Markus efter Sverige

I tried it already once in February, but changed my mind. But now finally I am that tired of writing a blog for everybody, that I quit it. It's more a principle thing I am tired about. Thanks to all (both) responses pushing me to continue my blog a few weeks ago, but it really does not make sense anymore. For the few who liked it, we are in contact anyway (excl. mijn anonieme vriend van Friesland; ik denk dat je anonimiteit moet opgeven, als je verder informeerd zijn wil: facebook, hyves of een biertje indien ik kom naar Friesland - en deeze keer mer conversatie dan alleen "hi" ;-) A bit statistics: this blog has 53 posts in 14 months. Most visitors came from Germany (798), Netherlands (732) and Sweden (210). Keyword that was used most to google my blog: "officina del mare brescia" (I think, earned another free dinner for good publicity, hahaha). Anyway, I had some new ideas for the blog the last days. More back to the roots, because in basic this blog was supp...

Since two weeks is "felt-spring". The month started with long waited for highlight as I had a small Nica-Reunion in Amsterdam. Although I spent most of the weekend in trains between Aken, Den Haag and Amsterdam, it was nice and worth the effort. I visited Amsterdam's flower market and even watched the local match of the world wide pillow fight. I looked like quite funny since you could only see a crowd of people and flying pillows and feather-clouds above them. In the end Kiki and I met with Ward for dinner in Nieuw Vennep. The restaurant "De Oude Molen" had awesome atmosphere and I can recommend everybody to go out there for dinner. One day Amsterdam Thanks to eastern holidays the week was rather short. Jens stopped by on Thursday and we started my second Dutch weekend. Again I spent most of the time in transit - either cars or trains. We had perfect weather, but as soon the temperatures were above 20 degrees my hayfeaver came back. That is a good reason to g...

Without really having noticed it, March is over. A far too calm month, especially during the weekends. Since my flatmates had either exams or spent time away from Aken with their family and/or girlfriends, I had to realize: I really hardly do not know anybody here. I tried to involve some random people, but I also had to realize real life is not as easy as erasmus or traveling. People are rather confused and on distance when being asked out for a drink or a party, although it is really only about going out. Therefore the going out during the weeks (birthday pary, St.Patrik's day etc.) have been more exciting than the weekends. Anyhow, as winter ends, the calm time does, too. Almost every weekend is booked in April. And as I am talking about traveling anyway, I booked my flights to Iceland to join Sandra and Ulli. Awesome! And last weekend Philipp even visited for a short visit. Ulrich, he and me have been eating, drinking and talking all the time. First coffee, then dinner, beer (a...

My first month as full time employee is over and things are going pretty well. Work is currently quite easy going. I have time to improve things. Most likely it will be worthless when the think-tanks behind the projects create new requirements, but that's ok, because I now get salary. The freshly graduated students I know all go the same prestige-track: first they buy a new computer. I did it, too, for my old one was barely working since I drowned it once during a legen-dary story (Hälsningar till Mainz, lil åpa). Considering the law of freshly graduated students a flat television in a minimum size of 60" will follow, right after a new by-far-too-expensive car and right before the super-duper dolby soround audio system with playstation 3 which gets lost in the living hall of my new huge single-appartment. I - dont - think - so. Instead I asked for holidays and I hope to get a response, soon. If everything goes well, I will escape the summer for two weeks in July. As I said, wo...

My erasmus winter semester 2007 met in Sundsvall during the last weekend. Although I did not even spend 48 hours in Sundsvall it was toally worth money, time and effort to go there. I arrived on Friday evening, met the Spanish girls at Wayne's coffee, had dinner and then we awesomely partied in O'Learys. On Saturday we had brunch in the city, I visited Jonny and Marzena and joined the others later on for skiing near Sidsjön. Saturday evening we had a preparty at Johan's place and invaded later on the good old K århuset where I finally met Sebastian and Solène, too. It is quite funny to see the connections between the different erasmus semesters. After a good long sleep on Sunday morning we met again in the city for brunch, but only shortly, because the Dutchs and me had to leave at 12. They dropped me off at the trainstation. On the way we figured that I would only have 10 minutes between arrival of the train and closing of the check-in. When I had booked trains and flights...

As constant readers know, I went on a last big trip before I start working in less than a week. I went to Nicaragua for a little bit more than 4 weeks starting 10 minutes before the new year. The trip was... intense. I missed the biggest attractions, but met a lot of nice people I hope to stay in contact with. There were treasure moments as well as worst moments. But still, it was the absolute right decision to go. Like a short movie of life, if you like. And since my job is supposed to give me a lot of freedom, it for sure won't have been my last big thing for this year. The amount of new stories is intense. By far too much for a blog. So I suppose, if you want to hear them, we have to meet. Since Christmas market in Aachen is closed since more than one month, I suggest a hot chocolate instead of Glühwein. If you make it to stay over night, we can exchange the chocolate with a few cold beers. And if I can trust my flatmates there should be some of this liqueur left :-) Costa Rica...

