Autumn? In August???

Well, I think the weekend that Andrea, Nynke and Ryanne were here (see last post) was the final pleasant weekend of the year. I mean, not so strange after all, considering it's already August, right? :-(((((

Anyway, despite the weather, good times have been had. My brother and his wife came over for a lovely weekend, during the Berlin beer festival, so we had a great time. This time, they decided not to bring their children to the beer festival, which was probably a wise decision... (Last year's visit). The weekend after, my parents came to visit. It was wonderful to see them, although they were not particularly lucky with the weather either. They are great visitors though, insisting on organising their own day-programme, giving us the opportunity to go to IKEA...

After that weekend, Fedor started his CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults) course, which actually takes up nearly as much time as promised. It is nice to both be in a serious working mood, although it would be nice if Fedor managed to free up his weekends a little... Oh well, too bad! Anyway, it's halfway now, so he only has 2 more fulltime weeks to go.

Last weekend, Fedor and I took the train to go to the Netherlands for the wedding of Joost and Kim. It was another beach party (like Bart and Tineke) and they were also lucky with the weather! The bride was gorgeous (and pregnant), the groom was drunk (unlike the bride) and the guests were merry: it was a perfect party!

Unfortunately, our trip back to Berlin didnt go quite as planned. We finally arrived home at about 2am (with 2.5 hours delay) and after repacking my suitcase, I only had about 2.5 hours to sleep. And being naturally stressed about this, I only slept for 1 hour.... At 5.30am, my taxi arrived to take me to the airport to fly to Glasgow for the European Economic Association. Thankfully, I arrived in time, because my presentation was in the first session on the first day. It went very well. For the next few days, I had the opportunity to meet with many old friends, meet many new ones, see some interesting sessions and enjoy Glasgow. And enjoying Glasgow is what I did! I have not got the photos from camera yet, so that will follow soon(ish), but I can tell that on the days it wasnt raining, Glasgow really is quite pleasant!

Anyway, I got home on Friday, in time to go out with Fedor's CELTA mates and to have dinner with Nicole and Pieter last night. Today some housework, and back to work tomorrow!

Talking about work, before Glasgow, I spent two weeks working on a project with my pirate-friend Anja, who works at my institute part-time. And in these two weeks, we produced nearly an entire paper. And not only is it nearly finished, it is also BEAUTIFUL. We have very, very high hopes for this paper, because it has a simple and appealing narrative and it just looks very, very promising. As soon as it comes out as a Discussion Paper (hopefully in a week or two), I will provide a link to it and tell you a little bit about it. It is just so incredibly cool, I am quite in love with it... :-)))))

For now, I say:
Tschüßi,
OJ

With the husband out and about tonight, I have some time to update my blog! First, to answer Gerwin, "yes, this will definitely involve a new city". I mean, the main reason why I want to change jobs is because I would like to live somewhere where the weather is at least bareable for more than 2 months per year (today, for example: 18° and rain: it's August...).

Anyway, during the past weekend, the weather was actually quite enjoyable, which was great because Andrea, Nynke and Ryanne came over from the Netherlands. We managed to spend some time on the beach (one of the many city beaches) and enjoyed the city's sights...

This was also Pieter's last weekend: he had to go back to the Netherlands, so we won't be taking any more fun weekend trips with him and Nicole for a while... At least Nicole is still here, so we can enjoy her company occassionally!

Anyway, for the rest there is fairly little to say. Thursday, my brother Lars and his wife are arriving for the weekend. I am totally looking forward to it, because it is going to be Berlin Beerfest and it is gonna be a lot of fun! Also, I am hoping my brother is going to be able to cure my laptop of some of its ills an viruses and so on.

By the way, I ran into this videothis video recently. It is a beautiful video of a slow-motion lightning strike! Watch it and be amazed!

Tschüßi,
OJ

ARRRRRRR

Summer is over, apparently. From the lovely temperatures in the past weeks, the temperature dropped to about 20-21° for the foreseeable future. :-( I mean, it could be worse, but it is quite a setback!

