Eigentlich hatte ich vor, mir selber endlich mein neues Design f?r diese Seite zu schenken. Nach einer stundenlangen Mammut-Sitzung mit den Herren Dreamweaver, Photoshop und Topstyle am Mittwoch, war eigentlich auch alles soweit fertig, da? ich gerne h?tte uploaden wollen, allerdings machte mir dann das Template f?r die Comments einen Strich durch die Rechnung. Schade schade! Leider werde ich mich nochmal dahinterklemmen m?ssen, denn halb fertige Sachen lade ich nicht mehr hoch.
Am Dienstag hatte ich ja wie gesagt meine Pr?fung. Nein, falsch, ich hatte Euch werten Lesern geschrieben, sie sei Donnerstag, aber das wurde nochmal sehr spontan revidiert. Ein Gl?ck nur, da? ich zuf?llig am Lehrstuhl die Aush?nge gelesen hatte, sonst w?re ich zum urspr?nglichen Termin angetreten. Wie es war? -Nun, es war ja eine Klausur f?r die „ausl?ndischen“ Studierenden, doch hatte selbst ich als Muttersprachler Probleme, das Pensum in der vorgegebenen Zeit zu schaffen. 14 Aufgaben auf 10 Seiten und „fill the whitespace“-Aufgabenstellung. Ich hab geschrieben wie ein Weltmeister. Die Aufgaben waren gr??tenteils Killefitz, hatte ich mir doch intensiv die Modelle von Howard und Sheth oder Miniard reingeballert. Nix von dem kam dran! Daf?r aber viel zu viel von dem Trivialwissen, von dem ich weniger schreiben konnte, als ich wu?te. Nun, so blieben leider 3 Unteraufgaben unbearbeitet, aber was soll’s. Das war ein astreiner Homerun, und das ist gut so!
Danach hatten Anke und Johannes zur Weihnachtsfeier mit festlichem Diner geladen, und ich kann nur sagen, dieser Abend war der beste Ausgleich f?r die ganze Stubenhockerei der Vorwoche, den man sich denken kann! Im Empfangszimmer gab’s erst einen Prosecco, dann, 2 Meter weiter im Speisesaal servierte man dann lecker Bierchen und schmackhafte Weinze zu edlen Speisen. Nach dem Nachtisch wechselte ich irgendwann von Bier zu Wein, und wer meine Vorliebe zu diesem G?rungprodukt kennt, der wei?, da? diese N?chte meist lang werden. Nun, was soll ich sagen, es war eben ein ausgesprochen luschtiger und gelungener Abend, soda? ich erst morgens den Weg nach Hause einschlug. Wir waren zu dritt unterwegs in die selbe Richtung, und so boten wir einem bis ?ber die beide Ohren besoffenen US-Soldaten ein billiges Ziel zum Anp?beln und saudumm nach „Gate 9″ fragen. Ich bin sicher, das einzige, was der noch gepeilt hat war, da? er in 10 Minuten am anderen Ende der Stadt an Gate 9 zum Morgenappell antreten mu?te. -Leider sehr unwahrscheinlich in seinem Zustand! Tut mir in der Seele weh, aber was war ich wenig hilfsbereit! Woher das blo? kommt… ? Aber was man so alles lernt, wenn man um viertel nach f?nf durch die Stra?en geht! Taxifahrer stehen in der Aral und trinken Kaffee, die Bamberger Gro?b?ckereien beginnen, ihre Filialen zu beliefern, und auch der Lidl an der Ecke bekommt um diese Zeit sein Brot. Um dieses Wissen reicher aber mit leerem Magen lag ich kurz danach im Bett – dementsprechend wasted war der Mittwoch…
Gestern hab ich mich dann nachdem ich mich vier Stunden lang in der Uni vollhusten, anniesen und beschnupfen hab lassen m?ssen, endlich auf den Heimweg ins Hesseland gemacht. Im Gep?ck: zwei Bamberger Bierspezialit?ten (Nr. 1, Nr. 2), die zu genie?en oberstes Gebot in den Festtagen sein wird.
Also, ich w?nsche allen ein frohes Weihnachtsfest! Und jetzt seid Ihr dran, denn selber gratulieren werde ich mir an dieser Stelle nicht! ;)

