Home Sweet Home, Kitesurfing, Roadtrippin, XMas and Roadtrippin again

It’s been a while since the last update coz I have been quite busy with a lot of stuff, so I try to keep the stories short…

First of all, I finally found a place. It’s a lovely place in an apartment with three people on the third floor and a balcony along all three rooms. But the most amazing thing is the rooftop, which is accessible from the balcony and where I sometimes enjoy my breakfast or dinner with an amazing view over Berkeley hills and campus on the one side and the skyline of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge on the other. One of my flatmates (and the main tenant) is a professional skater who is now selling magnetic skateboards, the other flatmate I have never seen, but he will probably move out soon…

And as soon as I moved in, a storm approached and I was stoked that I found a kite mate who is as addicted to kitesurfing as I am, so we spent a the Saturday in some awesome clean waves at the Pacific.

Shortly after, I got visit from the other end of the Pacific. Jo and Steff, who hosted me for a lil’ while at the end of my stay in New Zealand, finally left NZ and booked their flight without knowing that I’d be there with a stopover in San Francisco… So we met in a bar in downtown where they convinced me to shift my weekend to now and go on a road trip down to Monterrey and Santa Cruz with them. And so it happened…

By the way, I’m also working on my thesis, even though it might not sound like it… But it is a really awesome team and I enjoy my time there as much as in my spare time…

Last I hope everyone had a lovely Xmas and wish everyone a Happy New Year! I’m on a roadtrip with Julius at the moment, on our way to Vegas!!! Yeeha!
More about that and Willie, our 10kg Xmas-Turkey in the next post.

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American Football and German House

Aight, it’s a week ago now, but still worth to tell this story…

Last Saturday I woke up, knowing that the game was on – Cal Bears vs. Washington Huskies… We (that is me and some random Germans) wanted to meet in front of a fraternity house at 11 to start the day with free BBQ and get into the mood for the game, which is gonna start at 12. Well, my first steps onto the street were a bit insecure… Everyone, seriously EVERYONE was wearing dark blue and yellow clothes, except the policemen, who tried to keep it all under control. I realized that I was wearing a turquoise longsleeve… uhhm, was it the color of the enemy… oh… well… I wanted to get a nice Cal-Shirt anyhow, so I passed by the fraternity house we were supposed to meet and saw a television team and heaps of drunken people in front of the house – and it was still before 11 in the morning!!! Well, I went down the street, bought a Cal-Sweater, went back to the frat, hoping for some BBQ to fill my stomach, but everything I found was free booze and 1st year students playing beer pong and my German mates. So I changed my BBQ breakfast to beer breakfast and was even faster getting into the mood for a real American Football Game!
Well, it was fun for the first 20 minutes… Then it was already quite obvious that the Huskies didn’t stand a chance. The highlights of the following 3!!! hours were the subway sandwich and the half time show by the cheerleaders (around 80 gals and guys doin some real spectacular stuff) and the marching band… The final result was something like 49 to 9, and the 9 points were only possible since the Cal Bears sent their worst players at the field.
So we left the stadium, almost sobered up since beer is neither allowed in the stadium nor on the road.

Our ways separated and I rolled down the hill to have a look at an apartment… well, not really… it was… A TRAILER… unfortunately, rent is pretty expensive, so I thought I might have a look at it… but it was just too crappy as that I would consider moving in there, I’d rather stay in my dirty hostel… On my way back, I stumbled upon on of the other Germans by accident and was dragged to Jan’s place to have some more beer… and I have been successfully convinced that a jet lag is best fought with partying all night long… And so it shall be…

We split up again and met at 9 at another Germans place to get prepared for the party mayhem in downtown San Francisco. Well, as it normally happens, we stayed much longer and thus missed the bars of SF, since they shut their doors quite early, first because of the crowds, and at 2AM because no bar is allowed to be opened after 2.

But the Germans know where to find a real German house club – and so we walked through some dark regions of downtown until we finally reach the German House Club… and were asked to pay 31$ entry. Crap! But since we were 10 Germans, I convinced the girl at the counter that 10 Germans want to go nuts on their dancefloor, but not for 31$ !!! but for 20$. And it didn’t take long and we entered the club and partied with Prince Ironheart all night long, even far beyond the closing hour of 2AM.
The DJ was such a perfect stereotype of a German House DJ, having long blond hair, a little plump and a costume which is a mixture of StarTrek and medieval times.

And I have to admit, my jet lag was gone after that…

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Jetlagged between paper walls

A new adventure begins. My studies are beginning to find an end pretty soon, so I took my last chance to escape from Germany as a student.
Now I am in a dirty hostel dorm in Berkeley (the suburb of San Francisco for students), separated by the others just by Japanese paper walls.
One of my dorm mates, I will just call him Jesus because of his look and the fact that he wants to “walk on Christ’s path from here to Peru”, gave me some mate tea from Argentina. That helped me to stay awake until 11pm after a 2-hour-night, a long flight and the jet lag.
I took my skateboard for a ride to and over the campus and was seriously stoked by the gigantic buildings and the size of the campus.
Today I will get to know my supervisor for my Diploma Thesis, do all the bureaucratic stuff and try to find a nicer place to stay.
So far, so good. Today the massive fog is supposed to clear up, so I might even see the Golden Gate and take some pictures.

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