Dead Flies

Another year, another blog post.

2012-01-22T08:22:00.000-08:00

Many people -- indeed, most people, are not really motivated by money. They are usually motivated by an idealistic struggle that they really believe in -- well that, or jealousy of someone who leads such a struggle.

It was this jealousy, or shall we call it "blog envy" that motivated me to finally post a new blog entry, the first one in... err... almost exactly a year. Fitting that that last year's entry should have been about new year's resolutions. In the interest of full disclosure, a pinch of exhibitionism, and a walloping of masochistic exploration, let me comment on my new year's resolutions in retrospect -- meaning, in business speak, my personal KPI fulfillment in the previous year:

"

1. Re-start blogging
"

I may have tried to mislead you to hide the entire scope of my embarrassing failure on this one, but I'm too lazy to backdate posts. The only lame excuse I have is I didn't have time. The whole year. I procrastinated. To 2012. And now I'm starting again. Hope that convinced you....

Score: 0 / 10

2. Learn Sailing

Okay, so this we started, but didn't quite get to the license. Looking at the amount of money we sank *ahem* sailed off at the Zürichsee, I would say this one was a full hyperactive success. We look to continue next year, perhaps with a different teacher, lake, and price plan.

Score: 7 / 10

3. play (more) violin

Do other instruments count? Why did I put "violin"? That's so... limiting. The point is I started playing piano, and... no really...

Let me compose myself. So there was violin (one time) guitar (a few times) and piano (more times). Okay, I admit I more or less flunked this one. The resolution for next year will be "play (some) piano"

Score: 3 / 10

4. re-discover the art of writing (to illustrate the depth of my destitution, it suffices to say that it took me 2 minutes to properly formulate this point)

I re-discover this, every time I write a corporate e-mail. Okay, I see that wasn't too convincing. I did continue my journal, but did not make the world a better place with any more of my short stories.

Score: 4 / 10

5. attend more political events (like book clubs).

I did attend a book club, even if it was only in a representative role as MB's boyfriend, does that count? I can report that book clubs are no longer really political events (apart from the Nixon biography we got to take home as a very large and hitherto unopened addition to our bookshelf).

Oh, and plus, I tried to start a book club, but nobody came.

Does visiting a shooting club count as a political event?

Score: 2 / 10

6. focus, instead of just on input-related activities (reading the Economist, going to museums), also on output-related activities (writing, painting)

We did this, especially at the beginning of the year (painting), before we shamelessly reverted to our consumerist selves. However, then we lapsed a few times again.

Score: 5 / 10, not there yet.

7. refocus on core values (like living for knowledge, insight, conversation)

WTF? Man, those old core values seem so distant now! I live for the 25th of the month, which is when my bank account gets a bit fatter. No, seriously, to my former self: "you silly, little, naive young man!!"

Score: no longer applicable. I no longer seek conversation with mortals!

Interlude: damn, why isn't there anything here about working out??? I did work out in 2011, if my memory is correct, mostly in the beginning of the year. Oh, and I went to the gym yesterday. At 7 in

the morning. Boomyeah!

8. develop a certain positive attitude to work

Amm, not sure if I want to comment on this, lest someone from work find this blog...

Score: 0 / 10

9. do something crazy

Luckily I said "something", not "things". Because if I would have said "some crazy things" my abject failure would have been more apparent, considering I did not do anything really crazy the entire year. I asked MB if she knew of anything, anything at all. The best we could come up with: letting her drive my car.

Score: 3 / 10

10. learn to cook

Call Dani. Ask him about the turkish dinner. Call Gyuri. Ask him about the paprikascsirke. Talk to MB. Ask her about my meals.

Score: 8 / 10

11. continue to attempt speed reading

I scored a late breakthrough with this one. It was two days ago when I was reading a particularly boring article in the New Yorker. I said to myself: "damn, I'm fast at reading this". But I still remembered the gist: the yakuza are .

Score: 7 / 10

12. ...aaand the obligatory last point: go to the gym more often

Aha! Here it is! I should just have read on....

Score: 6 / 10

Average: 4.73. Result: F. Ouch. Harsh.

So that was last year. This year I have learned: no more resolutions...

This is the subject

2011-01-28T09:16:00.001-08:00

This is the test

New Year's Resolution

2011-01-09T10:11:00.000-08:00

For me, keeping new year's resolutions is about as hard as getting up early in the morning on Sundays in the interest of "being productive".

Much like getting up early, a resolution seems like a noble cause to aim for, but once the time comes, it seems so much easier to pull the covers over your ears and ignore the nagging voice in your head urging you to, at least once, live up to the promises you made to yourself, not long ago.

Thus, due to what economists call θ, or "time preference"* I will no doubt find myself, as millions of my commiserates on earth reneging on my oh so well meant promises.

Though this year will undoubtedly be no different, I will attempt to circumvent the problem by using a "shock and awe" approach: brainstorm so many resolutions, that by force of sheer statistical probability, I will be bound to achieve at least one.

1. Re-start blogging

2. Learn Sailing

3. play (more) violin

4. re-discover the art of writing (to illustrate the depth of my destitution, it suffices to say that it took me 2 minutes to properly formulate this point)

5. attend more political events (like book clubs).

6. focus, instead of just on input-related activities (reading the Economist, going to museums), also on output-related activities (writing, painting)

7. refocus on core values (like living for knowledge, insight, conversation)

8. develop a certain positive attitude to work

9. do something crazy

10. learn to cook

11. continue to attempt speed reading

12. ...aaand the obligatory last point: go to the gym more often

Note the way, however, you might only know about my success at points 2-12, if I don't break resolution 1. And, as we know, that one can be a hard enough resolution to follow

* (and what is tellingly in essence just another sort of egotism enjoyed by homines oeconomici - this time against their own future selves)

Very Random Comeback Post about Fitness Studios

2009-02-02T12:58:00.000-08:00

It is my strong belief that there is a tiny lesson in each and every situation life serves up, if one just looks hard enough. Okay, so I really had to squint to make out the following observations, but it was all well worth it, for now I can present to you all the lessons that one can learn from one visit to the local Fitness Studio (name of fitness Studio omitted in fear of legal litigation / blows-of-fist from muscle-laden, involved parties).

Lesson I: Those lessons we learn as children can be valuable also when we think that we are no longer children.

Remember all the books we used to read - or, to be truthful: look at pictures in - as children? Those fascinating books that tried to make a complex world more understandable by stressing all the fascinating, hidden connections at work in this existence?

I mean, of course, the Where's Waldo series we used to peruse. They propagated the notion that there will always be, behind every topsy-turvy situation, a little bit of "meaning" -- embodied in the fact that there was somehow, somewhere always a guy wearing a striped shirt. (One of the reasons I actually humbly suggest the renaming of the series from "Where's Waldo" to "There's Waldo Again").

Of course, little did we know at the time that this immensely simplified notion would turn out to be wildly correct, though after visiting the fitness studio for the umpteenth time, I can definitely state that Waldo does not wear a striped shirt. Instead, the real Waldo is an older, oriental-looking man with a beard much like the one I am currently touting, with short black pants and a gray shirt, whose exentric body movements automatically identify him as being present each and every time I visit the gym - whether he is powerwalking out of the dressing room, preparing to mount a "Milon Circle" machine (one of those contraptions with the bizzarre, proturding antaenne that are meant to be pumped in a rythmic fashion in a fusion of man and machine so perfectly ridiculous that I can only but refrain from indulging); or at the end, popping up at the automatic doors with his eerie smile, just as I am about to sneak out hoping not to have spotted him, just once.

Lesson II: Cute, innocent-looking girls prefer macho supermen.

Okay, so maybe some of you took less time than I did to figure this one out. I for one, grew up believing those "love is..." caricatures, where the boy and the girl are roughly of the same size, or at least of the same size category.

Alas, the cruel reality of the gym teaches us otherwise. Witness Mary and the Incredible Hulk, a staple presence at the freeweight section almost as omnipresent as Waldo.

I remember the first time I saw this duo in action, in essence a tragedy (at least from my perspective) in three acts:

Foreplay:

I go to the free weights section, chest-press 2*10kg+the bar (!), and am instantly proud of this small lift for man, giant-ass lift for someone who is essentially a boy. Enter cute blonde girl, who proceeds to said freeweight session, notices and endorses the 2*10kg+the bar with a smile thrown in my direction & I wonder whether I need to revise my preconception that I never have the luck to meet and date hot chicks from gyms.

