otta in portugal

oh shit.

2008-04-04T10:28:00.001-01:00

its over.

adklsfhlk

2008-03-13T14:41:00.000-01:00

Marocco

2008-03-11T11:59:00.002-01:00

Every album contains around 10 pictures, only the deserttrip has some more. I am not really satisfied how the pictures turned out, but I didn´t focus on taking pictures on that holidays too much. Still you can get an idea of our trip...

Back

2008-03-10T18:53:00.002-01:00

Hi there, if anybody is still "reading" this blog...
It has been a while, but I am back from Marocco, stayed here and there for a couple of nights and already had my parents as visitors. I am living in the flat I used to live in at the beginning, but the roommates changed completley. My flight back is in the 31st of March, so these are my last few weeks in Lisbon for now.
My webalbum/google is driving me mad at the moment so the pictures of our trip to Marocco will come tomorrow hopefully. Also the pictures of my brothers visit are still missing. But they will follow soon!

-->

2008-02-11T00:21:00.000-01:00

more pictures after the madrid/marokko-break!

PIXXX

2008-02-01T21:25:00.000-01:00

Not shittalking today, just the finest pixxx:

Neighbourhood

and some more with my brandnew objective plus filter:

Flos Visit

I shaved

2008-01-18T19:27:00.000-01:00

Yes I did, but that was before christmas. Anyway, I didnot write too much about changing my flat or about something in that time at all. All you need to know is that I am living in the 7th floor with a great view over a park. I can also see my university, but thats not important. I can reach it within 10 minutes per pedes, but that will be over in the end of January anyway.
The plans for the next month are as follows:
On the 14th of February Wiebke and I will fly to Madrid and stay until the 17th. Than we will head on to Marocco and travel over there until the 28th of February. I will quit my flat here before to save some money. On the 29th I will move back to my old flat in beautiful Martim Moniz to receive lots of guests in March. Its cheaper and in the center which spare us some money and time in the subways.
On the end of March my time in Lisbon allready will be over, there is no more second semester to come for me.

Shaving can be a lot of fun:

Maybe I will post some pictures in the next week. At the moment I am working for my final exams and presentations here. And sleeping takes a lot of time, too. The rainy weather is making me lazy taking pictures.

Até breve.

HAPPY NEW BLÖÖÖÖÖÖARGHS

2008-01-10T21:21:00.000-01:00

So this is the first real short post in 2008. I allready moved out in December 2007 to my new flat I am now in, but I didn´t found the time to post anything in that time. I was in Germany for about 2,5 weeks to celebrate christmas and new years eve with my family and friends (more about new years eve soon).
See some pictures I shot short before I left to Germany:

Lisboa Love

Break

2008-01-01T22:37:00.000-01:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, but currently I have more important things to do :)

See you soon with more content.

AND FELIZ ANO NOVO!!!

Yesterday!!!

2007-12-19T00:55:00.000-01:00

(just kidding.)

Beach + Afganistan Ye Yes

2007-12-13T14:19:00.000-01:00

Last friday we went to the beach instead of university. What a great decision. See yourself:

Costa de Caparica

On saturday I saw an INSANE show of the Afganistan Ye Yes from Spain.

