Garfield Live!

New and updated post, using english grammar!!!

I was gonna give this post an alliterating name that rhymes with "tussi mixtures", but then I thought, better not be flagged by Google, plus, how low would that be stooping for a gag, anyway...

Now, I know I have sunk low anyway, posting pictures of Garfield instead of fun, crazy travel pictures to exotic locations. I'm sorry, I just don't happen to be at a fun, exotic location right now, so I'm trying to make due with what I have. Looking at the beautiful things all around and closer to me, like the cat, or these cans of empty beer arranged in a floral pattern littering my desk. Less beautiful, albeit more smelly is the kitty litter box just outside the door, which I see as just another example of collateral damage caused by Garfield. To wrap up this topic, enjoy the picture of her posing,
then discovering the paparazzi and choosing the most consequent exit strategy.

Furry Friends

Now I usually don't blog about my domestic life, because if you'd come to my apartment, you'd realize that there is nothing funny about a flat where a hair dryer can cause a major power outage and there are legends about when the tub was last cleaned [updated: my new flatmates cleaned it! they actually pumped something like an entire wookie from the drain]

So when Rouven, my new flatmate, confronted me with a cat, and asked whether we can keep him, well, I instantly realized this is prima face blog material. For this blog is the forum where I am allowed to be blatantly honest about some things, including domestic wildlife.

So to be honest, my first reaction was shit, one more thing for me to trip over when I'm on my way to a midnight snack. My sombre mood lasted until I opened the refrigerator, and smelt that I had forgotten my sardines in over the weekend! Now, it was while smelling the sardines and contemplating whether they were still edible for humans that it struck me: what about edible for cats? it might be OK for me, but yum-yum for the cat! why not feed the cat?
The cat is huge and fat and orange, so I think I'll call it Garfield.

Of course, before Greenpeace storms my site, I will say that eating the food is strictly voluntary for Garfield, but of course, I do recommend the fish... cause I would probably have eaten them myself, were it not for her...

Update! : it did not end up eating the fish, but I did find it in my bed this afternoon, so I guess that makes it 2:0 for the cat...

Small intermezzo.

Now, I would love to keep churning out posts incessantly, but even you have to admit that like plants, bloggers need food, sleep, and sunlight; so just re-read my previous posts, while I fix myself some spaghetti and brainstorm further entertaining stories to waste your prescious time...

Albania: the ultimate bogus road trip.

Somehow, after days of hard conference work, my soul was aching for a little treat, parhaps some more space than the cramped plenary could provide. Little did I know, that this treat was just around the corner, in the form of the ultimate bogus road trip, one right across the border, to Albania...

The trip actually did not start out being a real treat, with the Don (2nd from left) breaking and entering my hotel room at 7.30 (early if you consider the last picture from the party before was thankfully labelled by my camera as having been taken at 5.30), shaking me from sleep and telling me that the "taxi to Albania is waiting downstairs." "...Taxi to Albania??? ah right..."
I had no idea when we had had such a seriously whacked idea.
So I emptied my pockets of all things I wouldn't need to be buried with, realized with a sigh that my breath still contained enough alcohol to be considered a fire hazard, found the way out of my room down a flight of stairs I had previously not known existed, and so the bogus journey began....




Before you could say "kalashnikov" Leo The Don, J-B & me were already being whisked away to our uncertain fate. My brain was franctically pumping out theories and new topics regarding inhumanity while we sped through somewhere... yes, such was my condition, that I took about 20 pictures like the one above...

Somehow, the landscape flying by seemed to confirm my apocalyptic mood...

I recalled Mad Max, being reminded of the inequality, coldness, and hostility inherent in mankind, plus that cool part where Mel Gibson battles it out with postapocalyptic warriors on top of a rusty land-train...

Yes, Albania was quite special. For me, the hot & cold, extravagance and poverty was an incredibly moving experience, especially because I was still far from sober.

Seriously tho, the pictures confirm what I still remember about the trip: that one part of the country was in ruins, and right next to there ruins, brand new houses were being built, and inbetween the houses, the craziest, most excessive BMWs were cruising; everywhere you could buy Cartier pearl-tipped duty-free; The Don didn't want to miss out on such a deal. Of course, like all of Cartier's discerning clientele , he preferred to pay in American Dollars.

