Monthly Archives: April 2003

Thursday, 24 April 2003

In the meantime...

In the meantime Mikey and I have visited my family. Unfortunately I spent most of the time in bed or on the couch feeling miserable because of some stomach flu (or something) I must've caught. I had to throw up on Sunday and couldn't really eat anything until Monday night. But I'm feeling okay again now. I just hope I didn't pass it on to my family.

Currently we're in Karlsruhe visiting with old friends. We'll stay here another day or two and then go back to Mikey's family's place to pick up our stuff and then head back to Berlin...

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 02:00 CET  |  [Comments Link]  6 comments

Friday, 18 April 2003

Back

So we're back in Germany now. It still feels strange. Just a couple of days ago we were in San Francisco and now we're here. I catch myself wanting to talk English all the time. Well I guess I'll adjust soon..

Monday evening (still in SF) Pooh took us to Todai, a great All-You-Can-Eat Japanese seafood buffet in Daly City. That was very yummy. They had everything from Sushi to crab legs. Mikey and I didn't sleep that night because we needed to pack our stuff. Surprisingly we managed to fit everything into our four pieces of luggage.

In the morning everything suddenly went very fast. David got up and went to take a shower. During that time the shuttle to the airport arrived (10 minutes too early). It took a while to fit everything into the car because they sent a regular car instead of a van even though we had told them that we were traveling with oversize bags. But by leaving the trunk open the guy managed to fit everything in. At the airport we didn't have any problems at all checking our snowboard bag. We had heard lots of horror stories about airlines refusing to transport these bags or charging an extra fee. So we were prepared for lots of trouble but everything went fine.

The next surprise came at the security checkpoint where I did not set off the metal detector. I even had my doctor write me a medical certificate about the metal plate in my arm on Monday. I'm glad I didn't need it though. They didn't even blink when I walked through. Since everything went so smoothly and we had expected lots of trouble we had to wait for two hours. By then I was pretty tired so I fell asleep in the waiting area for a couple of minutes. We had planned to sleep on the flight to Philadelphia but unfortunately the plane was full to the last seat and the flight over the Rockies was pretty choppy. So we didn't get that much sleep.

In Philadelphia we only had 40 minutes to catch our connecting flight but fortunately we didn't have problems to get there in time. Unfortunately though we didn't have enough time to grab something good to eat (I just hate airline food and I had had almost nothing to eat since Todai on Monday night). Had we only known that the plane would leave almost an hour later because they had to fix one of the thingies you use to call the flight attendant to your seat as it would go off all the time. We didn't much care and slept until the start but had we known it'd take this long we could've eaten a nice greasy pizza before we left. Ah well...

On the flight I watched "Catch me if you can" and two episodes of "Friends" then slept for a couple of hours and then watched an episode of "Sex and the City" right before the landing. In Frankfurt we had to wait for our luggage for almost an hour because they had some "technical problems" involving animals somebody had checked in. But finally they managed to sort it all out and we got everything, even our snowboard bag made it. Mikey's dad and one of his sisters were there to pick us up and take us to their house which was a very good thing because neither of us was in a state to drive for three hours.

Later we found out that somebody had opened our snowboard bag (probably at the security checkpoint in San Francisco) but they didn't put a tag on it that stated that they had opened it. Well it looks like nothing's missing so I won't complain.

Since then we haven't done much except catching up on sleep. We're still at Mikey's family's house. Today we met up with some of our friends and we'll meet them again later tonight. Tomorrow or so we'll drive to my family and spend a couple of days there. After that we'll see...

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 20:13 CET  |  [Comments Link]  3 comments

Tuesday, 15 April 2003

Nothing has happened

Okay, so maybe it'll take me longer than just a couple of days to write up a report of our roadtrip. I'm currently thinking of giving the roadtrip its own website instead of writing it down here. That would also make it easier to include pictures. But this will have to wait until I'm back in Berlin.

Last week we got a lot of stuff done that we had always put off before because "there's still so much time to do it later". Well, as always time flew and there was lots of stuff we still wanted to see or do. So we went shopping, did the 49 mile drive around the city (very recommendable if you don't have much time but want to see a lot of the famous sites of SF). We got our roadtrip pictures developed at a very, very good photo place in the Castro and ohmygod did they turn out great. We played games with David, saw Spirited Away (I just love Hayao Miyazaki's work) and Phone Booth (interesting cinematography and cuts). We also got my laptop repaired. It took only 4 days to get it repaired (including shipping it there and back). Very good service I'd say.

On Saturday was Game Day again. We had to take public transportation there and it was raining cats and dogs and there was even lightning and thunder in the city (which apparently only happens once every two years or so). David was delighted, which was so cute :) So we were soaked to the bone by the time we reached the bus stop but fortunately my pants took only two or three hour to dry. Game Day was at DavidM's place in Oakland this time. DavidM came to pick us up from the BART station and took us to a game store that the guy in the comic book store in Berkeley had recommended to us. The game store was indeed very good (especially for German games) and David, Mikey and I couldn't resist to buy some games. DavidM's place it's great. It's a three storey apartment with a very open architecture that lets in a lot of light. I love it. DavidM even drove us all the way back to the city at midnight. That was so very nice of him. Thank you again David!!

Today is our last day here in San Francisco and just writing this makes me a little teary-eyed. We had such a great time here. I'll miss the Bay Area and especially my old and new friends here and elsewhere in the country. I'll now go to "our" lake in the park one last time and then it's time to start packing. Sigh.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 00:39 CET  |  [Comments Link]  0 comments

Sunday, 6 April 2003

It's dead, Jim!

My laptop died on our roadtrip so I couldn't update this site. Worse was that I couldn't download the pictures from my digital camera. We're back in San Francisco now so I'll write up the rest of the road trip over the next couple of days.

Yesterday we visited Jennie, Sam, Gwen and Vesta where we first played with Gwen until she had to go to bed and then we played Cosmic Encounter. I had a lot of fun that day. I wish we could've done this more often while we were here. But at least we'll get to see them again next Saturday at Game Day...

Also:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!!! Love you.

And:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Stefan! Looking forward to seeing you again soon.

[Archive Link]  Posted by Edda at 23:19 CET  |  [Comments Link]  2 comments

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