The past week was mainly work-involved. I had my "target talk" on Tuesday where I told my boss that I would be looking for a new job at the end of my current project. He was very sad, but he did understand me (and of course, it has nothing to do with the job or with him, so that is nice too). For the rest, I have been able to do a bit of work on a new piracy project that I am looking to do some time soon and finalise the Afghanistan paper. Finally, I also attended the PhD defence of one of my colleagues: It is interesting to see the difference between a Dutch, an Italian and a German PhD defence: I really was very lucky in Italy, I have to say!!!

This weekend, a friend of Fedor is visiting with his girlfriend. Because the weather is kinda shitty, we have mostly been playing card games etc. Right now, they are sleeping (at 14.30 in the afternoon.......), so I cannot vacuum the flat. Oh well, I guess we'll just continue living in this dust bowl!

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS My god, that Love Parade thing in Duisburg is really awful... It reminds me of the celebration of 20 years Mauerfall last year when I was on such a huge festival with Ellen and Kim and we nearly got crushed as well: it was quite scary, but at least nobody died that day!!!

oopsy!

It started off with the wedding party, then I was out of town for other events for about 3 weeks, and then I had so much to catch up with that I just couldn't be bothered. Mwah, weak, weak, weak excuse, eh?

Well, let's just give a quick summary:

The wedding party was amazing!!! It was fantastic to have all our friends there, particularly because there were so many people there from different walks of life and different parts of our lives. It was simply fantastic to see them alltogether. Some I hadnt seen for years (Jo, my flatmate in Australia) and some I had just seen a few days before (my colleagues in Berlin): I was happy they were all there! And we were so incredibly lucky, with fantastic weather and a perfect location. It is simply incomprehensible how happy it all made me (us). Anyay, photos are available on Fedor's blog.

The weekend after, we travelled to the Netherlands again, for the wedding of Bart and Tineke. A beautiful party at a beach club made for a great location to celebrate. And it was cool to spend some time with them, as well as Joost and Kim, who will be our next wedding destination in the Netherlands in August. We also had the opportunity to meet up with some friends in Amsterdam before coming back to Berlin, so that was convenient.

The weeks after, I didn't spend a lot of time in Berlin. I first spend nearly a week in Turkey, going to a conference, meeting some interesting people and enjoying the lovely weather. Next, I went to France to work with my coauthor (and to enjoy some of the French delights like the food and the drinks!). Following that, I went to Amsterdam for yet another conference. For that trip, it was particularly great that I had the opportunity to spend some time with BarD, meet his new boyfriend and go partying. It was lovely to be in Amsterdam for those few days, but I was also very happy when I came home again and didn't have to venture out anymore... Except that, a week later, I went on a 2-day trip with my colleagues to Bad Saarow: a team-building event... Like last year, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but was actually a lot of fun...

Since then, we had Maartje and Edin over for one weekend, and then Fedor went on a few weekend trips (revenge for my "being away" for a few weeks?). Last weekend, he was in Prague with his mother, while I had Marie and Tom over for some fun times. This weekend, I was actually truly home alone, with Fedor being in Milano and me not having any visitors!!! While a bit lonely, it did give me the opportunity to do those things I have been needing to do for a while. Like proper cleaning, taxes, tanning etc... But I will be happy when he is back though.... (hopefully in half an hour or so!)

Anyways, apart from that general overview, I have to say that we have been having some good times. The weather has been amazing!!! I mean, one could nearly say the temperature has been a bit excessive (the 38° thing wasnt too much fun, working on the top floor under a flat roof and not having any aircon), but anything is better than the Winter, right? Obviously, the World Cup has been a lot of fun too, although I was away for most of it, I did manage to enjoy some of the matches. Most of our matches were spent at Kulturbrauerei, around the corner from our house, where there was a large concentration of Dutch people:


In other fun news, I have been having some discussions with the German tax office. Our marriage is not being recognised and I am obviously protesting that decision (it makes a fairly large tax difference), but so far I have not been particularly successful. Although I think I have now managed to get the decision-making process stalled until there is a final outcome from a court case currently going for the High Court, which should solve our problems... Anyway, in the meantime, they already gave me 2400 euros (yeah I know, it is not actually a gift: I simply paid too much in the first place) and I am fighting to get some more back. It is really quite exhilarating to try and fight with the system: I love it!!! Tomorrow, I will be sending them another three letters (one to protest the preliminary tax outcome, one to protest the preliminary outcome of Fedor's and one to protest the fact that we were forced to file separately: good times!!!).

