The greeting “Friendship!” (for “Freundschaft”) was taught in English class in Eastern Germany; and that was about it. But turns out, this is not enough in the capitalist vastness of America. With government money to introduce “Ossis” (Eastern Germans) to the world of the free, two friends want to make their way to San Francisco. But soon they are confronted with the realism of the free world. That is, that is barely enough to cross the Big Pond getting them as far as New York. Now if there weren’t those 3,300 miles inbetween NYC and the City by the Bay.

According to Google maps it takes about 2 days 5 hours to get from NYC to SF.

Major ingredients that contributed to the entire audience bursting into laughters: Troubling confusions with Germans being labeled as Nazis*  upon immigration, the irritatingly vast supermarket allies and corny vomit lines like “Your eyes shine like the stars over <Please Insert State>” used on easy, dull girls in the Midwest of America. Soon they learned that you’re a “Nobody” in the States without “this plastic card you insert in the wall spitting out cash” so they showed movies and sold off fake pieces of the Berlin wall. Guess it’s true what they say, you gotta monetize in the Land of the Free that David Hasselhoff praised so much blasting his Schlager (evergreen) off the Berlin wall.

*A statement, they immediately corrected with a “No, we’re free communists” – Please add a strong German accent there.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI51rZmd66Y

It’s a great movie which I can highly recommend. (Viennese people: Before the movie theater I urge you to check out this place Die Burgermacher on Burggasse- really awesome burgers, and when I say awesome, I truly absolutely positively mean it! You can’t get anything more authentic in good ol’ Wien).

In retrospect, I doubt that it only takes a fleeting 5 minutes of fast sprinting up and down the hills of San Francisco to go from Lombard St to the middle of the Golden Gate (1 hour and 15 min of walking). Ultimately, the movie bothered me, though, showing all those nice areal views of the city. It made me want to go back to the City (San Francisco, rather than New York because Sunny Californ-I-A is what I need now, really)  and just hang there using my fake Starbucks name (Francis that is).

While I realize that smallworld.ch is a Swiss initiative for better English language skills, it may as well as be addressed to inertia-laden Austrians. Of course, this is the national motion known as Gemütlichkeit among Austrianos who just don’t realize that it is a small place we are living and every once in a while one needs to cross borders. And what if someone does not understand our awkwardly-accented-Schulenglisch (school english)? Well, then, they better learn German is they want anything from us, right?

I am afraid this is not how this works on our side and that’s exactly why I like this campaign by Wirz/BBDO so much.

Ad campaign by smallworld.ch - A situation I've seen before. Sweating, spitting, tongues twisted.

(I Believe in Advertising)

Again, Mr Thomas Hawk is the genius when it comes to photography in San Francisco…

The cable looks like it prevents the Transamerica Pyramid from tipping over...

Just lost 2 minutes of my life that I will never ever get back.

Just can't get it out of my head. (Wait until the screen starts flashing in all sorts of colors...)

And yes, someone actually made the effort to register raraahahahromaromamagagaoohlala.com, coded a web page in order to show of the infinite loop of those more than less empty syllables. What’s more is that I made the time to actually post this on here, but I couldn’t help but share. And that’s what the new Interwebs are all about, right?

While cramming for exams take up most of the time here, I’m crawling the interwebs for the right flight this summer. Check out this list for search engines that magically spit out the cheapest offers of all airlines known to human kind.

• kayak “There’s even an iPhone app for that!”
• tripadvisor also offers a broad selection of travel tips.
• checkfelix representing Austrian engineering.

With a 15 hours layover in Paris, fellow blogger Josh Leo produced this impressive video showing what one can make out of 15 hours in Paris. Now I think I really have to go there. There’s no way around it. Especially now that I had a chance to brush up my French. Une reservation d’une chambre. I know how to do that!

Ordered this sweet postcard way back in November. I accidentally mailed it to my parents house and therefore have forgotten about it. However, packing up to go back to Vienna for university after Christmas break, I stumbled over this little post card here. It’s a great picture. I love it.

Too bad I can’t use it as a bookmark for my kindle. So far they only major nuisance I have to declare.

Ocean Spray by Elizabeth Weinberg Photography

I just received my Amazon Kindle 2. Let me get back to you on that one once I had the chance to fiddle around with it so I can give you a deeper review than that it’s white, light and thin.