These are my final days as student, for the trip to Sundsvall was a success. When Ulrich (surprise-guest) and I arrived in Sundsvall on Friday evening, it was too warm for snow and the streets were clear. But during the presentation next morning, it started to snow. Since then I have been in a snowy winterland. The weekend was beautiful. I somehow passed the presentation, I just need to make some corrections. Because of holidays it will take until February until I can apply for the master degree - until I receive it, it may take weeks or even months of bureaucracy. Anyhow, it is nothing that needs much effort, but patience. Sundsvall is pretty much the same like last February. They reconstruct the outdoor swimming pool to a kind of adventure pool and the campus at the university gets a new building. I was able to do everything that I wanted to do: A lonely night walk on the tiny paths in the woods while it was snowing and visiting Norra Berget and Alnön again. Sandra and Ulli have th...

Since this summer I was wondering where a beach could be in Aken. Well, there is Jens' favorite joke "If Holland would not be, Aken would be at the sea", but since luckily our western neighbours are still there, a coast in Aken is hard to imagine. Therefore, I was wondering about the following story that happened this summer: Me and a friend were on our way home from the pubs. At one traffic light, a car stopped and two guys asked us "Do you speak French?" - "No, sorry". So the guy tried in English: "Where is the beach of Aken?" - "The BEACH????". They got a little bit embarrassed, but still willingly to find the place, they said "Yes, the beach". We laughed hard and said that there is no beach in Aken. Obviously becoming red, they drove away. Since then we always wondered: how the hell can you seriously look for a beach in Aken. Until today. After dark I was on my way to the city center getting my last presents for Christ...

During the boring time in October/November I was asked if I want to join a short trip to Bad Kreuznach. Of course, I join. Why not finally some action. Therefore I spent two days near Mainz, including two short hiking trips, a lot of cold fresh air, beer and glühwein. And, of course, when I make a trip, Sweden can't be missing: on the Christmas market on Saturday evening I met with Basti and Inga. It was the first time since Leipzig in summer last year. I stayed longer with them on the Christmas market and went back to the hostel alone at night. This weekend was the start of my trips. During the next week I have to prepare my master defense in Sweden. My plane will take off Friday morning. On Friday evening I will be back home in Sundsvall.

Only two days left for finishing my thesis. And unfortunately the last two days have been a weekend. That meant, that I could not enter Atos where my computer was calculating the final results. This morning, I was a little nervous. Maybe somebody could have switched my computer off in between or there could have been a mistake in the calculations and I would have to start again. A calculation needs hours and this computer is not the slowest. But to my surprise, I did not have any results. The computer was still switched on, but the calculations aborted with the dooming message "out of memory". Maybe I should not have started two calculations in parallel, although that should work fine (two cores on one CPU). No clue. I checked the programs and I could not find any bottleneck. I guess then it is a problem of the API's I use. They do not seem to be in a final release anyway. Now I try it again. With more memory assigned and only one calculation, because I need the other cor...

Now, it is official: I will go back. For one last time I will go back to Sundsvall, for presenting my master thesis on the weekend before Christmas. Was I first looking forward, I now have mixed feelings about it. It will only be two days there. Luckily the presentation is on Saturday morning, so I will have Saturday afternoon and whole Sunday to catch up some memories while I wait for my plane back to Germany. It will be dark the whole day and it must be cold then. A walk through the woods once again would be nice. All alone, only with snow and firs. A place where you actually fill in some space.

Stefan, my flatmate, wondered about me and described my life of the last week: "You must have increased you efficiency by 300%". I think, that is even underestimated. He refers to my effort on the thesis. Before last week I was very inefficient. No chapter seemed to belong to the other and although I was writing and programming, the amount of pages did not grow, because I mostly rewrote everything. But last week it changed. Since then I am sitting from the morning until the evening and write and program. And it is even fun. Although this might be my last academical paper for a long time, I started to like it. Maybe I can continue paper research at Atos. However, I am starting to feel the side effects. I only eat, because I think I need something, not because I am hungry. I never am. My flatmates are so kind to cook, because I hardly leave my room, for I always need to finish the last thought which usually leads to another. Because of my limited space for activities, I left t...

Time is flying. Did I first plan to finish my thesis end of November, I more and more believe, that I will use the December, too. Atos already extended my thesis until end of December. If I really need longer than end of November, I can burry the plans to see Sundsvall this year again. Then I will need to make my final presentation some time in between when I work next year. But it was not going at all during the past weeks. I was writing and programming, but somehow... without any real goal. The thesis seemed so pointless. Maybe it was the staying at home. Because today I spent the afternoon with my flatmates at the university's library. They needed to study for exams and I just did not want to stay at home again and went with them. However, reading chapters from my book and a few scientific papers again, I got totally different things from my sources than when I read them before. I read all this before at home or at work. Maybe I needed the atmosphere of a library or the time to ...

Is it already 2 weeks ago, since I posted the last time? Man, time is flying... The thesis is growing slowly. Most of the time I spent with designing graphical user interfaces (GUI's). It did not really take so long, because I wanted to let it look perfect, but the GUI editor sometimes crushed the complete design. In between I wondered if my own GUI would stand the critics of my last thesis which was about user friendly GUI's. I guess, it would not pass, but since I am the only user, it does not even has to. It looks pretty cheap. But now it is working. The first test results are a disaster, but since I know why, I can already write things down in a new chapter. Today I got my contract at Atos in Aken. I will start in beginning of February as software architect. It sounds pretty good: high chance for traveling around the world, cooperation with several departments in different countries, and insight into all kind of different projects. As far as I know, they are still looking ...

