I love sandwiches in any form. Be it a proper cheese and ham sandwich, a burger, a falafel, an egg benedict or just some filled pita bread. Today however I felt like giving a Döner a try, homemade. Of course I had to cheat a little bit, as I don’t have a spit roasting thing, but I came quite close to what I wanted to get to.
Ich lese keine Zeitungen, weil diese mein Geld wollen und mir dafür nur paraphrasierte Agenturmeldungen bieten. Vom Vortag.
Ich lese die Zeitungen auch nicht so oft online, weil hier noch seltener echter Content geboten wird, und der Fokus auf Clickbait wie Bildstrecken und Boulevardmeldungen liegt. Außerdem gibt es kein brauchbares Bezahlmodell, das einem das Gefühl gibt, brauchbaren Journalismus zu unterstützen.
Was ich allerdings viel und gerne lese, sind Blogs. Ich habe ein paar Lieblinge in meinem rss reader feedly, der die Rolle vom Google Reader übernommen hat, als dieser von Google kaltblütig ermordet wurde.
Ich lese gerne, was andere lesen, um neuen Content zu entdecken, und darum teile ich jetzt hier, was ich so lese. Ich habe mir zwar angewöhnt, auf diesem Blog viel Englisch zu schreiben, allerdings sind fast alle meine rss feeds in deutsch, warum also nicht auch in deutsch darüber schreiben.
We had a great calm night in the new room that was only shared by us two and not by the snoring smelly rhino, although I missed him a bit.
The next day we thought about doing a tour of all the famous stuff in the city from when catholics and protestants were hitting each in the heads, but then we didn’t really feel like it. Instead we took a bus up to a hill that overlooks all of Belfast north of the town. Taking the bus is a bit scary, as only major stops are depicted on the maps, and you have to trust your driver when you ask him if he was going where you wanted to go. Our driver reassured us that he was indeed going towards the mountain and at some point he more or less yelled „NOW!“ and we hurried to get off the bus.
We arrived at the Belfast Zoo which lies at the base of said hill, I will just now call Mount Doom for ease of writing, and our guide book told us, that there was a way to go from the Zoo to a little castle on Mount Doom. And indeed there was, but not quite as we expected. A muddy path crawls behind the Zoo upwards. And unlike Berlin, where you can see at least one animal that isn’t a pigeon from outside the Zoo when you pass by, in Belfast you only see concrete walls, barbed wire and reinforced fences. The path consisted mostly of large patches of mud and some slippery stones and slopes. At some point we had to make our way across 10 meters of heel deep mud by jumping from stone to stone. Doro was cursing like a sailor. I never heard her curse like that before or after. We just made it across the mud pit when a group of 4 joggers arrived and went „Hep Hep Hep Hep“ while passing us, their legs muddy up to the knee.
The weather was grey and foggy and so the day looked pretty shitty. Crawling next to a fence through mud is not exactly what we intended to do.
We then slowly climbed to the peak area of Mount Doom. Doro said it would be nice if it would start to rain. It then started to rain.
Up on the side of Mount Doom was this cave you see below and we went to take a look at it. Looking down Mount Doom was just a vast area of greyness.
When we arrived at the cave’s entrance, we turned around to see that in that exact minute the skies cleared up, the sun shined on our faces and all the clouds moved away to annoy someone else.
The view then was most spectacular, we could watch the big boats arriving in the harbour of Belfast, look out to the see and all around us was sunshine and happiness. Yay!
While we stood there, admiring the scenery, me getting all sentimental and crying about the beauty of the day and God’s holy creation that we could witness, I was pulled out of my tranquillity by Doro fistpunching me in the kidneys. Twice. A young guy walked over the hill next to us. „Hello! How are you doing!“, was what I said. „Oh, ihr seid auch aus Deutschland.“ was his answer. Great. So much for my English skills. He then presented himself to be a lone wanderer of the Belfast area, originating from the Bodensee in Germany. We had a chat and he pointed us in the direction he came from to get to the castle that was our original goal. We said farewell, he went on and we went where he came from.
The forest we entered looked suiting to Mount Doom, green and mossy and like it was bursting with witches and alike.
But it wasn’t. The evil that lied within it was far beyond the evil of witchcraft. We took a turn at one point to get further down Mount Doom in direction of the castle I will now call Minas Tirit for no apparent reason. The slopes got more slippery and Doro had to do some impressive moves to avoid falling. So did I. But luckily I was the bearer of the camera and so it is not captured how I tumble down Mount Doom.
