New This Week, Part 8

Sorry for the delay, again. Carneval's going on here in the Rheinland, and although I'm not as actively participating as many others, things are a bit out of sync. Today's "Rosenmontag", and although it's not an official holiday, don't even bother showing up at work if your office is here or in Cologne. Nobody's going to be there.

Anyway, let's get to the news.

1. Place: Antenne Düsseldorf Office
On "Altweiber" (Thursday), which is something like a regional holiday, my colleagues and I went to the Antenne Düsseldorf (local radio station) office to say hi and get drunk. We managed both. :)



2. Event: Tuntenlauf on the Königsallee
On Saturday, we went to the "Tuntenlauf" (drag queen run) to Düsseldorf's prime shopping mile, the Königsallee. Several people had told me about this event independantly, so I decided it would be worth going. But I didn't go by myself, no no no. I took Amalia, some friends and even the parents of one of them to come along.

We paid a euro to get in but that's fine because the organizers spend the money on charity work, AIDS-related matters and such.

The event itself was horrible. We stood there in the freezing cold, and the stage program left a lot of room for improvement. Two not very funny fat drag queens bitched about uninteresting topics, made a lot of insider jokes, and the pre-acts were far from great. It took forever for the actual run to start, and when it did, it was, frankly, disappointing.

What was equally hard to take was that the beer shacks were on the other side, with tons of people in between so you couldn't easily go over and get a drink. Also, and only god knows who thought of this, the toilet coaches had been placed outside the fences, and if you went outside to pee, you didn't get back in. Obviously a lot of people peed into the düssel, the little river right there that gave Düsseldorf its name.

Alright, alright. It's nothing in comparison to last weeks, I know. But it's at least something. Be back next week with more. :)

Something New Every Week, Parts 6 and 7

Phew! Sorry for the delay in posting. Just this morning I returned home from a ten-day vacation in the US with my friend whom I will call Anthony here. He had invited me to meet him at his rental condo in Panama City in Florida, so I took some time off and went.

The past two weeks have been so full of new things that they make almost everything look like manure. Both of them brought a lot of fresh air into my life, which is why I will try to keep the chronological order but refrain from separating the weeks from each other. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter whether a certain experience came this week or that.

Let's go.

1. Business Class Flight as Non-Rev on Delta
My flights to and from the US were actually business class flights, and let me tell you, Delta certainly takes good care of their business class passengers. The seats are so spacious that I could actually sleep on my flight back to Germany! What was probably even more exciting, however, was the fact that Anthony had me fly over on a buddy pass, as a non-revenue passenger ("non-rev"). The procedures you follow as a non-rev, always flying stand-by (which means that you may not get onto the plane you wanted as there is simply no seat available after all the paying passengers got on), are exciting and almost have something of a secret code you adhere to.

2. City: Panama City, Florida
And as I was meeting Anthony to spend about a week in his rental condo in Panama City Beach, Florida, I of course got to see the area. As it is neither a capital nor has at least 500,000 inhabitants, it didn't count in Amalia's and my city race contest, but it's new alright.


3. Playing Frisbee on the Beach
What I just said. Actually, for not having played for quite a while, I pretty much sandbagged Anthony. Oh, and the word "sandbagging" I learned from him, just like plenty of others as well.



4. Restaurant: Hooters
Young girls in tight pants showing as much breasts as legally possible, fried and unhealthy but not so bad food, rednecks, rock music. That's Hooters. Unless you have a specific reason to go, like I do with my crazy "something new every week" stuff, don't.

5. Food: Edamame
Photo courtesy of Zesmerelda
For most of you it probably sounds a lot more interesting than it is, but it was something new anyway. Behind this possibly mysterious name is nothing more and less than green beans.


6. Store: Publix
Not the big deal, I know, but since Anthony and I were constantly running back and forth, or, how I used to call it, "forth and back", between stores, Publix was a welcome change. And actually, I like Publix a lot because of the way they present and order things, and their fresh-produce section is yummie even to look at.

