blog.antiprocess.net

Things left undone because of sudden lack of energy, too much things in mind to concentrate on single task, changing routines cause lack of sleep and level of stress reaches sky high… the fall is here.

Jani came to our place for a week long visit from 5th of this month and stayed to 14th. Few games of Kimble, many more of Starcraft Broodwars and even more youtube videos on replay. We watched the first season of Lost in 4 days. After all that, on the 14th we went to Jani’s place to Joensuu and stayed there to 17th.

Jani and Maria both wrote about the 1,5 weeks. Read from them more, they write better than I do.

Now it is the time to get everything back together and start working on the projects I’ve managed to put on hold with my behaviour. Sorry about that.

My first flight and immediately I was sucked into the glamour of flying, the plane was hour late from schedule.

The Ryanair plane wasn’t so awful as I was told before, but what do I know? It was my first time in the tincan that would be shot to the sky. After the flight we landed, quite smoothly, to the face of Bremen, Germany. This wasn’t my first time abroad, but this was first time so far away from home.

We, meaning my girlfriend Maria and her father Jukka, rented a car from Bremen to make the travelling easier and more eyes opening. You can’t get to see the nice views from a bus or train as well as parking the car to side of the road and just relaxing by watching the sight.

We went on our way towards the city of Cologne as soon as we could.

As the size of Kölner Dom, The Cologne Cathedral, started to became visible, my jaw just dropped. Hearing the size 157m is just numbers, but when the massive church of Gothic architecture was there, the size was just staggering. Of course we had to walk all the 509 steps to get to the top of the Cathedral. The view was awesome.

Other places we visited were Chocolate museums gift shop (we didn’t think the museum would have been worth 6,5€/adult), many bars (6 of them if I remember correctly), the KFC and Starbucks (where I bought myself a 19oz/0.5L coffee mug).

Next day, after good night sleep at hotel, we headed back to Bremen, but not so fast, we took our time and took a detour from south Germany. Alternahr was one of the small town we visited, found Übigs-tunnel (no idea where it was) and then we started to go back to north Germany, towards Bremen.

Bremen was a disappointment after the great city of Cologne, but it brought a great comparison to cities between north and south Germany. We ate at the local restaurant delicious pasta and I gave my first real tip to the waiter. Our plane was supposed to leave at 6am from the Bremen airport, so we rented a room near the airport and went to bed early. Waking up at 5am was hard, but we got in time to the security checks and finally to the airport to only hear that the plane was broken and it would take “few moments” to fix it. We were 5 extra hours at the airport. The glamour of flying was how the trip began and it also was the end of it.

I really liked Germany, and would like to visit it soon again. Next time I’ll take better notes of the places to visit and what to do around there.

• Germany 2007 set in Flickr.
• Maria blogs about the trip in finnish

Now that there’s less than 3 weeks to september and fall, it’s good to start listing stuff that I did this summer.

I was actually challenged to do this by Jani and Maria.

• This was my 3rd festival summer. I was on 2 festivals as a customer (Provinssirock and Ämyrock), worked on 3 festivals (Sauna Open Air, Value Life 2007 and Simerock) and saw 26 different bands. (Listing can be read from the end of this post.)
• I drove over 3500km. Provinssirock trip was ~750km and Simerock trip alone was ~1300km. I like to drive, it clears my head.
• Learned the basics of Devil Stick. (I can do this, this, this and this already.)
• Worked on various projects at work and at home. At one point I had 5 projects active at the same time, started to get bit hard to manage.
• Watched 20 movies and 3 seasons of various series and I also listened to 845 different tracks 916 times.
• Saw Nine Inch Nails for the second time and Placebo for the first time live.
• Got new ideas for various projects that will be taking place under the Hollow13.netdomain.
• Felt better, happier and more productive than I have for long long time.
• Got to know myself better.
• Helped people in various code and design projects. People helped me in my projects.
• Consumed 8 pints of beer.
• Designed 2 themes for the blog.
• Took about 150 photos, but released only 9 of them.
• Went out to play water fight with Maria and to get wet bare-feet during a downpour of water.
• I didn’t burn my skin this summer so well I usually do.

Bands I saw this summer:
Timo Rautiainen, Kotiteollisuus, Dimmu Borgir, Leverage, Swallow The Sun (3 times), Callisto, CMX, Mokoma, Stam1na, Diablo, Rubik (2 times), Lauri Tähkä & Elonkerjuu, Tori Amos, Don Johnson Big Band, Patti Smith and Band, Hatebreed, Sara, Superchrist, The Blood Brothers, Scissor Sisters and Lamb Of God

This just might be one of the best summers ever. Even thought I spend much time inside, coding and designing, I had a lot of fun while being outside.

One last thing to do before summer is over; swimming. I haven’t done that yet this summer. It’s not too late, is it?