Jax and the Village of Death

I had a meeting late last week in a place whose name translates as Death Village. Fittingly, it was waay out in the middle of nowhere Schleswig-Holstein. So far out, in fact, that I had to stop and drag limbs out of the road on the way to the hotel. People just don't go to that part of the world it seems. I knew from the beginning that this was a bad sign. Clearly, this was some kind of assassination attempt in disguise. The trip did not start well. The first thing I did was break my TomTom mount. This was most annoying, but fortunately I had a backup mount at home, but quickly discovered it didn't work well. So when I was meant to be driving and trying to beat rush hour in as many cities as possible, I was going around from store to store learning that they don't make mounts for my model anymore. So, with my TomTom mounted insecurely, I took off for Germany. My hotel (right on the Baltic Sea) turned out to be much nicer than I had expected. In fact, really nice. My room was huge, it had a kitchen, two bedrooms, two floors, and a really big livingroom. It was nicer than my apartment.



This was, also, the weekend when my german skills decided to completely fail me. My comprehension has been mostly good, better than normal, in fact. However, my menu reading has failed totally. Thursday night, I managed to get a big plate of cold pickled beef with fat jelly. Saturday night, I managed to get a giant roulade made with raw meat and bacon. Yuck. I don't get it, in both cases I got something almost as I expected, except cold or raw. There must be some keyword I missed. I just hope I don't get sick. Maybe it's a northern Germany thing?

Day one was devoted to my meeting. The notable part of it was the lunch at the local caf/porn outlet. Yes, their caf had a larger selection of porn on the counter than food. The siteseeing phase of this trip has been a bit scattered. Mostly I've been driving around, mostly back and forth. It's also been hampered by things being on limited schedules for the off season. The first major site was Lübeck. It's quite a nice city and pretty compact. A bit like a Dutch city with lots of canals and water. The next stop was Bremen to see the statue of the Bremen Town Musicians.

It was much smaller than I expected, and so a little disappointing. The rest of the city wasn't bad, it seemed to have some character and atmosphere, but not a compelling tourist stop.

Day two of the weekend started out with a walk around Celle, basically a nicely preserved town of half-timbered buildings. Then, to kill some time before the palace opened, I drove up the road to Bergen-Belsen and walked around the former concentration. Then back to Celle to go through the palace there. Next stop was up the road still further (yes, opposite from home) to the Panzermuseum. There's not much to recommend in the northern bits of Germany, but the Panzermuseum is one of them. It has just about every tank of note ever and all appear well preserved and maybe even in running order. And it's a fitting setting surrounded by panzer bases, it just feels like the kind of area that was meant for tanks (which is probably why it's there).


I've also decided I want a geländewagen, preferably an old, beat up one that I can just drive without caring about. Don't ask why, I'm just weird.

Anyhow, the rest of the pics from the trip are here, here, and here.

Update and Weekend in Vienna

It's been a while since the last post and now it's time for an update. The notable events since the last writing were a night out at Boom Chicago and a karaoke night. Boom Chicago is a skit/improv comedy club and it was pretty good. It was, however, really smokey and probably cost years off my life. If/when the smoking ban arrives in the Netherlands, maybe I will go again. The karaoke night was really good too. I've never tried that before, but it was a lot of fun (pics classified). It's also clear that there are some people who are really good at singing and some people (like me) who really aren't! But, I did get to sing Schnappi, and have had it stuck in my head ever since...

Now, on to Vienna.

This past weekend I went down to Vienna for the weekend. Vienna is a really scenic city, even when it's not the nicest time of the year. It has a very classical style that reminds me a lot of Paris. I saw the Hofburg, of course


and lots of these weird she-lion things.


Importantly, I also got to see The Kiss, which is much more impressive in person.


Also went to the Spanish Riding School to see the horses perform. It's a beautiful arena and, if you like horses, quite an interesting performance. Thanks to a screw-up at the ticket window, I managed to get much better seats than I was supposed to.


The other performance I saw was an opera. If you're ever in Vienna, you have to go to the opera. It's just the thing you have to do there. The opera house is absolutely incredible inside, and it's a really fun experience to dress up and go out for the evening. The seats even have translation screens so you can follow the show. In this case, the opera was about Moses. It started after the burning bush incident when he was trying to convince the Israelites that he had been directed by God. It ended just after he brought back the Commandments. In between, it got a bit shocking by relating the worshipping of Egyptian gods to modern "false gods" like beauty & mmoney. Even for me, seeing scantily clad girls grinding and lapdancing on the letters G, O, D, was a bit shocking. So, apparently even opera can be risque.

The funniest thing to happen, however, was my run in with the Vegan Front of Austria. I had just finished a big lunch of roast pork and ran straight into the "stop killing pigs" and "meat is murder" protest march they were holding. Naturally, I had to stop and take pictures. Kudos to the Austrian police for doing a better job of keeping a straight face than me.


The only bad thing I can say about Vienna is the U-bahn. It was filled with homeless people, most of whom appeared very drunk and often drugged out. I don't know if it was Austrian economic problems or people coming in from the east, but it was really sketchy. I'm not sure I could consider it a safe place for a woman to go alone. I gave a nasty stare to one guy who was staring at a young woman on the train with what I would have to call a serial rapist smile, which he proceded to stare at me with...

If you want to check out the rest of the pics, they are here.