Act 1: The tragedy takes its course

Enter giant steroid animal, who proceeds to add, to my 2*10kg, several*10kg (+the bar), upon which he receives a wonderful cooing pat from the above cute blonde. This incredible concentration of testosterone and muscle tissue now proceeds to be as rough with those poor weights as those weights are usually rough with poor me. His grunting is accompanied by general condolences ushered by said blonde chick.

Act 2: the sweaty catharsis

The WTF!8???!*20kg are now removed from the bar, and the giant belt girdling our Adonis is unlatched with the same ceremony as if it were some heavy weight boxing title. Our meat monster then proceeds to help said cute chick lift the bar several times, probably some sinister allusion to the fact that my 2*10 kg was something pretty close to what his girlfriend lifts.

Act 3: the happy ending (only for 2/3 of involved parties)

The drama closes with the two kissing, just to make her presumable conviction most blatantly obvious to me: the fact that her "partner" could snap someone like me in two goes some ways to addressing her need for that feeling of security she's seeking in an exciting and fulfilling relationship.

Lesson III: Never, ever believe the official sauna pictures (or: actual content may vary)

Okay, it's not like I went out and bought my fitness abo based on this:

I didn't, because although I do still believe in some things (like the FNAC salesman who told me I needed a $125 gold-plated cable to connect my DVD player to my beamer), I no longer believe in other things, like "heaven", or "truth in marketing".

In real life, the sauna is built of a dark, sweat-soaked wood, more ruddy in character; and instead of young, beautiful naked women, there are old, hairy, albeit naked men.

Finally, unlike what the picture seems to insinuate, I no longer expect enlightenment, in the form of a satisfying bright radiating beam, to touch me at the sauna.

2009-01-23T14:10:00.000-08:00

Apparently, an internet site called 123people.ch has made it its mission to gather pointless, confusingly garbled data about me for all to find and cherish as the first thing in sight when you google my name (uh-oh, so I just gave myself away...). Unfortunately, the lack of love with which the facts were assembled hints at computer involvement.... Apart from an assortment of photographs of random strangers who apparently, for some reason, come to the computer's mind when it thinks of my name (one thing they all have in common is that they all look French and kinda sleazy), there is quite a revealing "tag cloud", which I recommend to all of you who really want to start understanding me (it has this sort of "portal to my unconscious" flair, especially because I don't get it, either):
Bayern Design job Eth zürich Martin Aktualität Hungary Contest Abschluss Teilw Unisg Flies Projektes Car design Blogging Graph München Austausch Best car Darst Boesch Mecon

as you can see, you were right, all along... and all those years you kept on telling me that I should just listen to that part of me that wants to burst out... you were talking... of course... about Teilw!!!

Let's get this baby started again.

2009-01-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I was smoking a cigarillo in my bathtub with the lights out, treating* the room with Chopin from a stereo perched perilously close to the water...

In the bathtub, a little rhyme occurred to me:

In the darkness, there's a light:
a cigarette burning in the night...

and with that, welcome to the understated, hush-hush, yet nevertheless significant relaunch
of dead flies, orchestrated, heh heh, from my bathtub.

* The wonderful German word "beschallen", is, according to Leo, translated as "to treat with sound"

Iphone Blogging

2008-12-18T04:13:00.001-08:00

Dear readers,

I send this update from my phone. :)
Bertalan Moravánszky

Please note my new mobile number:
+41 (0) 79 448 87 04

Humble new beginnings.

2008-12-17T13:14:00.000-08:00

I have been fantasizing about re-starting my blog for a couple of months now. This post will be the first step in that direction. So, hello world. Here I am again. Wiser? Well, older, for sure... It's been a while...

I'm thinking of getting a Harley-Davidson...

2008-02-23T09:12:00.000-08:00

I admit that with trends in the family, it's often like the America-Europe paradigm for us in our family: my brother seems to be ahead by 3 years or so with every trend. About that much time ago, my bro bought himself a Speed Triple.

Today, he got free tickets to the Swiss Moto 08 and I trepidatiously agreed to go with him and Ildi to check out what the fuss was about.

Amm... ehh... look behind you...
Adam and Ildi trying some Honda Cruiser
Me on the Harley I would consider my favourite. I already had infos sent home... A slight detail is that I would have to learn how to actually ride a motorcycle. I have already talked to Adam's instructor and he told me step one is to go to a trial lesson, to see how far I am already. I think I'll do that, once I'm in Basel and I have some time.

Road trippin'

My new flat in the heart of Basel

2008-02-13T02:13:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, I'm signing the documents for starting my new existence. I got real lucky, and found a charming, over 70 square meter flat in the historic city, literally 20m from Basel's heart, the Barfüsserplatz.
Arrows point to the flat's windows, and to the right, the Barfüsserplatz can be seen.

The staircase...

The living room, with the outjutting bay window. Im planning to buy a projector, so I can show movies on the large wall to the back ;)

The bedroom

The roomy kitchen

The kitchen panel

The bathroom

Madrid, Marylin, Marry Moo Year 2008.

2008-01-06T05:39:00.001-08:00

Ayayayay.... Here I am, back from vacation in Madrid, and all I got you is a lousy post card:

with Marilyn Moo-nroe. If it helps any, I'm probably committing a blatant act of copyright infringement just making this picture available to you, so if you don't agree with its message, then you at least have the peace of mind that I might get sued. I must say, I found this card to be absolutely hilarious. Not in the ha-ha type of way, but in a genuinely cute and funny kind of way; and if you don't agree, well, sucks to you, cause I, and all of us, ought to be preparing for a happy Moo Year 2008, whatever the hell that means.
What could it mean? The new year will bring us higher oil prices, an unstable Pakistan with nuclear weapons, another opportunity for the US to bless us with a loony president, and more global warming which seems, contrary to its promise, to make summers and winters alike colder, at least here in Switzerland.

So what I, Berti, will be doing is looking for the "island" in the chaos, and I sense that that will require, besides great perseverance, an XXL sense of humor, as shown on my final postcard from Madrid:yes monkey that's, XX bloody L.

And because there will be enough challenge not just for me, but for everyone in 2008, I wish all of you, too, an XXL humor, and a very, very happy (2)mOO(8) year.

random picture & I'm going to Madrid.

2007-12-28T13:17:00.000-08:00

just as it seemed like my life had deteriorated to flying back and forth between Frankfurt and Zürich, increasingly revolving around trainings, partying with colleagues, and indiscriminate money spending, suddenly the holiday spirit set it and I found myself re-catapulted into family life around the Christmas tree. However, just as things were getting too cozy, I realized one of the grand truths of my new life: that suddenly, I had lots of money and little time, instead of lots of time and little money (if you're looking for deeper truths, check my other blog). Thus was born the idea to go to Madrid for new year's, to give birth to a few new entries on my impressions of the Iberian peninsula. Iberian peninsula, here I come...

My Blogging Helps You Cope.

2007-11-29T02:47:00.000-08:00

au lecteur - to the reader.

as you arrived in my blog's belly
an extra hit did my counter tally
my dear, you err inside a thread
where wise men truly fear to tread!

but I console you with a fact,
that your mind (till now) truly lack'd:
that though Peer Gynt an onion peels
as man himself for the core reels

There is no core of this entry!
no truth- but jest, there is plenty!

However, as long as there is still more time,
there will always be a rhyme
and another lay'r to peel away
and another stupid thing to say!!
[otherwise, try peeling something with
more of a core, like an avocado, or visit www.nietzsche.de]

evocation of my Muse.

Oh, somewhat be-muddled muse of all things blogged
haunting the molten plastic perfum'd blogosphere!
You, passionate one, who kisses our eyes, CRT-flogged
to us, bastard sons of an electronic Narciss, be near!

...as we yet again luggage our Facebook profiles,
with the sweet URL siren-call of our irrelevant blogs,
in the vain hope of catching, what out there lies:
another key-bor'd-potato, whose soul already sogs,

be-moist'nd by the wish
for another "easy" dish:
the Saran wrapp'd TV-dinner
of the internet age: the "blog".

Oh you vixen Muse, hear my call!
Make many, many ... for me fall!

don't be ashamed: being deep inside my blog is just as obscure a place as visiting www.wired.com

An Ode to the blogger.

Oh! You bloggers, who your secrets
from your parents keep,
with the fanatic determination of viperous Cerberus;
but are unashamed to exhibit them openly
to 2.5 billion other people!
To you goes out this ode, and to all
the under categories of you, whose tendencies
Google is so happy to index
to the detriment of those just trying
to find niche internet porn.

Let me start with, you, sweet girl bloggers,
who adorn your sites
with such star-trailing cursor magic
& perfuming pink style templates
that the visiting man
cannot but faint from its overbearing insense!