As some of my regular visitors have probably noticed, my other/former domain martinwetzel.com was not available for at least a week. Reason was, that I switched to a new provider, and somewhere between me, my old provider and my new provider a very simple fax must have gotten lost. Since I heavily doubt that, I’d rather be so keen and assume another case of stupidity or mental challenge at least at one of the companies. Or -since we talk of German firms- a consequently unprofessional workflow. Those who have witnessed me live talking to service representatives or know my style of writing can imagine that those guys wished they had a different job during the past week.
Anyways, it’s fixed now. Nevertheless, if you visit martinwetzel.com, you will only find a ‚temporarily closed‘ banner. The reason why I did not start preparing the upcoming content is simply that until Monday I didn’t even know for sure whether my domain remains my property or will be deleted and given back to NIC. Moreover, I am currently restyling Alice’s pages and this requires a lot of time. And since time is to be regarded a scarce resource even for a student, I get tired doing 3 domains parallel pretty fast. Note that there are no changes whatsoever regarding email-adresses.
So, to sum up the whole thing:
– martinwetzel.com is back, but still awaiting transformation to my CV-page
- photos.martinwetzel.com has been replaced by photos.traumdieb.com (however, for the transition time you will be redirected)
- photos.traumdieb.com now also contains a photoblog and up-to-date galleries for every month (more to come in the future)
- alter/adjust your bookmarks, but not the email-adresses and please DO write once in a while!

Wenn die Sonne in Bamberg scheint und sich nicht hinter dicken Regenwolken versteckt, gef?llt es mir doch um Klassen besser hier. Wie auch Rom ist Bamberg auf sieben H?geln erbaut, und rund um die Stadt erhebt sich die Fr?nkische Schweiz, was gerade im Herbst und dann w?nschenswerter Weise bei sonnigem Wetter erheblich mehr hermacht -optisch gesehen-, als das gleiche topographische Szenario grau-in-grau. Doch, ich mu? sagen, das Frankenland hat schon seinen Reiz, besonders wenn man sich den lokalen Spezialit?ten einmal n?hert. Mit dem hiesigen Bier habe ich da gar keine Schwierigkeiten, hatte ich doch im Rahmen einer f?r uns Erasmusser organisierten F?hrung im Brauereimuseum die Gelegenheit zu erfahren, da? Bier ?u?erst gesund ist, alle wichtigen N?hrstoffe enth?lt, und nicht dick macht – solange man nicht dazu i?t. Sp?ter ging es dann durch 4 der insgesamt 9 Bamberger Brauereien, oder „auf an Keller“, wie die Bamberger sagen w?rden. Das ultimative Schlenkerla-Rauchbier habe ich aufgrund ?berf?llung (nicht meines Magens, sondern der Kneipe!!) noch immer keines probiert. Wirklich der Knaller ist, da? in der Regel drei Sorten Bier direkt vom Fa? aus dem Braukeller kommen, also frischer als frisch sind, wenn sie ins Glas flie?en.
Leider gestaltet sich die Suche nach fester Nahrung nicht immer ganz so einfach. Nach 5 Jahren Geschmacksnerven-Folter durch holl?ndisches Brot (wenn man es ?berhaupt so nennen mag), f?hle ich mich hier in Bamberg wieder v?llig als Einkauf-Anf?nger, zumindest was die Wahl des Brotes angeht. Mein erster Versuch mit Fr?nkischem W?rzbrot war ein totaler Fehlgriff. Die Kinder in Afrika m?gen mir nicht b?se sein, aber dieses Brot war au?erhalb seines nat?rlichen Lebensraumes (z?nftige Brotzeit mit haufenweise Schinken und 5 Saidla dazu) nun wirklich nicht zu genie?en. Die darauf folgenden Eink?ufe waren da durchaus positiver. Aber mein ultimativstes Broterlebnis hatte ich am Samstag mit einem noch Ofenfrischen. Tante Anna nennt der „Beck“ das hier, und es ist k?stlich!
„Ebay hat sich immer eigene Gesetze!“ – so oder so ?hnlich w?rde ich mein j?ngstes Verkaufs-Erlebnis betiteln. Als einer der Gl?cklichen w?hnte ich mich am Montag der letzten Woche, als ich eines der letzten, noch nicht zensierten und eingezogenen Exemplare von Dieter Bohlens j?ngstem literarischen Werk in der Zeitschriftenecke meines Supermarktes entdeckte. Eine Stunde sp?ter stand es als eines von 32000 bei Ebay drin. Nun ja, dem einfachen ?konomischen Prinzip folgend, da? Angebot, Nachfrage und Preis untrennbar zusammenh?ngen, haben sich all die Bohlen-Versteigerer selbst das Gesch?ft kaputt gemacht. Die ersten B?cher, die schon am Wochenende f?r sagenhaft utopische 80-150 Euro gehandelt wurden, l?sten eine Kaufpanik von Nachahmern aus. Da ist es nicht verwunderlich, wenn aus dem Preisniveau von vielleicht 200 B?chern ein ganz anderes wird, wenn es auf einmal 32000 sind. Nunja, dumm gelaufen. Kai war so nett, mir meine Auktion abzufangen, soda? ich das Buch nicht mit Verlust verkaufen brauchte. Aber sehr ?rgerlich! Gerne h?tte ich ein wenig von Bohlens Kuchen gegessen, zumal ich das Buch auch noch ausgerechnet am Samstag Morgen in der Buchhandlung verschm?ht hatte…
Ich hatte mir eigentlich vorgenommen, am Samstag zeitig zu Bett zu gehen, wollte ich doch erstmals f?r ein Formel1-Rennen den Wecker stellen. Allerdings hinderte mich meine Photoseite (die ?brigens relativ kurz vor Neuer?ffnung steht) an diesem guten Vorsatz. So waren die Augen recht klein am Sonntag Morgen um 7 Uhr. Zu allem ?berflu? schlief ich auch noch w?hrend des Rennens 2mal ein, soda? mir die Schumis beste Schoten entgingen, und ich mich auf einmal wunderte, warum er schon wieder dem Feld hinterher f?hrt. Naja egal, er hat es ja mal wieder geschafft: zum sechsten Male Weltmeister! Weltmeisterlich fand ich dann auch meine Konsequenz, mich nach der Siegerehrung aus der Falle zu sch?len und im Schlo?park Seehof joggen zu gehen!