xxxxafganistanyeyesxxxx

Afganistan Ye Yes
No Good Reason
My Rules
The Youth

Porto

2007-12-10T02:22:00.000-01:00

The weekend end of November/beginning of December we went to Porto. We is in alphabetical order: Istvan, Luisa, Me and Niko. I rented a car which was way more trouble than I thought and which was way more expensive in the end as we all thought, but still we were independent and more flexible.
It took me almost two hours to rent the car due to problems with my creditcard and the insurance, but in the end I got it. I went to university, wrote a test and went to the Casa Marvao. I picked up the rest and we decided to go up the coast to safe the money for the toll. After a nice one hour and a half with the sun setting on the coast, we saw a sign for the highway - 27 km to Lisboa. So we were pretty quick. We then took the highway but forgot to take a ticket of the tollmachine. Great. Normally this costs more then 40 € if you show up at the paymentplace without, but our sad faces and great bargaining abilities helped that we didnot have to pay this. Anyway, it took us around more 4 hours to reach Porto and the place we wanted to stay. We had a nice walk through the almost empty streets, ending up in a way to fancy restaurant and later on in the best firefighter-bar ever. It was more like a livingroom with a big screen and we were speechless scaned as we entered the room to have a beer.
The next day in the morning it was raining heavily and after strolling around town in the rain, we decided to have another coffee and tosta (or francesinha). Francesinha is a typical food in Porto (besides something with guts). Its a toast with four different kinds of meat, lots of cheese and french fries or potatoes. The waitress was a little lost when I asked for a Francesinha without meat...
Around noon the weather got better and we explored more of the town. We also went to an exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg in the Museu Serralves of Porto, which was great. At night we finally arrived in a club in a 8th floor called Maus Habitus (Bad Habits). We walked all over town, just to find it around the corner of our place.
On Sunday we had some more sightseeing and made us on our way back not too late. We almost went half the way besides the main highway, safing money (what we spended like there was no tommorow before) and seeing the landscape of Portugal outside of the metropolitan areas. We had more or less a setting sun in Figuera do Foz where we explored the beach...

Porto

Check back in the next days more often, I have some more posts to come!

Évora e Sintra

2007-12-03T20:15:00.001-01:00

As you know I update with at least a week delay, so here are the pictures of the weekend 24/25th of November. I went with my language course to Évora which old citycentre is a UNESCO world heritage site. It was quiet cold and the city seemed to be pretty empty... We started at a Stonehenge-like site out of town, one of the oldest rudiments of mankind in whole Portugal. Inside Évora we headed from church to church, site to site. It was interesting, though a more calm trip would have been appreciated. And the singingcontest on the way back made me almost go AMOK. I couldn´t escape from the terrible voices that never sung a song sober before, was I sitting right underneath the speakers. That was really horrible. But still, see some pix here:

Évora

The next day I went with Istvan and Niko to Sintra, near Lisbon. This city + area is an UNESCO world heritage as well. We just explored the Castelo dos Mouros, but it was great. Walking through the forest up the hill, being sold out by a wonderfull 360° view. I will give you a panoramapicture later on...

Sintra

Next time more blabla!
Ciao

EARTHSHIP

2007-11-19T00:50:00.001-01:00

I WANT ONE!!!

check this out for more information: Earthship.net.

Payback time

2007-11-18T19:52:00.001-01:00

I made a lot of fun of you in the colder parts of Europe, I don´t regret that, but I get the payback now. It is f****** cold here at night. Ok, it´s still the warmest region in Europe at the moment(Check the weatherforecast here). But as you maybe know, my flat has no central heating system or insulated windows. So inside it is even colder than outside, because the houses cool out quickly. So, the weather changed in just a few days from very nice to still nice, but cold. I think the rain will also start in the next days...

I have been skateboarding twice in the last 2 days, what I didn´t do for almost 3 month. The pain in my back reminds me to these sessions. Maybe you recognize I am a little bit complaining, but hey: I need love. Send in your best love-related pictures and I will choose a winner. First price is a feature on this wellknown blog. Haha!
Yesterday I have been skating here. It is in Monsanto, the big wooded area in Lisbon. Do you actually know, how Lisbon looks like on the map? Here you go: Lisbon.
On the way to the skatepark we met a guy in the train. He wanted to join our conversation after sitting next to us. He told us, that his girlfriend has a deadly desease and she has to die, if she won´t eat fish daily. Than he started to talk about the developement of human teeth. He finished his speech with telling us, that he tried to become a Jedi Knight for the last 5 years and that he is fighting against the Sith from the Dark Side. May the force be with him.
Raquel took some pictures of my great skateboarding skills and if they are done I will present them to you. Yehaa!

