Ach, Berlin

Well hello everyone, and welcome back to the matt in europe show. As I look back to see when the last time I posted something was, i realize, wow, that was like 5 days ago, I've been busy, eh? I will work forwards from the last time.

We took the bikes out again the next day for a trip to the van Gogh museum, which was really neat. It put everything down chronologically including the time period (other artists) before he started painting, and then his work in order. There were a ton of people there which was hard to get through, but the art was neat. The part that I thought was really cool, was the "colorization" section. He had black and white copies of other artists work, and from those, he created copies, in color, of their work. The differences and similarities of his work to the original, with the only link being black and white was very intriguing. After which, we went to lunch at the hard rock, which was, well, not that great, but still ok. We continued on to biking down the Amstel River, which was beautiful (see pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/98781425@N00/ ). We saw a windmill and cows and such, which was cool, because 15 min prior, we had been deep in Amsterdam, and only left by bike. After this excursion, we hit up the grocery store for a bite, and headed back to turn our bikes in. I might add that we had to sit down very gingerly for a day or so after the biking because our butts were really hurting - like really hurting - we did a lot of biking in Amsterdam. We walked back, and a had a little nap I think, and went out for a bit after making phone calls and reservations for Berlin. If you'll see from the pictures, there was a guy, with a fireball that he kept "juggling" around his body in the square near our hostel. We went out to the bars later that night for a while, till we got tired, and realized we had to get up early the next morning.

The train ride to Berlin went off without a hitch - we got there, (again, too early, just like Toronto - better safe than sorry) and got on the train, and enjoyed the ride there. We almost got off a station too early, but we figured it out before we got off and had to face an unusually long local train system ride. Once again, we got out and said "uhhhhh so now what" when faced with how to get to our hostel, but we found an information booth, and he helped us. We are a little bit farther east than he was familiar with, and so he mapped the location and told us how to use the S-Bahn (surface trains), and the U-Bahn (underground trains) to get to our destination. I think i posted pictures of the station closest to us, Ostkaruz, which reminded me of what nazi germany should look like, but just because of the graffiti, and the overgrownness of the plant life. Our hostel is great though - great people, especially the owner Glenn, who left New Zealand when he was 18, never went back, and somehow ended up in Berlin. Great guy though - owns the hostel, a cafe next door where I've been using the internet, and probably the apartment building upstairs. We met some cool people from california who we went to hang out with that night and talked about such things as the meaning of the word "fickle" to the environmental situation in the united states / the world. Yesterday, we went on a Free Walking Tour which was one of the best tours I've ever been on - they operate solely on tips. Our tour guide was very animated as perhaps you can see from the pictures (he's the guy in the red shirt) and very good at explaining the stuff we saw. The one exhibit you might be wondering about that I took pictures of, was all the different height stones, with the narrow spaces in between. That is the "Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe" (or something similar using the word "Murdered") That was quite the memorial, with quite the name which is intended to use striking language - they don't really want what actually happened to fall by the wayside. Also, we saw the berlin wall, with all the stories that went along with it. Crazy stuff, I'll tell you. After the tour, we walked around a festival (greener earth type thing we think) which featured bands - one of which was a Ska band. They were good, but it was definitely weird hearing ska in german. We proceeded to go to the Reichstad building or the parliament building which is the glass sucker that we took all the pictures on top of. It's an older building that they added the dome to the top later on. The interesting thing about that, is the purpose of the glass dome. In the bottom of the building is where the parliament members all sit. The dome is directly above it. The point is that the people of germany can walk up there and look down on their government to make sure they like what they're doing, because they are all elected officials. Make your government work for you is pretty much the theme there. That night we just kind of hung out with the other people staying at the hostel which included a bunch of guys from california, and boston, and some girls who were on vacation in Berlin from Munich - can you believe they are only 15 and 16? I don't know how things work here, but if I were their parents, I wouldn't let them go stay in a hostel at 15 and 16 years of age - whatever, they were good at speaking english, which they told us was the universal language - "you have to learn english" is what they said. Speaking of languages - it's the general consensus between me and simon that we feel bad that we sort of expect everyone to know english. We love it that they all do though - I mean, the world pretty much takes english as their second or third language, so it works for us, and I suppose for them too because people in other countries also take english, and so now french people and german people can converse if they both took english.

