Auswanderer Quatsch

I don’t think I told you about it already: unlike France (or at least all I ever saw there), the rest of the world seem to have fun with fireworks on Silvester night. Not just a big “public firework” like it would be in France oh no, thousands of mini-private-fireworks… at every corner.

I had seen it in Nürnberg already, but this year we found a nice spot in Regensburg on the Eiserner Bridge and enjoyed the show as much as we participated as you can see on this video.

Here’s a short video of what it looked like a few minutes after midnight on the 1st of January 2011…

Similarly, kwyxz’s experience this year in Norway…

How was your Silvester night?

After six crazy weeks since our summer break and before a few others that will have me jump between Germany, Slovakia, Belgium and maybe even the USA… we’re taking a few days off “in the south”, on the shores of the Constance lake.

It’s the third time we come here to relax, in a little cabin litterally few steps away from the water.

Today’s program looked like every other day here: swim in some icy cold water, go running across the apple and grape fields, hack some wood for the evening’s camp fire, go buy some wine and fish/meat to grill on the sus-mentionned, lay in the sun and read (“The sundering”, “Le facteur temps ne sonne jamais deux fois”, “Conference internationale sur la radiotherapie” and “Succeeding with Agile”… in that order) go paddle on the lake with the kayak and turn around the anchored boats to bother the occupants… and repeat those tasks until bored…

In between all this, I might have some time to update this blog… who knows… at least here’s a picture to give you an idea of the trouble we’re in!

Thanks to the visit of a Canadian friend of MlleV this weekend, I set foot for the first time in the “BMW Welt” (“welt” means “world”) in Munich. This is not really a museum, more like an exhibit of some of the models they have, a lot of explanation about the “hybrid technology” created by BMW and a lot of technical explanations about the BMW cars in general.

Actually, we wanted to attend to the tour of the factory and visit the Museum, but all the tours were more than overbooked on that day and the museum was closed! Bad choice… but still… what do you have to say to that?

Big thanks to the French football national team in helping us unify a lot our development teams. Instead of complaining about everything, they are now all making fun of us – french guys – and me at the same time. Really not easy to be abroad during the football world cup when your country is that proud of itself in normal time and losing like this… you really pay for it I can tell ya! Anyway, let’s hope that the team really blasts to pieces and end this nasty era of miserable football!

Rock am Ring and Rock Im Park are two famous German rock festivals happening every year respectively on the Nürburgring (south from Bonn) since 25 years and in Nürnberg since 15 years. Those are organized in parallel and simply share the same bands. About 65.000 spectators showed up this year at RIP… possibly more at RAR… pretty damn impressive. This year, Mlle V declared that living in Nürnberg since more than 3 years and not having stepped even once at RockImPark was just plain impossible so she booked 4 day passes for us right away… it was this weekend.

Day1

It started on thursday evening with a “small” punk band coming from nord-germany called Turbostaat… it was fine! But honestly we were only there for the other band of the evening… one hell of a band: Rage against the Machine. Thanks to the foul weather we managed to get in front of the scene and enjoyed an incredible show.

Day2

Friday started late for me since I had to work. When I arrived there around 7:30 pm, the party was well started. We first saw Gogol Bordello, a really fun gipsy-punk band. After that we saw the incredible The Hives from Sweden, which singer is a born entertainer and probably ran a half marathon during the 90 min concert… that guy was really awesome!

Finally the day ended with a concert I had never thought would amaze me that much: Rammstein. I’m not a fan of the music… but what a real show that was. Pyrotechnic effects, light and fire, choregraphy, little details here and there… and every one of my neighbors simply new the fracking songs by heart (ok, sometime not so hard)… just plain fantastic!!!

Day3

On Saturday, we really showed up early. I think we arrived somwhere around 2:30 pm or so. We first had a very good surprise hearing Ellie Goulding, an amazing British indie-pop singer that I’m sure you’ll hear more from in a near future.

Then we briefly moved to the main stage and enjoyed one hour of crazy Slash, before changing back to another genre on the alternastage…

That’s where we saw a very disappointing Kate Nash. She kept on complaining that the crowd was not “dancing”, “screaming” and “having enough fun”… but did not do anything about it and simply continued singing one song after the other.. before leaving the scene at the end of her show without sawing anything… very disappointing. To finish the afternoon with, we headed to the main stage again to enjoy a great musical change: Jay-Z and even had the pleasure to hear Alicia Keys singing the song Empire State of Mind

But the main concert of the day was no doubt the last one with the legendary Kiss on the main stage. 2:30 hours of pure pleasure, old songs and rock&roll show by those 4-60 years old legends… just. plain. incredible!

Finally we moved back to the alternastage to enjoy some german hip-hop/reggae with Jan Delay. Unfortunately, after something like 30 minutes, the singer – jan - started complaining about the sound feedback (the one the musicians have directly in their ear) and stopped playing once, twice… we left at the third time to be ready for the grand final on Sunday!

Day4

Sunday was as hot as the other days so we showed up a little later, around 4 pm for some reggae with Gentlemen, soon followed by the incredible Gossip.

After a small break with 30 seconds to mars which was just fine the band that everybody was waiting for finally came: MUSE!

The concert was a blast, almost two hours of pure Muse without any word in between (not more than 10 – I counted) just pure undisturbed Muse… rhaaa lovely!

Well that was the hell of a nice weekend!

(Sorry for the quality of the iPhone pictures, that was more for the fun of it than for the art)