It soon appeared to us that we took a turn for a mountain bike downhill course. This paths are not made for walking. Although I can’t imagine how to survive riding a bike on a muddy slippery slope down Mount Doom, some people must have done that regularly. We found bike tracks and later on some ramps for jumps.
Then it happened. Although I descended Mount Doom lightfooted like a woodelf and fell and buried the camera in mud. Fun times. Luckily we soon found a way off this God forsaken bicycle track back to a normal route and we soon approached Minas Tirit. A lovely castle, often booked by wedding people to wed people together somehow. We walked over nicely kept lawns, me covered in mud, exhausted and not in the best mood. We headed straight into the washing rooms where we removed what we could of all the mud we brought.
I cleaned the camera and as we (or rather Doro) spent a lot of money on the camera it was actually water and dust sealed and could basically just be rinsed with water until it was clean. My leg still looked muddy for the rest of the day.
So finally, this is the castle of Minas Tirit.
The garden tells some kind of story of how the earl of the castle set himself on fire and jumped of a very high thing and fell into the town like a human torch, but unlike the friend of Mr Spandex, Invisible Girl and Dwayne Johnson he wasn’t able to fly like a bird. To tell the story a number of cats was hidden in the garden. Hidden as in there was a mosaic or a statue or picture. See if you can find them all on the pictures that follow up.
These stairs are mainly used by newly marriaged people to stumble and fall down while the guests are laughing at them. Very nice thing to see.
These are for friendzoned men and their crushes. Quite close but with an uncrossable gap.
This sign tells the story of how the castle’s inhabitants (servants for weddings) are lucky as long as a cat lives on the premises. As cats are known to chew on headphone cables the servants thought to be clever by hiding cat shaped objects in the garden. Kind of similar to the way they wanted to tell the story of the Earl of Minas Tirit and his torch experience.
This is me ignoring the fact that the cat is dead, because she messed with Goldfinger.
I then lost a part of my backpack somewhere and despite looking for it we couldn’t find it. Mmh. We then descended from Mount Doom back into the civilisation. When we turned around we were stunned by the giant’s face that was visible against the sky. WE WERE WALKING ON A GIANT’S HEAD ALL THE TIME!?! We were so lucky not to have woken him. The locals say that the giant’s face looks like Napoleon. But I don’t see the afro anywhere. Or the moonboots.
Nearly done now! Only a few dozen posts about Ireland left before I can talk to you again about my food and the stuff I don’t like!
Huzza!
It is dark outside, grey, my nose is running, I cough occasionally, what better thing is there to do then to finish up my master piece of how I went to Ireland and came back.
What happened so far: We arrived in Belfast the day before, found an amazing tent full of fancy veg, browsed the southern area of Belfast and then headed back to the hostel, after having some mediocre fish and chips and place calling itself „The best fish and chips“. It was not.
Yesterday some people convinced to attend the screening of the new Hobbit 2 – The Desolation of the Smaugomat in a cinema place. I don’t like cinemas. People show up there, and then they crunch through buckets of popcorn and smash tons of nachos with their ugly faces, all while snorting and babbling. And today a ticket to a movie costs half my rent plus a quarter of my savings for when I’m old.
This Christmas was a calm one. On christmas eve, the main event day in Germany, we did nothing fancy. We had some good dinner with nice bread and stuff and then watched cat videos.
The next day however I invited my parents to come and have dinner with us. Uuuhh scary parents around. Luckily mine are quite uncomplicated and so I did not have to be stressed about a successful dinner. Still I wanted to do something fancy, as I like to cook fancy stuff. The only problem is that we are usually just two, and making a whole cooking dinner event just for two is a bit too much. I use every occasion to bring out the big menu when people come by, and this time it was not different.
Before I let you participate in the documentation of the feast we had for Christmas, I wanted to tell you about my favourite place in Berlin to have dumply dumplings. The road leading there was a long and winding one. The first great dumplings we had were in London – where else? – at Ping Pong, a fancy place, quite pricey, but great dim sum and dumplings in all kinds of varieties, each served in a individual bamboo casket. Their drinks were particularly fancy with teas from single flowers that open during brewing. So we came back from London and wanted something similarly amazing here in Berlin.