A nice ‚hello‘ to everybody! I felt it was time to calm down and erase rising rumors that I finally died of my Internet addiction after giving up my broadband connection in Maastricht. But nooo, I am still alive. Nevertheless, I think there is one thing worse than no Internet at all, which is slow Internet. Really, trust me, I would rather start writing letters again by hand than having to cope with a 56k dial-up connection for the rest of my life! Insiders already know that DSL is the only reason why I would visit Kai and Thomas or Alice’s parents regularly lately… Enough of that bullshit, let’s get serious. Since I started living with my parents again, I am basically jumping over boxes all day. If there is one thing I absolutely did not do in the past week, then it is sorting out, unpacking and re-arranging the stuff inside those boxes. It’s terrible! I am afraid of having to start all over with my stuff, having to take everything in my hands again. I’d rather wish to simply grab the boxes as they are and unpack them in Bamberg. Besides enjoying the benefits of ‚Hotel Mama‘ I havn’t done anything of particular importance. As I said, I see friends quite often and pretend that I am living here. Friday I went to Bonn, where Alice is doing her internship with T-Com. Yesterday we went to Gregor’s and Roland’s b-day party. And today we played badminton. WOW! No really, at least I got myself to keep up the will to do sports and workout. It seems it is time to get a new agenda, new tasks and a timetable, cause I began to vagabond around and get sick of my long long holidays. By the way, I uploaded new photos to my Yahoo-album, showing shockingly nasty moments of wasted youth!

Ladies and gentlemen, these are the last lines i will be writing from my desk in Maastricht for at least five months. My room is now completely empty, just the PC and a bag awaiting to be taken away as well. I cannot quite describe how I am feeling, now after five years in this city. But maybe the current weather serves as a good picture for your imagination: sun and heavy rainclouds.
Well well, now the day finally came that I am the one leaving for study abroad, or at least for good. During the weekend, I looked over a book about Bamberg, and I must say, at least the photos have created some appetite for something new. The thing is why I am absolutely zero enthusiastic about anything, be it staying here or leaving to Bamberg, is simply that I don’t want to study any more. I want to get finished, receive my diploma, go and queue at the Arbeitsamt while sending out 50 job applications a day, and then finally find a job. I am sick of books and scholars, students and lectures. But hey, it’s only one semester more of courses, and a thesis and then I am finally done!
If you like, come visit this site regularly, since I will be blogging form Bamberg as well. For now, I tell all the people I have not been able to visit again goodbye, more ‚auf Wiedersehen‘, since I’ll be back (if I am allowed to quote Arnold here). Take care!