Then to you, oh bards, you sharers of deep experience
Tell me, which shops you visit, and musics you listen to,
which sounds play from your electric harp-proxies.
Are you currently listening to an underground group
called Monkey Idol? Rest assured, I care,
though alas, today I've forgotten my pen...

And you, bricoleurs, you hobby reviewers of digital trinkets!
Tell me, how you cleaned the CCD on your Sony DSC-P200!
Tell me, how you can boost the range of Bluetooth mice!
May God grant you the Odysseuses you seek
who crave precisely that knowledge
in the wild nihil of the internet, which your site doeth graciously, (with pictures), provide!
[And please, review the iPhone!]

Then, oh , you desperate souls, you melancholically inclined,
Tell me, like a Polar bear surrounded by global-warm'd melting ice,
how your lives have no more meaning,
but please, spray your entries with the misty insence of self-loving eloquence
Maybe then, on the next party, that you and I attend
Between the small talk, to your necrophile tendencies I can attend!

Oh, and you, baby bloggers, wrapped in delicate swaddling clothes,
who put the glint back in our eyes with their first and only entries:
"Welcome to my new blog, where I will from now on post random thoughts
and impressions on my life. Yeah, so this is my first post"
dated 2006 february.
please, write another entry, so we know that blogging is alive and well!

Oh bloggers, bloggers of the world unite!
Let us show where people need to search
the pulse of eternal life
in this internet age!

"This is Barbecue"

2007-11-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

It is an open secret that my other blog has been more active recently. However, because I also want to entertain those for whom finding my other blog remains too daunting a challenge, I will now proceed to sharing a completely random anecdote.

When I was in Regensburg, there was an intern from Belgium, (let's just call him Mr. G...) who loved to smoke good pot. As much as he liked to indulge himself in aforementioned (in-)activity, Geoffrey had admittedly a more difficult time in actually getting the pot:

In Prague, at four-thirty in the morning, a dealer had cut him in on four centimetres of supposed premium hash compressed in a saran-wrap tube; for twenty euros, each five euro'd centimetre would actually have seemed somewhat a bargain, at least when high at five-thirty in the hostel; alas, fate would have it that the there-puffing Geoffrey went quite fast from the declaration, "mmm good shit" to "strange shit" to "this is not shit!" as the first one-millimeter layer of shit wore through to the tobacco filling.

Alas for Geoffrey, this would not be his last close call with Mary Jane; an even closer one indeed is what motivated this entry and its clou, which has since become a kind of redewendung for me. (It was no doubt partly this final adventure that sent Geoffrey packing back to Belgium, somewhat closer to the centre of European weedendom):

I also had a friend called P... (this time omitted because I actually have forgotten his name) who was considerably more successful at finding sources than poor old Geoffrey. My adventures with P... also form the butt (or shall we say, blunt) of several anecdotes, but alas, these cannot be the topic of today's post. It suffices to say that on one evening, when Geoffrey and I were again forced to face the quality (or lack thereof) of our navigation skills by not finding a certain party, which is a complicated way of saying 'one evening when we were lost in Regensburg', we randomly met P... . Now, not only did this radically increase our chances of actually getting to the club before the party was over; it also put tender, teary hope in Geoffrey's eyes of finally, as he put it, "connecting to the Galileo satellite" (evidently, besides being a fan of substance, Geoffrey was also a great fan of the European Union). Indeed, no sooner did I share with P... Geoffrey's preferences, than P... nodded understandingly and pulled out a small satchel and some papes, and proceeded to roll one. Though Geoffrey's vision was obscured by joyous, expectant tears, I saw clearly that what P... was rolling looked more like dried carrots, onion and ginger root than some of that real "sticky-icky". When confronted by my nagging doubts , P... shot back: "ja, es handelt sich hierbei um die beste Imitation, aus Indien. Fast so gut wie echt, und zehnmal so billig." "Fuer deinen Kolleg ist das eh gesunder", he added with a smirk, while handing the roll to Geoffrey. (Oh! And shall we mention, that as fitting of a tragic hero, Geoffrey had skipped most German classes that he had been offered by the university). Poor Geoffrey was thus left with his tears of joy and a hand greedily patting down his coat for a lighter. Soon, it was lit and the first expectant tokes were taken; we all eyed him questioningly, foreboding the final, tragic fall of our hero. Mouth agape, we were not dissappointed.

Said Geoffrey:

"This is not shit!... This is barbecue!"

So I leave you with this post tonight, which was not really brilliant, but also, I hope, not completely barbecue.

I read your blog entry...

2007-10-05T02:07:00.000-07:00

The more I read other people's blogs, the more I freak out. I'm freaking about the kinds of friends I have:

suddenly, a tough-guy I know for his confidence and "bring it on" style reveals himself a gentle poet slash crybaby; a girl with a world-renowned smile reveals a heart more tormented than a fat man doing bodyPump(TM); and a colleague known for a clear head and analytic standpoints churns out blog entries slaloming between obscure new-age music discoveries and contemplating suicide. Guys, let me just ask you: why don't you tell us these things up front, so we can help? Is it because of the conviction that no-one reads your blogs anyways, so you might as well, or because you somehow feel these things so embarrassing that you'd rather give it to us in writing, and then shut your eyes and hide behind a pile of coats? The thing is, if you write it in your blogs, it's kind of public. So from now on, beware. I might just throw in a question about your foot fetish, just *bam* in the middle of the small talk you seem to prefer when you're not around your computers.

In Zürich.

2007-07-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, so dead flies is dead. It wasn't "the people" who killed it, much the way it wasn't really "the people" who killed typewriters or good taste; they just got replaced by cooler things like computers and MTV, and left with their heads hanging.
Ok ok, so I admit it, the fact is dead flies died because I killed it. But I have an excuse, which is that recently, my life has been reduced to sitting at home with my shirt off, either working on my thesis paper, or watching TV while drinking liters of "high C" orange juice, only to use the empty cartons as projectiles to hit the channel change or volume adjust buttons. While engaged in such deliciously duotonous (as in, paradoxically, two times monotonous) activity, I would sometimes drift and slumber, and before I would wake myself with my own hideous first snore, I would dream of those times when my blog got tons of visitors, with enough third-party comments to actually bathe me in the illusion that people were actually, God knows why, taking their time to read my absolutely random rantings. So in this second before the snore, I made up my mind, however childish and insignificant it seemed, to strike a blow towards whatever my blog represents by again blogging something. And while this post seems to demonstrate that you actually CAN make something out of nothing much, it also demonstrates that that something then, due to the infinite justice at work in the world, actually ends up adding up to nothing much.

Rümlang Bodyflying

2007-06-24T02:23:00.000-07:00

Paris... one more time

2007-06-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

It breaks my heart to see the counter on my page creep up, while the number of weeks since I haven't posted just keeps increasing. It seems like a pyramid scheme doomed to fail in the long term. To keep all those dead flies fans alive, here a few commemorative "good-bye" snapshots of Paris, courtesy of Marc's telephoto lens.

Bretagne!

2007-04-29T05:26:00.000-07:00

Continuing a dear dead flies tradition, the computer ate this post the first time I wrote it.
So I wrote it again, because I know that the computer likes seconds.

Ah yes, the little squares of Rennes, teeming with life, booming and echoing with thousands of chatting denizens who should actually have been hard at work in plastic-and-steel cubicles, improving France's disappointing first-quarter GDP figures.

After Rennes came the first true highlight of the trip: Le Mont St. Michel; the approach was designed for maximum effect, with the majestically towering fortress throning over the landscape from miles away... the parking lot gets flooded every high tide, so we kept our cars under surveillance from the many small windows of the monastery. Interesting note: the very top of the Church was finished in the 20th century and added via helicopter.

Inside, a surprisingly serene atmosphere...

the monastery hall..
...the visit effeting our entourage to the point that they reenacted the dead WWI soldier stance on a field nearby, shortly after leaving for Dinard...

On the way to another highlight, another highlight: the forest in Huelgoat, alias the devil's bowling alley. We climbed down into the caves below, where light is thrown in thin beams into the musky darkness.

Then, finally, the cliffs of Crozon, our final destination... the view below...
Tamas testing his life insurance.
Who knew France had these treasures, other than the Guide Michelin?
On the way back, we stopped in several picturesque towns, above the Roman/early Gothic Pleyben, home of the Pleyben cookies.

Menez Hom, supposedly the best panorama in the Bretagne, overvalued in our opinion (see picture)

the obligatory beach picture, keeping in tradition. Above: Tamas running from seaweedman. (Seaweedman not pictured) A flower, courtesy of Katrin, which sprang about at an evening BBQ session at a backpacker's hostel somewhere in Bretagne.