Ich habe einen Fehler gemacht. Ich bin sehenden Auges in mein Verderben gerannt. Ich hätte es wissen können, ja wissen müssen. Ich habe das ungute Gefühl im Bauch ignoriert, habe nicht auf die schmerzenden Augen von Beginn an gehört. Ich habe mir das Finale von „The Taste“ angesehen. So halb. Am Stück und komplett habe ich es nicht ausgehalten. „The Taste“ ist eine Wir-suchen-den-besten-normalo-der-aber-was-kann show. Drölf Kandidaten mussten sich durch elfunddreißig Runden kochen, der schwächste wurde entfernt und die anderen Glücklichen blieben solange, bis sie die schwächsten waren und entfernt wurden. So weit, so unspannend.
Today I stumbled across this link, explaining the new plans for the Italian tax regulations. If a company wants to market stuff in Italy and uses ads and commercials for it, the company has to have a dependence in Italy where it pays taxes.
The idea is simple: you want to sell stuff here, you have to pay taxes here. They aimed especially for the big players, google, starbucks, facebook who have their European representation in the Republic of Ireland for tax reasons. This summer the story made the rounds, that Starbucks pays taxes for the first time in 5 years in the UK. Starbucks just changed their accounting numbers legally so that all profit was taken from the UK and it looked like Starbucks had five consecutive years of losses in the UK while paying (cheaper) taxes in the Republic of Ireland for the money.
Now Italy is like „F**k you, international corporations, give us our share if you already milk our citizens.“ The new law uses the sneaky way of not touching directly the income made in a year. By forcing the companies to be actually present legally in Italy and pay taxes there it is harder for the company to just claim „Sorry, we tried everything but no one wants to buy our Latte Grande Shittocino, no income this year, sorry, also no taxes. A shame, really.“
And who fights for the citizens rights, who makes sure that not only the citizens pay the taxes, but also the global players? Right, not the European Union. They are now all like: „Nah, Italy, don’t do that. This is unfair, because companies can now only sell their products on your market when they actually are in your country. What if a small farmer from Brandenburg wants to sell his pickled cucumbers to your citizens? And wants to advertise it? Poor Horst can’t participate on your market.“ And so the European Union announces trouble should the law pass the legislation process.
That’s the good thing about the European Union. They make sure that we could trans-atlantic treaties with the U.S., that international companies don’t run into too much trouble when shifting money around the world and that all the useless politicians of the individual countries have a good outcome in Brussels and Strasbourg. Their idea of equal opportunities and rights results in companies pushing their goods into the neighbor’s markets, making it difficult for local producers. The whole European Union concept enables big players to do what they want with the small companies on the markets. Germany’s export surplus every year makes sure that there is no need for other companies to emerge and develop in the market areas. U.S. internet giants generate profits in every country but only pay taxes in a few. Protected by the European Union. Every try by local governments to act is stopped in Brussels (and Strasbourg every so often, another stupid thing in the EU concept) in the name of equality.
I once went to Brussels during school times and got introduced into the whole thing, I saw the monuments of glass and steel they built in the city centre, and I saw the vast complexes of translation offices, that take every single document, translate it into the 2 dozen languages of the EU and then print it out and put it on shelves to throw away after a month of no one picking it up. Back in the day I was convinced that the whole idea was a good one, that the people have the bigger profit and that the companies have a hard time to fulfil the EU regulations on toxic compounds, organic produce and production quality.
Today I see the regulations on cucumber bending angles that are tolerated, the strict ban of conventional light bulbs in favour of toxic energy saving bulbs (a good idea that is poorly executed, as the manufacturers are not obligated to produce better bulbs. Most energy savers live not as long as conventional bulbs, but take more time to be produced and are dangerous when thrown in the regular garbage.) and now the interference with the attempts to stop large companies from drawing local money out of countries into the company’s pockets.
This is a long rant. I don’t want to give the impression that all EU legislation is completely useless, but the whole concept of it has so many flaws that I wonder sometimes where the benefits for the people actually are. This whole thing wastes shitloads of money for travelling between two cities, for printing and translating every tiny document, for all the gigantic infrastructure. And in the end it’s not the sovereign who benefits but those who sell things to the sovereign. The governments blame all bad things on the EU while they use it to pass laws that are impossible to pass in the country itself. There is a lot of change needed before I can be happy about the EU again as I was somewhere in 2005.