Compliments on Albania, it was the only place that I was miraculously able to withdraw Euros from the teller machine, as opposed to Skopje, where this had proven impossible. (The lack of bancomats in Skopje is probably at least in part responsible for my skeptical description...) To make a long story short, we had a brief sojour in Pogradec, a type of turbo-capitalist city, with Mercedes S Classes cruising dirt roads in a martian feudalism that reminded me of nobility cruising desolate landscapes in the classiest carriages in Dicken's Tale of Two Cities...

EuroCo part II.

But before we go to heaven, let's go shopping. We actually went to the biggest Mall in Skopje, which you actually cannot miss, because it's right next to the main square.

I had to cringe a bit about the negative side effects such incapsulated opulence has on its surroundings (if you didnt get this one, just read my publication):

of course, I have already discussed south central Skopje in my previous post. So let us go onto more pleasant subjects, like for instance our visit to the only restaurant open on sundays at 15.30, McDonalds.

Obviously, I had fun photographing our accompanying frenchmen in flagranti with a BigMac and fries...

Soon, it was again time to leave this safe haven for the bogus bus trip which would take us to paradise lake.

now, before you all get the impression that I was just goofing off and that students don't have to attend lectures in paradise, I have to dissappoint you, referring you to the picture left. Important to note is that the capital letters do not signify any brainwashing; they signify POINTS WHICH I KNOW TO BE VERY RELEVANT TO ME.

But, after all the work I did, I also needed fun and recreation.

Now, I know that different stakeholders visiting my site expect different content, and I hope you're appreciating the mix. To again fulfill a few expectations, here a wild party pic:

Which I have censored, to satisfy the expectations of another group of stakeholders. I believe everyone should be happy now.

Now, many of you have been telling me "Berti, I like your blog, but I think too often, you're posing with the wrong people. Some say, I shouldn't be posing with uptight people. Others say, I shouldn't be posing with drunk people. To show my synergious nature, here a picture of me posing with two security guards. And to answer your question: yes, they were drunk. As you can see, I felt secure, nevertheless (so they were actually doing their jobs quite well).

EuroCo in Macedonia.the real monty. Instead of the full one.

POP Quiz: Who can find Mazedonia on the map? Anyone? Ok, who noticed I spelled Macedonia wrong in the last sentence? Everyone? Great. Obviously I am dealing with a selected clientele.

Just kidding. Here is some help, courtesy of google earth:

Check google earth sometime. there is a small hardcore of crazy people, labelling everything including our offices in Macedonia. (thanks to Marko doing this, I have more spare time to mark the University and City Kebap in St. Gallen.)

So this is the country I started my bogus journey from. Note the little star on the map. Thats Skopje, the capital. Although it looks small from up here up here, its actually a great city. Please feel free to misunderstand great to mean splendid in this context. What I actually mean is that it has lots of inhabitants.The nicest thing is, it still has that touch-of-socialism spirit, with lovely attention to every detail, including the water faucets which are too long for the sinks underneath.

We took a small tour of the hotel surroudings.

now before I get irate mail on the one-sidedness of this portrayal from all Macedonia fans, I would like to refer you to my exit to purgatory/entering heaven at the Lake Ochrid post... So yes, I am a wee bit biased against Skopje, but I am already planning my return to other parts of the country... [In the first picture, lake Ochrid is the one where the google user went crazy labelling and ended up missing the screen and our attention span with his monstrous text-snake.]

Yes, that is heaven...

...where we went to after we endured the murderous elevator doors, missing steps, street races, and general chaos of Skopje.... so to talk about heaven, I will see you on the next post.

EuroCo I

Just to sort of lighten your spirits before I dive into the world of hedonistic indulgence,

Take a moment to contemplate what I was confronted with...

...from my hotel window.

At lake Ochrid,

a quiet earth.

EuroCo, here we c o m e . . .

Ok. The picture above is not evidence to the fact that I fixed the blogger problem; for all I did is blatantly freeload a picture link from another website. What it is evidence for, is that I think Ill have a good time in EuroCo in Macedonia... a REAL good time. Like, my dad kept telling me, if youre going to Macedonia, you just have to go to the Ohrid lake; I'm like, well, umm, I think Ill be living quite close.... ;)

Is deadflies marketing confusion?