Today we went out to go see the Gugenheim (sp?) museum, which was free today, but was slightly underwhemling. It was just one room with some works in it, but nothing all that special. Oh, and it had a cafe. That's it - I guess it was good that it was free. From there, we continued on to the Pergamonmuseum which houses greek and roman artifacts, statues, parts of statues, and a giant gate they stole (oops, "collected") from Turkey. It was undergoing repairs because they have yet to put it back together after it got nailed by a bomb from WWII. An interesting thing we learned on the tour yesterday was how to date buildings. If the building had bullet holes and shrapnel scars, it was older than the war. If not, and it just looked old, it was just made to look old, and was built after the war. Kind of sad to have to date things with bullet holes, but as you can see from the pictures I took of the side of one building, it's pretty evident that they are there, and everywhere. After the pergamon, we decided our feet hurt too much, and we came back to the hostel after stopping at a street vendor called Check Point Curry, a play on words from the military checkpoint ran by the americans called Checkpoint Charlie. They have very good curryworst, which is sausage, cut up, covered with this kind of sauce and curry, along with fries. Very good. We made some phone calls, booked the Munich hostel, and grabbed a nap. We just had some dinner at the cafe next door - very good chicken curry for me, and a fantastic looking cheeseburger for simon. We'll see what we do tonight, but I'm sure i'm going to be tired fairly early, given that it is 10:15 already, and we have to get up "early" tomorrow to hop on an 10:57 train to munich.

Thanks for reading so much at one time - hope you enjoyed the info.

I love and miss you all so very very much-- thanks for all the support!

From Berlin, in the schlafmeile hostel,
Matt

Never underestimate the amazingness of good water pressure in the shower

5-31-07, 6:54, Amsterdam

Well, what to say about my first day in Amsterdam. We got up, took showers, which didn't have much pressure, to say the least. 3 good streams of water, plus a couple extras that hit the wall at a pretty unnatural angle for a person to get under. Anyway - the soap got out of my hair somehow, although I couldn't help but think I looked like the Seinfield gang when the superintendent put the "water saver shower heads" on all of their showers. "I can't get the soap out jerry!" It was raining a bit today so we had to wear rain stuff a couple of times, but then it got sunny....then it got rainy... then it got sunny...then it got cold...then it got hot... weird city - I guess it's because it's on the water. We rented bikes, which was really great, because we got to go really far in the city without too much effort - we managed not to kill ourselves today, which was a plus, as we followed most of the street rules and such.

We proceeded to the Anne Frank house which was really pretty neat - very sad, but very interesting. They wouldn't allow us to take pictures, so I couldn't get the shots Kristen wanted me to, but I got a few of the outside. You all know the story - very very sad, but very neat to see how they lived there for so long without someone finding them out. Then we went to the Heineken Experience. What a great advertisement for Heineken! I mean, don't get me wrong, it was a great museum and stuff, and the 3 beers included in the price were great too. After that, we went to Vondelpark (with a statue of Vondel in the middle - who knows who he was or what he did, but he was there), and had "dinner" of some sort. We had cheese on bread, with a bottle of wine, which we picked up from the local supermarket, where I also got a few stamps, one of which to mail out to my sister, on a postcard from the Anne Frank house - expect that sometime in the future, Kristen. Maybe we'll have a little more to eat later, but that satiated both of us for the moment, as well as being really picturesque. We walked through the red light district for a little bit today - that was a bit weird, but that's ok - good to see during the day - it was safe with a lof people walking around, and some with their kids, so that made me feel safe. Now we're back at the hostel, which I'll talk about for a moment. We have 3 roommates (I think I messed up when I told you guys that before on the phone, but sorry, I wasn't thinking right about the number of people). Two of which are from Australia (don't know each other), and the third is from Toronto - we haven't seen much of them because they seem like they have their own thing to do (hang out at the hostel all day and party at night), but they're really cool -- gave us some tips on the hostel and such.