Right, now that is about enough. The coming weeks will contain lots of work, and hopefully some more warm days: I love it!!!

Tschüßi,
OJ

36 billion Euros

That is what the war in Afghanistan costs the German tax payers. And an annual cost of about 3 billion, contrasted with the 1 billion that the government claims. Clearly, enough for quite a bit of a controversy! The news came out last Thursday, with news areticles in Spiegel Onlin, Manager Magazine and many others. I am particularly proud of the interview in Spiegel Online and the fact that a weapons company lost 5% of its value, apparently thanks to our report. That is just supercool, right? In the Netherlands, I got a large article in NRC Handelsblad (page 5, last Friday), so I am very proud!!!

Anywys, for the rest all is well. The real report is only coming out on Wednesday, so that is when we can expect some proper controversy... Let's see what happens! In the meantime, we entertained Mignon and Sander during this long weekend and made some use of the fairly nice weather. Particularly yesterday was glorious, with the Karneval der Kulturen der Welt: a large intercultural festival with a parade and everything. It was a lot of fun! Today, I also managed to squeeze in some time to finish the Alte Nationalgalerie. Another Museumsinsel attraction ticked off. After Bode Museum (4 visits), Pergamon (4 visits) and the Altes Museum (2 visits). Tonight: game night with Nicole and Pieter. Woohoo! And next weekend: Dresden!

Good times, I say!

Tschüßi,
OJ

Afghanistan

Last week, my boss received a phone call from a journalist: whether we would be able to to estimate the costs of the German participation in the war in Afghanistan. Together, we decided to say "yes, sure", which led to my longest and most intensive work week since, well, I guess the exam time during my first PhD year! I have even given up on my principle that I do not work during the weekend: I spent two Sundays in the office already! I mean, the 9-21 working days during the week are one thing, but Sundays??? Anyway, the deadline for the numbers is tomorrow and for the final report on Wednesday.... It looks like it will make quite a splash when our report comes out, with several media outlets already planning to take up the results. It is a particularly interesting time to discuss this, with several large government expenditure programmes under discussion (Greece bailout, for example). I am quite sure the government is not going to be particularly excited to be told that they have already spent more than the German share of the bailout on fighting a war in Afghanistan.... And I guess our message of "the numbers provided by the government regarding the costs of the conflict are off by a factor 5" will not go down to well either!

Anyway, the need to come up with a trustworthy estimate that can stand the scrutiny of the Ministries of Finance and Defence have been keeping me at work for quite some time... I promise to provide links to the research when it is published!

In other news, the Queen's Day party at the Embassy was a lot of fun again. And once more, too much alcohol was consumed, although it was not quite as bad as it was last year... Las weekend, we had some friends over from the Netherlands: Cobie and Peter. It also happened to be Labour Day, which is commonly celebrated with music, beer and rioting, so we spent quite some time in Kreuzberg:

In all honesty, we did not in fact participate in any riots, to everyone's relief. It was great to see them though, and we rediscovered the joys of playing Cluedo! I always thought that game was kinda stupid, but it really is not that bad!!! (*shock*). This weekend was (yet another) visitor-free one. Instead, we did have Nicole, Pieter and Kristy over for dinner. I finally made Costarican ceviche, which is an absolutely delicious fish-lime dish.

This week is thankfully short. On Thursday, it is Ascension Day (which in Germany is also Men Day, apparently) and in order to compensate for my Sundays of work, I am taking the Friday off as well. This works out well, because Fedor's mum will be here with her boyfriend: we will be able to spend some time together! Now all I have to do is last until Wednesday and finalise my research report...

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS I don't want to share any specific numbers yet regarding the cost of the war effort, but it suffices to say that the cost is expressed in the tens of billions of euros...

