Things that might be decidedly odd…

First Trip Update

I’m currently in Hamburg, sitting at some internet cafe near my hotel, the Hotel Village. My hotel apparently used to be a bordello, but now it’s just some hip place that was once used in a photo shoot by Nena (of ‘99 Luftbaloon’ fame). I’m up on the fifth floor (which in America would be the sixth floor because the ground floor never seems to count here) of a building with no elevator. At least I have a room with a balcony and a view though. And a large folding wall thingee emlazoned with Audrey Hepburn’s picture. I’ve taken photos (which I’ll probably not be able to post until I get home) show all this better.

Anyhow, since arriving I’ve been coping with jetlag as best I can. It always takes me several days to accomodate, except this time I’ll probably be used to it just in time to return to Seattle.

Copenhagen was an interesting place. It’s sort of Seattle-like in that big city that doesn’t feel massive sort of a way. The weather was also a lot like Seattle–rainy and in the 50s. I wandered around the city a bit, walking by most of the sights like downtown, the Tivoli, the port and so forth. I stayed at the Hotel Windsor, which while small was a perfectly fine hotel. On Saturday night (the night I arrived), I went to Pan Club, which is a gay dance club in the city center. There were two dance floors but the pop hits one was more popular than the techno one. Of course, I didn’t seem to know many of these hits, because this stuff seems to vary so much around the world. I took some hot guy home, which is very unlike me but, well, I’m on vacation and needed to do some wild oat sowing while in Europe since I never did when I still lived here. To make a long story short, he had a lot of issues that were expressing themselves when we got back to my hotel (crazy family, body issues, fear of abandonment, etc.) but fortunately he passed out quickly in my bed and woke the next morning sober and infintely more charming. Turns out he was originally from Iceland (so exotic–there can only be like a couple thousand gay Icelandic boys in the whole world), a genuinely nice guy and a lot fun.

Anyhow, my time is about to run out. I’ll hopefully update again soon.

Travel Books and More

I went over to the Barnes and Noble at Crossroads Plaza by work today to look through their travel books. I picked up Fodor’s Denmark book and Lonely Planet’s Germany book. The Fodor’s was more up to date, but I like the more bohemian (read cheap as in no listings for 4 star hotels I can’t afford) aspect to Lonely Planet. Unfortunately, there was only a “Scandinavian Europe” book and I couldn’t bring myself to pay ~$25 for a book I’d only be using a very small section of. Just buying the books was good though. At least now I’ll have some info for when I get on the ground in these cities on where to find accomodation.

I’m leaving for Copenhagen Friday night and I still haven’t done much planning. I did send off an email to some B&B place in Copenhagen asking if they still have space available this weekend. Hopefully, they’ll get back to me soon so I can make the reservation or start looking for another place.

I’m planning to pack light to avoid suffering too much with a heavy pack. It’s going to be slightly tricky though because I’m connecting through London, which still has relatively strict rules on liquids (no liquids allowed not even in 3oz containers). I suppose I could wear my glasses and just find some contact lense solution once I get to Denmark.

Also, I read today that the impending strike among Danish SAS flight attendants was averted. I could have gotten a direct flight to Copenhagen for less than I’m paying to connect through London! Oh well, the uncertainly of the situation would have probably stressed me out more than the $150.

Stupid, Stupid Me

This morning I missed a meeting with my boss’s boss. When will I learn to not schedule meetings on Monday when I always forget about upcoming meetings due to the weekend? Everything got smoothed over though and I’ve added the new appointment to my personal calendar. Plus, the stress and guilt of it all seemed to motivate me to get a lot of work done today.

In the parking lot at work today, I saw something for which I wish I’d had a camera: a Hummer H2 parked across two compact spaces. I would have so been tempted to post said shameful pictures on this site.

Edit: Fixed broken Hummer link reported by Eric.

Doh!

It’s 8:45am on a Saturday, which is very early for me to be up. I was very proud of myself for getting up this early to make it to Frontrunners. That is until I realized that last night in a rush I left the garage door remote inside my car. For most people this wouldn’t be a problem (in fact, it would be the norm) but unfortunately the remote is the only way I have to get into the garage. There’s a separate door, but the building management can’t make any keys for it and the locksmith they had out couldn’t remove the lock to replace it. Fortunately, I can get to the garage by stairs from inside the building, but of course I don’t have a key to the main door either (it’s a different building than the one I live in). Hence, I have to resort to calling the manager and having her buzz me in. The only thing is that it’s early Saturday morning and outside of business hours.

Well, I guess I’ll go back to bed. I’m still tired from staying out late at the bars (Purr followed by the Cuff) last night anyways. Hopefully, I can get a hold of the manager later today or at least sketchily follow somebody into the building.

Short Notice Vacation

A recent turn of events has caused me to re-evaluate my vacation usage in the near term. It looks like I will be able to go to Germany soon after all. In fact, I just bought a plane ticket for an 8 day trip to Denmark and Germany (into Copenhagen, out through Berlin) that will start a week from Friday. My plan is to start in Copenhagen then stop over in Hamburg for a couple days on my way to Berlin. Of the three cities, I’ve only been to Berlin before and that was nearly 5 years ago. It should be a nice little get away.

Yikes, I’m so unprepared! Fortunately, I’ve got a few days to get things in order.