okok, i was very lazy these days. of course i am back in one piece and yes, we took many photos, and yes again, we are working on our travel report as well as the galleries. just to give you the bare bottom-line: it was magnificent! btw, it would be smart to check traumdieb.comas well once in a while, since this is my upcoming movabletype-blog, which will replace this one here as soon as i find time and inspiration to get the design ready and work out a solution for my new site concept in the respective templates. — merely at home, i bought a new radio for my car. it’s a jvc kd-lh7r (which does not tell you anything i believe, right?) and this beautiful machine is capable of mp3. damn, why didn’t i switch to that earlier? for the first time now, it makes really sense to burn my stuff on a mp3-cd, resulting in 4 and more hours of music with just one cd. — these days, i basically get up very early to sweep filou’s piss and kick his butt to continue outside. you know, this damn dachshund is becoming more psychotic every year, but hell, i simply love him too much to be really angry with him. ok, i shout and yell at him just to let him know that i am not accord with his demonstration-riot-or-whatever-else acts, but hey, my parents have started that laissez-faire thing too long ago that i could stard reversing it during the 2 weeks in summer where i am in charge of the house. but maybe it’s simply filou’s way to express his sympathy to me; let’s therefore call it the daily „warm“ welcome. — keep your eyes closed, for the sun is shining way too brightly.

Back to boring, back to Germany… Of course, we will write the obligatory travel report, but right now, we need to get slowly used to the computer and internet, next to no beach, no sea, avarage-tasting tomatoes, muggy heat and absence of sheep and goats on the streets and later in the pan.
N-Joy the summer and await pictures, pictures, pictures…. as we took 455 digital and 15 analogue photos.

the only excuse for not blogging for so long is the weather and all the activities related to it. however, i have made several attempts in the past days to blog, but somehow i could not get the animated gif i wanted to share with the audience to an acceptable filesize (yes, there are still visitors using dial-up…), which was driving me crazy. now you guys wonder what the planned content was, and i will not fail to report my sheer exitement about a stunning afternoon at krefeld’s horse-racing circuit. don’t get me wrong, i still like horses best when smoked, sliced and on my sandwich -or at least from a secure distance-; but seeing these powerful animals flexing their muscles as they race for victory with sharp eyes and flying hair is truly an impressive scene. although we pretended to inspect the horses before the race (mainly by imitating the viewes and analytical talk the people next to us held), we didn’t place any bets. that was due to the fact that of the three horses i judged as either ‚cripple‘, ‚tired‘ or ‚weak‘, two were among the top three and the other ranked fifth. so, when it comes to judging horses, next time i stick to my taste ;) — back home in hessen we had high-percentage sit-ins with my cousin (i haven’t seen her for at least 5 years) and my uncle. the next day, we made the first big move in my grandma’s house. my father had arranged for a huge van we filled up with equally old and heavy furniture, which was supposed to be my sister’s and my stake of the heritage. dividing up heritage-stuff in an empty house is a pretty shitty thing for all being involved, i can tell you. — today, alice and i booked our rental car for our holidays in crete. after having checked several rental companies, we were left with holiday autos and sunny cars, both offering almost the same price and conditions. as we found, it’s of crucial importance to select a rental company offering unlimited insurance coverage, especially referring to our irish outback action when we were lucky to have the extra insurance waiver. i just hope that everything works out as planned, since i tried to change our flights today. i must say, i was a little surprised when i checked the travel voucher with the tickets and all, as i had to find the flight’s duration to be almost 5 hours! gee, in five hours you can almost get to jo-burg. now, since we booked a direct flight from d?sseldorf earliest in the morning, i had to find that our flight stops at frankfurt, meaning that i could have boarded in frankfurt at a way more pleasant time due to an unmentioned change in the flight schedule. now, i am very curious how the travel-agency will handle my complaint and whether the airline is able and willing to change the booking to, all other variables being equal, frankfurt. — since my last blog, i have made a step towards movabletype: i bought webspace with all-inkl.com! so, i will surprise the interested visitor on www.traumdieb.com (which is still empty as i am writing this) with my first tryouts in mt shortly. i haven’t made up my mind yet how i will go on with this domain here, but my blog will definitely move to traumdieb.com. i am simply too much pissed by blogger and haloscan. new designs are already in the pipeline, but need thematic round-up, so to say. also, my photopages will have some decent rennovation (and an update, of course) as soon as i get accquainted with php and sql. besides, for those being interested in the dialect of my home village, i have put lots of work into mein-burgsolms.de lately, so check it out if you like. stay awake!