And then: just us, and the sea.

The adventurous eight. From 1' o clock: Paul (CAN), Celia (CAN), Tamas (H), Euripides (BRA), Mika (SWE), Kathrin (SWE), Gustavo (BRA) & Yours Truly.

Decadence

2007-04-29T03:48:00.000-07:00

Decadence is a word that slips out of my mouth quite easily, in fact, I am the first to admit that I have been mis- and over-using the term throughout my blogger career. Some deadflies historians might actually point out my own special hypocritical relationship to the word.

But here at HEC campus, one doesn't just take this word for a walk once in a while to chastise fellow students for lacking that socialist-compassionate glazing so appreciated in hardcore business universities... no, one can't just spit out the word; one has to really reflect about it, before settling on using it as a sort of "I told you so" excuse for then guiltily indulging oneself to the core.

It is hard to quantify the exact magnitude of crazyness that the elections of the local BDE (student government) draws with it here; 300,000 carefully raised Euros need to be spent in 3 days on completely furtuitious activities, ranging from completely pointless, gargantuan-sized advertisements of the various warring apolitical parties:
To the provision of random fun-tools around campus (Segway not pictured):
To the provision of only somewhat rickety amusement rides that, with only somewhat faulty security bracers and restraint mechanisms, are only somwehat dangerous to the soewhat jaded, indigenous student population:
let me not mention the free food service for one week, with room delivery, the poker tournament with the plasma screen as prize (grabbed, of course, from the French by our Xchange man Paul aka Pokerman aka Shinny), or the parties with just about free everything.
Those of you who think young students here might be getting the wrong impression about the meaning of life, go figure. Yeah, go figure, while I take my thirteenth intoxicated bumper car ride...

Some serious catching up.

2007-04-22T02:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have to admit that I've been neglecting things. In fact, last time I logged into blogger, I could hardly even remember the password. I have been feeling guilty about not posting, tho, so guilty that I chose to drown the guilt in not posting even more. In fact, dead flies was not only dead in the last few months, but some of you might have gained the impression that it was actually even more than dead, perhaps undead, having reverted to some sort of electrodecaying afterlife as a zealously frozen-in-time mummy, or mummified zombie. Well, there is one thing that all mummies have in common, other than being wrapped-in-cloth carcasses, which is that they come back to life; this is also the reason why dead flies is back from the dead, albeit in a perhaps more deeply boring form.

Chartres

2007-03-22T16:58:00.000-07:00

With Chartres checked off and another trip to the Bretagne already in the pipeline, who am I to complain? Well, I'm not sure, but I think Ill do it anyway...

first of all, I still haven't nailed the topic for my Master's thesis, tho I know it should be something on new economic geography and that I should choose at least two cities to analyse from an urban dynamic perspective. I was trying to surf the net for some good material, but the best thing I found was Rem Koolhaas' treatsy on Junkspace, an amusing yet unsettling piece from the Harvard Guide to Shopping. There are some great quotes, like: "Although its individual parts [i.e. parts of a shopping center] are the outcome of brilliant inventions, lucidly planned by human intelligence, boosted by infinite computation, their sum spells the end of Enlightenment, its resurrection as farce, a low-grade purgatory... [junkspace]" ; "junkspace is like being condemned to a perpetual Jacuzzi with millions of your best friends...". Anyway, read this rich form of scathing social critique if you have time; I certainly did, which wasted [at least relative to what I was supposed to be doing] even more of my time. I know I want to expand on the holistic approach I had in my last thesis, but Im not yet sure how I want to integrate such elements....

secondly, Ill have to spend this whole week on house-arrest studying for the theory of finance test I have next wednesday. This kinda snuck up on me... I was understanding every session until a few classes ago when I suddenly found myself copying endless processions of incomprehensible greek characters chained together with logical operators in what can only be described as a rococo math nightmare. Speaking of styles, check out this picture I shot of the stone work surrounding the altar at Chartres Cathedral.

thirdly, guess who I found hyping MEcon on the HSG website?

Our Campus

2007-03-16T00:57:00.000-07:00

l'ouest side part deux

2007-03-11T12:53:00.000-07:00

Ah yes. What bogus road trip would be complete without the obligatory escape-from the world, final destination, road-ends here beach picture? None of course; and so, neither was ours, until we went to the beach near Bordeaux.

And to prove to you that Im not lying about this being symptomatic, here a random picture of Sandfoort on our Amsterdam road trip 3 years ago;

followed by one from our time in Oostende early last year (notice the apocalyptic name for added effect on this last one). So obviously, I'm not just riding clichés here. Facts prove time and time again: final destination beaches are part of every well-staged decadent road trip these days.

Ok, anyway, back to the main plot. Unlike the Bordeaux wine from the vineyard, we didnt really let the city unfold its bouquet all too much, arriving deep in the evening and leaving early in the morning the next day; instead, we got to see Nantes in quite vivid detail, including this spooky night shot of the back gate of Nantes castle... now how useful was that while you were trying to free that imprisoned princess?
Actually, we ourselves chose all too often to leave the princes to the knights, preferring to leave our nights to the obligatory pizza-and-juice hostel sessions. Pictured: Richard, Luis, Mary-Louise, Juice, assorted bevarages, pizza. We then chose to move to more elegant surroundings, were dinner was served:
(no actually, this picture is from the Louvre I visited the week afterwards, but having accidentally made it into this post, it's such a beauty, I dont have the heart to take it out again...)

Back from WestSide I

2007-03-09T23:36:00.000-08:00

I know, I am late with these pictures, having given myself one luxurious week between the trip's end and posting. But hey, this way, all the memories are just that much more fuzzy, guaranteeing some more creative storytelling than the exact, meticulous style that you are accustomed to from this site.

Yes, so once upon a time, there was a core team that set out to discover the Wild West of France, bottom up. Here on this picture, in a tiny little town somewhere along the way: Chaim, Sal, Richard, Luis, and Katrin. Notice the sun shining, a luxury which would become increasingly sparse as time wore on.

Im actually glad about the added realism in this picture; I could just have posted pictures where everybody is partying in the back of the car, instead of showing sour, concerned, or terrified faces. The tense demeanors could be due to three reasons: 1. I was driving as this picture was taken; or: 2. I was next up to drive when it was taken 3. I had just finished driving when the picture was taken, but was slated to drive again, some time in the future.

Ah yes, the typical "on the road" snapshot. Please notice the decorative feathers we added to the front during the trip, which miraculously stayed glued to the car the whole time and did much to bemuse French city dwellers. Here we are driving through one of the miriad of little generic towns on our way from Bordeaux to a vineyard of our choice.

Here the vineyard of our choice from the outside. What was inside is anybody's guess. hint: wine.
Ah yes, la campagne. How many of these cabbage fields did we see on the trip? Many. Many many. Too bad we only noticed on the before-last day that our map actually had the scenic routes marked. This had both positive and negative effects: positive was, that we finally actually took the scenic routes. Negative was the creation of a new inside joke: guys, this road is now scenic... wait wait... beginning at that curve over there, it is no longer scenic... 1..2...3... aaawww... its no longer scenic; guys, seriously, retire those cameras; this is no longer scenic. By the way: the picture above is not scenic; I have no scenic pictures, because at that time, I was busy trying to keep us all from doing a Thelma and Louise off the next cliff.

à la recherche du temps perdu

2007-02-22T05:42:00.000-08:00

ah, exchange student life.

where one can just meet a random friend on the way to the library and decide to go eat lunch now and then during lunch, decide to join a group going to the Louvre in 10 minutes...

where, even more extreme, one can plan a 7-day trip to Rome with 4 people, then privately decide that one wants to stay in France instead, only to have the 4 others also suddenly ditch the Rome trip and come along...

...and thats exactly how our trip idea from Toulouse to Nantes started, and now it has snowballed into a project involving seven people, an Opel Zafira, and several dreams of finding the meaning of life somewhere between Biarritz and St-Jean-de-Luz...

