Øblog

Sometimes it feels great to invest in a 10 minute drive into nowhere or up the mountains, park the car and turn it off – and then just enjoy the silence. This is where I did such last time:

I think many believes that taking a 10 minute break like that would ruin the time-schedule and plans but all in all no one will notice – the others are too busy with their own time-schedule.

I call it investment because I feel much fresher and happier after a break like that and I perform better. I have to admit that I prefer summers up there but this has its charm as well.

Google finally implemented its images of Norway to Google Street View last week and we’ve seen a few amusing shots. Finn is a company in Norway who also creates street views and one day they met. Check this out:

Link to Google Street view: The Finn car.

I was walking an evening and went down to our local beach, it was peaceful and quiet – except for the calming sounds of the ocean. Ok, I look forward to the summer now.

The drug-party in Vancouver has started, which is an ordinary thing for the Olympics. Whenever I hear the word Olympics I think of it as a drug-event. Where “athletes” compete in finding the best drug that won’t be detected. But most fail and today 30 of the “athletes” has been denied start because of too high bloodvalues.

I pity the sponsors, after a broadcast we hear “this was brought to you by….” McDonalds for instance. Do the owners of Mc Donalds have stocks in the pharmacy production or are they simply believing that the Olympics is a healthy sport-event? I think that is a bit naive.

Oh well.. Happy needle-weeks! Eh I mean Olympics!

The irony is that Vancouver also struggles with other drugs: BBC

Once again we had a successful kickoff, this time in Berlin. It was a great experience and I learned a lot about the history – its a pity that they’ve cleaned out most of it but luckily some sensible persons stopped them so theres still some scars left for the next generations to see. I understand though that they wanted to get rid of it, they wanted to start with blank sheets and who are we to decide that they should be a gigantic museum.

Our hotel was located near Alexander Platz, a grim area with concrete and enormous roads but deeper into the city centre we found the cozy buildings, the ones that I imagine thinking of Germany.

We walked a lot, took the trams, trains, subs and buses – I think we were everywhere. I took a lot of pictures but I think this is my favourite. Hundreds of snowmen near the Dom:

Heres from an area where they haven’t removed all scars, the wall, the tower and the fusebox is still there. Lots of people tried to pass this area but failed.

Here is one of the Stasi buildings, this is were the new arrests were taken in and interrogated. An artist once asked people in Berlin what they would like to know about the building – the artist printed their questions onto these signs on the building.

We also visited the ghost stations, Checkpoint Charlie and all the other sites. We had a great guide who could tell us all the details. One of the things that surprised me was that so many of the citizens were members of Stasi, some says each 6th were on Stasi’s payroll – no wonder people got psyked out. They couldn’t trust their neighbor.

Else there were lots of great buildings to see, here is the Berlin Cathedral (Berlin Dom) seen from the DDR Museum, I stitched it together from many shots:

Have you seen a bigger gate than this? This is what the communist leaders would see when they came to Berlin for a visit:

They wanted to tear this down too but so many people live there now so they were denied.

Here is the known TV tower in Berlin, I tried to catch the “God’s Vengeance” but a bit difficult from this angle.

Last week Joakim and i visited Myrkdalen, a two hour drive up in the mountains, a great ski resort which its guarantied to have snow during winters. This was January 23.. I am way behind schedule posting to my blog.. sorry.

Heres on our way up, I love the drive.