Dear readers,

I am ashamed.

No sooner was my site starting to become popular with broader audiences than I suddenly realized that innocent newcomers are being welcomed with more boring, pseudo- intellectual reading than ever before.

Now, not that I don't appreciate the avid discussions that some of these monster texts incur, but I do believe that dead flies is and should be targeted towards a neo-illiterate, illustration-craving audience. So without further ado, here a picture from one of my previous posts more in tune with the dead flies philosophy.



I hope that gives us some food for thought.

Anyway, I hope to see all new visitors again, soon. By that time, I promise, I will have
taken more vacation and will again post in the usual, nihilist style that all my regular readers are so fond of.

Szeptember Végén Part II

If you already tuned out during the last entry, please feel free to skip this one, and check out my ISP experience report instead... To the rest: wow, you'd never have expected so much educational value from my effete website, would you?

So anyway, with the background provided, perhaps some things happening in Hungary today can be more readily explained:
The point is, Gyurcsany, our prime minister now known and ridiculed all over Europe for his infamous lie speech (which was by the way not really a confession, as often claimed, because it was held in a small circle and secretly taped): "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening, we lied at night" or: "we really fucked up" etc... is member of the socialist party, which is a successor of the communist party (which lied a lot), so the revelations actually do not come as a suprise to most people.

What pisses them off is that Gyurcsany promised everything to the people during elections the last time around, fulfilled his promises - thus bankrupting the country - promised everything to the people during reelections again, but can no longer fulfill the promises, cause apparently, there is hardly anything left.

So the point of the story is, with a cynical leadership rather bent on reelection than on helping the country, Hungary is now on the edge of ruin and the people are starting to get pissed off, and Budapest is being bathed in a light wholly different than the majestic colors of the Chain Bridge.

Szeptember Végén Part I

Guys, you know that feeling when you're hungry, thirsty, and still sleepy from 9 hours of sleep, and then you turn on your computer, sit down, and instead of having breakfast, you blog another dead-end blog entry? No? Well I do, 'cause that's what I'm doing right at this moment.

Because of all the events going on in Hungary, and due to the high degree of possible misinterpretation that can occur, (considering some of us might not even be able to find Hungary on the world map) [notice the clever use of "us" to make this subtle reproach salonfähig]
I just thought I'd fill you in on my point of view.

First, a brief history of Hungary.

The Hungarians were a happy and strong people who (among other deeds) burned down St. Gallen and controlled much of today's Slovakia, Romania, Croatia and even Austria until the Turks came. We faught valiantly against the Turks until there were almost no Hungarians left to fight valiantly, which is when they occupied our country. After waiting about a century, the Austrians, along with the rest of Rumsfeld's Old Europe called the Haubsburg Empire, kicked out the Turks, but decided to stay for the next few hundred years. There was a revolution in 1848 which was put down, but afterwards, we got some rights anyways, cause the Haubsburgs got scared. After the turn of the century, when whole Europe got bored of all the abundance, prosperity and peace, all men who had hitherto only seen and disscussed war in the fin-de-siecle bordellos and salons marched off excitedly to WWI. After the war, we lost two-thirds of our territory, which prompted us to join another war, WWII, which we, like some despairing gambler upping the ante, also lost (of course, the example of Poland shows that it doesn't really matter if you win or lose, it matters how close you are to Russia). The Russians decided to stay, and there was a revolution in 1956 which was put down, but afterwardss, we got some rights anyways, cause the Russians got scared. Then, in 1989, communism collapsed, and since, Hungary has mainly been ruled by the socialist party, who are the same people who in communist times were most enthusiastic about wearing their cute red uniforms, if you catch my drift.

And the Winner is....

deadflies.blogspot.com

hereby proudly awards
CILEIA

the deadflies power poster award (2 posts! :D )
for:
posting a record amount of times and introducing the now-classic phrasing of "rocking Ceci's handbag" or just "rocking [one's] handbag"
thus contributing to the sustainability, artistic and conceptual development of this site, as well as generally incresing the chick factor of the site.
awarded by deadflies president:
Bertalan M.
fynken.com
may this award serve as inspiration to all the wussies out there who freeload off the good humour of this site but just haven't quite gotten around to posting yet...