Actually, this is just the way I wanted my college life to close, as a sort of reminiscence, reflection and re-interpretation on the preceding 5 years of my existence, or what college life was all about.

impromptu visits to the capital; ramblings (I am a bit sick,,,)

2007-02-17T02:52:00.000-08:00

I give the title because we went in with one of my friends (name deleted to insure anonymity, and to avoid being blamed for posting this) to meet some friends of this friend. Unfortunately, the friends' status as friends seemed rather questionable since they hardly bothered to even aknowledge the existence of my friend when we finally found them, after having been chased through half of Paris by frantic cell-phone calls, initiated exclusively by my friend. (you can guess that my friend is a guy, and that my friends' friends are pretty girls)

oh well; good to see that the parisian froid-sang is contagious; (perhaps I myself will learn something from this, maybe becoming less gullible to those telephone surveys that I always somehow feel obliged to answer, or to always accept random acts of kindness from strangers, no matter how counter-productive, for instance like being driven up from the store in Jouy-en-Josas to campus, even tho I still needed to go to the post office, because I couldn't decline such a charming offer from a local étudiante)

Anyway, Im drifting off again, but dont blame me, blame me being sick today, with swollen eyes due to some infection which I hope will go tomorrow...

And now, for something completely different:

us at the cafe at the place du Luxembourg.

And now for something completely the same. Us paying for the coffee at the cafe at the place du Luxembourg. Notice the heavily opportunistic use of 5 cent pieces to get rid of excess ballast.
The Pantheon. There are many great things about it, including the great French it commemorates inside, and its entry prices, the latter of which explains why we didnt go in to see former, at least yet.

The Louvre; Im getting a bit sloppy. It seems I have forgotten to rotate the picture; actually, I blame my swollen eyes, which make me now have the motivation for manipulating pictures I cannot see anyway be lower than that of a claustrophobic chipmunk closed in a cage.

Where I'm @

2007-02-15T09:05:00.000-08:00

Hi guys. Now, many of you didn't want to believe me when I said I live at the end of the world. Well, guess what? I've got photo-graphic proof, courtesy of Google Earth. The first way of telling that there is nothing exciting in a 50' radius of here is the fact that no-one actually bothered to place one landmark sign on the map, except one guy who mistakenly labelled the HEC restaurant as a "compelling culinary center clear of any comparison" [just kidding, even students here would not be arrogant enough to claim that...], anyway, please witness the map below, with the signature forest (which I see outside of my window) separating us from the outpost of civilisation others call Jouy en Josas (top of picture).

Axtually, as I am writing this, I am currently residing in the house the furthest to the west of the bottom quadrant of the photo. I'd point to which one, except I'm not at your pc, so that I could point. As a clue, it's actually the one closest to the main building, on the bottom left [right above the (C) symbol], a fact that comes in handy when the alarm tings 5 minutes before class starts at 8...

News around Campus

2007-02-13T14:44:00.000-08:00

Attempting to act sustainable, I stumbled upon a strange paradox: the cheap, humongous, environmentally friendly refrigerator I have devised right on my dorm's terrace is actually not sustainable; for whatever will I do when summer comes??? Already, I have started to consume my Hoegaardens to keep them safe from those inquisitive rays of sun that seem to radiate ever more often onto my rain-worn balcony.

On other news, I have somehow landed in FRENCH IV, aka. the hardest French class; I'm one of the two boys in the class of about 15, which is somehow typical of high-workload courses in general here; apparently, the men here seem to have found more lucrative endeavours, like shirking work and occasionally bumming beer from my giant refrigerator.

The university St. Gallen has written me, and has decided to accept all my "reccommendations" for how the credits should be transferred; I guess the absolute holy terror, (including the sending of pathos-laden mails with sentences like "... es macht keinen Sinn, hier Kurse zu nehmen, ohne bescheid zu wissen, ob sie mir überhaupt angerechnet werden.... ") has finally paid off!!!

Finally, a few colleagues, most notably me and Luis from Mexico, saw a car the other day for 700 Euros, and started fantasizing about doing road trips in France; now how cool would that be? If I had the money, I'd do it, but I certainly don't, plus, that seems like a hard sell to my parents at home...

Paris by night

2007-02-11T06:18:00.000-08:00

There are several mysteries inherent in life, including why the HEC has a separate building for sport activities (gym, indoor soccer field) without any shower or change rooms, why my room shares a shower cubicle with the adjacent one, with a translucent door (not that I am opposed to this, for as I hear, a french girl is just moving in ;P ), and why, oh why the HEC and the Uni St. Gallen still haven't figured out whether they want to give me even 1 lousy credit for this exchange semester; apparently, St. Gallen is not convinced that these classes here are actually master level, even tho they do stem from a master-level catalogue.... pompous bureaucrats. Whatever, just trying to let off some steam here before going on to the praising Paris part.

Well, here I am sitting in my room, after a long day of crawling the capital yesterday followed by a gratuitous binge-sleeping session till 12 today morning. Far from reporting In Westen Nichts Neues, there are several fun facts I want to share with you, in condensed form, of course.

Im glad to report the Eiffel tower is still standing; I subjected the great needle to a véritable strip-tease as I approached her from the east, revealing more and more of her iron-clad beauty as she slipped from behind a line of Parisian apartment buildings; ooh, here she is in her dotted dress:

with this fascinating, beautiful "upskirt" shot of the core:

well to sum it up, the monument is just huge in every respect! I mean, I think it beats any skyscraper because of its singular "approachability", exposure, and naked grace!

So, apart from these little nightly adventures, what else did we do?
Well, we took pictures of the turbid Seine, where my body is perhaps going to be thrown into: We took a little rest, to have a drink at an even littler cafe, out of even smaller little coffee cups (check out how everyone is trying to dive out of this picture, btw... poor Austin was caught in the middle, feeling perhaps a bit uncomfortable at not being able to slip away...)
plus, we posed the obligatory student-tourist-group picture
and we risked our lives, in traffic, to take pictures for YOU.

Paris, the first time

2007-02-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so it was my first day in Paris today; I went in with Tamás after everyone else who wanted to go either skipped or went separately; in fact, even the few guys still coming in with us decided to get laptops instead of exploring the city... At least this left us with less waiting for everyone to take pictures, rest in a little cafe on the way, buy the cute little porcelain doggie in the shop window or have a quick burger at Mc. Donald's....

So today, we were actually able to cover quite a bit of terrain in a first little preliminary exploration of the premises.... But actually, let me backtrack a bit and say that the city where we are living, to put it more exactly, the city that we live close to, is actually what the Swiss would call a kaff. A kaff, and in a huge way. Meaning in a tiny way. Meaning, it is not a small city, it is a tiny, tiny, little miniscule outpost in the middle of the pampa. Here a picture of one of the main arteries:

Oh yeah, and the shopping district by night:

Impressive, huh? Well, after that much provinciality, it is understandable that we were a bit interested in the big life. So that's why we took a metro to the Ile de la Cite and were not that suprised to find this:

Ah yes, the Notre Dame. And to overuse a term favoured by american tourists around the world, the inside was even more beautiful than the outside, witness this somewhat overexposed shot (for dramatic purpose, of course)...

We then proceeded to the Centre Pompidou, of which I shall not share any pictures, because I couldnt get it all into the viewfinder. Instead, how bout the Louvre, with Tamas posing, to make the picture more lively :)
Then, we took a long metro ride from the Concorde to the Sacre Coeur, and were greeted by a great view of the tower:
and the city:

I promise you, the next post will be more amusingly written.
Thing is, today was more about educating me than about entertaining you; for because of former,
Im way too wasted now to do the latter.

Second full day in Paris

2007-02-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

Well, all of you who were on academic exchange will know that the first three days seem to take forever, then, all other days fly by like [insert the name of a very fast bird here]. Knowing this, I decided to leverage the extra time by doing something I usually have trouble squeezing into my repertoire: go to the gym and lift weights senslessly for 1 hour, known to germans as pumpen. In the gym, I found (suspiciously) thin frenchmen, with one of whom I started a conversation. How I liked it in France was his first question, and whether Paris was the most beautiful city in the world was the second. Well, judging by his complexion, I prolly would have gotten away with a double negative, but, I thought, why not be nice and soothe his Gallic soul with a bit of sweet talk...

Now, how bout some random pictures I took not long ago:

another from the RER on my way here, continuing the story on the previous post...
Ma chambre, with ma laptop.
The view today morning. There was a mistake, I did not order snow.
self portrait with bed and shawl.
My lunch, alu-foil style.

And now, my cheries, Im going to go shopping in Joy-en-Josas, and Ill bring you some pix....

Goodbyes & PARIS, here I come....