End of April

It is nearly the end of April, and I have to say that it was mostly disappointing in terms of weather. Last year, when I had arrived on one of the last days of March, April was simply glorious. Unfortunately, it has not been as great this year. But, a significant upshot is the fact that most of the fairly rare nice weather appears to be taking place in the weekend! Last weekend, for example, was simply amazing. We spent a lovely Sunday afternoon in Mauerpark, watching the Open Air Karaoke and drinking beer (before retiring to the Prater Biergarten to drink some more beer). And this weekend again appears to have found the road to loveliness!

Did anything important happen recently? Nah, not really. My paper was accepted for the European Economic Association meeting in Glasgow in August, so that was a nice surprise. I mean, previous experiences in Scotland in August notwithstanding, I have been told that the weather there can occassionally be rather pleasant! So that should be lots of fun (and a great opportunity to meet many old friends). In fact, overall, this Summer appears ot be one of mucho travelling. Next month, we will be visiting Dresden with Nicole and Pieter. Then in June, it will be Dalen (NL) for our own party, Den Haag for a wedding, probably Turkey (or otherwise Hannover) for a conference, possibly Clermont-Ferrand for a research visit and finally Amsterdam for a conference. July will have the department retreat, August the trip to Glasgow and September Munich (and possibly possibly possibly Tanzania). My conclusion: good times!

At work, all is quite well. I have a little sad that my intern, who worked her hass off for 3 months has returned to her University, so that it is now just me and my Research Asisstant. But in May I should be getting a new intern temporarily, who will be succeeded by new ones in July and September. As for any results of my research: that is debatable. The Global Economic Costs of Conflict? Well, I have a number, but it has a high margin of uncertainty (VERY high) and still changes a lot whenever I change some of my underlying assumptions. But, just to give you an indicator. Right now it looks as follows: if there was no, and had never been any, civil conflict, the world would have had a GDP in 2000 that would be approximately 1.5 trillion dollars higher. That is $1,500,000,000,000 for the year 2000.

This week is going to be a nice one. The weather has cleared up, I will have lots of opportunities to go to the gym (yes, I have managed to get into a rhythm of visiting the gym 3x per week! I feel very proud...), on Wednesday there will be the lavish party at the Embassy again to celebrate Queen's Day (where I got VERY drunk last year), and on Thursday, friends arrive who will spend the weekend with us. And who will celebrate the first of May with us. Labour Day has a longstanding tradition of urban rioting in Berlin, so it is quite a sight to be seen!

In another amazing development: the German tax office required only ONE week to reject our tax declaration! On the grounds that our marriage is clearly not enshrined in law and we thus cannot file jointly. My first protest against the German Tax Office is already on its way! (apparently, one has to ritually protest the decision three times, before we can go to court: High Court, here we come!!!)

Now, just to finish off, here are two old pictures that I wanted to share (because I havent been posting any pictures lately):
Sunset on the Ssese Islands in Uganda (2004?)
Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican (the darkness of the picture reminds me of the evils of the catholic church: I love it!) (2006?)

Tschüßi,
OJ

Bode Museum II

Well, that whole Spring thing has been fairly disappointing so far. But I guess we should keep hope and wait for the real thing to arrive finally, right? Last week, during the loooooong Easter weekend (which in Germany means both the Friday and the Monday off work), we had some opportunity to enjoy the weather. We laid in the park shortly (it was cooold) and had our first Weiße beers in the Beergarden (it was cooooooooold), so I guess it could have been worse! It was also the weekend of Jochen's visit with his new (well, new for us, not for him) Italian girlfriend Viola. Great to meet her and we spent a lot of time drinking, eating, eating and eating. So I say: good times!

My working week was graced by having the opportunity to discuss with a potential co-author about our new project on Pirates. I love myself some good pirate things, so it was a great to be able to discuss our new project with her. Then this weekend has been a quiet one. Like I have said before, we are significantly less popular in Berlin than we were in Milano, so we do not get as many visitors. Not such bad news, because it gave us the opportunity to have dinner with Nicole and Pieter and see their new house. Obviously, copious amounts of alcohol were consumed, but we still managed to get up reasonably early today to once again go to the Bode Museum. It is an amazing museum, with impressive architecture, but it is also very big. We have now covered one floor and a little bit, in our two visits. One more floor to go!!!

