks, with my oh-so-smart MacBook and just opposite the Apple store while I nuzzle an espresso and wait for my digital prints to be developed. That’s something you normally might read somewhere at felix‘. Now I sit here and the funny thing is that it continues to feel unreal while I’m experiencing it.

And the view is quite stunning, to be honest.

Probably it’s because normally one doesn’t really put himself into the position of his admired idols and if you finally succeeded in doing so, it does not mean, that you’re going to feel comfortable. In fact I feel quite awkward although I really enjoy the fastness of the broadband connection and the soft background humming of the Buena Vista Social Club CD. It’s just so… artificial.

Which reminds of what I read over at Winkelsen’s: Kopien sucken big time.

Things I never understood. Manhuggers. Treehuggers, aye, hugging trees makes sense. It’s a good practice for climbing up when the raging panda is after you – but hugging men? Well, there is something definitely about hugging female men, that is ahm… well, anyways: I got hugged. By a man. One of those ‘free-hugs-men’. It was fun and sweaty.

More sweaty business: The Free Hugs Campaign

Blogged with Flock

Illustration by jaqian

Everybody has a weak point. A point that other persons ought better not to cross. A point were one gets angry. I, for example, don’t like to be fucked over.

Not that Iris did. Well, I guess she didn’t really intended to. Or I still try to stick to that belief. It’s gets harder after what happened, I admit it. She basically took my rent – twohundredandthirty quid – and my deposit – another twohundredandninety quid – and run away with it. I’ve been told that Bristol is a very expensive place and I am certainly overpaid regarding that I only work twelve hours a week. But I’m still pissed.

But that only turned out when I was already considering the idea of moving out. I’m no angel, I considered moving out long before I mentioned it to anyone. Long before I actually acknowledged it to myself. What would also be a pertinent observation about me is that I am a lazy bastard. Which was more or less the reason why I didn’t care, why I didn’t move out. I had a nice room, I had just moved in, I had a stunning view on the Edinburgh Castle, I simply saw no reason.

So I stayed.

And got fucked over another time. This time it was the agency.

Kingford Estates Ltd. is that sort of company people around here would call a ‘bunch of fuckers’. An interestingly good description if you ask me. What happened unfolds like this: If I wasn’t an angel my flat-mates definitely were devils. Their philosophy was as simple as ineffective. The agency wasn’t very obliged to their duties so they decided to drop their’s. Not smoking in the flat was, as I already mentioned, one of them. And after the agency didn’t really care about the state of their property we stopped to do so, too. How could we have, anyways? With no hover cleaning was definitely out of question. It was cold outside, so we stopped smoking out there. And, what none of us did know: Mario stopped paying the bills. That he spent the money the others gave him for his own purposes if he needed to is another story.

Nevertheless, after a wile and many complaints things started to turn out positive. Or so we thought. We received a letter from the agency telling us that we would be relocated to a hotel for three days in order to complete the final repairs in kitchen and bathroom. Which was a brilliant idea. There was only one problem. The problem was small, had long hair and a German nationality. It was me.
As a subtenant your landlords don’t even know about the amount of tenant’s rights you can claim is ridiculously small. You’re basically homeless. And of course it is a little bit difficult to check into a hotel if you’re supposed to be a) Spanish b) female and c) beautiful. Assumed of course, you don’t match those criteria.
Since I didn’t, I chose the way of making myself official. Being official is something expensive in Scotland. And compared to Germany it is just crazy. In Germany there are no agencies. I’ve been a subtenant for my whole life, I never signed a contract and if I payed I simply handed over some cash.
Well, at least this didn’t change. The amount of cash I payed to Kingsford Estates summed up to exactly onehundredandtwenty British Pound Sterling. For staying exactly one month… but let’s stick to the storyline. At least this made me a rightful tenant, for good measure even a tenant that was internationally credible, since I had to pass a so called international credit check which should prove that I never committed the crime of running away without paying my rent. So far so good.