2007-02-05T12:03:00.000-08:00

Ok. so these last few days have been heavy with heartache and hard goodbyes. I said goodbye & good luck to the new executive board:

Then to Rouven & Daniela who had organised an incredible "au revior party"

Then to mah friends in Zurich, including mah main man Dominic, too, with whom we even light-signed an artistic photograph (with my mobile):
And of course I said bye to my family... at the end of all the goodbyes, when everyone had definitely seen enough of me, and was already in the stage of "ok, but now go", I took a deep breath, boarded a train, aaaand....

and sooner than I expected, I had entered the heart of French civilisation. Now, you might have expected a beautiful picture of the Eiffel tower, but instead, this is me on a french RER, already heading for the HEC campus. The sour face is due to being woken up so early in the morning. All I actually got to see of downtown paris so far was a short flash of the Sacre Coeur... Too short for pictures :))

So, what adventures await me in Paris? Loot? Adventure? Classes on Chinese History I ? The latter most definitely, of the former two: only time will tell. So far, Ive only met a Hungarian called Tamas and some snooty french people, one of whom switched to English while talking to me, which I gather is NOT a good sign.

Ah well, the excitment of tomorrow awaits.... Here my resolution manifesto for the whole French Trip:

1. Take everything with humor & levity
2. It will never be like this, ever again. Be conscious of such mortality!
3. Always remember your secrets (I don't remember what I meant with this 1 ;) )
4. France? It's a dream. Don't worry, diffuse... or wake up...
5. Be French. Be intellectual. Spin Virilio and Focault into your discourse
6. Enjoy the first 5 days. then, enjoy the next 5.
7. Blog. Rename your blog "mouches mortes"
8. Always remember home.
9. Write, search serindipity
10. Create words. Forget lists. forget this list.
11. Yeehaw. Paris as a student. this just rules.

Be number 2007 and Win!

2007-01-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

Traffic around my blog has hushed up a bit, because my posting frequency fell below the heartrate of a yoga guru on sleeping pills.

So to celebrate the reopening, to celebrate 2007, to celebrate another year of ridin' dirty, I will sponsor a special deadflies pimp prize to whoever hits number 2007 on my site!

Cheers and get ready for the new year.

Happy New Year

2007-01-01T03:14:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! I just wanted to say happy new year! Being the extrovert lifestyle intellectual that I am, just saying that will not suffice: instead, I would like to say happy new year dressed as a modern Mozart. After this picture was taken, I proceeded to play "Praeludium in C" on the piano, a piece that I later remembered is by Bach. Oh well, baby, same millennium!

Garfield Live!

2006-11-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-05T14:48:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-02T10:39:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-11-02T09:18:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

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 . . .

2006-10-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-09-24T02:14:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-22T01:38:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-22T01:10:00.000-07:00

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....

2006-09-19T11:06:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-16T14:02:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-09-16T13:34:00.000-07:00

"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

2006-09-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-10T02:00:00.000-07:00

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 !!!

2006-08-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-05T03:20:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-08-02T15:25:00.000-07:00

Let me think... umm.. yes.

Rotterdam Here We Come!

2006-07-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

We actually went to the New York Cafe this time, as my dad had recommended (not pictured). On the picture: an en passant pink Caddy.

Guess who again, at one of the Rotterdam main squares...

Gaudis girl is mad because I nabbed her handbag... You have to admit it matches well with that shirt, tho.
Prolly because of the fact that we finally got somit to drink...

We were quite relieved to arrive at AI headquarters in Rotterdam, and the gesturing took a different form...

The gang in Liechtenstein.

We had just arrived in Luxenbourg. As you can see, Marc was quite happy about it.

We decided to take a liiitle bit of a trip up to Rotterdam. I have posted the consequences.

D-Day Starts Tomorrow

2006-07-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

For all of us finishing our master's in economics, the showdown has two venues: Microeconomics V and Macroeconomics V. About 400 Pages worth of formulas like the one above is the raw material for the open book showdown to take place tomorrow.

I dont know what you know about me...

2006-06-19T15:15:00.000-07:00

Taking the sun by surprise, I ventured out with my brother to the Claiente! festival. Here is a pic of us after yet another act of senseless bravery: navigating Zürich dressed up as crazy freak pimp daddies. The nice part was, we finally found a dress code that lets us blend perfectly with the Langstrasse crowd.

Where are the new posts?

2006-05-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure, either. Maybe under them stones?

Kickoff 06

2006-05-08T15:50:00.000-07:00

Love jah...

What is the EB up to?

2006-04-15T14:27:00.000-07:00

Still Life with Beer (2006)
Beer, Sofa, Cotton scarf.

FREE BEER FOR THE 1000th VISITOR!

2006-04-05T12:53:00.000-07:00

Guys, I want to say this well enough in advance: the 1000th visitor to my site gets free beer. So once that counter hits 1k, you just hit me up for a drink. Of course, if you are the tenth person to assures me of this, I will naturally become a bit suspicious... ;)

Bowling Evening

2006-03-29T00:17:00.000-08:00

My BuddyBaby -Liz from Prague- and I pose after winning the first round (we lost all subsequent rounds)
Bea takes her time as Mr. Feelings decides to check the instruction manual again

Mr. Feeling gets in position as Bea from Hungary tries to hide from the camera's inquisitive lens.
I don't want to sound negative, but bowling evenings usually really suck. Pounded into dust by people who assure you that it's the first time they play, a man's self esteem can see lows hitherto reserved to bad dreams of being in class only in one's underwear. On the Buddysystem Bowling night, it was time again to be subject to this intricate game of subjugation. Luckily, I atually had pleasant company to easen the pain... So this time, I can say for the first time that BowlingNight was not a complete fiasco.

EuroLDS: The world pales in comparison.

2006-03-25T13:22:00.000-08:00

As all of my posts, this one starts at the bottom... So scroll down and read up! NEW! Updated Post -

The dream is over... Group Bobbystyle gives one last pose before we go...

The Khazak delegation had us sign a banana. It was probably the most sane thing we did at the conference.

Someone tell this Dutchman that Global Village is over...

The next morning, everyone slipped into suits to pretend nothing had happened... I fought hard to hide the amortization... I lost:
The Beauty and the Beast.

Memories become fuzzy after this point. However, it is when the party really took off. (My last photo is dated 2 hours after this one. What remains is the wildest, craziest party of my life..

I pose with Petra, a particularly pleasant member of the Hungarian delegation.

I left the Swiss stand for some adventure. I'm not sure who took this picture; It was taken before I was hit with a cannoball combination of snooz tobacco, caviar and two shots of single-malt at the Norwegian stand. It hardly threw me off, however; i was determined to give every stand a chance to wow me with their local foods and bevarages.

Candy (name changed to maintain social acceptance) came to our stand, wanting to get a nice Swiss drink. All we could offer her was some 55% Kirsch.

The Dutch stand assumes position. On the left is Kris, whose family owns a liquour empire. Needless to say, Kris did not come empty-handed.

Like some carefully orchestrated Greek Tragedy, we were heading towards climax. On the picture, last minute preparations at the Turkish stand for the ominous Global Village

We did a bit of a photoshooting on the beach next day, to practice team bonding...

Already on the second night, which was but an introduction, people were quite crazy...

Then the second day started... left to right: Dänu from Berne and Marc, (my man for external relations) preparing to sheik things up.

The official part was already quite fun, with activities designed for ten-year olds performed by people more than twice that age with a wicked hangover from the party the day before...

The Backdrop: hundreds of people in AIESEC EB (executive board) positions wanting to learn more about Europe and the world around them... The conference was very educational, but due to my target audience on this blog, I will focus on nocturnal activities...

Did you ever look out the window and think, what must it be like right now... at the most whacked out place in the world ? Well, from sunday, the 12th or March to friday, the 17th, we no longer asked. We were too busy being there. It's damn hard to tell the story through pictures, especially if you have a lousy photographer. But EuroLDS was so crazy, so whacked, and so great, some things shine through...

Föld, Föld (Sentimental Journey)

2006-03-25T12:36:00.000-08:00

Where will this road lead?

And then, you let go...

A typical street in Szigetszentmiklos. Most people in this town are neither rich, nor poor; they have what they need.

Szigetszentmiklos is surrounded by no man's land - some places, it creeps into the city...

Before I went to Belgium, I flew back to Hungary for a short week. It ended up being
a kind of journey home. The old church in Sigetszentmiklos. I had first communion here.

Noblesse Oblige

2006-03-24T14:57:00.000-08:00

Insanity is relative. To some people, blowing open a rabbit with a burst of high-pressured air is actually a groundbreaking idea just waiting to be shared with others.

EuroLDS: A Delirious week

2006-03-21T03:31:00.000-08:00

I will post soon. As soon as I have energy.

There is no justice on the internet.

