Moving from Alternate to Accepted

Several weeks ago I received a message saying that I was moved from alternate to accepted. No, this was unfortunately nothing personal (^^), but my talk at one of the biggest computer science conferences world wide! Find below one of the several conference buildings in the center of San Francisco..



They even shut down a street just for the conference. On the next picture, you see what Oktoberfest in San Francisco looks like ;)



This is what I'd call an advertisement..



People streaming out of the keynote speaker room with a capacity of about 10.000 seats. Unfortunately, my talk was in one of the smaller rooms ^^.



The Black Eyed Peas live on stage on treasure island. It was a bit weird with all the business people in a festival atmosphere, but nevertheless it was fun (and the lead singer girl was pretty amazing... ^^)!



What would a weekend in California be without a hike? Great weather for getting to the top of Yosemite Falls.



It has been exciting 10 days in the bay area, and tomorrow I'll be (again) on my flight back to home sweet home...

Stefan and Andi visiting

On the weekend, Stefan and Andi have been visiting! After spending some time in Kopenhagen and desperately leaving after we realized that we could not see the famous mermaid but a poster with "www.mermaidexchange.com", we went back to Aarhus. Well, there is one more thing to mention about Kopenhagen: They have an awesome Scotish bar and Stefan obviously knows the importance of getting a really good whiskey ;).

On the train back, we could see the "Great Belt Fixed Link". In Aarhus, we tried to find city bikes, but most likely due to the recent festival they were all gone! We still did the city bike harbour photo, just without the city bikes ^^.



At the harbour, we selected our favourite ship:



On our long way back by foot, we found a bike counting machine. So, to our relief there seemed to be still some bikes left in Aarhus. 138 bikes passed the point on that day. We tried hard to somehow trick the machine to belief we are bikers, but we could not make the counter increase..



This was my last post from Aarhus, as by now, I'm already back home. German Autobahn was quite fun. And immediately after returning, I had of course do a mountain tour (click here for photos)!

Moni and Simon visiting

This is what I really like about Denmark compared to California: Every now and then some friends from Austria can come by and visit me! Last weekend, it were Moni and Simon that gave the solitudinarian some company. They were lucky to chose a time when all sorts of strange things are happening in Aarhus because of some festival (they also planted a forest in the middle of Aarhus, but unfortunately it was just obvious that the main users of a forest in the middle of a city are drunk kids). This is how Danish children are grounded, and they even seem to like it..



Well, from previous visits I learned that the ice cream parlors are one of the biggest attractions. The next photo shows Simon and me with a "I gonna love it" sized ice cream (I also learned from a previous visit that a "I gotta have it" sized ice cream is not preferable ^^):



And finally, I could resolve a bet with Daniel and Lisi, it was about the "blond" blog entry he asked for in a previous comment: A photo with one of the beautiful ice cream girls. I must admit, that she is not very enthusiastic about the photo, but I hope it counts nevertheless ;)




On Saturday afternoon, we used the city bikes to visit the harbour. I'm very proud of myself to be now an old hand Aarhus city bike station discoverer knowing most station locations by heart. This was very beneficial :).



Unfortunately, Moni and Simon did not stay for Monday morning, so they could not see the office. But we decided that we nevertheless need to take a beautiful couch photo like Lisi and Daniel.



Well, this time I'll only have to wait one week until the next visit: Stefan and Andi will arrive in Aarhus next weekend and I'm looking forward to it!

Laura and Elli

Last week, I was in London visiting the office in Buckingham Palace street. After flying from Aarhus to Kopenhagen and later to Heathrow, I could use the so-called Heathrow express to get to central London. The underground system was quite impressive as you can see on the picture below...

Unfortunately, I had only the street address of the hotel, so I had to do a lucky guess on the correct one. I had to smirk when I entered the hotel. I mean, what would you expect to happen if a desoriented guy with a half finished Burger King meal goes to the reception of a noble hotel and says something like "I think G booked a room for me" (G being a synonym for a very large search company; I avoid direct references to keep the blog as unsearchable as possible). If I'm unlucky they put me in a mental station. Well, I was lucky, and so a good-looking German girl from the hotel staff started to flirt with me. Oh, I'm sorry, probably she just tried to be nice... Probably because she didn't want to lose her job that's why she was nice. Yeah, that's probably the correct reception ;). Hm, but after seeing "inception" I don't care so much about reality or dreaming anymore as it seems to be kind of interchangable ^^.

The hotel room was the best room I've ever been in. Especially the bathroom; I was sort of amused by the amount of mirrors and glass...

The office was very impressive; never seen anything like that. One nice feature was a facility that allowed to get a bit of a flight simulator feeling. On the picture, you can see me pointing at the Uniteich!

