Hey, you know I arrived well in Portland, Oregon, don't you? If not: I did ;)

By the way, when we were asking our personal student advisor about good places to eat something here in Portland, he mentioned:

"McDonald's is crap. Avoid it at all times. In fact, nobody wants to go to McDonald's."

So you know what I promise to you, precious readers?

I hereby promise that I avoid McDonalds as long as possible.

And this is a really hard task when being in the U.S., you can probably imagine? - And I promise, too, that I immediately admit it publicly (i.e., here ;) ) when I went to McD for the first time during my stay here.

I mean, my fellows really must force me then to go to McD. Voluntarily, wild horses don't drag me there. Seriously! :)

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Portland hat keine U-Bahn. Dafür aber einen ganz gut funktionierenden Nahverkehr (und das ist nicht gewöhnlich für eine amerikanische Stadt). Die "Streetcars", also die Tram, sind im Innenstadtbereich kostenlos, die Einzelfahrkarte kostet 1,80 und die Tageskarte für ganz Portland liegt irgendwo bei 4 Dollar. Zudem gibt es Busse, die übrigens eine kleine Besonderheit haben: Sie haben an der Vorderseite ausklappbare Fahrradhalter, auf denen (kostenlos) bis zu zwei Fahrräder mit transportiert werden können.

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Hallo liebe Leser,

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Movies and TV series are shown in the U.S. quite a bit earlier than they come to Germany. (They have to be translated etc...) Usually I don't care but when you go to the U.S., you're heavily endangered to miss good films and TV series. - Crap.

I wanted to see Sin City in the original, english version while I am still in Germany, but no movie theatre anywhere in Karlsruhe shows it in English. They all have the German version, though. Plus, there is no chance to see it in a cinema in the U.S.: The film has already left cinemas for quite a long time and the DVD was released two weeks ago. Argh! (Hm, maybe they offer those dvd rental machines in Oregon, soon?)

Another PoA (point of annoyance ;) ) is that CSI: NY starts on German TV just next week, but the first season has already been on TV in the U.S. a lot of times. I nearly assume, if I eventually happen to get a TV (or freevo? :) ), the second season will start before I were able to see the first one. grrmpf

Okay, you're right: I really shouldn't watch TV at all. It's too frustrating ;)

But I'm going to watch quite a lot of new movies and tell my German friends if it was good - for them to be excited for about two months until the film comes to German cinemas! I am so evil, I know ;) hehe

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Liebe Leser, darf ich vorstellen?

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... left until my departure to the U.S. hooray

By the way: I switched to Wordpress yesterday (it's easier to handle two blogs on the same software) and after some web research I found a really cool theme for it (do you like it?).

I also wrote some new software called phpMyiCal, a PHP script that allows you to store and share your iCal / Mozilla Calendar files online in a MySQL database (it's probably compatible with PHP iCalendar, also). I'll release its beta version for you to check it out, soon.

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Jean Pierre recently showed me some photos of Karlsruhe on Flickr.





What is so nice about these photos (unfortunately there are only two of them) is that it's Karlsruhe, North Dakota. As of the 2000 census, there live barely more than 100 people. "Our" Karlsruhe (having about 300.000 inhabitants) is marginally larger ;)

Nice, small town, though. Unfortunately, its WP article doesn't tell us about whose idea it was to name it like that. What a pity. Does anyone know more?

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Okay, things are getting clearer now: Next month I’ll leave Germany for Corvallis (precisely, to OSU) and wave Karlsruhe farewell for quite a long time, then.

Yesterday, by the way, I have bought a bike in Corvallis. Yes, you read well ;) I’ll have it put in a "safe place" until I get there to fetch it. Yeah.

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Gedankliche Notiz:

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