Originally, I thought was going to get a great deal on a plane ticket but there were a couple catches. American Airlines was (is?) offering a roundtrip right now to Frankfurt from Seattle for only about $570. The catch is that you have to spend the night in Chicago or Dallas on the return flight. Then I saw a great deal on SAS from Seattle to Copenhagen non-stop with a return from Berlin (via Copenhagen) for only $650. The direct flights would have made the trip fairly short even–it’s just 9.5 hours non-stop from Seattle to Copenhagen because they’re both so far north. Unfortunately, after some investigation I realized the reason the prices are so good on SAS to Denmark right now is that a cabin crew strike is imminent and likely. Back in my college days, I would have just bought the cheap and uncertain SAS ticket, but these days I’d rather pay the extra $150 to avoid the hassle of having my flight cancelled and missing a bunch of vacation days.

So it looks like I’ll be flying British Airways for about $800, which all told isn’t too bad considering it’s fairly direct (just a stop at Heathrow) with good times on both ends.

Unfortunately, this means I’ll be missing out on Halloween in Seattle. That’s too bad because I was thinking about going to Bump (a big, gay Halloween party in Seattle) or to a party a friend is throwing. I just feel that I had to jump on this opportunity to go since it probably won’t present itself again until some time late next year.

Stammtisch in Seattle

I was poking around online this evening to see if I could find a local Stammtisch to attend. A Stammtisch is a regular (usually weekly) meeting of friends or collegues. In the US, people usually speak German at them as well. Universities tend to have one. I ended up finding this nifty calendar which shows several in the area plus other German-related events. I may have to check one or more of these out some time. I really need to practice my German–it’s been too long since I’ve last used it.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

For my drive to Oregon and back last weekend, I bought an audiobook through iTunes. The book I bought was the abridged version of David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day. It’s a collection of entertaining essays. I’d heard about Sedaris a number of time from various people and seen him listed on random people’s MySpaces even. The first time his work was recommended to me though was by my friend Amy who I knew in Bayreuth. I actually didn’t know much about the author except that his writing is apparently entertaining and that he’s gay. It was quite entertaining for all sorts of reasons though. He largely grew up in North Carolina, so there were lots of references to my former state which I found amusing.

I managed to find a link to one of the more amusing NC-related essays here. Definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re one of my UNC peeps.

Helping to Move

Last weekend I went down two Oregon to help my parents move into their new house outside of Cottage Grove. I got there late Friday night and woke up at 6:30am on Saturday to start the moving. First, the truck rental place didn’t have any trucks (despite my parents having a reservation). Eventually, we found another truck at another location in Eugene. Professional movers were supposed to meet us at the old place in Eugene at 9am, but they never showed up. Consequently, it was just the three of us moving a lot of stuff. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to fit everything in one load (24 ft truck) so we had to go back a second time after dinner. In the end it was an all day affair involving several large, heavy items including a couple couches, a refrigerator, a safe, 3 pieces of slate for a pool table and quite a few heavy boxes. Eventually, we did finish though some time around 9pm (I think). Definitely a long and tiring day!

Sunday morning, we all slept in after the long previous day. Late in the morning, my parents showed me around their property. It’s 90% timberland (lots of Weyerhaeuser land in the area) and 10% is pastured (where the house is located). The forest is fairly dense and there’s already some work that needs to be done to clear the roads that run through it.

After that, we had lunch in Eugene and then I headed back to Seattle. I’m still sore from moving all that heavy stuff, but at least I won’t have to worry about working out for a while.

Neighbors

Ken, Evan, Ian and I ended up hitting Neighbors around midnight after watching TV over at Larry’s tonight. I hadn’t been to Neighbors in many months–probably not since April or so. It’s definitely a different scene than the Cuff (where I usually seem to go these days to dance)–more straight women, younger on average. I had a good time dancing to the 80s music though and there was lots of eye candy to look at. I danced with a cute Latino guy for a while, but eventually I had to go home to sleep so that tomorrow I can go to work at a decent hour and drive five hours to Oregon.

Brakes

After putting it off for most of the summer, I broke down and took my car into get the brakes taken care of. It’s not like they’d gone out or anything, but my car has been breaking increasingly roughly for a while now. When I went up to the San Juans months ago, Rico (who works in the auto parts business) made some sort of exclamation about my rotors. Then Jay told some horror story about the tens (or maybe it was hundreds) of thousands of yen he had to pay for new rotors in Japan when he used to live there.

Now, the thing I hate most about getting my car fixed is finding a place to go. Experience has taught me to assume most mechanics are thieves who will screw you over at every chance. That leaves me with very few good options. I’d rather just pay more and not have to deal with as much bullshit. So I did what a lot of people do in that situation and just took the car to the Toyota dealer. On the plus side, the dealership downtown is a short walk (less than a mile I think) from my apartment and they’re supposed to know what they’re doing. The people there seemed to be fairly professional and they took care of everything in a timely and polite fashion. No games about when I’d get the car back or bald-faced attempts at selling me services and products I didn’t really need.

I had to get new pads on the front, have the front rotors machined, have the break fluid changed, new pads on the back and new rotors on the back (since they’re too worn to be machined). Plus, they noticed that my power steering fluid was in need of changing. I told them to just do it since if I didn’t I know it would continue to bother me. Unfortunately, getting everything done was really expensive. I obviously expected that, but the amount I paid was still more than I had expected.