Category: Austria

Hey world, I’m waiting for a smile again! Life hasn’t been smiling at me recently and I start to wonder when I will see a smile again. The weather is fine, its spring in Austria and there is good music playing on the radio, but yet I feel empty, and I don’t know where that is coming from. Usually I live by the rule “don’t waste the best time of your life, waiting for the best time of your life” – but right now its damm hard to not just lay back and wait for better times to come.

What the heck, I will not complain, instead, i will go out there and don’t let myself get depressed. I’m going to smile at the world till it smiles back again at me. And yes, if you see me on the street tomorrow, don’t forget to smile back and don’t forget about the rest of those people out there, who just wait for a smile to make their day a little bit brighter.

Today I had the funniest meeting in my entire career! A couple of weeks ago my company was approached by a guy from the United States about a possible cooperation of his search-engine and our website. I agreed to meet him and we set a date. Today when I returned from my lunch break (27th of April 2005), this guy was waiting in my office. First I got an angry look from my colleagues because they thought that I just forgot about the meeting, and for a couple of seconds, I actually feared that they where right.

But then I double checked my appointment calendar and reassured myself that the meeting was indeed set for 29th of April 2005. So this got the guy all nervous and he started to check his appointment calendar as well. Turned out that he was actually supposed to meet someone else in a completely different city, more then 350 kilometers (300 miles) away!

A few phone calls where made and luckily for him, I did not had any other appointments and we could held the meeting. Maybe I could have worn something instead of just plain jeans and a T-shirt, but in the end it was a very nice and interesting conversation.

There is a new pope, Benedict XVI, and the media is taking care that everyone knows about that fact. If someone from Germany is in the media, I’ve noticed an interresting side effect. The, more or less secret, war between German and British tabloid, such as Bild-Zeitung and The Sun.

Soccer matches, canvas-chairs fights on Mediterranean islands, they have been previously used to create headlines to remind Brits and Germans that they used to be arch-enemies. Especially the Sun likes to dig up old stories from World War II, without a doubt one of the darkest moments in the history of Europe.

So this time around its Benedict XVI, formally known as Cardinal Josef Ratzinger. Mr. Ratzing was unfortunately born in Germany in the year 1927 which means that he grew during the dark time of the Nazi Regime and was member of an organization called “Hitler Jugend” just like many fellow young Germans. So the Sun had nothing better to do then to point out this information of historic proportion in the biggest letters on their front-page : From Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi… Of course the Bild-Zeitung in Germany had to defend the German Pope in the biggest letters on their frontpage and at the same time remembering the Germans of all the flaws of the Brits.

Josef Ratzinger is 78, and all the others who actually lived during the rise and fall of the “Dritte Reich” will be history sooner or later. As a matter of fact, there will be a day when the last German who lived during the time of the Nazi-Regime will be dead. Poor Sun, no more headlines about some dark secret from in the past of German citizens…

This is just theoretical , but I’m currently 26 years old, male, catholic and not married, which, according to church law, means that I could become Pope at some point in the future. What would the Sun write about me? That my grandfather used to be part of the Hitler Youth? That I worked in Linz, once the favorite city of A. Hitler? Well, I don’t have to worry anyway, I’m Austrian, and the Germans have to take all the credit for World War II…

I wonder if, say in 20 years from now, the Germans will still blamed for things that happend between 1938 and 1945. But I also hope that human mankind has learned a few things since 1945 and that history will not repeat itself.

Two days ago I was sitting on the tram in the early morning hours on the way to work. A casual thing I’ve done many times before. But that morning was different. Out of the sudden, about five or six Austrian schoolboy, maybe 10 or 12 years old, showed up and surrounded two foreign boys, who where sitting close to me. One of the Austrian boys started yelling at the two foreigners for being refugees in Austria, using the worst language I’ve ever heard from a boy at such a young age. He would not only insult the boy, but also the entire family.

This would go for about two or three minutes, getting worse every time that boy would open his mouth, until to a point, where I had to get up, walk to the Austrian boy and ask him if there was a problem with those two kids. I must have taken him by surprise, because he wouldn’t even respond. I continued to ask him if they had ever done anything to him, to which he would also (SURPRISE) not respond. While I had the (very rare for me) urge to just punch him in the face, I left him with the words, “leave them alone” and walked back to my seat. Fortunately he would not continue his hate triads for the time I was on the tram.

But the most shocking aspect for me is that I wasn’t the only grown up on the tram, there where about five to six other adults who could have gotten up from their seats and could have stopped that boy.

We are all so busy with our lives that we completely forget that sometimes, someone might need our help. To remain silent and ignore ongoing injustice is flat out wrong. Incidence like the one I witnessed two days ago happen around the world day in and day out. I don’t think it is necessary to try and handle a gun fight, but sometimes we do have the power and the obligation to protect those who need our help.Be a snowflake and become part of an avalanche to make the world a better place!

I’ve received fifteen invitations today (so far), all of mid twenty girls, unhappy with their husbands or boyfriends. Usually their messages includes their perfect measures and a line like “My idiot boyfriend is out of town and I’m a little lonely.” All these young woman have a webcam, and they all want to do very nasty things to me. I can’t believe how lucky I actually am. If I would try to please them all, I sure would have to order Viagra from those online pharmacies that also keep sending me emails

All those girls, actually hundreds of them every month… But wait! When I go to their homepage to get in touch, I’m asked to enter my credit card information. And they want my money(!) Hey, your loved one is out of town, you claim that he is a jerk, and you actually expect me to pay to do YOU a favor? How come? Why don’t you offer me the money? And actually a flight ticket to Houston, Texas, or Chicago, your respective location, as I’m sitting in frosty Austria right now.

„Sigh”

I get the feeling that those girls don’t really want me. They want to make money out of male desires and stupidity. There is no Debbie, no Vivian or Cynthia, they are all fake! And as long as I have to send those emails to junk heaven every single day, I know that men are just men. And I am just one of them. Cause, if a hot girl would walk on me in a bar and say “My idiot boyfriend is out of town and I’m a little lonely” WITHOUT charging me, I might would consider sending her to seventh heaven, instead of junk heaven. Or just pinch myself and wake up!

Everybody should do something creative every now and then.

Today I’m proud to announce that I created my very first cocktail!

Its called “Frozen Melissa” (1.0) – (Fanfares!!!)

You might scratch your head about the name, but let me explain:

One of the main ingredients of the cocktail is lemon balm syrup, which is usually used to prepare a soft drink. The Latin name for “lemon balm” is “Melissa officinalis” – hence the Name ;-).

So, what do we need for a cocktail for one person:

4cl Vodka

2cl Brown Tequila

3cl lemon balm syrup

Champagne

Crushed Ice

I can’t promise that Lemon Balm Syrup is available everywhere but at least in Austria and Germany it is.

How to prepare the Cocktail:

Put the crushed ice into a glas, add vodka, tequila and the lemon balm syrup and fill the rest of the glas with champagne.

Enjoy!

This might not be the final recipe, so for right now lets call it the Frozen Melissa 1.0, I’ll let you all know if I come up with a better mixture.