you know, these things just happen..

Our car is an old Mazda 232 hatchback, not exactly a beauty and also not really what you would call “in good condition” but it brings me to Aachen safely and – most importantly – dry ;)

8 a.m., I start the car and it makes a screeching sound that is so frightening that I immediately switch it off again.

From my days in the Mercedes-callcenter I remember: This is the V-belt, the thing that connects the engine and the generator, it has gotten worn out and now in the coldness has lost its elasticity and slips over the discs producing this screeching sound.
Scenarios begin to appear in my head:

• Me on the Freeway waiting in the coldness for the technician that will never come
• me in a workshop in Aachen, not able to pay the tech who finds 20 more damages and won’t let me drive away anymore.

I realize, I am thinking in terms of “Mercedes” and not “18 year old Mazda that cost as much as your boots”
(although this is not quite true, my Dr. Marten’s boots cost 99,- EUR and the Mazda cost 125,- EUR but it’s close ;) )
so I open the Owners Manual and against all my fears I find the following passage:

…check the tension of the v-belt and make sure it does not move more than 10 mm if you press it with your thumb. If it does, open the screw above the generator and slide the generator to the left till tension is restored. Tighten the screw again and check tension again…

So instead of having to go to a workshop and leaving lots of $$$ there, I am even told how exactly I have to do it myself. I love this car :)

Yesterday, while we had a funny sit-in and drank a considerable amount of Glühwein, Astrid (our neighbour) found my old german ID card and smiled at the photo..
It is true that I have changed _a little_ since 1999…
This resulted in me searching photos from all these years and putting them together here:

http://blueeyedcreature.net/blog/?page_id=18

funny how a person changes and at the same time looks the same (look for example at the smile of 2001 and the one of 2003…)

These days winter finally arrived. Not only it’s incredibly cold, there is also a hard wind that blows the coldness in every crack of your clothing. Luckily we went for warm jackets early this year so we are prepared ;)
It even snows a little, so the coldness is not a problem. I just dislike wet coldness :)

Anyway: The dutch railway system can definitely not handle coldness. Every year in autumn there are delays because of leaves on the tracks, as soon as it gets cold there are delays because of ice on the railways and if by accident everything works fine you can expect something like a lightning striking the power supply of a central node of the railway system.
Ususally this happens at the station of Utrecht.
As for today, it was a combination of lightning and a crash of two trains that completely stopped the north-south traffic in the Netherlands. (I wonder why this always happens on fridays when Anna wants to come to Maastricht?)

Anna had just arrived at Amsterdam central station when it was announced that there is a problem in Utrecht and there won’t be any other trains to the south.
She managed to do a detour to Rotterdam (luckily :) ) and arrived here at eight; some unlucky people had to wait in the station of Utrecht until now (22:00h) and are getting free nights at hotels…

What I am always amazed about is the way “Deutsche Bahn” is handling these things. There is never a problem when there are leaves on the tracks.. probably the dutch trains are more sensitive or something like that ;)
And the thunderstorms apparently also don’t like the German train system, they seem to prefer dutch power lines. Oh well.. Murphy at his best.

Oooh.. Markting can be SO much fun :)

especially if you are allowed to throw 250000 rubber balls down a street in San Francisco.. WHEEE!!!!
look here for a video of the advertisement SONY has made recently:

Download high resolution vid here.
Truly like.no.other

*bows in respect*

today after work/university I went to the parking and startled: no car!

First I thought, I’d gotten into the same situation as Matt some weeks ago but it turned out that I have parked it on some “University parking” which for me was absolutely correct to to…

Well, the people from the towing service then told me that only employees of the university can park there, not students…

100,- Euros, the most expensive ticket I ever got.

And to end the story with a quote of Matt:

“That is a lot of money” :(