End of the Heatwave

After it was [very hot for many weeks](/2007/05/25/too-hot-again/), and especially unpleasant last week, the weather completely changed: The thunderstorms they’d been announcing for weeks finally arrived in force. Very loud. Very impressive. And with a huge amount of rain. Today it is cloudy and dark and stormy and still very rainy. I love it. Because not only it’s fun weather, it also means I do not have to sit in a puddle of my own sweat at work.

If it was up to me, I’d keep this weather all summer until we’ll eventually hit the autumn storms.

Kenya Donates Food for Germany

The world is stranger than you think. Spiegel.de is reporting that employees of the Muslim Tawfiq hospital in Kenya, after hearing for the first time about the plight of the poor people in Germany, decided to collect and donate coffee and tea for Germany. Their idea: To send something to keep people warm in cold Germany.

The airline LTU is transporting the 300 kg freight for free to Germany. The recipient in Germany is hoping to use this to give out warm drinks for about 250 HartzIV welfare recipients until April.

(Via lawblog.)

Snowed In

As I wrote on Friday, [snow arrived in Frankfurt en masse](/2006/03/03/snowing-like-crazy/) that day. I cursed my bad luck, that I didn’t have a camera with me. In the morning it was snowing quite a lot, but this only increased. We easily had 15-20 centimeters by the late afternoon. Needless to say, few people were able to cope with the weather. Lufthansa alone had to cancel 150 flights. And it took me about two hours to go home.

I left my office at about 16:25. The bus was supposed to arrive at 16:29, but never came. Someone said there had been an accident with it earlier. Several other guys stood there and waited with me, but none of us was really willing to walk through the snow. Finally, at about 16:45, we decided that we might as well go ahead and walk to the next bus stop.

It was not pleasant. Within a few meters the wet snow entered my shoes and my feet were cold and wet. The bridge near our office was quite a sight. The icy, partially frozen snow was so slippery that the trucks and lorries were unable to drive unto the bridge – it was too steep. This also told us what had happened to the bus line. One truck was standing on the onramp of the bridge, and smaller cars tried to pass left of it – until one of them slid against the safety fence. There was no damage, but the car was unable to resume driving.

We continued our walk, until we arrived at the bus stop of the Flight Training Center. A bus just arrived; the rest of the way to Terminal 1 was just as slow as if we had walked, but at least it was warm.

The subways were also late. I finally arrived at home at about 6:40 or so. Freezing like crazy. The snow is still around, some of it anyway. I wonder if there will be more or if the winter is now finally over.

One Year In Frankfurt

Well, I didn’t search for my train tickets or something, but I am still pretty sure that today (October 29th) marks my 1 year anniversary in Frankfurt. Either that, or the 30th, but yeah I am pretty sure it was the 29th.

So, what have I been doing all this time? Got a job, got laid off, got another job, and didn’t get laid off, so far. Found some new friends, dated more than ever before in my life (which proves to you what a sad life this geek usually has had rather than anything else), but otherwise, it’s been pretty much business as usual.

Frankfurt.

Mh, what’s there to say about Frankfurt. I kinda like it, it’s small enough that you can get everywhere rather quickly, and yet it still has some very neat skyscrapers, and also buildings of “older” styles. There’s a lot of international stuff here, too, mostly due to the airports, but to some lesser extent due to the banks. It’s a weird mix of an international, hub-of-the-world type city and a provincial small town. A lot of the people who live here are fake, or morons, or both. Still, every city has some gems, and I also met some really nifty folks here (you know who you are).

But is Frankfurt “home”? Home, in a way, is where your heart is, or so the saying goes. Is my heart in Frankfurt? Well, obviously, I took it with me when I moved here, still, if I could pick from all the cities in this world, Frankfurt would probably not be my first choice.

So, let’s get started on the second year here.