Bull market? More a bull party ...

well, what shall i say, here are some pictures of a party of a gigantic soft drink producer. no pix of the half naked girls that shaked their asses in the embassy. why is an embassy a place associated with dignity? i can't remember.

anyways, the guys at the embassy were very kind when they let us stay over night there. living in college park when the last metro leaves at 12 pm or so can be difficult.

but don't be mistaken. the red bull party is one of the best parties in dc (i was told). and it is notorious. well, free booze and lot's of girls dancing on tables can be attractive to many people. sodom and gomorrah. sure. well, in some sense. was it that bad? no.






.:. .:. .:.

people are leaving.....



susanne & katharina gone





marcel gone

martin & paul gone

d stays. hhhmmm... as pointed out quite a couple of times. you always meet great people. and they always leave. or you leave. and you never get used to it.

.:. .:. .:.

d learns more about men and women in the us: the concept of dating

we don't have this concept of dating in austria. i guess this is actually true for europe. i am still not sure what it actually is. but i learned that questions like "do you wanna have lunch with me?" or "let's meet for a coffee?" are in many cases considered as invitations for a date. if the two persons meeting are of different sex. men have dinner among each other. so do women.

this is sooooooooooo weird.

i still couldn't figure out what a date is good for... obviously in some sense it is the way for men to get in touch with women, since they don't eat together. going to the cinema is a date for sure. you don't have friends from the other sex. these kind of things are supposed to be akward.

d is confused.

on voit partout: d

Yesterday i went to the Capitol, well to one of its buildings. The LHC project director was giving a talk. It was not so bad, the guy had troubles with the remote control. That was funny. What i really liked was the way he pointed out, how amazingly good the people at CERN are in their jobs. CERN is just a great place.

On one of his last slides he had a picture of students in front of one of the exhibition pieces at the CERN site. And i thought: oh, how nice. A picture of the summer students.
And then it hit me. I was on that picture. It was a group photo of the 2003 summer students.
Can you believe it? I was totally excited. After all 2003 was probably the best summer in my life.

Later that day Anton Pelinka was giving also a good talk at the Austrian Embassy. He spoke about the status of US EU relations after Nov 4. I liked his talk, althouhg the questions session was really long. And Prof. Pelinka won’t give you a short answer.

I have already noticed this habit in the states. You can ask any question you like, how silly it may be (yes, i know there are in principal no silly questions. But come here and see. There are silly questions, those were the speaker is so stunned that he or she doesn’t even know what to say.). Last week there was a cocert at the Embassy by an Austrian piano player. And well, she was improvising contemporary music. Since somebody i spend quite a lot of time with is really into that, i know these concerts. And i have to admit at the beginning i didn’t really know what to think of it. And still many pieces i don’t like. It’s a question of getting used to it to being able to experience what it is about, i guess. Anyhow. Most of the people in the audience obviously didn’t come for contemoprary music. And at the end those that remained would ask many, many, many question to poor Elisabeth. I don’t consider this too bad (although some of the questions were silly), since the showed interest in her work. They were after all curioius.

What else happened? I was interviewing the woman I am writing an article about. Lisa Kaltenegger, astrophysicist at Harvard. It was a lot of fun. We were laughing a lot. She is really great. I hope I can come up to her great personality (I really like her) with an appropriatly good article.

On Thursday I went to a talk of the German Historical Institute. It was about the hard times of the Weimarer republic and how scientsit delt with it. I guess, it was a good talk, too. However, I have never been to a talk of a historian before. She had her line of argumentation prepared really well. But then she was reading it of from a piece of paper. She was quite fast and had kind of complicated sentences So it was hard to follow. But this is due to the fact that i am not from the field.

Announcement: next week: red bull party at the embassy. That could potentially be interesting my dearest readers.

yes, they can

tuesday was ... simply incredible

d, the pessimistic, could hardly believe it. for sure she couldn't imagine.

on tuesday something happened which i have never experienced myself before: democracy turns things to the better. i only wish that some kind of that spirit could go round in austria, too. and i also wish that some kind of politican with abilities appears from nowhere.

people here do not take democray for granted. and we probably shouldn't too.

they were dancing in the streets. it felt very much like Germany during the world championships 2006.

i have to admit. i am an obama fan. i was so much impressed by his acceptence speech. one has the feeling that this is a man finally has the abilities for his job. being the son of a president certainly does not qualify you to be president yourself. mission for next week: get an obama t-shirt.

today was a rather tough day. i was out yesterday. got home rather not so sober at 3 am. and i had to get up at 7 to visit the White House, which was not superexciting. but: i can still do such things without my body collapsing.

Can we borrow Obama for president of Austria?

We do need him so much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJCn2AvxlH0&feature=related

Obama for president!

Am Wochenende hab ich hoffentlich Zeit fuer Schilderungen von der Wahl.

Oesterreich, wach auf!

fyI

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,588586,00.html

boo!!

boo!

das glück ist gekommen

und gestern hat es mich wieder verlassen.

in tiefster tristesse sitzt d nun da und hat nichts besseres mehr zu tun als blog einträge zu schreiben.

so, what happened last week?

halloween of course!

a&d stayed at adam's inn. and in our street one of the best halloween parties took place. what an amazing holiday!

we spent more than two hours giving candy to the kids. trick-or-treating this is called. it all started when kids would ask for candy and we - in our desperation - gave them chocolate that the hotel would provide for its guests. then the hotel owner - adam - came with a bag of candy. "here, use this instead." and so it came that we took part in this event ourselves... and adam would bring more candy! he was so excited, too. adam wore a wintercoat with lots of muscles on it. so that he looked like hulk or so... a&d were wearing spin webs on their heads. yes, we truely participated. fantastic costumes. "i bleed" said one kid to us. and so he did...

we had a marvellous time.

universe is fond of balance. if some things are just perfect others are not so good.

like the weather. a&d hat to fight against the wind and the cold this week. hui. i have a wintercoat now, a cap and two pairs of gloves. i look gorgeous. hehe.

today: 20 ° of course.

we went to the zoo. and i could share my excitement about the shrew. we went to the spy museum. you can use dog poo as a radio transmitter.

oh. and also: the official reception due to the austrian national holiday at the austrian embassy.
i should have asked first what kind of food there would be. schnitzel and frankfurter of course. i have already realised: creativity is one of the marketing strategies of these events. besides, i have never seen so many old people in one room since i was in a home for old people. i wonder ...

shannandoah