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!