Alpha Core

In winter it barely snows in Hamburg, usually once a year. And most often the few lovely white snowflakes immediately transform into dirty slush when they touch ground. This year, however, things are different. It snowed for several consecutive days and with temperatures below -10 °C during the night conditions are perfect. For a lot of other places this is probably a really good joke, but we are proud about a 5 cm thick layer of snow. I even built a small snowman on our balcony.
To savour the snow-white beauty even more Tom and me made a day trip to the Baltic coast where we enjoyed the whitest beach possible.

The sad truth is that my snowman is melting silently away while I’m writing this post…

We went to see the Queen Mary 2 leaving the harbor of Hamburg (Germany) at 8:30 p.m. (CEST) on August 15, 2009. Here are some impressions taken from one of the accompanying boats:

No, please! Avert your eyes from the picture! It’s actually a pretty tasty dish! What you see here is called Labskaus (or Lapskaus) and it is a specialty from Northern Germany and in particular from Hamburg. The coloring given by the red beets may deceive you at first, but after you’ve tasted it, you’ll agree that it’s actually quite good! Here’s the recipe for this rather special dish: Read more

Below is a movie we took in Oevelgönne of the Queen Mary 2 arriving in the harbor of Hamburg (Germany) shortly after midnight on July 30, 2008 while some other, smaller ships are passing by and welcoming her with their horn. The Queen Mary 2 replies with the most impressive one though. Too bad it was so dark that we couldn’t take any good pictures.

During the Hamburg Cruise Days (from July 30 until August 3), there’s also some other great ships to see in the harbor aside from the Queen Mary 2. Check out the website for an impression.

(Source of the picture)

I’ve been experiencing the silliest things lately with the money transfer & online payment called NETELLER. After opening an account there, it is required to arrange a telephone call to verify that you are indeed a real person and not some smart poodle surfing the internet.

So I gave them my number in Belgium that automatically gets forwarded over the internet to Germany, because I was in Germany at that time. I made the foolish mistake of letting them in on this and all of a sudden, this number was no good anymore; I needed to be in my country of registration. After some discussion, people calling their bosses and listening to some relaxing music, they finally agreed on calling me on this Belgian number as well as on a fixed line of choice in Germany. Well, alright then! Within the hour some guy from a call center called me on both numbers. The absurdity level of this stranger twice asking me for my user ID and (something similar to) what my mother’s maiden name is, is hilariously high! Read more

As some of you might already know, I’m constantly on the move between Germany and Belgium. In order to make communications as easy and cheap as possible, I wanted people in Belgium to be able to reach me in Germany at national rates by calling a fixed-line number in Belgium. The call should get transparently redirected over the internet to Germany as follows:

I also wanted to call people in Belgium from Germany at very low costs. For them, my call seems to originate from within Belgium. Since some people already showed interest in how I set this up, I decided to write an article about this. Read more

Last thursday evening Melanie and me went snowboarding. Some of you will be surprised, because Hamburg is not so very well know for it’s huge mountains and people who visited the area lately also know that it is actually much too warm for snow. But still – we went snowboarding. This was possible in the Snowdome Bispingen, which is an indoor ski slope, where you can go skiing, snowboarding or sledging all year round and in kind of every weather. The piste is about 300 m long and inclines between 9 % and 20 %. For someone who lives close to real mountains that’s of course just a good laugh, but even though I wouldn’t call it too impressive, we enjoyed it big time. As none of us brought a camera, I copied two pictures from the official website to give you an impression. This means of course that unfortunately there are no pictures of us showing all these great stunts…

(Source of the pictures)

This is Noli – my horse. Or to be more precise with everything: her given name is Magnolia and she is a pony of the kind ‘Deutsches Reitpony‘. Noli was born in the stable were I took riding lessons when I was a child. In this stable every child could choose a horse or a pony to look after it, which basically meant grooming it regularly. I happened to choose a pony mare, named Towy Valley Marguerite, but because this name really is a lot too long, she is called Margie. After a while the owner decided that Margie should have a foal. And that’s where Noli occurs in this story. She was born in 1994 when I was 12 years old. Ever since then I also took care of her and on my 15th birthday my wish came true and Noli was my present. We changed stables then and Noli is now living in an open stable near Hamburg. The picture on the left side is taken in summer, when Noli was standing on a meadow and the picture on the right side shows the two of us going for a hack in winter.

Since almost a year ago, we’ve seen an enormous increase in popularity of the game poker, the Texas hold’ em variant to be more specific. I think it was around the time that the latest Bond movie (Casino Royale) was shown in theaters that I started to take some interest in the game. Sure, in high school we played some draw poker, but no game was ever as much fun as a regular hold ‘em one, simply for the reason that there’s a lot more interaction in this variant. The main reason for this are the ‘community cards’, a set of (eventually) five cards lying in the middle of the table that are shared by all players. Just two cards, called the ‘pocket cards’, are being dealt to every player at the beginning of every hand. These two cards are the only ones that can give you an edge over your fellow player. The community cards add a lot to the game and they offer a feeling of interaction. The game isn’t just about your hand and your luck drawing some cards anymore.

Update (October, 7th): NBC airs a great daily show called Poker After Dark and puts all episodes online for free. Watching the series is a good way to learn more about poker and to get to know some of the successful players out there. It’s really exciting and fun to watch! There are also some nice shows on Joost that are highly entertaining, e.g. the WPT (World Poker Tour) finals. Read more