Chuck Ragan

Click on photo to enlarge

A friend and I still stick to our rule of visiting at least one live concert a month. The gig for September was performed by one of our favorite German bands called Muff Potter.
Well, Muff Potter did ok but I wasn't squealing with glee. They seemed to be tired or bored or both.
Like the last concert of Muff Potter in Erlangen the supporting act was really great for my ears. The name of the guy was Chuck Ragan and he's usually involved in a band called Hot Water Music.
He played a solo concert and I think the crowd cheered louder after his concert than after Muff Potter.
Well, and now I have his new CD and a T-shirt with his name on it.
I doubt that I ever get to old for wearing band T-shirts - even if it gets embarrassing.

I had my camera with me and decided to shoot only black/white photos instead of converting the stuff afterwards. It always gives me a completely different sense for tones and lighting. Unfortunately it didn't prevent me from shooting almost every photo very blurry. This is one of the very few focused ones.

Pumpkin-Country-Love

Click on photo to enlarge

This was a perfect German autumn weekend from a weather point of view. The air was warm, the sun was stroking my neck without burning it, the trees just started to prepare for their color-LSD-trip and my nose discovered an overwhelming mixture of fresh soil, fallen leaves and rotten grass.
And if you add a pumpkin field found by coincidence near one of my favorite hills (the "Walberla") I can't help falling in love with this angular landscape instantly.
My internal batteries use autumn days like this to charge for the winter.

I even sat in the beer garden in the evening. Probably the last time this year. But who knows.

Milk Girl

A posting in a blog I read regurarily about a small girl sipping milk reminded me of a girl I saw last autumn in Berlin.
I had breakfast with a friend in front of a small café. Beside us a small girl and her father were celebrating easy living. He was drinking a coffee and she was enjoying a big glass of milk. Every few minutes she was cheering "is that gooood".
That "gooood" was really great and makes me smile every time I think of it. One could really see that the girl was very concentrated and dedicated to what was doing. Sometimes it's visible that a human being is thinking - that was one of that situations.

I was so enchanted that I shot some photos (yes, her father saw and allowed it by nodding).
The milk girl photos are really special to me.
Maybe now it's a good point in time to publish the shots of my favorite milk girl.
I hope she kept the ability to enjoy the small things in life.

Knife Man

Click on photo to enlarge

This old man was the owner of a booth at a small farmer's market in Hamburg. Actually it wasn't a real booth but only a small table with some mixed stuff. All he offered was some batteries and a few small knifes. It was quite obvious that he wasted no thoughts about "target markets" and "core competencies" and I doubted that he can make a living out of the money he makes with this small things.
He told me in very broken German that he's doing this for more than 15 years now. Unbelievable.
In the end I hardly understood anything he said but this didn't matter. He was glad that I shot photos of his small knifes and I was glad that he told me about his life - even if I had no idea about the language he spoke.

Your Order Please

Imagine a restaurant. The waitress comes and ask you for your order. Instead of telling her your wish you say that you formed the order out of plasticine and it's up to her to find it out.
Wouldn't it be cool if the waitress wouldn't look at you with that I-guess-you-are-a-complete-idiot-look but simply say "One tomato soup and rice with vegetables"?

You know what - exactly this happened to me yesterday. Ok, the waitress needed some hints for the rice dish but she succeeded at the 3rd try - and she did perfect for the tomato soup.

In the end she wasn't happy when I tried to knead her tip out of plasticine but then she joined me in laughing.

It's so great if you don't have to explain your behavior all the time.

Is Life Good?

And what if not?

A thing that scares me a little bit is the fact that it requires only a few moved lines of plasticine on a table in a café to revert the message.



("doof" = german for "foolish")

Today it was more or less the latter.

Genies and Locked Bottles

You can rub the bottle as long as you want. As long as the bottle is locked, no genie will come out.

Process description:
1) Get rid of this damn restraining bottle cap
2) Rub the bottle
3) Think about your wish

Oh - I forgot an important step between 1) and 2): Find someone that wants to rub.

I'm a genie in a bottle, baby
Come, come, come and let me out
(Chrisina Aguilera - Genie in a Bottle)

Radish Life

Market. There is a booth offering vegetables and fruits. Every piece looks good from the distance. You look closer. That bunch of radish looks redder than the rest. Almost perfect. Your hand reaches out to touch a radish. It feels good. You press a little bit. Not too hard and not to soft. No risk when buying it.

Oh boy, life is completely different than the radish-shopping most of the time, isn't it?

You don't even dare to get close to look at situations, problems or human beings oftentimes.
Wouldn't it be great to touch and check a new chapter in your life before you "buy" it?
Well, probably we would skip all the foul chapters then and I'm pretty sure that these are the chapters that teach us more than the perfect red radish ones.

