monday i came back from Ireland. our 500-miles trip with the rental car was just great. alice and i have written a report for the interested visitor. it somewhat summarizes our endeavours and the oddities we witnessed in those 3 days in the irish outback. — after my plane landed in frankfurt, i was once more amazed by all what has changed after osama: before queuing at the desks, your luggage is scanned for the first time and sealed with a bundesgrenzschutz tape. you cannot walk inside the airport for more than 2 minutes without coming across bundesgrenzschutz-people with bulletproof-vests and uzis. at the gates the hand-luggage is scanned and in some cases carefully examined (i am so glad for not looking like a muslim or even being a non-eu citizen). but even the average eu taxpayer gets a decent body check as i had to learn. ireland’s shannon airport became the target of two attacks. one should know that the us army moves a large part of their airforce through shannon to the gulf. the only result of these attacks is some sort of extra work for the irish army for they have moved tanks and a lot of soldiers to the airport area in order to provide security for the foreign subsidiaries of the greatest of all countries… while i was over in ireland, huge demonstrations against war took place, attrackting the masses. and indeed, it is like constance said it, only the government seems to have a pro-war attitude. — i must applause for how schr?der behaves in this explosive situation! the world does not consist of american colonies (although this view is rather close-by, given the trails the us army has left over in many countries). germany is a souvereign country, having his own beliefs, interests and opinions when making decisions. donald and georgie, we are not vetoing together with belgium and france just to piss you off or to to „move nato into the deepest crisis of its history“. no, we simply do not want to participate in a rage, which is no longer motivated by the threat the iraq was said to be. rather, there is oil, hell, plenty of it, and they are muslims so lets bomb them. cool move, really. you cannot honestly expect the world to follow your propaganda. and be polite!! donald, do you think the talk you talk is fostering the events? watch your language! — i would love to post some news regarding my career if you want to say so, but i am still waiting for the take-off sign from daimlerchrysler for my internship-to-come. so you will have to be as patient as i am, looking forward to the things to come. however, there is the news regarding how my fall/winter will look like this year. i have applied for a place for study abroad and got a very foreign place at bamberg university ;) you might say „boring“, „germany“, „what about the us or asia“ – i tell you what: given the current situation, i do not envy shorty and mathieu for having to move to south-korea right now, with the radioactive rockets of the north in place. i also do not envy martin for going to ohio, since i feel such a deep antipathy for the us. so why not bamberg? it will be a foreign experience anyways, since i have never studied in germany before, and most important, bavaria is a foreign country… — i should also mention that our house configuration has changed again. nicky moved out to live 300 m down the road for the last 4 months of her time in maastricht. nina moved into nicky’s room and feels more comfortable with this squaremeter-upgrade. mila is the new housemate then. the house was a terrible mess after 3 movings, but we managed to get it more worth living in again than it used to be in the last year. now you may eat again from the floor ;) — that’s it for today – stay tuned!