Merry Christmas

Today my first visitor arrived. I could quit work early at 3pm and we were able to drive in a new record time home: 45minutes from Montvale to New York City, 8th Ave @42nd. And it was probably the last time with the e-class because the guy who owned the car has to give it back in january :( But we will see what the next year brings... I was not able to pick him up at the airport because I was at work nd his plane landed around noon. But my roommate was so nice to let him in. Thank you so much for this :-)
We introduced him to the very delicious drink egg-nok. It's made with milk, rum, brandy and cinnamon. Now he sleeps in my bed cause he's really tired cause of the flight and the interesting evening with Clue. Meanwhile I make some "internet-research" and watch the new episode of Prison Break before I join him - no, I'm kiddin'. Not today, there I will sleep on the couch. Maybe tomorrow ^^

So enjoy your christmas time, have fun with your family and be happy about Gluehwein (or mulled wine in AE).
Stay in contact and keep up to date :-)

All the best,
Markus

My 4th Advent

und diesmal wirklich - glaub ich zumindest ^^
Kostenfreie Weihnachtskonzerte sind in NYC kaum zu finden - jedenfalls nicht ueber's Internet. Da muss man schon wie ich an einer Kirche vorbeistolpern und spontan reingehen. In dieser dann 2 andere MBUSA-Praktikanten treffen und noch den Schlusston des Orgelkonzerts mitbekommen. Schade - aber immerhin bin ich in den genuss einer 32' Orgelpfeiffe gekommen. Ich glaub die Haelfte der Leute die da sass hat den Ton garnicht mehr gehoert so tief war er ;)
Ansonsten war die letzte Woche ziemlich durchwachsen. Von uebergluecklich bis deprimiert war alles dabei. Mittlerweile bin ich wieder ganz ausgeglichen :)
Das liegt unter anderem an der Freude ueber den ersten Schnee. Zum Glueck hatten wir am Freitag ein Auto um von der Arbeit nach Hause zu kommen. Statt einer haben wir ueber drei Stunden gebraucht weil der highway so voll mit Schnee und Autos war. JA, es war wie man das in den Filmen immer gezeigt bekommt ;) Mittlerweile hat es zu tauen angefangen. Allerdings wurde es heute abend dann doch wieder kuehler und wer hat sich in downtown Manhattan in einer schwungvollen Parade von der Konsistenz des Strasssenbelages ueberzeug? Right - that was me. Zum Glueck hatte ich meine Kamera, den Martini Bianco und den Rotwein im Rucksack und meine Haende nicht in der Tasche, so ging das ganze nochmal glimpflich aus, zumal ich mal wieder am Traeumen und deshalb nicht ganz so reaktionsschnell war, aber meien hand war zuerst auf dem Boden um das Schlimmste zu verhindern ^^
Am Freitag war ich mit meiner Mitbewohnerin und ihrem Freund zu einer kleinen Feier in der 105-ten Ecke Broadway. Ich habe dort einige ziemlich interessante leute kennengelernt. Vom Musiker bis zum konservativen Amerikaner war alles dabei. Zum ersten Mal gab es Gebspraeche ueber amerikanische Politik mir Amerikanern. Bei Bier, leckeren Appetithappen, nem liebevoll geschmueckten Weihnachtsbaum und schlechtem Gluehwein. Sowas sollten sie echt uns Deutschen ueberlassen *gg*
Whatever, am Samstag bin ich dann durch die Stadt gelaufen auf der Suche nach nem Plattenspieler. Statt dessen habe ich den Bruderladen (Schwesterladen hoert sich besser an, passt aber glaub ich nich wegen dem Geschlecht von laden ;) ) von meinem Lieblingsbuchladen am Broadway gefunden. Der hat mindestens 3x so viele LPs, CDs, Kassetten und Song- und Notenhefte wie der Buchladen. Von unten bis oben alles voll mit LPs, und auf die auch noch 30% Rabatt. Ich stand kurz davor die original Lord of the rings Musik auf LP zu kaufen, war dann aber doch zu geizig. Ich glaube ich sollte da naechste Woche nochmal hingehen ^^ Am Ende hab ich mich jedenfalls noch ueber ne Stunde mit dem Verkaeufer und seinem Kumpel der gerade da abhing unterhalten. Was fuer coole Typen. Das war quasi meine zweite Lektion in Sachen american way of live. Sie haben relativ schnell eingesehen dass es in Dtld allein schon deswegen besser ist weil wir Bier in 0,5l-Flaschen haben und dieses auch direkt nachdem wir den laden verlassen haben auch aufmachen uerfen sofern uns danach ist. Und mal ehrlich - wem war noch nie danach :)) Der eine war Musiker und totaler Fan von deutschen Komponisten. Ok, seiner Meinung nach gibt es nur Komponisten aus Deutschland die gute klassische Musik machen (konnten), aber nach eingehender Diskussion haben wir uns dann darauf geeinigt dass die Italiener auch garnicht so schlecht waren (siehe Paganini und Verdi). Und ausserdem war der dritte im Bunde Italiener, also war das ganze nur gerecht ;)
Heute abend wollte ich mir eigentlich Giants vs. Carolina in einer Sportsbar anschauen, aber dann habe ich mal grob die Ausgaben fuer die naechsten zwei Wochen ueberschlagen und mir statt dessen ne kleine Pizza und Chickenwings fuer den Ofen gekauft. Man war das lecker *mjam* Nun brauche ich aber immer noch einen Plattenspieler um in die Platten reinhoeren zu koennen die cih mir bereits fuer nen Dollar gekauft habe - darunter ein Punk-Album der Chipmunks, Orgelmusik von Bach, ein Abba-Album und ein Album von Glenn Miller.
Geniesst die Vorweihnachtstage und lasst euch nicht stressen :)