here at my parent’s place one gets the idea of the concept of ‚la dolce vita‘. being here for a week now, i have already had my first sunburn due to the incredible weather, have partied to my complete satisfaction, have made a couple of warm-up bike rides to actually prepare my physics for some more action in the coming weeks, have enjoyed ‚hotel mama‘ to the max and with that the wide array of home-shopping possibilities, have had decent beer and ?ppelwoi (something i really miss in maastricht; not so much the ?ppelwoi but rather the beer because i am now ready to state that dutch beer sucks completely – with one exception, grolsch!), and simply could relax bigtime here. nevertheless, i am up quite early, do lots of things that i couldn’t do during the last months (for example awarding the car the looks it deserves, that is, getting the alloys mounted…), and in essence use my time for something reasonable or even tangible. well well, as nice as life in maastricht can be, i don’t think i will ever feel that accustomed and settled there as i feel here as soon as i drop my luggage. mybe it’s only the fact that i am still living in this shitty studenthouse with no garden, no neighborhood and nothing around you get completely comfortable with. on the other hand, i asked my sister whether she would miss here dirty studenthouse and ass-monkey neighbors since she is moving to a new, own appartment next weekend. she immediately replied „not at all“. see, i am not the only one…. — last weekend it was party at lena’s place where she and katrin celebrated her birthday. they live on the 4th floor (stairs in the entrance not counted) in giessen inner-city. we had a grand time there! maybe we enjoyed too much „lady’s beer“ (beck’s gold) and other beverages as our headaches next day revealed. nevertheless we were still able to call ourselves a cab taking us to thomas‘ and kai’s place sometime in the morning to get some sleep. not bad at all. you can view the pictures here (in the ‚lena’s & katrin’s party‘ folder). — tonight we are probably heading to the ultimate „tia maria revival party“ – the discothek we used to go to when we were 15 and proud as hell to manage to get in there without showing our id… damn, that’s already 10 years ago! hell, where did time go? -anyways, shitty as the place is, i expect to meet a whole bunch of people there i haven’t met for ages. on the other hand, it’s karfreitag tomorrow meaning that dancing will be prohibited from midnight onwards. i don’t get any of this old-fashioned crap. but as long as religion plays a role in our legislation, i expect this to go on. what would the world look like if we removed all this church-stuff from public life? -i tell you, in the first couple of years one would miss the regular christian holidays, but after that i see a rosy future. just think about the economic costs of all these holidays… but enough of that. anyways, i still have a lot of people to meet in the remaining days, and i am looking forward to it. — tomorrow, we managed to plan and organize this season’s first bbq on lena’s terrace. despite „good friday“ we will mainly roast pork – as i mentioned above, we don’t give a fiddler’s fart, just like good „schwazzkittel“ do. on tuesday i will be back in maastricht, go to mercedes for the last time to hand in my access card and fetch my coffee cup. but before, i will enjoy easter…. with lots of eggs and chocolate bunnies!

happy easter!!!

greetings from the island! i had originally planned to fly over to dublin on friday. but after checking for flights with ryanair, i found that i had already waited for too long, since what i had to read there was everything else but ‚low fares‘. i finally chose for aer lingus, the other irish flag-carrier, since they were cheaper than ryanair and even flying from frankfurt/main. should they continue with their 40 euro flights for inner-european destinations, i would defininately prefer their service over ryanair. let’s be honest: we don’t wanna pay for a bad meal, but if plenty of coffee, tea or water, coming with sandwiches of acceptable taste and cookies are included, i DO appreaciate that! anyways, since the plane for friday was full already, i simply booked for thursday and decided not to tell alice about that. i started heavy and serious collaboration with constance, alice’s landlady, who then picked me up at the airport and took me home, where i found alice doing her laundry in the kitchen as i stepped in. well, she has reported that on her website as well, so i leave it to her telling how terribly surprised she was. — we met with ricarda (ex x-change from germany) and her 100% dubliner boyfriend gordon on the weekend as we went for the movies, but ended up behind guinness and cider, since everything of interest was sold out. gordon then took us to a totally amazing bar carrying a gaelic name i cannot reproduce here, but being pronounced „miss you“ – but then with dublin accent and spoken fast. make sure you go there once when in dublin! — yesterday we went to a gaelic football match. alice was faster than me presenting her report on her blog already yesterday night, so go there for details on frozen feet, hot tea and new impressions. — we have just received the reservation receipt from budget for our rental car which will take us around the island in the upcoming three days. we will leave for glendalough, kilkenny, the cliffs of moher, and finally galway. we will keep you posted after we are safely back in dublin, since bad weather is being forecasted :(. — have a look at the picture at the beginning of this entry. the people of ireland are currently demonstrating against the us troop movements since the shannon area is heavily involved. it seems like everybody is against bush, but the irish government doesn’t seem to listen to its people or voters i should better be saying. as constance puts it, „the bloody government is simply ass-kissing with these cowboys, obviously because of economic motives. nobody wants this war-thing here – but everybody’s ape-shitting because of this cowboy.“ – way too cool to listen to, i tell ye! — till next time folx, take a look at the photos alice has put up in the february album! take care!