7. Food: Sweet Potato Fries
Roy's Original in Panama City Beach has sweet potato fries. They guys there are actually very nice, too. Their smoothies hadn't sold so well so they had decided to give them up just before Anthony and I came there to have lunch. When we asked for a smoothie they gave us a whole half-gallon bottle of pineapple-coconut smoothie mix, for free.
Yum yum, smoothies at home!




8. Food: Gator Jerky
Jerky made of alligator meat. It's kinda unspectacular, actually, and tastes pretty much like regular jerky, Anthony told me. In Germany, by the way, there is a very similar snack out there, called "Landjäger".



9. Drink: Root Beer Float
Photo courtesy of faeryboots
Beware, this one is totally American! Root beer mixed with vanilla ice cream, quite a treat! I've seen it's out there with all sorts of ice cream. Naturally, why not. We had it at a cute little store on our way from Panama City to Tallahassee, along with the gator jerky.




10. SCORE: Tallahassee
Yes, this is my first real point in our city race contest this year (Frankfurt was an extremely weak one)! Anthony and I went to see Tallahassee, and even though the city itself is about as interesting as the legendary bag of rice, it was fun going, also because I finally found the toothpaste squeezers that we had searched one store after another for.

11. Food: Chocolate blueberries
I am not listing this to show off but as a warning. Chocolate blueberries are not delicious, you must know. For all I know, they're not even real blueberries but rather some sugar fat mix artificially altered so that you get the idea of blueberry taste. If you want to treat yourself to blueberries, go for the natural ones. They're great in cereal!


12. Drink: Arnold Palmer
Photo courtesy of elena's pantry
This drink is named after the famous American golfer and is a mixture of ice tea and lemonade. For your general education, my German friends.





13. Restaurant: fresh2order
A fast-food type place with an incredibly good variety of food and drinks.





14. SCORE: Atlanta, Georgia
Hah! Amalia didn't see this one coming! Anthony and I decided to spend two more days in Atlanta! Score number three for me this year!




15. Sight: Georgia Aquarium
They say it's the world's largest aquarium so we had to see it. And actually, some of the views you get there are stunning. So good that you can even bear the kids' yelling and, whining.



16. Sight: Coca-Cola Tourist Trap (Atlanta)
It's tacky, we knew, but we decided to see it anyway. Expecting that you could see the actual process of Coca-Cola manufacturing, we were disappointed by the artificial small model of the machines but the entertainment was kinda nice. And at the end, you get to taste all the different Coca-Cola products in existance worldwide. That was neat.

17. Restaurant: California Pizza Kitchen (Lenox Square Mall, Atlanta)
Anthony had told me about this chain, and when we had decided to see Atlanta it was clear that we'd have to go. He eats at CPK every now and then so he knew what to recommend. And actually, their Thai Crunch Salad is marvellous.

18. Exhibition: First Emperor at High Museum (Atlanta)
We can't spend a week only on hanging out, talking nonsense and shopping, right? So we decided to go see this exhibition on the day of our return flights. Actually, to be frank, this exhibition was nice but hardly anything more. The few warriors and pieces you see there are in very good shape, and the craft of shaping and modelling of clay at the time was very elaborate. But I cannot say I was very impressed.




19. Spent Valentine's Day with somebody I care for very much
Valentine's day is not big in Germany, and I had just never spent it with anybody whom I cared for, at least not consciously.




All in all, the last two weeks have been a lot of fun and excitement. The next ones will very probably not be half as interesting but I'll do my best anyway.

Thank you, Anthony, for this unbelievable vacation!

Something New Every Week, Part 5

This week has been kinda low key. Amalia and I had dinner guests last night, and she made d-licious Cameroun peanut chicken and mango strudel, I can tell you, but apart from the following two small things, life has gone its pretty mediocre way.

New deed no 1
Wednesday night, I went to a new place for a drink with a new online acquaintance of mine, after dinner at Konkubine. The place is called "Othello" and is actually pretty close to where I live. It's nice, small, cozy and has Pilsner Urquell, one of the greatest pils beers ever.


New deed no 2
Also, I went to Les Halles on a Friday night for the first time. Not as danceclub-like as I thought but the music was funky.

Next week, however, something very cool is going to happen, I can already announce. It will involve flying. Uh-huh, yeah, cool, right? :)