Playing for change

Playing For Change: Song Around the World | Stand By Me from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

My 3rd Advent

took place in an bavarian restaurant called "Zum Schneider" with german service, german Weissbier and Gluehwein. They invited to a Christmas Caroling at 1pm. And we had a lot of fun singing german weihnachtslieder with american guys :)) They were so excited to sing on this afternoon. It was amazing to watch and listen. Some songs we first sang in german and after this one more time in english. Sometimes - many didn't knew wether the German nor the English text *hihi*
But after the first Weissbier or Gluehwein it doesn't matters ^^
For lunch I had my first O'Baza (unter Obatzda findet man's dann auch im Netz ^^): It's different kind of cheese with some bred. Well, it was ok but next time I'll have Sauerkraut this tastes much better ;)
The band was great. The two guys played accordeon and guitar and made a great show :)
See the following pictures:

2008-12-14 Christmas Caroling

At 9pm I had to leave because I was out of money. On my way home I discovered the Manhattan Bridge and the arc standing in front of and filled a whole film. We'll see how pictures look like if they are developed :)

Größere Kartenansicht
At home the boyfriend of my roommate offered me a very delicious drink made of some fat milk, rum, liqueur and cinnamon. We had a great discussion about life in general and in particular.
All in all it was a great day. At least I had a wonderful ICQ-conversation in the morning, lasting about 3 hours :) so i went to work on monday morning and had a smile all over the face the whole day cause of the great weekend.
Enjoy the last week before Santa Claus is coming.
Btw - my Santa was here today for the first time and delivered a paket from Amazon-Germany. I was able to figure out that it was from my lovely dad, but I didn't open it yet ;)

Take you 16 minutes to smile

Brief news

As a member of Bank of America you are allowed to visit some museums in the USA for free on every first weekend a year - some of them, like the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts and the Museum in the International Center of Photography are in New York. These I visited on saturday and sunday. I liked the Museum of Photography most. The pictures were very impressive and touching. Furthermore I liked it because I saw what you can do without using photoshop and such kind of tools. That motivated me ome more time to continue to take photos with my SLR EOS 300. But these you will just see if you meet me in person one day, because they are non-digital ;)
Following some impressions from the AMNH