On the weekend, I took the bus to Oxford to meet Laura and Elli who happened to be there during their England round trip. In the double decker bus, I could get the front seat on the top deck! When Laura and Elli arrived, I shouldn't have been surprised, but, I mean; what is the first thing one would do if you arrive in an unknown city? Of course the answer is: Shopping! Well, I don't know; maybe this is a gender specific issue that I wouldn't expect this ;) Anyway, thankfully it did not take too long for them to buy their Oxford T-shirt, so we could move on to the museum of science ^^. The museum itself was not really exciting, but an interesting citation drew my attention:

"However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end internal, consisting in an aspect of our mentalities: in the widely held belief that our work should make us happy."

After eating some ice cream, we cooked dinner at the youth hostel. And despite fundamental dissensions about the amount of noodles a single person can eat; and nearly triggering a fire alarm with burnt cucumbers, it was quite fun ;). After the dinner we explored the youth hostel game room. Maybe I should not write this here; but to my shame I must admit that I lost against the girls in tabletop soccer..

The next day, we attended a mass of the church of England. The priest was a woman and it was amazing how she reminded me of some teacher in Harry Potter...

Well, time passed by fast in Oxford and my flight back was booked for Sunday afternoon. So, I had to say good bye to Laura and Elli..... Below you can see a photo with me and the two lovely girls ;).

On the flight back, I had my first experience with multiplied gravity, because I had to go to the front of the plane while it was approaching for landing in Kopenhagen. Just when I stood in the middle of the plane, the pilot pulled the plane upwards forcing me on the floor and sort of turning the world around me. So I was glad to reach the ground of the airport in Aarhus...

Lisi and Daniel visiting

After two eventful weeks with ups :) and downs :(, I finally have some spare time (and photo material) for my third Aarhus blogpost. So, the weekend was great, because Lisi and Daniel came for a visit! And my office is really a place to enjoy...


The sea is great too! And finally I had someone to go to the beach. Regarding the temperature, I would guess somewhere between Elmsee and Almsee... So, it's warm enough to wet one's feet. And more is not necessary anyway as the water is not very deep:


One of the main attractions of Aarhus seems to be the botanic garden. It was a nice place to visit with lots of different species. However, plants, piranhas, cactuses, palm trees, butterflies, coffee plants, and water lilies were not the only attraction there as you can see on the picture below ;-) !!

We enjoyed the different ice cream parlours a lot. Not necessarily only because of the good ice cream. Lisi always tried to make a match between the beautiful girls behind the glass case and me ^^. Well, anyway, here is the evidence that I'm taking my main goal for the internship (+10 pounds) very serious:

Getting around in the city is awesome with the free city bikes! At least if you have a 20 DDK coin and some patience to find a pick-up spot with a free bike on it. A bit more patience if you are a small group of three people. And you should probably enjoy the feeling of riding a bike uphill, because this is how it feels riding a city bike. Well, the good side is that they are really robust! We could explore the harbor of Aarhus with them:


So, it was a sad moment when they left again on Tuesday. Now I'm feeling a bit lonely again. However, next Wednesday I will fly to London to meet some other interns - and on the weekend I'll maybe see another friend...

Please send me a postcard!

I LOVE postcards! And I actually just received one (shown below) from Sarah & Franz transmitted as an e-mail attachment from Andi - Thx ;-) ! If you want to brighten up my stay here with a postcard (and spare Andi the trouble of scanning it) - please use my Danish office address: Aabogade 15, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. Include the company I'm working for (I leave out all direct references in order for this blog not getting revealed too easily) and my name before the street address. I would be delighted to receive some mail and I ==promise== to write back!

In the meantime I could also set up a reasonable internet connection in my appartment using a wireless router. Next picture is for nerds only - isn't this awesome? Just a little piece of home I'm connecting too.. ^^

Today, I attended my first evangelical mass. Although it was a big church in the center of Aarhus (see below), the Raum-der-Stille would have fitted the number of attending people comfortably.. Additionally, there were only 2 people below 35: A 3-year-old and me. And the 3-year-old spoke Danish only anyway ^^.

Yesterday, it was such a sad moment when Forlan (cool player!) put the free kick onto the crossbar. But today Spain is gonna own the Netherlands (1-0) / (1-1) / 2-1. Goals for Spain: Villa and Torres. Goal for the Netherlands: Snyder. What is your tip?

Aarhus

So, I'm back abroad! And traditionally, the starting point of the blog is always the photo just after arrival (see California 1 and California 2). This time I'll spare all references to any textile objects; time moves on ;-). Addtionally, instead of taking the plain across the Atlantic, I took the train up to Aarhus (Denmark). Yesterday, I arrived and my room is awesome:

And in particular, there are two nice pictures in my new room. First, a crowd of people for not feeling lonely:

Second, a beautiful woman with an interesting look. I'm still trying to figure out what she wants to tell me - what do you think ^^ ?.