That nothing was done, when we came back is a different kettle of fish.

to be continued…

…peep… peep… Well, I think I’m more or less back to live. The past two months were a little bit stressful. But no worries, slowly but in time I’ll retell the adventurous story how a naive stranger in this city was robbed, thrown in the gutter and continued fighting with fierce adversaries to emerge as a new hero for a bunch of twelve-year old pupils.

Everything began… when I moved in. Moving into another city is always a risk. The main problem isn’t to find a home or new people to talk to, the problem is to find someone you trust.

I’m easily fooled.

When the innocent teacher moved into a flat with a bunch of Spaniards he made not just one mistake. He mistook the whole situation. Iris, the girl that inhabited the room before I moved in was smart and totally stupid in the same moment. I suppose she mistook the situation as well as I did – the difference between me and her was that she had criminal instinct.
Her error was to trust the Mexicans. And to think that a letting agency should be professional and costumer orientated. The agency’s name was Kingsford Estates Ltd. and the assumptions proved fatally wrong.

Kingford Estates is as far as I experienced professional in doing exactly one thing: sailing very, very close to the wind. But the fact that they did not even know that they had Mexican tenants before my flat-mates moved in really swept me of my feet. This small incident resulted in my flat-mates being accused of causing damage in the flat they weren’t responsible for.

But back to the beginning of this story… Once upon a time my flat-mates moved into a nice flat in Leith, offering a magnificent view to the castle and being hilariously cheap. They head heard about this flat from some Mexicans who wanted to move out and were looking for new tenants who would start a new contract for another twelve months. The landlords seemed to be more or less reasonable and further doubts were resolved by the already mentioned view.
After they moved in they realized the contract they signed had some handicaps. For smokers it can be a small problem to live inside a nonsmoking flat. And then there were all those small damages that the agency had promised to repair. Two months later the small damages were still there and had bred a few siblings. Three months later the flat still missed the repairs and also a hover plus a microwave.

This was the point when the plumbing in the bathroom exploded. I don’t know how it looked like, it was mid August and I was backpacking through Sweden. But if you ever lived in a house where you had your own private waterfall in the kitchen you probably get an idea of the situation. Well, the plumbing was fixed. The damages were… cladded.

So when I moved in everything looked more or less alright. And if you’re desperately looking for a flat you don’t care about a little hole behind the sink or some dark spots at the ceiling. And you definitely don’t ask, if they have a hover. Who for Christ’s sake doesn’t have a hover?
So I moved in, a naive newly-born subtenant, gave my money to Iris who moved out and my deposit as well, because she promised to change the names in the agency. Nice. Everything is settled. Let’s start to live again.

to be continued…

It’s easy to feel at home…. All you need is a bed, some nice people to talk to and a decent coup of coffee. That’s basically everything. Every additional bit is already luxus.

If you miss the people you’ll feel lonely. If you miss a place to sleep you’ll feel outcast. And if you’ll miss the coffee you’ll find that you need something to bridge the moments you don’t know what to do next.

If found a home: the Forest is were my folks are. My flat-sharing community is were my bed stands. And both places serve coffee.

Sometimes I’m really tempted to trust in fate. Finding the Forest was such a moment. I was looking for was a nice internet cafe. What I found is a fluctuating family. Sort of. “The Forest” is a student run cafe that sets up the infrastructure for a whole bunch of projects ranging from darkroom for amateur photographers to the free shop – an institution entitled to make people swapping stuff. They would put it differently, of course:

a volunteer run collectively owned free arts and events space masquerading as a veggie cafe.

But it’s not the stuff you can do at the Forest, it’s the people that are drawn to this place. Open minded, creative, mostly alternative, of all ages and often students. The Forest somehow seems to be a weird but nice mixture of all places that I chose as second homes: a bit of Stuttgart’s Uni-WG, the people resembling the folks I met in the Ping-Pong Bar in Kreuzberg, the Coffee as good as in the Kuenstler Cafe and the veggie-green experience of the Bio-Cafe at the FU.

