Blogging 2008 - Here we go!

A wise person once said to me "The funny thing about blogs, is that you keep one when you have nothing worth saying - and when you do have something, you don't want to keep one".

Well, I'd have to say thats factually accurate. While I'm not going to go into it in any depth, I've decided to try and bring this blog up-to-date. Starting from now. Guess nobody is going to cry over a 16 month gap in the middle of it :-)

It's nearly the end of the year, but there's still a few good things to come that are probably worth commenting on. So i guess i'll leave it at htat for now :)

Tour of Germany 2007 - Hamburg (Days 1-4)

[Day1 - Birmingham, UK -> Hamburg, DE]

I realise it's been a while (again) since I blogged. But, for once, I've actually been doing something relatively intetresting. Due to my enforced 3 week holiday from work, I decided to go and do a bit of travelling around Germany. By a happy coincidence it was also my birthday on the 13th March, so Captains Ado and Tim decided to come out to Germany for a few days too.

The first stop (for me) was to be Hamburg - the Northern port city. The 2 Captain's decided they were going to go out on an early flight (as I had my early-Birthday party the night before and didn't really want to be getting up at 5am to get on a plane as that could have been potentially rather difficult!)

Fortunatly, they managed to get there without any difficulty but the first text message from Tim was unencouraging "Ado has his crazy magnet turned on and we're being harrased by crazy Germans in a bar" (!). Then I had a bit of a minor crisis at work and nearly managed to miss my train and therefore my flight. However, all was eventually well and I managed to find the hotel in Hamburg with only minor trouble (and a taxi driver needing to consult his A-Z Map a number of times).

When I got there though - more trouble. Unfortunatly the hotel hadn't got the 3 seperate rooms that we had booked "due to flooding*", so they had managed to get us a room between us. This was alright, as it transpired - as it was a fairly big room with lots of space - however it didn't stop Ado & Tim spending the afternoon looking around for a different hotel. Anyhow, by the time I arrived, everything was pretty much sorted (and Tim had extracted a discount from the dodgy proprierters of the hotel). So it was time for us to hit the town.

Now the hotel was right on the edge of, what I had been told, was the dodgy area of Hamburg - St. Pauli. It didn't seem that bad to me, to be honest - if you ignored the large number of sex shops and leagalised brothels that seem to exist there. We headed into town and grabbed some pizza - then sampled a number of the local hostelries - which were pretty good, to be fair. After we finished around 1am it was time to head back and retire before another fun filled day.

On the Saturday we decided to investigate going on a trip around the harbour - as I had been told it was definatly worth doing. Unfortunatly, we got slightly sidetracked and ended up walking around looking a the sights in the AltStadt and the shopping area. This is a particularly beautiful place - particularly down towards the river front and in the old quarter of the town. I took some pictures and put them online here

After wandering aroud the Altstadt - and watching Tim buy some sickeningly heart shaped trinket for 'a friend' at home - it was time to get some food at the very German 'Block House' steak outfit. This gave me my first chance (of many in the coming 3 weeks) to embarass myself in front of Germans by trying to speak their language. Fortunatly they had menus in English ;-) ... so all was well.

On Sunday, we managed to get down to the port and go on the boat trip around Hamburg harbour. It's probably not a trip that everyone would appreciate but I thought it was fantastic. You cannot really appreciate the scale of the shipping operations that go on in Hamburg until you see the massive cranes and drydocks that line the confluence of 4 major European rivers. After this, unfortunalty with basically nothing being open on Germany on a Sunday, it was back to St. Pauli again to go and visit a couple more bars and get ready for the evening.

Unfortunatly there was a rather nasty suprise about to happen - a text message arrived telling Tim and Ado that their flight back to the UK on Monday had been cancelled and they had to get a different flight. Fortunatly this didnt really concern me as I still had another couple of weeks before I was going back :-) However, it was a bit of a pain for them.

