You keep what you kill

We returned to Berlin in the middle of last night after an uneventful train ride across Germany. From da westside to da eastside sozusagen. And we fell asleep almost immediately after getting back to our flat. When we woke up Monday morning, everything was white. Snow, in case you're wondering, not cocaine, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this, I would own the fucking Internet. So instead of a walk through coca fields we did what Wooster likes best - walking through heaps and heaps of snow in the Tiergarten. Btw, these are really the very rare moments when the Tiergarten is actually a nice place - snow makes it happen, covers up all the junk. Without snow, it's just an ugly German dump. But I'm digressing ... as a true direwolf Wooster likes snow and enjoys running amok. Hope you enjoy the pictures as well. Should you be wondering why he's looking so wet in some of them - he tried the ice and fell into the lake. Very sweet, and real close to the shore luckily, so n...

Ich war ein bisschen enttäuscht, dass der Song nicht auf der Setlist stand. Das war aber auch das einzige, was ich am letzten Dienstag abend auszusetzen hatte. Endlich wieder Kreator live. Da froie ich mich seit Wochen drauf. Ich hatte einige Bedenken wegen der Location, das Huxleys ist nicht gerade für seinen guten Sound berühmt. Aber das war zum Glück unbegründet, der Sound war der Hammer, druckvoll, brutal, wunderbar. Es geht doch, man muss halt nur das richtige Equipment ranschaffen und Leute, die was davon verstehen ... . Besonders traurig wenn man das mit dem Rise Against Konzert im fucking Velodrom vor ein paar Wochen vergleicht. Das war ordentlich viel teurer und richtig Scheiße wegen des Kacksounds. Anyway, no use crying over spilt milk. Kreator haben gerockt, geiles Intro, Hammerset, relativ straight durchgeprügelt, mit fast allen Hits von ganz früher bis heute. Ich bin verliebt und lösche alle anderen Songs auf meiner Festplatte. :-) Geil war auch das Publikum. Eine Menge ...

It seems to be a characteristic of the last couple of weeks before the end of the year that thousands of bands are on tour and you need a secretary to schedule and manage all those dates. I've already posted my disappointment about the fucking velodrome on fuckbook. Rise Against were great but the sound was shit, so overall a big disaster and another location to add to the no-go list. The postbahnhof is on that list as well. Cheers! Last night we were at the columbiahalle at the Trailerpark record release party. Sexualethisch desorientiert. The sound was not good, but not as bad as in the velodrome. I still don't understand why all these locations in Berlin struggle with the sound so much. Nevermind, the show was still a lot of fun, very silly as expected.  Today Aufbau West and then my personal highlight of the year on Tuesday. Kreator. Roaaaaaaaar.

Created by Chance. Had to use up some stuff that was on the verge of rotting away. So I threw together: 1 Avocado, ripe A Handful of Basil Leaves Juice from two oranges 1 Banana A Piece of Ginger (me likes it rough, so lots *g*) Chili Flakes Beautiful. Perfect consistency, the acidity of the oranges, the ginger punch, the chili power versus the sweetness of the banana and the richness of the avo. And on top the fresh basil flavour. I'm in love with my creation. Happy weekend.

I was so lucky as to be invited to speak at the MarkLogic World event in London a couple of weeks ago and the event was hosted at the Emirates stadium, home of Arsenal London. Great location, especially since Arsenal is my favorite English team (even before BFG!). The timing couldn't have been better, Arsenal won the FA cup the weekend before and ended a long streak of years without a title. The stadium is a temple, and the hospitality areas are of course very posh, all in all a very good event in a nice area of London (with Otolenghi's just around the corner :-) ).

What a blast! What a movie! It was so great to see my old buddy Optimus again after all these years. Glad he's still in such good shape although it's of course hard to pose next to me. The greatest movie ever made. Period. Europapremiere am Potsdamer Platz und alle waren dabei. Vor allem der Gott der massenhaften Zerstörung und Explosion, Michael Bay. Kick Ass. I'm still not able to write complex sentences. Must fight. Must kill. Must explode. Aaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!

Weiß Facebook da etwas, was wir alle nicht wissen? Klar, vom Aussehen und vom Talent her Gerard Piqué, das ist klar. Aber die anderen drei ... ???

Ich war ja sehr gespannt letztes Jahr, wie diese sologeschichte wohl werden würde, in welche Richtung das gehen würde. Die ersten paar Songs waren sehr gut, dann Der Tag wird kommen straight in your face. Und vor ein paar Wochen dann die ganze CD gehört, sehr geil. The school of Marcus Wiebusch. Wie geil ist das denn? Und heute live, mit Band, kick ass. Hammerkonzert. Ich verneige mich. Textlich und musikalisch große Klasse, und jetzt auch noch mit tanzperformance auf der Bühne, volle Punktzahl. :-) Geiles Konzert, bitte noch viele mehr davon. Love.