2008-12-07 Museum of Natural History

In Please give attention to my spleen for Spongebob Squarepants *hihi*
Catching the scallop you can see in this video is one of his extrem hobbies ^^


On sunday evening I was to a concert of Nada Surf. There were two pre-bands. both I like very very much - although I listened to their music the first time. The bands were Bear Hands and Delta Spirit. The music was sooo awesome. The floor of the Webster Hall was made of wood which carries the sound, specifically the basses, really really good. Most of the time I was not able to swallow because the uvula (or Zaepfchen in german) in the throat went up and down all the time and made it really hart to swallow. my whole body felt like a big beat box all the time. It was amazing :) Well, how ever, today I have pain in my throat - maybe I'm getting a cold or it's because of the concert. Comments please :)
Matthew, the singer of Nada Surf gave a short privat concert with hbis guitar after the real one. He's a pretty nice guy. Really down-to-earth and very likeable.
Feel free to watch some pictures:

2008-12-07 Nada Surf in Webster Hall

The picture of the month is this one. I toke it in the Museum of American History. I like the intention of the first sentence.

I name it: One sentence - two meanings

Nothing left to do

Today was one of the days where I had nothing to do. I mean really nothing. I started my day with reading some news. After this i organised my email-contacts, filtered my inbox, created new labels for incomming mails and wrote some to people from whome I heard nothing for a long time. After this I started reading news and digging some, reading stuff on facebook and making some intranet-research. After this I went to the gym to make a workout.
I'm really interested in what's going on on the market for automobiles in the US. The situation of the "Three Big" (GM, Ford, Chrysler) is very bad. I like one comment another reader wrote under one article: "The predicted volume for next year produced by the Three Big is about 16Mio cars. The demand is approximately at 11Mio cars. So the only logical way is that at most 2 can survive." Well, Chrysler probably will be out of money until end of this year. So either they get bought by another company or they or they go bankrupt. Some people say this will effect all other companies as well because in may cases they use the same supplieres. So the other two will go bankrupt, too. This is an argument for a bailout by he government. Because if they don't pay about $25Billion for the companies they have to pay much more for all the unemployed people and pension fonds etc. So in my eyes it's like: vom Regen in die Trauffe. Because if the government pays the money this month, they will have to pay some more during the following years. Although there's no garanty that despite they payed a lot of money the one or other company goes bankrupt. And if they don't pay the money it's the same. I don't think that all tree will go down. All have a more or less strong will to survive. Because the economy is really bad at the moment. So everybody, including the Union, will be motivated to aggree to any kind of compromise to survive....
Well, my own financial situation is not as bad as the one of the car-companies. But I agreed to some cutbacks. I try to survive with max. $5 a day for foot. that means no buying of coffee, foot or candies in the MBUSA-Cafeteria. No Starbucks-Coffee/Hot Chocolate, no Burger, Sandwiches etc from the street. Just hand-made ones - all the ingredients have to be bought in the cheapest grocerie-store on manhattan-island, of course ;)
I think it's possible to survive on this way. Next week I will look what i payed or foot on this week. That was my evening meal today:
Noodles, tomatoe-sauce including sausage made of chicken because chicken is 3 times less expensive then sausage made of real meat. Turckey is between them but not that tasty. I use it just for the sandwiches because there you don't taste it so much ;)
It looks not that great because the plate is a bit to small but it was sooo delicious. I payed about $6 and it's all enough for about three days ;)

On the right side of the plate you see a glas. well, I have to confess that this is Martini (red) - the original one. I was in my favorite wine store and wanted to buy a bottle of great tasting red wine. Instead of this I saw russian vodka- reduced to $12 from $34 a litre. But I don't want to be drunk every evening (or can't be - depends on ;) ) so I walked thorugh the store and saw the 1l bottle Martini for about $8,50. I think this is a fair price for a fan like me. So I had an intalian meal this evening ^^
There ws some music in the underground, too. Maybe you remember these two guys. I walked through the subway station with maximum "Weezer" on my ears and although I could hear the great sound of this guys. Have fun :)


Please see the new links on the right side- the one about the one Going Under NYC is really funny :)