Até logo.

quem casa, quer casa

2007-11-14T22:02:00.001-01:00

So, the title has nothing to do with anything, I just liked it. And this time my update won´t start with a whiny "sorry"-saying that I did not update more early. Because IDGAF. Said that, you will have a bigger one this time. We´ll see.

Shortcuts:
- I love the fact that I can cross a red light in front of a policeman, without getting hassled. Last time in Germany I had to pay 85€ for this little fun.
- Since a few weeks people are selling chestnuts on the streets. That seems a little bit displaced, is there still lots of sun at the daytime.
- The city is getting decorated with christmasstuff as well. Thats a little too early for me, too. Ok, it´s not that long anymore, but still. The good weather is confusing me. Although it is getting cold at night and you need a jacket... What a pity.
- Something else caught my attention quiet a lot in the beginning. At night the public utilities are watering the streets with high-pressure cleaner. I think it is kind of drinkable or at least not from the ocean. I just wondered how many liters of water they pour into the streets every night. I mean, it is helping a lot to keep it nice and maybe they only clean the touristic places, but I think in Germany we would already have a discussion about wasting water and so on...
- I have been to a treehugger-shop lately (bio/eco-stuff) and I was surprised. Almost 75% of the goods were imported from Germany, so I found myself in a little shop surrounded by german ecofood. But as it costs like three times the price it does in Germany, I just bought a nice whole-grain bread. Lovely.

My friend Benjamin, whom I know since we went to the elementary school together, visited me last weekend and we had a nice Caipirinha-revival. Some pix of that weekend and pix of my university are in the album below:

University/BennisVisit

We also have been to a concert, here are some images of the show in Crew Hassan:

Enoch Ardon, Adorno, Too Titan To Fall

You should know Adorno so far.
I didn´t find a homepage or myspace of "Too Titan To Fall" so fast.
Enoch Ardon. Cool stuff.

No video today. Bye.

Finally another update

2007-11-01T18:52:00.000-01:00

Sorry, it has been a while, but chilling out and doing nothing is keeping me pretty busy. Well, thats actually how I feel like in my university. I asked around and its not only me. Often classes don´t take place or start late or end early. Or I leave early, because I need my Macrobiotica. Or I just sleep too long and I can´t make it to the classes. They all start at 12 o´clock, but HEY, I´m an Erasmus. (And I get paid for that. You can add an insult here.)
But how can you feel like working much when there are palmtrees on the yard of the university? And a Galão is only 80 cents? When the cool guys having a beer at noon and playing their guitar? It forces you to be relaxed. It´s not my fault.

What I don´t consider as relaxing is the fact, that Lisbon is build on hills. Seven as you say, but they somehow forget one. It should be eight. Because of this you rarely see bicycles and you have to walk a lot. For me as a guy from Münster this is like completly the opposite of what I used to do. And everything needs its time.

My girlfriend was here for some days and we did a lot of nice things. No, we didn´t do THAT. We never do THAT, we are not married (yet). AHAHAAA, I am so funny. But we visited some nice places and you can see some impressions here:

Belém and more

Short news:
- There is a guy living in this house, I haven´t seen him since I´m living here. He was back home in Ukraine. He is fixing stuff in the house and he is pretty quiet. I think he will never read this and if he will, it doesn´t matter. These are only facts: I have NEVER EVER seen him eating something else than meat. Never. He always puts his meat in the pan, fries it, eats it and thats it. Maybe he is doing this meat diet from Atkins.
- The doclisboa 2007 took place in the last week, it is a documantary film festival. Unfortunatly I was only able to see this movie: Bomb It.
- Still living here, still speaking crappy portuguese.

Check out the FlickR from Istvan.

You should always have one of these in your home. Just in case.

Time for some anti-american slogans? No, but its still fucked up.

Thats it.
No, wait. I miss you, you know who you are.

WORST.MOVIE.EVER.