Hungary reloaded

Phew! Just before blogging about IC overflowed my attention span, which is that of a monkey on prozac, my picture material ended!!! Phew, as in phew, dammit, I finally get to go to bed, it's almost 2 in the morning, and you probably haven't read my previous posts yet, so get back there and start reading (or read them again).

But just in case you have read everything attentively, here a post-IC impression of my trip to Hungary. I pose in front of my favorite graffiti, which has ornated (If I just made that word up, I don't care, it's too late in the evening to be fussy) the building by the station in Szekesfehervar for over 20 years.

The sign reads "everything has an end, even the end !" I love it, a fitting metaphor for life, love, and this blog entry.

And just to dwelve on the truth behind the previous statement, here a random picture of my home town at night. Peacful, huh? With everybody sleeping... Except me... who was probably bloody blogging again!

IC Part III

Guys, it's already one thirty in the morning, and Im not paid to write this stuff, neither are you paid to read it; so lets just say that Global Village was a blast:

Hier ve aah wiz ze aaztrian MCP;
I'm not just adding this picture because I want to promote Davy Lin's blog again, but because I want to raise my reader's awareness towards traditional maltese dress.

I also want to show you traditional american formal dress, worn here by bedazzling Mal

And the traditional University St. Gallen look and dress, which the Swiss delegation above was asked to assume, with complete success (Notice the dollar signs in all our eyes)

Annnd of course the traditional Kyrgyz look, accompanied by the drunken master style of pre-hangover looks.

IC Part II

Ah yes, bear with me as the roman numerals in the title get more complicated.




In Torun, we wisited the gingerbread house, with the master gingerbread maker who first made gingerbread with us, then completed our gingerbread certificates. I must say, I was very satisfied: as opposed to my framed bachelor's degree from the University of St. Gallen, which has so far eluded any use whatsoever (apart from nearly killing me once when it fell off the nail and onto my sleeping head) I was actually able to use this high gram per square meter certificate to alleviate a dire situation (whose nature I shall not further disclose, except for the fact that it had to do with a seemingly omnipresent lack of paper of another kind in the country of poland)... [If you didnt get this last sentece, its ok: it not that funny, plus it would finally remove the last fig leaf hiding my shameful, vulgar mind behind a haze of artificial metaphor. ]

Continuing the journey, we arrived at Stutthof concentration camp. On the picture, behind the barbed wire, you will see the lonely waking figure of Davy Lin. I could only suspect that at the time I took this picture, Lynnie was wrestling with the inhumanity of humankind. [Should you be looking for a meaningful discussion of this topic, I urge you to check out her blog entry on the subject, which I assure you is dipped in refreshingly less postmodern irony/cynisism than my blog entries could ever hope to be.] I for one was very busy searching for hidden beauty, contemplating how chic she looked with that cute little blue rucksack.

Anyway, time passed and went and flew by, and soon, it was time for opening ceremony.

needless to say, AIESEC is man enough to admit that bigger is actually better, which is why opening ceremony was just one incredibly long, gargantuan ceremony to celebrate just how incredibly gargantuan you can make opening ceremonies be. The show included everything, including dancing bunnies and dancing little girls, girls, women, little boys, boys and men, plus company executives, which really is just another way of saying it was very big. Then, there was some postmodern polish country music, which I guess added the dot on the "gargantuan . "

And then, the acutal conference started...

Oh, yes, but what would it all have been without Global Village. On the picture, a part of the Chinese delegation. Because she's so cute, we'll give the MC member on the right the benefit of the doubt about the blonde ethnic Chinese part. For more on this global village globalization phenomenon, check out my next post.

IC where I was this summer...

"Let me take you back, 'cause I'm going too..." would actually be a good start to this post, as I often drift back to my memories of this banana summer while gradually falling back to the day-to-day* of enjoying the last remnants of my soon-to-end student life...

...yet this time, I'm not "going" to the morally questionable, spicy "Strawberry Fields", but to the very beginning of our IC trip, which started, if I still remember right, at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. The town in question was the city of Breslau; the bus station in question was full of young, motivated skinheads; and the bus in question had no air conditioning.