This week? Nothing special, just working. And next weekend? Again, no visitors!

Ohne Titel

Having survived this terrible winter without ever getting sick, it only seems befitting that the moment Spring starts kicking in, I get a terrible cold. So I did last Sunday, and only since yesterday, I am starting to feel okay again. I mean, it still is only a cold, but it did bother me quite a bit. Particularly because I actually needed to work quite a lot (deadline on Monday). I have some first numbers resulting from my main research project! The numbers dont mean anything yet, really, but this first estimation puts the costs of all conflict between 1960 and 1999 at an estimated 1.5 trillion dollars. I reckon it is still a major underestimation, so I will be cranking that number up a bit further!

On Wednesday, we joined Nicole and some friends to go to another Pub quiz (last time, the three of us were an embarrassing failure), but this time with a twist. Or actually, two twists. First, it was in German. Second, it was a "glamour-themed" pub quiz, presented by a drag queen in one of the gay bars around the corner. Well, as you may have guessed: our knowledge regarding German glamour themes was rather inadequate.... :-))) We only knew 1.5 questions (where "we" refers to Nicole in particular. I think the most shocking thing is actually that there were people/teams who actually had 18 out of 20 questions correct... With questions like "who is designing the wedding dress of Princess Victoria of Sweden" and "What celebrity was on the t-shirt of Oliver Kahn when he was spotted in a Bavarian Biergarten last year?", it seems hard to do well!

On Thursday, Fedor's brothers arrived for a weekend-in-Berlin. Fedor is delighted to have them around, and it is a good reason to drink and eat well. So we did/do! Tomorrow morning, Hascar (Fedor's oldest brother) will be running the Berlin half-marathon, so we are hoping for some nice weather. And in the afternoon, they will be taking the train back to the Netherlands. Currently, the boys are all out in the city, so I have some time to relax and work more on my tax returns. It is said that 50% of all tax law in the world is written in German, because it is so complicated. And I must say that I am indeed having a pretty tough time, despite using some handy software that is making it all a lot easier. But it looks like it will work out with a nice taxback, so that will be delightful!

Oh, and next week is Easter, so a 4-day weekend! Looking forward to it already, let's hope there will be some nice weather....

Tschüßi,
OJ

As promised!

Washington DC: my god, there is sooo much snow!!!!

 

 

This is at the hotel, during blizzard 2.0

 

Thankfully, I finally did make it to Milano. Where I got to see the Duomo naked for the first time!!!! (as in: no scaffolding)

 

And we had good times, including at Massi and Jen's, where we made Massi very happy with a bottle of scorpion-infused whiskey from Laos (btw: it was rather disgusting)

 

Back in Berlin, during one of our after-work trips to our regular haunt: Pony Bar!

 

And finally, Wittenberg with Nicole and Pieter

 

 

Now I really go back into the kitchen!

Spring is here!

So, I guess I have just been suffering a winter depression over the last 6/7 weeks, which is why I have not been updating my blog. It certainly wasnt because of an overdose of visitors, because in fact there have not been all that many... Anyway, I will give a short recap. And after finishing this, I will just add a little post with photos that give a nice overview of life.

First of all, spring is here! Finally. Because wow, this was a heavy winter. Heavy enough for us to decide that Berlin is definitely not our city of choice for the rest of our lives. I mean, the occassionally -20 (or colder) is bad, but I think it has been the 2 1/2 months of snow cover that really did my head in. But it is fine now, because it hasn't snowed for nearly a week and in fact temperatures have risen substantially (of course it is rainy and a bit lousy, but hey!).

What have we been doing? So, after I finally managed to get out of bloody Washington DC, I finally made it to Milano on Friday afternoon, where Fedor joined me too. We had a great weekend, but unfortunately I did not actually manage to do the work that I was supposed to have been doing with Idil. So I went back 2 weeks ago for 3 days to get that over with. Furthermore, Matt came over from Coventry to see us, and Linda was supposed to come from the Netherlands but couldnt because she was injured :-((((.

