Cell Phone Camera Dump

About a year since the last one, random images and observations accumulating on my phone:



If you live in Germany, sometimes, even if you're leaning vegetarian lately, you just have to go for big hearty German meal, like Haxe, Saurkraut, Knödel, and Bier.



This is a photo of the sleeping situation I've encountered multiple times in hotels. This bed is two mattresses. There is a space in the middle. The frame of the bed is once piece. Who is this for?? If you want to sleep two together, or spread out alone over the bed, somebody falls in the crack. If you want to sleep two separately, you cannot separate the mattresses. On the other hand, I HAVE gotten used to the whole no covering sheet thing in Germany. Just a mattress covering sheet and a duvet.



This vuvuzela has been in our lab for years. It is not used anymore, but at one time it was the bane of my existence, and so I wrote "Use only in case of emergency" on it. And somebody got smart with an extra comment.

Speaking of vuvuzelas, last summer was of course the world cup. I happened to be traveling while Germany was playing, along with several other unfortunate souls. I think this was the Frankfurt airport, where not only was the gave live all over the airport, not only did they even pipe it in on planes, but the buses that took us to the planes had a live feed over the speakers. What you hear here is the drone of vuvuzelas over the radio.

This photo is also from the summer. I was at a conference in Heidelberg, and as I was leaving a full cafeteria of people on the last day after saying goodbyes to catch the train home, I walked smack straight into a clear glass door. I did not look back to see people staring, but walked straight on to catch a cab, pausing only to reflect on the pain and take a photograph of the welt developing on my forehead.

Flohmarkt on the Elbe. Cliff and Sarah rented a stand to get rid of their wares in preparation for moving back to the States. I joined and sold a shirt and a headset!


This was on odd, uh....snack I found on the shelves in the supermarket. Texas barbeque-flavored Taccos. My impression is that it's some sort of god-awful combination of tacos, texas BBQ, and some sort of shish-kebab. So I went to the Chio website to learn more. You should visit, it has a very cheesy sound intro followed by - and it changes when you reload - either a man or woman essentially having an orgasm. If you navigate to the Taccos page, you learn they "schmecken wie deftiges Texas Barbecue, kross über dem Lagerfeuer geröstet - ganz so, wie's die Cowboys lieben". riiiiiight.

The tortillas chips you can find in stores here are basically terrible, even though I've gotten used to one brand...but the Chio brand are the worst. They taste and have the texture of pure chemicals. And the cheese dip they market, I literally could not eat. Had to throw the whole thing in the trash.

In conclusion, not even the lure of a free trip home can get me to buy this product.



This is my favorite Hefeweizen. It's not super-easy to find in Dresden, you have to know where to go, but when you find it it's 79 cents a bottle I think. This photo was taken in a supermarket back in the States, don't remember if in NY or TX. Excited they had the beer, was subsequently saddened by the price tag. If and when I get back to the States this will be a hard transition.



Last month I went skiing in Austria. This was the view (click to enlarge; taken with cell phone camera - not masterful at panorama stitching) at the top of a lift where we ate lunch a few times. Unreal.