2006-02-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

I got bored with studying for the ln(e^x+1)st exam, so I started googling my old friends from Brookline. Now, I knew that both Liam Moran and Katie Greenzang from Driscoll school had made it to Harvard, so I suspected that the two had made most of the last decade. I was not dissappointed: apparetly Liam (who I used to do short skits with in english class) is now an opera singer at the Metropolitan Opera (Boston)! And Katie (who I edited the school yearbook with) has become a doctor, publishing several papers in esteemed peer-reviewed journals, gaining research grants from Harvard and other Universities.
By comparison, if you google berti moravanszky, you get a recipe for noodles with cheese curd. I am, however, working on this issue. Meaning on becoming a valuable member of society (my gastronomical skills have already been perfected).

What is The Meaning of Life? This Blog gives answers.

2006-02-26T06:13:00.000-08:00

Guys, in my never-ebbing quest to find the meaning of life, I have decided to harness the power of Google. I Googled "the meaning of life is" to find out the truth.

the meaning of life is a personal choice.
the meaning of life is cognitively meaningless
the meaning of life is pick up an item and use it somewhere else
the meaning of life is a struggle
the meaning of life is to aquire happyness
the meaning of life is to live
The Meaning of Life is the title of a 1983 Monty Python film

I hope this helps,

Berti.

P.S: It was only after this post, that, paging through 100 other blogs, I came up with the FIRST RULE OF BLOGGING, or what bloggers should have the guts to think more often when weighing posting the latest creative outburst:

"...yes, but strangers don't really care about that..."

YESSS ! ! !

2006-02-25T05:20:00.000-08:00

Im sorry, I just have to quote myself: Im going to the HEC next february... turbid Seine, here we come!!

What is Fusion?

2006-02-23T15:07:00.000-08:00

Prüfungszeit gets to you, probably like the way 'Nam got to you, in those days. First, it probably only made you harder, but then, you know, it started messing with your mind... Thats why Im posting this right now. To prove to you that you don't need to be pumped full of LSD to fail the creative writing competition with only one entrand called my blog.

You see, there are three types of blogs. There are those like Philippe's, which attempt to retain high hit statistics by posting +/- useful, niche-market information. There are those that bask in the glory of exhibitionistic hedonism, like my brother's entry. There are travel blogs, which, if the person knows how to live, are a particularly crass undercategory of this category.
Finally, there are the rest, which overload you with the -let's face it- rather freaky "creative" world of the suffering, yet explosively self-absorbed guy or girl making it. For the rest of us, these artist websites are about as exciting as watching a concert for cymbals and solo harp.

So now for my revolutionary concept: FUSION. That's right. You see, in economics, we learn that with economies of scale, sometimes the sum effect of merger can be bigger than the mere addition of its parts... That's why, from now on, as before, this site will be bringing you informative pictures of hedonistic activity with comments by an explosively creative yet - ah, you get the picture.

More from the Treasure Trove.

2006-02-23T14:57:00.000-08:00

Have fun finding Waldo.

AIESEC Elections

2006-02-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

Asel gave me some pix of the AIESEC elections...

l-r LCP; ex-LCP; ER; FI

Birthday, boy.

2006-02-21T15:26:00.000-08:00

Today is my birthday. Or, that special time of the year when you're supposed to feel happy getting older... Well you know, I did..... Yeah, when I was like, five....
So all you friends of mine who check on this blog every half an eon or so and therefore forgot all about this, rest assured that I'm not pissed at you for not having mentionend me getting older. I'm pissed at you that you didn't get me presents...
Anyway, unlike Eminem, who wishes for "...a big enough ass... for the whole world to kiss.." [Eminem: If I had...], all I wish for is to understand Microeconomics IV by next tuesday... :D

Stress me Silly

2006-02-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

I just bought Philippe's ol' h6340 and am enjoying every minute, especially with the new GPS unit that also came with it... I went to school with it in my pocket with the lady telling me "nach möglichkeit, wenden... " I'm like, lady, I pay you to tell me the fastest way to get from A to B, not to make far-fetched, (perhaps metaphoric, pseudo-existentialist) statements about a university that is right the heck in front of me, and let's face it, I can also find without GPS....

Guys, I know.

2006-02-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

I should be living less and posting more. But just try to understand... Im under considerable time pressure, and until Asel sends me the photos of the AIESEC elections, youll just have to make due with this picture of some ass.

So I'm Mr. President...

2006-02-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

...With a special hint and nudge-nudge to Matthias!!!

Bp Pix by Zoltan

2006-01-25T00:23:00.000-08:00

Bp here

Monster ski weekend / ghetto weekdays

2006-01-09T07:24:00.000-08:00

Because of latter, I will only have time to post 3 pix of the former.

Cheers,
b!

TOEFL Scores

2005-12-28T12:11:00.000-08:00

Apparently, by some sleight-of-life, the little jaunt to Duesseldorf resulted in a fair enough score to meet the requirements at my school. This should clear the way, paradoxical as it may be, for me to go to Paris. In fact, if I am very lucky, then I might even get to the school of schools, the ominous HEC. I'm scared of this already... when will all my hochstaplerei come tumbling down? Or will I just be free to go, only to have angry Parisienne People dump my flaccid body into the turbid Seine?

The Impromptu Dinner

2005-12-13T02:28:00.000-08:00

The Poser WG.

Zdenek; Niki; Claudia; Berti.

Zdenek and Claudia philosophize over the temporary nature of friendship in the internet age.

Moving along these Weeks

2005-12-13T02:18:00.000-08:00

Well, Let me just give you all a few impressions of what I have been up to the last few weeks....

The AIESEC Christmas dinner. I actually got an award! Thanx guys!

Then a Quicktrip to do the TOEFL to Düsseldorf and Munich with my main men Leo (l.), Hendrik (r.), Akin (not pictured). Leo is a crazy guy from Moscow, just the sort of person whos usually really missing at the university.

Then it all went very quickly: the next night we had to leave for the Orchestra trip (somewhere in Austria). To my right, speeding through this town, Raphael.

And the less beautiful inside. At least I got every girl's sympathy the next day...

Do-IT: The beautiful Melancholy outside...

A Hungarian Dinner. Alot of new faces; I was happy to greet Claudia (Neuweiler), Tibor, Zoli (always a pleasure), Márton...

A Very Noble Xmas To You!

2005-12-07T20:43:00.000-08:00

...from Willi, Berti and Nik!

TOEFL weekend

2005-12-05T04:26:00.000-08:00

Guys,

because:

I'm way back on my blog,

this weekend was really whacked and Ive got pix

Ill post again soon.

Long Weekend

2005-11-30T00:45:00.000-08:00

I Had such a long, whacky weekend. Will post some stuff, as soon as Al Gore reinvents the internet in a way that it doesnt crash every 5 minutes at our flat.

MCHSG meeting no.1

2005-11-13T15:01:00.000-08:00

Where the MCHSG stands for massive case of hugging in St. Gallen. This took place at the Limette. Some of us look rather wasted, im afraid. But after all that Shisha, we really were ready for group therapy.

Graduation Day

2005-11-13T14:56:00.000-08:00

In Da Club. Of graduates, that is.

Ah, cheer up guys! I just graduated!...

Where I get a beautiful green diploma. (From left to right: my brother; me; my mom.)

MCSG

2005-10-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

This just in! The first photo of the Hungarian Club St. Gallen.

Tenereefer Pix

2005-10-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

I hit Teneriffa with my main man Dominic, here seen posing near Playa des Americas.

This was the typical Tenerifa pose. Dominic and I agreed on the tiring effects of sunbathing and excessive daytime sleep.

It is an irony of fate that the Player's Guide I printed for the trip was later imprinted on my foot.

What morally questionable young westerners do when they get bored: rent a Wrangler and hit the road.

Not that it wasn't worth it: view of the sole vulcano of the island...

Approaching the end of the world. Somewhere near Candas del Teide, the winds picked up...

Bliss at thousandsomething meters. We Wranglered our way up the road you see on the picture, then proceeded onwards...

To the top of the world...

Only to plunge all the deeper next day.

And so the days passed, and made way to night... until one day, it was time to return... to Swissilization.

Baby one more time...

2005-09-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

yes, vienna pix coming soon, teneriffa pix coming afterwards.

All Along the Bahnhofstrasse

2005-09-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Well yes, I admit it, the last few days I've mostly been hanging around Zürich, being shamed by all of you flying off to India, Hong Kong, Russia, and China... well, apart from my planned little stint to a yet unnamed island in less than a month's time, I plan to go to Vienna & Hungary if I feel my current too acarpous...

Yesterday, there was a planned rehersal with Dominic's band. However, as the other members had cancelled, we were forced to go to plan B: drinking beer & chatting at the Zürisee.