On the Monday, as we now had an extra half day, we went back out to the Altstadt, Checked out and the went for a quick beer. I had to get a train to Bremen at 13.15 so I had to leave them to their own devices after that - although they apparently went on a city tour and then off to the airport. When I arrived in Bremen I had to locate my hotel, which was different from the one I originally was going to stay in (which was for reasons that I'm not going into here :) )

Unfortunalty with my dodgy GPS technology that I was using to locate the hotel, I ended up walking halfway to the wrong hotel before I realised I was heading in the wrong direction... Oh well.

Anyhow, I then went to scout out Bremen and see what there was to do. Again, it was another quaint German Town and the centre of the town was particularly beautiful.

* - More likely "due to them being a bunch of shonky Germans who never had the rooms in the first place but took the booking anyway."

Big Rich goes to CeBit

As I was advised by management a couple of months ago that I needed use all the available holiday I have remaining before April 1 (which turned out to be 21 days (!) ) - I thought that I may as well make good use of it and plan a trip somewhere.

So after much debating and booking off the last 3 weeks in March, I decided to go back to Germany and do a bit of travelling around, as the people are relatively friendly and I can see a few places that we didn't manage to get to last time. It also, happily, coincides with my birthday - so for the first 4 days, Captain happy and Tim are coming to Hamburg - so that should be all jolly.

Another happy coincidence is that I have picked the week that the CeBit show is on in Hannover. Now I've always wanted to go to CeBit (which is effectively the European equivalent of the ECTS held in the US each year) but have never had the time or opportunity - so this seemed to be a chance that couldn't be missed - especially as by yet another coincidence (never have so many coincidences gone into a blog post before!) I have a friend who managed to blag me a free ticket! Obviously to a gadget-loving-geek like myself, this sounds like a day of pure technology heaven (as well as trying to collect as many freebies from the stands as possible!).

So this morning, I ordered my show guide, event planner and travel guide (not much point getting a free ticket if you can't find the place when you get to Hannover!). Hopefully this should turn up before I go in March.

Haven't quite decided what to do with the rest of the 3 weeks yet, but I need to as booking a flight back from somewhere would probably be a decent plan!

TOOT TOOT!

I have to admit to not really being much of a computer game player - but i've always had a soft spot for Sid Meirs strategy games. With one or two very notable exceptions they have generally been excellent - especially the Civilization and the Railroad Tycoon/Railroads! series.

I bought Railroads! a while ago, but its onl really just become stable through a coiple of patch releases. I also got Captain Steve to get a copy - so recently we have been using the online gaming option to have a couple of games. Originally I was kicking ass, however, due recently to some bad luck in initial railroad placement, lack of resources and nasty bandits* pirating the few resources I did have, I have managed to lose a couple of games. Which has not amused me remotely.

Check out Railroads! It's a great game

* = Steve

Si Cald

Thought it had been a bit of a warm winter - it couldnt really last. Woke up this morning to find my garden covered in lovely white snow :-

[Snow - Leamington Spa, Today]

Of course, 2 inches of snow has caused chaos on the roads and rails and all the scools are shut - as well as god damned students deciding to buid snowmen rather than do any work. At least it looks nice though!

Mmmmmm!! BOOOOTIFUL*

Rising, as one does, rather late of a Saturday morning, I was feeling a bit peckish - so I warmed up the grill and got ready to make myself a nice warm sausage sandwich. Mmmmmm.

Now - after a visit to the shop, they didn't actually have any normal sausages - rather just some skinless turkey things. "Well - that will do", thinks I. After getting back and getting my sandwiches grilled and ready, I sat down to watch the news and eat my brekky - unfortunatly, pictures of 100,000 dead turkeys being disposed of into lorries after an Avian Influenza Outbreak left half of the sandwich uneaten :-S

Great start to the day.

Shabby Blog Updating

... is exactly what I have got into the habit of doing over the last few months (or no blog updating at all, come to think about it). Therefore one of my new-year resolutions is to make sure I try and do at least a couple of updates a week - even if it is on trivial things.