2007-10-20T16:50:00.001-01:00

If want to see the worst movie ever, watch "The Inner Life Of Martin Frost". Shitty actors, shitty story, shitty dialogues, shitty soundtrack, shitty everything. Even these words are giving the movie more attention than it should get. It is so bad, it is almost funny.
Martin Frost is a writer who writes, guess what, a book. Suddenly a woman(apparently his muse) appears out of nowhere and they fall in love and lalalala. When the girl in his book dies, the woman is dying as well. So he burns the book and she is back again. But "they"(you´ll never know who "they" are) don´t allow them to have sex anymore for exactly one year. And he is only allowed to see her in the mirror. And his friend has one of these women that came from out of nowhere(imagination huhu) as well. He is writing as well. AAAARGH. WTF.

i'm also quick at peeing and pooping but slow at eating

2007-10-17T21:14:00.000-01:00

Allright. Allright. Allright. It took me some time to update, so here comes a huge one. At least I think so. And if you are wondering about the title, its actually just an accident, but as well a greeting to someone who knows who it is and its not you, so you can feel sorry now, that I didn´t greet you.
So, lets get startet. What happend? I don´t know anymore exactly haha. Well, I went to the cinema to see "Planet Terror" and you should do as well. Its insane and weird and I like zombies getting shot. There is a trailer down there in the videosection!

Entao. I went to see Draft, Suchi Rakara and No Good Reason. See some pix of the show here:

Draft, Suchi Rakara, NGR

Giu and Laurenz from Germany passed by, so we had a little Münster-Lisboa-Meeting at the show. It will be repeated on new years eve :)

Check out the bands from the show:
Draft
Suchi Rukara
NGR

Oh, and take a look at this pic. It is from the goodbye-dinner at Ritas house almost two weeks ago. Bejinhos to France!!! And OLÁ to the other ones!

Click for larger image.

When I am posting pictures right now, you should also check these out:

Mixed Up

I am still trying to find another room/flat/whatever to stay, but to be honest, I am not trying too hard. With so many Germans in the flat my Portuguese is not really getting better. We will take a look at some flats the next days...

I am too lazy to write much today... just something that I think I should mention about Lisboa is the DOGCRAP. Damn, its everywhere. But actually there are not too many things, that are strange or different for me at all anymore. I am in love with the daily Galão. Lots of milk mixed with a Bica(Espresso). I am almost completely assimilated.

Here are some links you should check out. The first two refer to Raquels work, a girl I know from here. She is doing great photos, so take a look:

1. Her fotolog. Mostly Lomo.
2. Her flickR.

This one is about bodymodification, I couldn´t get enough of it in the last weeks. Pretty tough and graphic sometimes, but also really good work. I like: Modblog

Today there are going to be three videos.
The first one is a Fado-song. Thats the so called typicall portuguese sound of someone suffering of yearning. Something like that. A lot of restaurants advertise with "Fado tonight". Mariza - Meu Fado Meu. HAHA.

This is the trailer of Planet Terror and Death Proof(Grindhouse). Maybe more funny than Fado.

And one more Family Guy video. This one is intense.

Watch it before they delete it again!

Fim.

BLÖÖÖÖUAAUAAAAARRRLLAHAGGAAAAAAUÖÖ

2007-10-09T19:50:00.000-01:00

My sense of humor.

JWB - Escape, Escape

2007-10-08T21:04:00.001-01:00

lean back. counteract. how many times have you been there? where nothing will ever grow again. no faith. no cure. no words for an excuse. too little. too late. i saw you once there. picking up nails and screws. deep into the mud of what a man can feel. deep into the mud. caught in a condition apart of things will work out. deep into mud. play against the time. counter-clockwise i run. exploit myself for being lost in the end. can't change myself (within the years). hold on. just a minute. stop to breathe. hold on. just a minute. begin to realize the weight of the past. hold on. just a minute. i know it can't be wrong. and I know that. your wounds have just been healed. but your worried thoughts can not be concealed. a feeding cancer. deep inside. you breathe your last.
i know it can't be wrong to follow what burns inside your chest.