I should go now, because 2 of them are trying to sleep, and the typing, while quiet, is not stealthily quiet. I think about everyone all the time - in fact, I was just telling Simon how weird it is to be so far away, just a couple hours prior. Anyway, good afternoon to all of you, and good evening to us.

Love and miss you all,
Matt

Toronto Airport and missing people

Well we're here. Kind of - we're in the beautiful and majestic Toronto Airport diligently awaiting our flight. I wanted to leave a little later than my parents wanted me to, as well as everyone else at the dinner table last night, but I caved, and we're here, a full 4 or so hours ahead of the flight (it's 6:46, and our flight leaves at around 11 or so). Just for the record, the wait for customs was 15 minutes, in case anyone was wondering. We're just kind of sitting here, looking at the duty free store, and listening to the airport news channel showing on the flat panels above our heads. I am missing everyone so much already - this morning was a bit teary to say the least; I guess I'll just leave it at that - teary. These next weeks will be difficult on me and everyone else involved, especially Claire, but I'm confident that we can all make it - we love each other for pete sake! I think I should put this thing away for a bit, seeing as how the wireless is a bit spotty here, but the really good wireless is 10 bucks for a day. I suppose that's not really worth it -- we're stuck in this airport for a long time, but not quite a day. This is going to be so much fun, difficult on me as far as missing people, but so much fun! "We're on Vay-Kay!"

Love and miss you all --
Matt

PS: Our flight (BMI#109 from Hethrow) arrives in the amsterdam airport at 4:45 (local time), 10:45 (rochester time)

PSS: Quick edit before I go, (Edit means I added it later), but simon and I forgot to put tags on our bags, so I'm sure they'll get there alright, but we picked up some luggage tags while we were in the airport.... We got Canadian Flag luggage tags - no use risking the anti-american sentiment, right?

Analogy

"Bloggers are to journalists as journalists are to bloggers."
-Matt Mendick

Senseiteki: <---- I5 4 G14N7 D0rk

So, I didn't have anything to do tonight, so I decided to fix this computer that I have to do at some point for this lady. Piece of crap computer, windows 98 se, and it doesn't even do that well, but that's another story.

So while I was waiting for the computer to do it's shit, I decided to call the geek squad, pretending to be some guy who had a really slow computer, and wanted his laptop hooked up to a wireless network, and he doesn't own the router.

Anyway, so I call, they ask me hundreds questions, and she said that in order for them to come out and get all the crap off my computer, it would be 249. Basically, that price is figured out by including the "drive fee" of 129 for them to come out to my place. But, she tried to make me feel better by saying that it is guaranteed for 30 days, so if anything goes wrong, they'll come out again. I told her I heard of "these guys" who will come out to my house too, fix all my shit, and they also guarantee their work for 30 days. They charge 59 dollars. Want to wager a guess who "these guys" are ;) Anyway, she really didn't have an answer for me why the price difference is so much. I guess I don't know either - it's just exorbitant! (i think i used that right - go go dictionary.com)

So I asked how much it would be to have the wireless network installed - she said 149, including the "two computers." That doesn't include the router, so I said "how much is that?"
She says: "Well, you have to buy that yourself."
Matt: "Aren't you people from Best Buy?"
Geek: "Yes, but you still have to buy it yourself."
Matt: "Can't they just pick one up at the store on the way out?"
Geek: "Well, you can come to Best Buy and have them show you which one you need to buy."
Matt: "But if I was going all the way to Best Buy in the first place, shouldn't I just bring in my computer and avoid the 129 dollar drive fee?"
Geek: "I guess you could do that."