This will be the month with the fewest blog entries in my 2 years career as author. But in fact, not so much is happening. Well, not so much that it is really worth to tell. After Italy there was big "and what now"-period. The only thing I had to do was writing thesis. That is even going so well. Since three weeks now, I am sitting at home writing only working on the thesis. I wrote a small program where I can modify the data sets I need for running my first tests on it. After that, there should be brand new information that I can pipe into the thesis (wow, what a speech...). When October started I wrote applications again. I had a good opportunity to stay here in Aken, but because I did not want to depend on one rumor, I applied in different departments, too. Six applications I even sent to Netherlands. It were online applications and it was a disaster. To the first I sent my CV from last February, because it was in the same folder on my computer as the new version. For the ...

The last two days in Italy were dedicated to big lakes. Ward, Silvia and Thomas had to leave already on Tuesday morning, so Christian and I have been almost alone again. We ate lunch with the remaining Italians and Thomas and drove then with Andrea and Mathias to Largo di Garda in order to take a ferry. Unfortunately we missed our ferry closely, so we took another one going to Sirmione. But that ferry was also half an hour late. That did not really matter for the duration of waiting, because since Ward had left, we had blue sky, sunshine and hot temperatures again. But when we reached after one hour boat tour the island, we had only half an hour for walking around until the last ferry went back to where we came from. Lake Garda was beautiful, if you ignore the tourists. But the blue water, the amazing weather and the high mountains made it nice. Sirmione is made for tourists, but still cute - for half an hour. If you ever go there, you should maybe still plan a little bit more time in...

Monday the 15th was supposed to be the day we came for at first place: Marcos restaurant opening. To kill the time until the evening, we walked around in the city, watched the university and copied a picture from all of us in order to give it as a present to Marco. We also drove to big Marco's home for checking some stuff in the internet like check in, addresses for postcards or simply just emails. On the way back to Brescia we stopped in a big shopping center, because everybody wanted to bring some orginal Italian food as souvenirs for family back home. Without doing that much, it was finally half past 8 and we drove to the restaurant out of the city. The place looks excellent and you see from the first moment on: you do not come for dinner here every evening. I had little bit doubts about the food, because I figured that night that I am definitely not a friend of pure fish. The buffet I tried to skip politely. But then came the pasta. With shrimps. It - was - so - delicious. Afte...

On Sunday Carolina had to leave already in the morning to be back in Spain for working. The only advantage was that there was enough space now in the apartment, so Christian and I could move in which halved the price for a night. Thomas had the idea that we could drive to Verona, the city of Romeo and Julia. Although the weather was unreliable, we gave it a try and we had luck, because the rain followed us only half way. Grandpa Markus had been in Verona before; in 2001, to be exactly. I uploaded some pictures of that trip on my very old homepage . It was a trip of the school of the whole class. I recognized some places. In a restaurant we had the perfect example of Italian language skills. We tried to order in English, but as so often, the waitress could not speak English. But French, German and Spanish. Good that our group could cover all these languages. We decided to let Thomas order in French. And he said, her French was excellent. Somehow the Italians often seem to know German or...

It was only our third day but I already had lost the feeling for time. It was Saturday and we planned to drive to Brescia to meet with Ward, Silvia, Thomas and Carolina. The weather had changed. Because Maritha makes currently sure Nicaragua gets its yearly rain season, it was up to Ward to bring Dutch weather to Italy. And he did not spare a drop of rain. Especially on Saturday it rained a lot. Totally wet Christian and I found the apartment where the others lived for the weekend. Later Marco & Marco joined. Because the appartment was to small for Christian and me to move in, too, we booked a room in a hostel outside Brescia. That also meant that I could not drink alcohol, because I had to drive. At night we met with a lot of erasmus students from Sundsvall in the city center of Brescia and went out for dinner. For those of you, who know the people: Luca, Andrea, Mathias, Valentina, Thomas, Ward, Silvia, Marco, Marco, Christian, Carolina and I. The dinner was ok, although this fir...

The night was interesting, because we did not have beds where we could sleep. I woke up several times at night, because owls or something were screaming from the roof of a nearby building. Once I woke up and scared a small dog that did not realize me up to the moment it stood next to me. It ran away. I wanted to whistle, but a mosquito had bit me in my lips, therefore I could not make a sound and scared the poor little creature maybe even more. Once it started to rain a little bit, so I moved my benches under a tree, but it did not rain anymore that night. Around 6 I felt very cold and could not sleep anymore. When I scared the first pedastrians away, I thought it is time to stand up. We felt bad. The day before had been so hot that our clothes were filthy of sweat. At least we had some water to wash ourselves a little bit. But we were longing for a shower. So we drove back to Piacenza hoing to find a tourist information who could explain us the detailed way to a hostel. Piacenza is a ...