I am fine guys. But even in the most beautiful places you just have to hold on for a minute sometimes. One need time to reflex and rethink what happend. Nothing bad happend to me here at all.
I just wanted to post some more ideas, thoughts or whatever that caught me additional to my storytelling kind of reports. And this song just got me. As all of Just Went Black so far.
Yeah, seems as if I am starting to expose myself in the internet. WOW! But no striptease or anything will ever happen here.

7th of October

2007-10-08T17:52:00.000-01:00

Nothing special. I just wanted to say that I got a slight red tan in my face from hanging out at the ocean all day long yesterday. It´s October.

Quatro

2007-10-05T20:32:00.000-01:00

Here we go. Today we´ll have two albums of pictures of the last friday. Huh? Well, I had a nice day going to the Oceanário de Lisboa and in the night the first show of Reaching Hand took place. If you are in Lisbon one day, you should check them out. The fishes and the band as well, both is really worth it:

Oceanário de Lisboa

Reaching Hand - 1. Show, Broken Distance, True Colors

In the meantime I found out some more funny/strange/different-from-germany things going on here in Lisbon. Off course these are the typical travelguide nonsense advices, but I think some are close to reality.
- Eat with knife and fork. If you don´t do it, you seem to have bad behavoir.
- Smoking (pot) in the official buildings of the university is no problem.
- There are no bicycles in town.
--> Damn it. I had a list in my head about these things, and I forgot mostly all of them. Maybe I am already used to it?!

Some more shortcuts:
- Istvan is a poet:"Travelling is not expensive. You will remember it your whole life." and "My English is so bad, I cannot express myself as I want. It is like a prison." And because he hates beeing photographed, find another shot here. Doing what he loves most. Smoking. Oh wait, and drinking beer!

Check out the bands from the concert:

- Reaching Hand - girlfronted HC from Lisbon
- Broken Distance
- Fired Up
- True Colors

Thats it so far. Here´s the usual videocrap. Rambo is back and still pissed!!!

Rambo Is Back And Still Pissed Off - Watch more free videos

três

2007-09-30T16:07:00.000-01:00

Então. My third week is already done. Time is running by, as it seems. As I said last weekend I went to Coimbra with João and his grandma. We met his grandaunt and his cousin with his family. The first day we stayed half the day in the little village his grandaunt lives in, around 30km far away from Coimbra. The other half we spent in Coimbra itself, walking through this calm city which is one of Europes oldest university-cities.
Sunday we spent almost the whole day with his cousin, his wife and the two children in the mountains. We visited an old castle, chilled out at a small creek and finally went deep into the hills to explore an almost completely abandoned village. It was stunning and the pictures can´t transmit the feeling you have, walking through the leftovers of a prior time.

But you can still take a look:

três

Many thanks to Joãos family, I felt warmly welcomed and it was a beautiful trip to the countryside of Portugal.

Off course some more things happened, but I am too lazy to post them all. You´ll get the well known shortcuts:
- I just finished my first week of university and it was completly chaotic, as I expected. I don´t understand too much at all, but I hope it will get better with the time.
- You want an idea of globalization? Here is one: I(German) went with the hungarian guy Istvan in a chinese shop in Lisbon. I bought a japanese noodlesoup which was produced in Germany. Damn it.
- Please imagine this situation as well: We were having dinner, when suddenly Istvan(yeah, still from Hungary) talked to the portuguese Turtle named Geoffrey:"Tens lume?" (Do you have a lighter?). Maybe you should smoke a Mariachi from Spain before. Then its more funny.
- I went into a fancy gym to ask for the monthly fee. 107€. Hahahahahaaaaaaa. Not kidding.
- There is a guy in Lisbon. Every night he is standing at the same place and he is waving to the cars. He is there for YEARS.

I didn´t write that much about Lisbon itself at all, but here are some ideas...
- Everybody is always saying "Sorry", especially in the subway. Honestly. You touch someone. "Sorry.". You want to pass by. "Sorry." Off course there are two different expressions to use in the right situation. It´s a really friendly atmosphere, I like that.
- You stay in line. If you don´t, there is no more friendly atmosphere. I like that, too.
- Don´t say "No". Say "maybe".
- Time is flexible.
- Eat Pastéis and get addicted.
- Try to speak portuguese. They will honour this.