My flats-sharing community is different, but not less kool. At the moment we are four Spanish and me as the only German teaching them English. And I’m learning Spanish. No, in fact Edu and me created a language learning tandem: from the beginning of October, I’m going to learn Spanish. In exchange Edu’ll get some of the lessons I prepared for my  pupils. And coming home really feels like belonging there. Especially when Victor’s at home. Victor is our chef de la cuisine. And a fucking good one. And when Victor’s at home the main subject we’re talking about is food. Valencian food. And Scotish beef. From Angus cattle.

It’s easy to be at home. All you need is a nice place and a cup of coffee.

T-Mobile has the winning bid. Apple’s iPhone is sold at T-Mobile. Well, in that case the first possible date I’m buying one is somewhere around march 2009… I never really thought o2 would come to the fall of the hammer… but hope dies last.

But that line of thought certainly goes or will go on in many people’s mind. Less people will buy the iPhone because Apple’s strategy of exclusiveness would force them to change their mobile provider. I don’t know how easy it is to change your provider in the U.S. but here it’s a lot of fuss as far as I know. The last time I switched I tried to take my mobile number with me. Confronted with a small pile of formulas I instantly abandoned that thought.

On the other hand: a smaller provider than T-Mobile would have led to an even smaller amount of possible user’s. The iPhone is, as the iPod was, designed for mass-usage. And as the iPod forced Apple to something you could call a open-door policy towards Microsoft (in making iTunes compatible with Win32-Systems), the iPhone has already led to contributions towards the mass market: the iPhone is a combined everything. A little bit like the Nokia-ad: there’s a thing in my pocket – it’s not one, it’s many.

With the iPhone you’re not only be able to phone, surf, e-mail and use GPRS – you’re able to combine those functions. Which is on the one hand a fantastic idea – I personally dreamed years of such a wonder – but on the other hand it’s not a certain promise. The iPod in some ways has become the ultimate audio-player, it even replaced Sony’s Walkman which at a certain point was just another word for ‘portable music-thing’. The iPhone already is one of thousands of smartphones. Maybe it’s the best (which I doubt) and of course it’s an Apple – but the question promptly arises: is an Apple something for everybody?

To cut a long story short: placing the iPhone at T-Mobile in fact may be a user-friendly development. For, although T-Mobile is the worst case for service-fanatics and a horrible threat for all those exotic Mac-Hipsters – it’s the provider with the biggest and best working network and the furthest in building up network supporting UMTS. It’s still written in the stars whether the European version is provided with an additional UMTS-support, but for Apple, whose marketing-campaigners face laments about slow EDGE-connections by now, it would be a relief.

via off the record & DE:BUG & Nerdcore

While reading some René’s more ancient posts I suddenly found myself supplied with new inspiration.

I’m terrorizing this society, too. I’m a barefooter. (uh, I’ll get some additional years in hell for that)

Barefooters are the outcasts of modern society. Not even Hippies are walking around barefooted anymore. On the contrary I knew a crazy student of informatics who went around barefooted when I already thought of putting on my winter collection. For feet. Hippies on the other hand are now part of the general move towards unusually ugly footware.

Somebody tell me: why do have sandals or sandalettes or flip-flops have to be so unbelievably horrible. And why should I pay so unreasonably high prices? The most recent development are monstrous chimeras of shoes I already didn’t like combined with flip-flops. Merged it looks a clubfooted with a prosthesis attached with pink ribbons. Plus a com-plaster styled like a revolutionary rosette. In pink, of course.

And so every time the thermometer creeps over twenty-five degrees shoes are obsolete. For me. And walking barefooted not only gives you a nice provocative spice. I always feel a bit like Robinson Crusoe. Explorer’s are barefooted, aren’t they? At least those who get lost. And exploring the city with your feet slapping over cobblestone (in Kreuzberg), paving slabs (Dahlem) and asphalt (everywhere) is quite an adventure. Especially if you still try to maneuver around little stones. Which you shouldn’t if you don’t want to look like a drunken bear dancing.