But let us not dwelve on this most unpleasant part of the trip (the Eurolines ride to Warsaw) which confronted me with the Highway situation in Poland (or lack thereof); for tho I very much enjoy the MC blog, which I shall now proceed to shamelessly plug, I do believe that our dear MC has forgotten that the average reader of the blogger age is ready to read 0.01% of the text in a typical MC post and is right away frustrated by the lack of respect it shows to the large segment of neo-illiterate** insomniacs on the web. This new breed of netizens will only accept more than four lines of text without a picture either from Houellebecq, Playboy magazine, or this blog, all of which happen to be pseudo-pornographic. But because even my blog cant survive text cemetaries without bringing up an occasional picture, I shall present the first slide...

Ah, Torun, Torun. Here you see the whole gang of study-tourees who braved the absolute burn-out of study-trip, pre-conference, and conference. Notice the way the photographer cut poor Copernicus at the legs, a metaphor for the cultural decadence of the modern student tourist group hellbent on visiting all Starbucks outlets in the town with the funny name they cannot pronounce.

ah, but let us not dwelve on the sense of dismay I feel every time my parents shame me by asking me exactly which cities I visited on the poland trip. Instead, let us celebrate cultural diversity. As we threatened to burn alive inside the bus bringing us to Marienburg, the driver released us into the open, allowing us one of those greatly appreciated, completely artificially induced moments of glee. As we were outside, he screamed at us that we should get back in or we could walk the rest of the way. "But sir, your bus is burning"... so we started walking... (on the picture: Robin poses in front of the burning vehicle)

I'm not sure you would appreciate all the pictures we took of the nearby gas station while the coordinators organised another bus; instead, a little interlude of a picture, taken as we actually got to Marienburg, 5 minutes before we started heading back:

This is me with Dina. She was a very sweet girl, I think I met her at coffee the day before... notice my hangover...

so maybe the view towards the other side is more rewarding... Finally, on the second day, we arrived in the city of Gdansk (Danzig), and at that point, blogger *&"&ç* refused to let me post more pictures, forcing me to ask you to continue reading at the next post....

*this term was proudly coined by me and will now be used for the next twenty years to the general dismay of english teachers reading this blog worldwide.

** people who teach themselves not to have to read

Nihilistic Rambling Post after Return from Megalomaniac IC pre-mid-and post conference + Hungary trip

My dearests,

Apart from being glad that my Blog is finally starting to attract beautiful girls, I have just soooo crash landed today on the hard reality of autumn life in Zürich. The smell of stale wine from my fridge has re-activated my memories of the cheap, smelly bambus drinks we indulged ourselves in early this summer... oohh... the putrid aroma is taking me back...


*** like the leaves of summer, gone are the days of hedonistic indulgence:


gone. ***

But what gives. lemme reminisc a bit more... Im just gonna grab this Tetra-packed Merlot here, give Maya (spelling?) a ring, and post my IC pix later... sorry everyone...

My Bro in Andaluzia

Guys, while I was on ISP, my Bro wasn't hybernating, either, but having this type of edge-of the world, Robinsoncrusoesque experience with his significantly younger girlfriend. I found following picture so rich, I just have to post it. Man, if I wouldn't have had a great vacation, I'd have reason to be melon-choly! And while we're talking melons, check out the scary parallels between our two vacations.

We want more! More ISP !!!

at the end, it was only the Egyptians, and Jasper and me again... and then, just Jasper and me... and the whole thing seemed like one crazy dream to take back to good old Switzerland, as a memory...

the days sped past...


and the daily kisses...

Ah, the nightly dance rituals!

And concentrated on more important things. On the picture: three of us photographing a sign reading "shampooing prohibited"

but in good company, we forgot about that rather early...

Well ok, so maybe the light fixture in the hotel room was less than perfect....

We have arrived.


Jasper and I chilling on the hellishly long busride to paradise.

Gearing up for the Ultimate.

Forget Hollywood. This summer of passion & experience, I am gearing up for the ultimate Trip. In the last spasms of my student career, I feel that life is somehow accelerating towards a concatenation of amplifying bifurcation points. The logical next step is the International Congress. Ten days of serenity with the creme de la creme of student life, somewhere in europe. Hugged by miscellaneous points of random encounter, 5 days in Poland, afterwards a plane to the Puszta. Will the trip continue back from the edge of the world? I rest, to gain strength.

Was ISP2006 Fun?

Let me think... umm.. yes.