In the meantime, of course there has been work-work-work-work (and a bit of play every now and then). Some of my work is progressing steadily, some of it is not progressing at all and some of it is going really well. I am quite lucky to have a posse working for/with me, consisting of a Research Assistant and an intern, so that relieves some of the work. Overall, I guess I can say it is going quite well, actually!

I know this post is a bit varied and has some unrelated bits and pieces, but oh well, that is just the way it is. I recently realised that I have been living in Germany for nearly a year and that I still havent bought (or missed) the Lonely Planet for Germany! How terrible is that! It means (and this is true) that we have not been doing nearly enough sightseeing. One of the reasons for that is of course that there is already so much to see in Berlin itself that we do not need to go out of the city, and another is the fact that Brandenburg etc is not nearly as packed with pretty places to visit as Lombardia was... Anyway, apart from our days visit to Potsdam last year, we hadnt really seen anything yet. Until last weekend that is! We joined up with Nicole and Pieter (who have a car) and went to Wittenberg: the birthplace of Protestantism (you know, with Luther and all that), as well as the printing press! And it was quite a cute city. At least, the city centre was. The surroundings consist of chemical industry and half-abandoned ugly towns, but the city centre was pretty. The weather wasnt great (got hit by a blizzard on the way home), but it was great to get out of the city for once. Should do that again!

Well, I think I have now written about enough. I should go back to cooking anyway: we are having some of my colleagues over for dinner tonight...

Tschüßi,
OJ

PS Party Planning for June 5 is going superbly! It is gonna be awesome!
PPS Photos will follow shortly...

SO BORED...

After yet another day spent at the Dulles Holiday Inn, I am now officially BORED. This whole "blizzard-thing" is really not much fun anymore...

Oh, I didn't mention earlier that I had to go to Washington DC? Well, my boss asked me last week whether I could attend some job interviews in Washington, and I couldnt really say no. So I left for DC on Saturday, and I had not paid any attention to any weather forecasts, as I had been very very busy beforehand. So at Frankfurt airport, I ran into my colleague who had left a day earlier but got stuck overnight in Frankfurt. We departed Frankfurt together, but finally heard that Blizzard 2010 was still hitting Dulles International Airport and we had to divert to New York. The excitement of going to NY was shortlived by the time we found out that Lufthansa was putting us up in a hotel somewhere out on Long Island... Finally, on Sunday, we made it to DC, but unfortunately, our job market candidates did not! So only two candidates were interviewed, with us struggling through the 60 cm of snow that covered DC. Sidenote: Helix Hotel in DC is AWESOME.
Monday night at 2am, I received a phonecall from Lufthansa, informing me my flight had been cancelled. A lot of rebooking ensued, but I finally got booked on a flight going to Newark early afternoon on Tuesday, before Snowmaggedon 2.0 was gonna hit. But by the time I made it to the airport (75$ taxi ride), all flights had already been cancelled.... So I got put up in the Dulles Holiday Inn for the night. Today, the blizzard 2.0 started hitting really hard, so there was not even any way to get back to the city: I spent another day at the Holiday Inn. Tomorrow, I should be able to get out of here though!
Unfortunately, that does mean that I missed out on the two days of work I was going to put in with Idil, in Milano (if I make it to Europe at all), which sucks!!!
Anyways, before the trip to DC, we had Meghan and John over for a visit, and it was great to see them. BBefore that, Adama came to Berlin for a few days, so we could work on a new project that seems rather promising. Finally, before that, my workshop was a great success. We had a large number of impressive, interesting researchers and a great programme to boost!
All in all, it has been a great few weeks, with lots of interesting things going on!!!
For the story of our honeymoon, promised earlier, check out Fedors blog...
Tschüßi,
OJ

We survived!

I will provide more details soon, but I just wanted to share with you that we just returned to Berlin today and we had an absolutely fabulous time!!!

Photographic summary available here.

The best part? No illness (well, two days towards the end, but that hardly counts). And of course, great food, nice weather and lovely people.... More info to come soon!

Tschüßi,
OJ