Here a few pictures that I took on my way back, all along the midnight Bahnhofstrasse.

Reminiscing Regensburg

2005-08-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

Alright guys! I have finally gotten my act together & posted some impressions of my Regensburg trip, to give you an idea where Ive been sticking the last 6 months. Please start reading at the bottom and scroll upwards, unless you prefer reverse chronology. See you at the bottom of this post!

And finally, the fruit of all the six month's labor: my report card, which I am so proud of that I will post it here!
And last but not least: karaoke! Too bad Lenas nose is obstructed by a lens flare... Here it is, along with the signatories: from left to right, top row: Orkan, Fabian, Simone, Tamara, Steffi, Fabian Bottom: Joanna, Maria, Berti, Michi, Ida, Lena. Little Oezden had already moved off to Berlin.
Fabian, Brigitte & I as we wait for the goodbye-present...
And so time flew, and soon, sooner than I gambled for, we were already celebrating the official goodbye-party. I made sure to come all in white, so we could karaoke "Like a Virgin"... Yes, they have these pussycats in Munich too now. .. I mean the one the girls and I are sitting on.

The topic here was the Swiss legal system, which explains my wild gesticulation.
Well, time flew and flew; here you see me with Joanna and her Polish mates at the Odeonsplatz, guess where again.

The parliament

Impressions of Beautapest: The Chain Bridge comissioned by da man Széchenyi;

Well, time flew and flew. Soon, it was time to buzz off to Budapest for a few days, with my boss. I went to the Gellert-bath (pictured above), which was an absolute highlight; first, the 36 C pool, then the 38er, then the steambath, then the wave pool... Im definitely taking whoever I show Budapest to, next time.

By the time we got back to Munich, it was dark. To my dissappointment, the Romanians did not turn into vampires; too bad: without a coffin to creep into, the trip back took 5 hours and 5 changes of train; I excercised my sense of humor.

Cooling off a bit...

We were yet to suffer for Marius' bizzarre habit of sitting on other people's motorcycles. I refused to make engine noises for him while photographing tho.

Witness what we thought was the biggest barrel in the world. We: "thats a pretty big barrel" Then we saw the sign reading "kleines Fass". We then went on to find the bigger one (not pictured, as did not fit into viewfinder). We: "thats a pretty damn big barrel".

Ah, do you really need text here telling you beautiful?

The castle.

Heidelberg was shortlisted for UNESCO world heritage bliss.

Back from Prague, life went on as usual a few days... With our coffee breaks getting lengthier and lengthier. Soon, I had an urge to go on another trip, this time with my Romanian crew. Enter Marius (l.) Andy, Sherban. Heidelberg could come.

"Alázatosan jelentem, kapitány: jó-a-bor!"

A last check of our supplies before a go-go.

If you want to see more beautiful pictures of the city, I suggest you Google "Prague". We were at the Castle, learnt new vocab words like "defenestration" (look it up!) visited the old Synagogue, the Cemetery & da Ghetto, the Cathedral. Then, miraculously, even the Germans joined in that evening. Above: preparations.

Hung over in Prague. "The Pretty little streets..." I wrote in my journal, "are pretty yellow... in Prague.."

Above: Note I wrote to the Germans (with Geoffroy dictating) after coming home in the morning. I would need another course in hermeneutics to interpret.

Night falls over golden Prague... And who are the only ones ready to brave the 5-floor disco'd, absynth-drenched, effete nightlife? Obviously, only the interns: Joanna, Geoffrey, Berti.

From ontop of the prague castle. Sorry I couldnt get them to spell out your name.

obligatory head-scratching after arrival.

Nomen est omen

Back to civilization. Time was flying, so were the hard days at the office. By that time, Joanna, the Polish intern had arrived and proceeded to pep up the rabót at work. Right after she arrived, the hard core of AIESEC people took a trip to Prague. Above: Joanna sleeping on the train.

Berti surveys damage done, preferring to leave the second position for the masters of the art. All alcohol consumed was in accordance with German purity laws, including above bottles for 25 cents a bottle.

Geoffroy assumes second position as Berti prepares to assume first position;

Ah, those special moments of youth. Witness homo ludens at bongus beerus (0.5l in 5 s). Shown here: Geoffroy assumes First Position.

Geffroy in full dress.

The Walhalla

No, we did not go to Athens for these pictures. All it took was a day-long bike trip to the Walhalla. Above: Nora and I at the (W)acropolis.

Here is part of the crew... I wont go into names. Lets just say that luckily, German girls are quite the drinkers, which is why the trip back did not pass without incident.
Obviously, this king has had a jug too many in his life; never mind, he was dressed better than most people at our company...

Here I am, indulging with my main man Michi.

Snap back to reality. Witness our trip to Bergkirchweih, which is a type of Octoberfest.

Ah Düsseldorf! I have a lot of pix, but the city wasn't really beautiful, so I'll spare you. Instead, an impression of the main street, at night.

Here I was at the fair... I don't remember much about anymore, except that there were a lot of machines that moved chocolate bars around.
Also, I got a lot of free beer, courtesy of a guy who insisted that he was a consultant for our company...

Bah! Do you feel it? All that culture is having your mouse cursor gyrate towards "close window!" We must therefore quickly escape from this land of rococo reliefs, porcelain statuettes, and bronze horses that shoot water through their noseholes. What better way than to ride along to a large industry fair with two cellular-totin businessmen? The relative calm on the picture is largely show - we were driving to Düsseldorf with over 200 km/h. At that speed, no one can see you phone...

Poor old Loodwig (sic)! Im not sure I share his adoration for Wagner (above, a set he designed for Parsifal), but he certainly had a flair for extravagant arhitecture!

But enough about work, and back to the TRIP (Trip Regensburg In Pictures). I went to Neuschwanstein with Kathrin. Naturally, we were greeted by sunshine.

Also of note at Krones AG was my boss Wolfgang, the quintessential German, who I became friends with; he showed me his home city of Frankfurt and also took me along to Hungary. Unfortunately, the Frankfurt pictures are all lost, courtesy of my CD burners moodyness.

Well, of course life couldn't just be fun and games all the time! After all - theoretically at least - I was in RB to work!!(?) Above, you see the building where I worked. Luckily, the lovely co-intern Nora helped pep up the otherwise terribly bleak landscape.

Above is the only picture I found of ma player Jatzek, a guy I often went partying with the first few months. Witnessing Jatzeks art was a lesson in suaveness (and cynisism). Here he is 'opening a set'.

Back to my dorm life, where I discovered that having a good time doesn't grow on trees... it has to be nurtured. Above a good example. Here I am with Aurelie at one of the famous Bar nights.

Yes, I admit it, I like photographing people even more than buildings. Will you forgive me if I tell you that this time, it is through a funky mirror at the Valentinsmuseum? Vamsi, Brigitte, Joseph.

Travel constituted much of my free time. Above you see Munich, a city I visited 7 times while in RB; at the end I became sort of a guide, even leading Germans around! Above a pic from the Frauenkirche and the very baroque Asamkirche; followed by yet another cultural highlight, Joseph and I smoking cigars and hopefully discussing jazz at a Vietnamese restaurant.

Well, let us step back and focus on the less high-percentage activities for now. One of the big scoops of the trip was the cultural part. Above you will see a detail of the Nürnberg castle, obscured by the company of the Columbian guy, lovely Lena from AIESEC RB, Vamsi the Indian eXchange dude, Kathrin (A-RB), and Ludovic "the gigolo with a conscience" de Marseille.

Regensburg. It supposedly has the biggest pub density of any city in the world; now this might or might not be a goshdang lie, but after having a few beers, does it really matter? Above a pic from Murphys Law, one of the first among many, many pub visits. From left to right: yours truly, Elisabeth, Fabian, Aurelie.

Speaking of landmarks, lo and behold, Regensburgs most prominent structure, the one that dwarfs all others & gracefully shames all the crummy modern architecture around it... Our lady the Dom. She not only captivates the denizens of the city with her beauty, she also spared many a bicycle-mounted tourist a wrong turn through the guidance of her high-high towers...

It was cold & snowy when I arrived, but my reception was nevertheless a warm one. Above, you can see one of the landmarks of Regensburg, the old stone bridge. In front, there is a Columbian from AIESEC Passau trying to hop of the way... The poor Columbians were certainly not used to this weather... neither was I, for that matter...

And so the story begins, sometime early 2005, in this brick building. It is where I lived for 6 months, first in the room with the left middle window... then in what could be called a windowless rathole in the same building, and finally in something civilized again, meaning a room resembling the first one.