Fusion Festival 2007 - Germany

If there's two things i've learnt since starting travelling two weeks ago is that

1. Air France really sucks
2. Fusion is going to be one hell of a reunion in amongst 30,000 people!

I have realised that I am to a degree on my physical IM world tour catchup (MSN,GTALK,SKYPE) ex-pats too! Still it's very nice to be naive in a brand new city and feel challenged by not knowing the local language!

I'm currently in an occupied house in Barcelona, just under the hill with the crosses on top below 'Parc Guell' which makes following the recommendation of all my friends who have been here before to go there very easy to follow!

For the poor souls in Melbourne freezing in the cold, yes it's warm humid and i am trying to make the beers cold enuff!

The Apple iRack

glumbert.com

my camera is making strange noises

small hickups when your travelling! on the way out to a techno party in Bernau i noticed my Canon 350d started to make a wierd whirrrrrr noise when i took a photo.

Of course, Germany is a terrible place in the world for service, 10-15 days to get it fixed and i need the original receipt which is in my bed side drawer in Melbourne... sigh

Time to upgrade, no time to mess around!

none of the big cheap stores here seem to carry the Canon EOS 400d body, the german prices aren't too bad compared to Melbourne prices, but i have no time, as i'm off to barcelona tomorrow.

turns out canon are having a 25 year celebration in spain with a 80 euro cash back offer! price before cash back is between 615-635 Euro...

cool, looks like i'm going camera shopping with Basti in Barcelona! cool :)

The great thing is that the 350d and 400d use the same batteries, everything else for the EOS series are compatible... only the batteries are sometimes different (the 300d batteries are bigger)

Oli and Nicole are Married!

I had the pleasure on the weekend of being the best man at a wedding of two very good old friends of mine here in Berlin. I met Oli and Nicole whilst travelling in and out of Berlin in 99. I have known them ever since and was there the day they got together as boyfriend and girlfriend.

From oli and nicol...

With Diana and myself as the 'traumsauger' (the maid of honor and best man ) at the Palais der Festungsgraben in Mitte in berlin, near the Spree river and Humbolt University, on a hot Berlin day, they both said 'Ja' and a new chapter in their live began.



Before the ceremony it was wonderful to catch up with a lot of old friends, all a wee bit older and wiser than last time i saw them.

Diana and I headed into the wedding with Wolfgang in his Porsche, which almost went terribly wrong as we took the wrong exit off the autobahn and ended up in the Grunewald which is a very long way from Mitte. Thankfully, I had a GPS in my phone and i managed to get us back on track and 42Km later we made it in time. Gotta love the geek toys!

The reception at Oli's parent's place was lovely in the backyard under the pine trees. Oli and Nicole didn't think we need to bring music, but Wolfgang said we should so my laptop became the sound system for the party. Great idea Wolfgang :)

I had played some Andromeda the night before to Wolfgang, who lay back described it as 'Kunst', so we kicked off our music with some beautiful tracks. Jan then took over Dj'ing and later on we had a great retro set with tracks from Atmos, Element, Shiva Chandra , 2raumwohnung and many more old tracks.




The food and wine was fanatastic and I even learnt some greek dancing. I am going to get some more dancing lessons from Oli before the Greek wedding.



All in all a beautiful wedding!

German Prepaid Sim Card recommendations

ok, optus roaming charges suck, time to get a local sim card

ALDI have a nice cheap german sim card

Everland Festival, Spain

BuzzT is playing here, looking very tempting, there may of been a bit of easyjet booking on my part yesterday.

Barcelona, hear i come on the 19th of June :)

i bought a n95

i bought a n95 last week, optus kindly upgraded my phone 6 moths before my contract was up. I had lotsa dramas with getting it delivered, but it all worked out in the end.

I have re-flashed my phone three times, as the default aussie profile has only english, inodnesian and polynesian... Stupid Optus, use the EURO-1 profile please...

the nokia software is ok, if a little non-standard (flash i/f). I miss some of the features from my w800i, the little things make life easier. But it's nice to be able to txt easily, as my old w800i joystick was very very sick.

maps are good on the n95, still two hard to load them tho. why does the phone have multiple modes? PC Suite should expose the phone a a drive... is that so hard to make work?

anyway, life's good :)

i also have a skype in number for melbourne.... no caller id which sucks, but it's good value for 10 pounds..

back in berrrrlin!

after over four years i'm back in berlin (long rrr in their for the english speakers)

memories are flooding back, we went out to olli's parents place yesterday and helped setup for the wedding. I heard all then plans for the wedding, my family becomes part of their family as i am the best man :)

which means i am a unmarried cousin of olli's which means i can play a role in the greek wedding, which is going to be a mix of old traditionals.

been chatting with basti in barcelona online of course (good when your in the same timezone too) Talked the Micha before, he sounds really good. Wolfgang is coming to berlin a day early to catch up, it was nice to ring him and surprise him yesterday. Katja is busy setting up two markets stalls which have to be moved coz their in the wrong spot, so she's flat chat busy. Nicole just came back from the dry cleaners which haven't yet cleaned her wedding dress... hope they do a 1 hour dry cleaning.. some of those services you take for granted in oz aren't so common here.

it's lovely weather here :)

Psynema does RIO!

I love the way the world works, sitting on my pc, I noticed basti( buzzT) has a new video on his skype comments.

I was sitting here @ my PC with Wastl, who made a suprise arrival unnannounced back from Alice Springs to catch up before i head to berlin. Anyway we were watching the video and suprise, Basti pops up on MSN asking about Olli and Nicole's wedding.....

Tis a small and beautiful world