I can't stand to hear a rich junkie whine... .  Hat jemand mit mehr Tattoos als wie ich vor vielen Jahren gesungen. Oh Marcus, was hast du dir denn bei dem aufwärmer gedacht? Der spielt ja gleich den Saal leer. The lovely girlfriend hates him, too. Nette Idee mit der Begleitmusik vom Band, das gibt einen Fleißpunkt, aber keinen fleischpunkt. Und nur von Fleiß wird man nicht satt. Auch nicht die hipster Veganer hier aus der Gegend. So was gehört ja eher auf ein bezirksfest der grünen. So stelle ich mir das zumindest vor, alle haben am Ende ekstatisch eine birkenstocksandale in der Hand und folgen dem Messias. Lasst Brian frei! For something completely different. Als ich eben hipster tippte, schlug mir meine super App direkt mal "Hipster-papis" vor. Das ist echte KI. Und ich mache hier gleich erster Mai, wenn der Hippie nicht bald aufhört. Der Horst heißt Im übrigen "the Golden shower", damit sollte er besser in der reizbar auftreten, dann h...

O.s.ä. Doch, doch. Ich kann mich eigentlich ganz gut mit dem Gedanken an eine Massenhinrichtung deutscher Sportjournalisten anfroinden. Sehr gut sogar. Die Spiele/Events werden an sich schon zu ca. 98% unerträglich kommentiert, oft auch mit mangelnder Fachkenntnis dazu. Als Sahnehäubchen ein "Experte", der alle zehn Minuten zwei Sätze sagt, die nichts sagen. Doch das schlimmste kommt vor, zwischen und nach den eigentlichen Spielzeiten ... Kommentare, "Analysen", Interviews. Auch hier knallt die mangelnde Fachkenntnis voll durch, was die Analyse nennen, kann mein Beagle beim Kacken besser. Und die Interviews sind ja seit jeher dieselben dummen Fragen auf die nur Phrasen als Antwort kommen. Alle hundert Jahre ist dann auch mal einer ehrlich und dafür sollten wir alle Jürgen Klopp danken. Ich hätte den ZDF-Arsch ja noch kurz umarmt und dann abgewürgt oder dem Opfer einfach eine kleine Backpfeife gegeben. Oder ihn gefragt, wie er damit klarkommt, dass seine Tontechniker...

I just learned that one of my favorite sites when it comes to reviewing TV shows will cease to exist the next weekend. :-( :-( :-( Televisionwithoutpity  was just that, straightforward, often merciless, most of the time hilarious recaps of TV shows. I followed the 24 recaps back then and quite often found the recap to be even better than the episode itself. They certainly had some very talented people contributing. So, goodbye TWOP, thank you for a lot of great reads and laughs!

Sometimes great things really do happen. Like finding a great cafe in the middle of nowhere. We discovered Café Frieda on Insel Poel today : I'll sum it up with two words: fantastic cakes. I sacrificed myself and tasted three of them myself and also took some samples from two others. And I can confirm that it's first class. A true gem and with decent prices and tanmaster compatible sizes as well. It doesn't get much better than this. It was a very cakey weekend all in all, we finished it off with another great breakfast at Café Glücklich, Glücksschnecken, cake, hot chocolate. A very healthy 24 hours and another adjective invented, cake does definitely stimulate my creativity. :-)

What a great name for a clothing label. I was seriously tempted to buy a t-shirt but I'm afraid it would have led to a lot of misunderstandings in my hood. On the other hand, should've bought a ton and started a new trend at the reizbar.

Singapore. Back after 13yrs. Finally. I love this city, walking from restaurant to restaurant, exploring food stalls, eating the day away. Definitely my cup of tea. And the botanic gardens, the bird park, the bay gardens, etc. Perfect spot for a long layover, especially at 35 degrees. :-) and even the super skeptical and at times slightly xenophobic reisebegleitung likes it (although she's currently sorting through the contents of her Tom kha ghai soup, fishing out mushrooms she doesn't like, to quote: "Pilze sollten immer nur einen Hut haben, Pilze mit zwei hüten übereinander sollte man nicht essen." irgendwo gibt es bestimmt ein Buch mit mecklenburgischen Lebensweisheiten.). So we're roaming about the city, will go back to the airport round sunset, go for a swim at the rooftop pool (another reason why Changi is simply the best airport) and then hop onto the A380 for the second leg to Frankfurt.

