Yesterday morning Martin, Alex and I packed our 7 irons and drove down to the Regnitzwiesen for a nice little two hour round of cross golf. Martin and me had bought the clubs and 40 golf balls over two months ago but so far never found the time for a joint session. The spot was perfect with it's wide open spaces, relatively short grass and almost no people around. And despite our time mostly being spent by searching for our golf balls – and thereby constantly stumbling into dog shit and the occasional rabbit carcass – it was one hell of a blast. The date of the 'Christmas Sluggers Invitational' will be announced shortly :D

Last weekend, good friend Martin finally redeemed a two year old birthday coupon for a day at a local high ropes course. So on a beautiful late summer Sunday three guys and three girls made their way to Betzenstein for what turned out to be a pretty cool experience – with a couple of exceptions.

The park was quite pretty with the sunlight playing through the leaves and the platforms, giving the whole thing sort of a Neverland-ish atmosphere. We arrived at a pretty busy time and killed an hour chilling on a nearby meadow (Martin and me trying to sleep off our hangover from Heilbronn) before listening to the safety instructions. After those the girls went off to do the beginners course while the boys started off with an intermediate one (harrharr...).

I have to say that I'm not particularly afraid of heights, but in 10-12m above the ground with nothing else holding you but two ropes... well, you get the point. After two courses, Martin and Julia took another intermediate trail while Tim – who goes climbing almost every week – urged me to take the expert course. Frankly, I wasn't too keen on doing so, only wearing sneakers and having seen how difficult it would get. But then again I didn't wanna let him go by himself and I did feel a certain inner temptation, so we went. Bad Idea.

Already having been scared shitless at the second obstacle, there was one about halfway through the course where I was this close to losing it. It was shaky as hell, I had major difficulties keeping balance, I was slowly losing strength in my left arm (which was carrying all my weight at that time) and had huge troubles with the constant reattaching of the carabiners to the different ropes. I was so fucking panicky I kept shouting horrible insults (motherf***** being one of the lighter ones) at Tim – who had already passed it – for the entire time it took me to get through the obstacle, which was all in all maybe 10 minutes. During my struggle and verbal abuse of Tim I caught the glimpse of a kid doing a course one level below us. He stared at me in utter disbelief probably thinking "If you can't handle it, don't go up there, dumbass!". God, he was so right.

Anyways, half an hour later we were one safe ground again. I had lost 2 pounds of sweat, the ability to speak and my sense of humor. In retrospect it was cool to have 'taken on the challenge' but I could just as well have done without. Still a really cool day. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take our cameras up so you'll have to settle for these three shots from below.

Admittedly, the picture below is about three weeks old, but it pretty much visualizes my life since then up until now. After I arrived home I had about one week to empty out my room – dismantle furniture, throw out memorabilia and pack up the rest – before the new house owners took over the floor to start reconstruction. Then I moved to my grandpa's old living room and helped my parents do the same thing to the rest of the house for two weeks while trying to get my life in Germany back on track.

Last Sunday we were finally done with everything. On Monday the moving company picked up the furniture and the keys were handed over – in other words, bye bye old home *little sniff*. And since Tuesday I'm back in Darmstadt, my oh-so-beautiful study town :P

It took me two days to straighten up the apartment. I almost forgot to re-enroll to university (one more week and they would've kicked me out). I'm behind on pretty much everything, first and foremost my diploma preparations. I'm broke, confused and aimless. In general it seems I'm having slight troubles adjusting to my home country.

Either I get my act together reeeal quick and come to terms with fact that this is gonna be 'it' for the next half year or it'll be one long semester...

There are few things in nature that I love more than that special light during a late afternoon summer rain. It doesn't happen too often around here, if you're lucky maybe two, three times a year. But when it does, when the sun / cloud constellation is just right, you get this beautiful warm yellowish hue everywhere. And then these warm heavy water drops that'll get you soaked within seconds – perfect moment.

Last Sunday (not yesterday, the one before) was confirmation that being back In Germany doesn't necessarily have to mean that my life will be boring from this point forth. By coincidence I had found out about a tiny 'festival' called Sunday?! It's What You Make It at one of my favorite hometown venues, the beloved E-Werk. I had only been home for one and a half days back then, so it was a good first opportunity to meet up with some friends.

So we chilled in the sun, drank beer and listened to relaxing swedish indie rockers Jeniferever. After their set we went on to one of our favorite local beer gardens til late at night. While everyone else went home after that, I returned to the festival to see Bodi Bill, who I had heard only good things about, mostly from my boy Äl. And good they were – great mixture of Electronica, Minimal and... Folk? They had fun – happy to play a rather small crowd after having to please thousands at MELT! – and the crowd had fun at this cozy little outdoor gig.

Almost perfect night, hadn't I gone from full speed to full stop in less than a second with my bike on my way home. I had to do so in order to avoid one of those damn pizza delivery scooters at an inner city crossroad. Result: blood dripping forehead, busted knee, fucked up shoulder and something wrong with my back. Luckily, I crashed right next to a clinic to which a fellow festival returnee helped me find my way. Nothing big in the end, but it still hurt like a mother! Oh well...

At least half a year in Germany.
:) or :(
I'm not sure yet.

A couple of friends and I discovered the Swedish game of Kubb that another friend who spend an exchange year in Stockholm introduced to us. It's a so-called 'tactical lawn game' in which you have to throw wooden sticks at wooden blocks. Sounds stupid, I know, but it's pretty addictive...

The little man is heading back to London tomorrow morning - of course I couldn't let him leave before watching the epic 'Lammbock' together. So as part of a little Hossegor '05 revival Chris, he and I took the ol' T3 up to a field on a local hill and watched this monumental film on the Macbook, with the sunset in front of us and a whole lot of mist around us. After a ten minute phone call with long explanations and several times of confirming that this isn't a prank call we even got pizza delivered to that place in the middle of nowhere! The minimum order value was 12€ (equals one family size Margeritha) - we had 12,18 €... Yupp, that's what we farm boys do for fun out here ;)

Last Friday at a chilled barbeque with friends. Almost everyone (3 people missing) from the old gäng was home for once. From left to right, not the names but rather the places theses guys and girls live/are coming from/are going to:

Munich, Erlangen, Erlangen, Mauritius, London, Nuremberg, Kassel, Sydney, Erlangen, Stockholm

That's the Belgian band a couple of friends and I went to see last night in the garden of the E-Werk, a local club complex. The concert took place as part of 'Grill The Monday', a weekly get-together where anyone can come, sit and bring they're own food which the E-Werk staff will then barbeque for you. Very relaxed atmosphere, kinda sad it was my first time there as I'm usually not around on Mondays.

Eté 67 was quite nice as well by the way - melodic Pop-Rock with a very enthusiastic band leader. Don't know how they are on an album, but the live sound was perfect.