I have to learn some right now. Desculpe. Posting is over.

Oh. Watch this if you like surprises:

Numero dois.

2007-09-21T19:58:00.001-01:00

Here we go again. Just a few more pictures and short news in this post. My first two week are almost done and I had a nice start here in Lisboa. I was hanging out with my new mates, took a lot of touristic pictures and I slept until noon almost every day.
Next monday my Erasmus-Welcome will take place and I think my lessons will start on first of October. Life will change again, no more lazy days. Hard work lies ahead of me. Maybe.

Check this out. I bought a VivaLisboa-Card for using all the different transportation options:

I didn´t have a passportpicture and I was waiting for about 45min to hand over my papers. I gave them an "old" one...

See some more pix of the last days here:

Impressions No.2

Shortcuts:
- I´m looking forward to take lessons in portuguese. My portuguese right now is not worth it to talk about. I never get the answers... merda.
- I will be in Coimbra this weekend. João, his grandma and me are visiting his grandaunt. I will report in the next posting.
- My friend Luisa from Germany got robbed at night, they stole her laptop out of her room, while she was sleeping next to it. And she lost her mobile. That´s baaaaaad and I feel sorry for her.
- This week the Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival took place, and I went with 4 portuguese girls and 2 other guys I know. We saw a movie called Good Dyke Porn. You can check out some scenes. Instead of the name it wasn´t good at all. It was gross. Sorry that I am posting filthy porn again, but it was just awful. The other movie was a tourdiary of a lesbian band from Germany. It was kind of funny to hear german in a lesbian movie in Lisbon.
- In Bairro Alto - the quarter for the partypeople - lives a guy from Brazil. He sells selfmade vegetarian burgers on the streets. If he is not around, you can call him and he´ll come to take the order. After a few minutes he will be back with the burgers. That´s hillarious.
- I am reading "1984" of George Orwell right now. Damn, it´s eerie.
- In the Jardim da Estrala i stepped into the biggest human shit ever. I even had shit on my pants.
- These shortcuts seem to be no shortcuts at all anymore. Last thing: Eugene Mirman can kill a man with his tongue. Seriously:

Depois uma semana...

2007-09-18T17:52:00.000-01:00

Ok, I repost this in English, so my non-german friends will understand as well. I think I won´t write too much anyway. I´ll rather put some pics online frome time to time and give some short updates about what´s going on...

Os primeiros impressãos

Oh, and yeah... Lisbon is GREAT!!!

Shortcuts:
- Our flat (Casa Marvao) got 13 rooms, 4 bathrooms and is kind of labyrinthine so I got lost in the first days.
- Our beloved turtle is named Geoffrey. Its goldfishfriends are called Jochen & Jochen.
- Around the corner the whores and pimps are hanging out.
- 5 minutes by feet to the inner city.
- This is my Flatmate and Homie Istvan from Hungary. He´s a great guy and we love to listen to Elvis. See video down below.
- I met another cool guy. He edited pornvideos for the internet. If you like cheap porn, get an idea of his former boss: Clara G.
- At least one time a day - when I´m home - a guy passes by with his monsterbass in his car. Asshole.
- Or the 12 is bumping by. That´s way better. See here.
- There is a midget living in our neighborhood.
- The "homem elefante" looks way more extreme in real life, than on this picture.
- I met some great portuguese people, they take care of me going to good hardcore-shows haha. Greetings to all of you!

- Soundtrack of the last days - live:

- Listen to the sound of my friends from Adorno
- The Youth - cool punk from Lisbon
- Day of the Dead
- Endstand

- No Good Reason
- Breaking Through
- A peaceful Fight
- Worth the Fight

- Grabba Grabba Tape - just listen.
- Lobsters

- And check out this. We almost pissed our pants while listening to Elvis having a laughing fit:

Thats it.

If you want to know more, check out Wikipedia: Lisbon. Harhar!