Random Tidbits

It's been busy over here, so just a few quick things:

Hafengeburtstag: The yearly "birthday party" for Hamburg's harbor takes place this weekend. The harbor is considered to have been "born" on May 7, 1189 (the day when Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa granted the people of Hamburg an exemption from tolls for their ships traveling on the Elbe River between Hamburg and the North Sea), so it'll be turning 815 this year. On the water will be ships of all types -- tall ships, steamships, fishing boats, an icebreaker, police and fire boats -- docked and open to visitors. On land will be a giant party along the riverbank -- kind of a DOM on with water, with food, music, booths, and rides. The party officially begins on Friday afternoon with a church service (!) and a parade of ships into the harbor, but preparations began in earnest yesterday, with all kinds of booths and tents being set up within spitting distance of our office (and with my bus stop being $%^!&@ out of service until Monday, since they started shutting down the neighborhood streets last night). It'll be hard to concentrate on Friday with festivities in sight out of the office windows ...

The "Alice" mystery solved: Just in time for Hafengeburstag, the people who plastered the city with the mysterious "Alice kommt" ads last week hung a giant (at least 100 meters long!) new "Alice" ad from the side of one of the floating drydocks along the river. And it looks like the people who guessed that this had something to do with some kind of new DSL service (like the "Alice" services being offered in Italy and France) were right, since this ad explicitly mentions the Net. I lose! (On the other hand, just being one of the first people to mention www.alice-kommt.de on my blog has really driven up my traffic -- around a hundred people have come by in the past few days, trying to figure out what those ads are about.)

More Museums (also part of "there's something interesting every weekend" file): Next weekend is the Lange Nacht der Museen -- "the long night of the museums", where 42 museums will be open from 6 PM Saturday night to 2 AM Sunday morning. Most of the museums will be hosting special events -- films, lectures, music, dancing, food -- in addition to their regular exhibits. 10 Euro buys you a combined admissions ticket and transit pass. How many will we be able to see? (For those who wimp out early, the admissions ticket is also good for regular hours on Sunday as well.)

The Horrors of LA: Tuesday at lunch, I was asked what Shelby and I planned to do after we returned to the US; I mentioned that we might go back to San Jose, but we might move to Südkalifornien instead. "Oh, LA?" (All of Southern California is LA, except for San Diego.) Ja. "Wow, you'll have to be a movie star or a musician to live there, won't you -- or a porno star!" Well, no, I think I'll keep my job here, thanks -- but we'll just buy a giant SUV and then we'll fit right in. Kein problem! "But then you'll have to get your SUV armor-plated so that you can survive all of the freeway shootings!"

Thing is, I'm not entirely sure whether they're joking or serious. I've already had to explain that just because I grew up in Southern California, that didn't mean that my friends and I went surfing every day after school and held bonfires on the beach every weekend ...