Postcards from Hamburg-Switzerland

I was in Hamburg for the weekend and visited good friends. On Saturday we made a digital hunt with our cameras through the city. As always we gave us some photo assignments. One of them was "Summer anyway!".
It was cold and raining and it wasn't much like summer at all.
Then we saw a red car near the St. Pauli Landungsbrücken. A red car covered with...snow.
"Summer anyway" – just perfect.
We jumped to the two guys sitting beside the car chilling in the (invisible) sun and shot some photos.
While shooting photos and chatting it turned out that they simply were on promotion tour for a Swiss airline. We joked around a lot and they gave us some merchandising junk including postcards with a Swiss airplane.
This brought me to the idea that the Swiss guys should write us a postcard. I bought some stamps, wrote my address on the card and handed the postcard together with a pen back to the chilling guys.
After the usual second with surprised faces the guys smiled and started to write.
They promised to put the cards in a post box the same day.

Well, I'm very curious whether I'll receive a postcard with a Swiss airplane from Hamburg to Bavaria. Maybe even with the phone number of the Swiss girl? Crap - wake up.

Aaand - I promised myself to write more postcards to friends without a special reason.

Start Me Up

You screwed it up? Just press the Start-button and try again. And again. And again.
Look at the photo. Look close. Do you see it?
The Start-button looks very used. This tells me that it's very common to start up over and over again.

Press start to continue...

Sunrobic

I saw this guy a few days ago while sitting on the grass in a public park in Erlangen.
It was funny to watch him trying to cover his face from the sun. He started by using his shirt as shelter for his nose. A few minutes later he began to shield the sun with his hands, changing the position every minute as soon as his arms got tired.
For me it looked like a kind of Aerobic, maybe Sunrobic.

Hey sun, I'm not yet prepared for 6 months of darkness, low temperatures, rain and even snow. I do like autumn and winter, too, but please give me some more weeks for flirting with your beams.

Volksfest Impressions

I like the environment at fairs. It's the smell-mixture of Popcorn, French Fries and fresh Prezels together with the noise landscape of cheering young girls, the bored announcements of the booth-people and the pneumatic "shhh" sounds of the fun rides.
This time my visit at the Nuremberg Volksfest wasn't depressing like the last time because this time I had a friend with me and we had a lot of fun watching the people. I even found a few guys that were willing to write their phrase of the day on my little chalk board.

2 Minutes

Click on photo to enlarge.

There are 2 magic minutes on some afternoons. The 2 minutes prior to sunset. The sky consists of more shades of red, orange and yellow than the best graphichs card can display.
If you are lucky you have your camera and your tripod with you.

The photo is a HDR and calculated out of 9 single photos. It shows the Nuremberg Volksfest (fair) beside a small lake called Dutzendteich.

Untrained

Almost untrained - signed up anyhow - 1 minute faster than last time, though.
I really love that Marathon feeling - especially the Fränkische Schweiz Marathon.

Hopefully I can exchange the 4 from 01:43:29 with a 3 next time. Damn lazyness.

This is alreay my 3rd or 4th posting about Inline Skate Marathons. Is my life going in circles or am I just trying to repeat the good parts?

Berlin 2006
Fränksiche Schweiz Marathon 2006

Bravery

Do you see that tower? It's with the utmost probability the highest tower in the world.
Imagine two very small and young human beings and one of their hardest challenges so far.
My two favorite girls accompanied me to a spontaneous visit at a look-out. Their great-aunt was also with us.
I just wanted to climb the tower for a few sunset photos (BTW: they turned out to be bad). Actually the girls cheered "yeees" as answer to my question whether they will join me for the climb because they had no idea what a look-out is and that it's the highest peak on the planet.
The smaller girl was held back by the slightly hysterical great-aunt. She said that she's too small and there are "numerous dangers" and that the tower is shaking and the girl would throw up.
So I took the hand of the other girl and started to climb the stairway. The girl was very impressed by the height of the building and kind of reluctant but willing to do it. After 10 steps the grant-aunt screamed with a high-pitched voice out of an old Doris-Day-Movie "You are about to throw up, aren’t you, sweetie?"
My girl looked and me and said "I can't go on. I'm afraid. It's too high".
At this point in time I wouldn't have given the maximum sympathy points to my screaming aunt.
So I went back down with my disenchanted girl and my aunt said "You see I was right. They are frightened".
I was about to climb the tower on my own as the smaller girl broke free from her grant-aunt, run to me and took my hand with a very determined face. It was a perfect mixture of will and fear.
Before my aunt had the chance to start screaming we were already 20 steps ahead.
I counted the stairs loudly to distract the girl. 102 steps later we had a great view from the top and the screaming grant-aunt was only a kind of grant-ant on Speed.
The way down was easy.
Back down the small girl had a look at her older sister that made me grin very broadly. It was the I'm-way-younger-than-you-but-I-was-up-there-and-you-weren't-you-whiny-wimp-look.
What shall I tell you - the bigger girl swallowed, stumped over to me, took my hand and said "I wanna try again".
My grin went even broader and we did it. I could feel through the hand I was holding that she was slightly shivering and so I encouraged her to count the stairs with me (although the number 102 was way beyond their number-horizon).
On top she was not able to go to the balustrade but that didn't matter.
Finally it caused a see-I'm-rehabilitated-look to her smaller sister and the world was OK again.

The photo was shot 2 minutes later. I really love the pride in their faces a lot - pride because of a glorious victory over the fear facing a task that is higher than the highest tower in the world.