Alpha Core

As we’re preparing for our summer vacation to Sweden, we’re going over our checklist of things we want to take along. One of the items pretty high up the list is the GPS device we recently ordered at Futurumshop (a Magellan eXplorist 210) for our geocaching adventures. We’re a bit afraid that it might not be delivered in time, while it seems that Magellan is having serious delivering problems right now since they didn’t have any models at the local Globetrotter store neither anymore. Oh well, we keep faith and aren’t running around screaming and frantically waving our hands in the air… yet. Read more

Caesar & Cleopatra (by KOSMOS) is a game I recently picked up at the flea market at the IKEA Moorfleet parking lot in Hamburg. It’s one of the few two-player-only games in our collection. One player takes up the role of Caesar, while the other one ends up with Cleopatra. The subtlety of the game lies in the act that the players don’t battle each other directly, but rather try to gain as much sympathy as possible with the most influential politicians in Rome and Egypt.

It’s very nice to see how the game constantly re-balances itself. Winning one politician for you also means having a harder time gaining the next one for you as well. You can choose the pace of the game yourself by either openly showing which politicians you are interested in or by not revealing your intentions immediately. The game offers enough deceit, bluffing and suspense to keep anyone happy.

Until now the strange thing about this game is that the one who is winning in the end often did not expect this, while the one already celebrating his/her victory at the start faces defeat by a vote or two. This shows that the game is quite tricky, but therefore will stay interesting for a while.

Yesterday we went to the Grindel Ufa Palast in Hamburg, where they feature original English movies. Tuesday is ‘movie day’ there, and for a mere 4,50 €/person we booked ourselves (online and without any extra costs) some great seats for the long awaited movie Shrek the Third.

Even though the story of the movie was not so special, the jokes and all the action scenes caught us in our seats from the first second on. We stayed trapped until the end of the credits, hoping for some hilarious bloopers.. but unfortunately, there were none. Anyway, the movie is highly recommendable and we are already looking forward to the next sequel, which will probably be in theaters in 2010.

Update (September, 4th): Grindel Ufa Palast closed down in Hamburg. I suppose not enough people are interested in original movies that aren’t dubbed here. It’s a terrible shame!