I just don't get it. It's kinda like AOL - they're taking advantage of people who don't know any better. I hate that.





this has been a paid advertisement for My Computer Guy - This blogger does not necessarily (but I do) agree with the product being advertised herein.

www.mcguy.com

;)

Jerry Seinfeld

So what's the deal with oversized toilet paper rolls anyway? Are the American People that lazy that they can't even imagine having to store more than one roll of toilet paper next to the commode? The manufactures of this stuff are so hooked on making the roll double the size of a regular roll, or triple the size, or quadruple the size (and extremely soft, which bugs the crap out of me, by the way), that they have even added, in specially marked packages of giant-humungo sized toilet paper, a toilet paper roll dispense extender that makes your normal toilet paper roll housing fit their giant abomination of a paper product.

What's the deal with that?

Oh, time to sing:

"happy 100 postings to you, happy 100 postings to you, happy 100 postings dear Thoughts and Ramblings (mostly ramblings), happy birthday to you"

Maczot again!

SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys
BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com



MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software

This is pretty cool - they give .05 for each blog entry that mentions this stuff, and then so you can download it for free! freaking A mannn

99.99999 of you won't give a shit, sorry guys


-matt

Napping

Scene:
Sitting in posvar hall, next to a recently finished turkey sangwich, cup of sierra mist, and a bag of original lays potato chips (there is no replacement for the original, I have recently rediscovered, although, I will undoubtedly continue to buy the baked version when available), there is a guy, in a chair, passed the fuck out. Sitting there in his "a little too tight shirt to be comfortable" (oops, I was in a rush this morning), and his shorts with no cargo pockets (which are nice sometimes not to have that extra material around), and his head balance delicately on the plam of his (due to lack of bloodflow) now asleep arm, is itself, asleep. Man, that feels soo good.

I'm writing to tell you that I really like something about myself - my ability to fall asleep damn near anywhere, the noisier the better, actually, as long as the noise is constant, and random. Don't get me wrong, silence works too (usually better for long-term sleep), but noise is nice for a nap. Of course, as Claire can tell you, napping gets me in trouble sometimes, especially more recently. I've been taking them more often, right around class time, and when she sees my screename doesn't go back to that soothing "a-person-has-touched-that computer-in-less-than-10 min" yellow, she knows something's up. She gives me a polite but stern, "Matt, did you fall asleep?" "yes..." "OK, well, I think you have class in 8 minutes... maybe you'd better go ;)" The one napping event that I've been trying to master, is napping at work. Usuaually I'll get an hour for a lunch break in the afternoon at Public Abstract, and sometimes, on nights that I returned home at around 4 AM from being out doing absolutely nothing (which is amazing, I might add :) ), the day after has been primed for the taking for a lunch-hour nap. I try to do it at a bench in the "lobby" which is better than actually in the office, and sometimes my co-workers see me out there, and laugh and joke about it later in the day. But, perhaps this summer I will take the holy grail of napping - doing it inside the office. And I'm not just talking about desk napping, or even napping while standing in line at the clerk's office (which cannot be done by the way, I'm convinced standing and sleeping is physically impossible -- after much effort trying, don't you worry about that), I'm talking about all out, on-the-floor-with-your-coat-as-a-pillow-napping, which I witnessed my co-worker Keith do once. He said after getting up, "man, I really, Really, needed that." That's what I want. That is great. That is, the best nap ever.

macZOT?

Yeah! macZOT - sounds like pretty cool stuff. better get me some macZOT when i get a mac

http://maczot.com/

check it out

machines with brains?

Short and sweet:

I went to buy a candybar during the break between halves of a night class. I had a hankoring for a bag of reeses pieces, so I inserted my dollar, and pushed E6 - 85 cent item. It said "make another selection" - wtf. Why, on earth, do I need to make another selection. Ok, maybe it doesn't have 15 cents to give me back. But I try another one - Giant Ass Kit Kat - E8 - 85 cent item. It said, sure thing buddy, here ya go. What's up with that? Maybe it knows how many of each item there are in there, and it has some sort of ulterior motive to sell equal amounts of each candy bar or bag of chips, so that the machine looks more full, more of the time. Maybe it's just totally fucked in the "head." Maybe it sized me up, said "hm, a big ass kit kat has less calories in it than the bag of reeses pieces, so maybe I should do it a favor and give him something that'll help his waistline."

Or it's a glitch. Whatever, you decide. I like to the last idea, personally.