We decided to spend our last couple of days on Waihi beach and stayed at a brilliant bed and breakfast aptly named Beachfront Bed and Breakfast. Great place, lovely hosts, perfect location. Probably the best stay of this holiday. So I spent some more time playing with Harald, walking and running on the beach, soaking in the nearby Athenree hot pools, and of course exploring the gorgeous Kahangarake Gorge. Although it's on the infamous 101 AA list, we didn't really meet too many people there. Nice hiking through the forest, exploring some old gold mining relics, which pleased the reisebegleitung to no end. Well the relics, not so much the walking. :-) the flat white cafe does good cakes and a surprisingly good veggie burger, the Waitete restaurant and ice creamery does good ice cream for non European standards (run by an Austrian guy). For our last night at Waihi we went to have dinner at the Falls Retreat, which is in the middle of nowhere, rustic setting, absolutely great food...

When we driving down the scenic road to Raglan I nearly crashed the car because I was co-performing another Kreator song that had found its way on the playlist. Why is it that so many metal songs contain a line like 'a dark wind is blowing from the east'? Are they all eastophobic? Is that some kind of Western cultural heritage, where all things dark and evil come from the east? Whatever, Kreator certainly is the right soundtrack for approaching the beautiful black sand beaches of Raglan. We climbed Mt Karioi this time, because we caught one of the rare cloudless moments, beautiful views across the coast. We then took off a day earlier than originally planned because I had to find an Internet Café that was open long enough in the evening to allow a Skype call to Germany. And, to be frank, I couldn't stand the stinking backpackers anymore. ;-) we'd stayed at the same place as a couple of years before, still a very nice and well run hostel, Raglan waterfront. We took ano...

We were driving from Napier to Stratford, Taranaki a couple of days ago and that was somewhat frightening. First of all, I saw this billboard on the side of the road for "SS showers". That would be a complicated sell in Germany. Next was a billboard for "SS homes". So I was starting to worry whether we'd ended up in South America or Sachsen through a wormhole or something. Then we made a late breakfast stop in Woodville and I'm not kidding now, the name of the Café was "Café 88". Hmm. Maybe all these stories about AH hiding beneath Antarctica weren't so bullshit after all, just a few sea miles off? But the folks at the cafe were really nice kiwis, so it was maybe just a coincidence. BUT! when we checked into our motel in Stratford, the Dutch owner greeted me with a friendly "Deutschland über alles", so I'm not sure any more. The motel was a great place to stay, only ten dollars more than the hostel, clean, well maintained, friend...

One more pic, than I'm out for today. A nice little mozzie festival on Lake Rotorua. Breath through your nose!

After three fantastic days in Whakatane I feel pretty safe to declare that this is probably really my favorite spot in NZ, Ohope Beach to be precise. 11 perfect, glamourous, lovely, charming, inviting, ... kilometres of sandy empty beach with great surf. What more could one wish for? Well, maybe heaps of great produce from the farms and orchards all around? Decently priced good quality accommodation? Some nice bushwalks? Great views? An active marine volcano on the doorstep? It's all there, and last but certainly not least it's the place with the most sunshine hours in NZ. So definitely LOVE. We drove to over to the West coast today, to enjoy some black sand beaches and have based ourselves in Raglan for a couple of days. Great thing about the hostel here is they offer yoga lessons at 3pm in the afternoon, perfectly aligned with the tide currently. :-) Got some more hot pics for you as well. Sunrise at Ohope Beach this morning, absolutely stunning!

Our plan for spending the rainy day was extremely successful. Soak and swim for a couple of hours in the hot springs, spend the rest running on the beach, swimming in the ocean and eating heaps of real fruit ice-cream, muffins, and fresh berries at both the lovely Blueberry Corner and the even more lovely Julian's Berry Farm. Bliss. If only the soccer results could keep up with that, but it looks like Monday night games next year.

This is really the first year where we don't have any itinerary at all, we just look at the weather forecast and then decide on the next two days or so. Of course this has the potential to turn into a classical TSP scenario, so lucky us that we're atheists and have the brains to deal with this. :-) I still can't get over these damn German Christian fuckers, but I promise this will be the last rant ... maybe. Anyway, after three extremely relaxing days full of beach fun at the Mount we drove down to Rotorua. On my previous nine trips to NZ I have always avoided RotoVegas like the plague, because of the plaguelike hordes you're likely to encounter. But we decided to give it a chance and what a good decision that was. First of all, the accommodation - we stayed at the Funky Green Voyager, a nice hostel close to the town center. Second, if you avoid all the "must see" things then you avoid the hordes and still get to enjoy the scenery. Sounds too easy? Well, som...