Hey fellas,
you see, the blog seems to take a back seat the last couple of weeks. I'm sorry for that but on the other hand I don't want to bother you with lame everyday stories. So far I'm still pretty good, laying in a huge bed in a hotel near the LAX cause my dearest JOSIE!!!!! has arrived. We left home yesterday and will leave this town today. I'm pretty stoked about this trip, seems to be a great team, Josie, his awesome AnnSo and my dearest Markus.
Some words for the last days. Was actually pretty pretty nice over here. Had a good last working week and a lot of fun with my new Cam. Also we had 26degs on saturday which felt kinda good (if you think about your loved ones with -15!):-) So to make it short and sweet, Mirjam a friend of mine from Santa Barbara came down on Saturday to see the city and so I showed her arround, checked the spots and had a good time. For all the girls of you, do you know this guy on the right? He played Leo DiCaprios' opponend in Titanic. And this moron stepped on my slippers from behind in Beverly Hills and didn't even apollogize! So I took the opportunity and did revenge for Leo and Kate and beat the hell out of him:-) Well no, he also seems to be the bad guy in real life;-)
Here are some pics of saturday, which was pretty awesome with this great weather and the christmas lights all over the place:
And last but not least, see what I shot my new cam! I love this baby, a lot of fun!
Happy Holidays you all! Don't freeze!
Peace and Love!
The weather is pretty nice again, sunny, no single cloud up in the sky and around 20 degs everyday :-) So what should I use my new waterproof HD camera for? See here:
Wow, I passed the 100 days mark and it feels great! One hundret days of pure fun, exciting new stuff and get to know a country that is the way better than it's reputation! I really got to say, as sad as it sounds but it's USA 1:0 Germany.
No, I really mean it, of course I've always been excited about the states and did't cared that much about the politicians here. But seriously if I watch the german news every day, we aren't the way better! After this 100 days I'm really not a tourist any more, I have my scheduled everydays life and know and really settled here. America differs in many ways, but I really got to say in the most differences America scores. So what I want to do in this blog, is pointing out and share some of this experiences I've made with my new life.
"Oh excuse me..." - Respect
That's probably the biggest difference I've experienced here. Everybody treats each other with respect, no matter if you are a manager, a punk kid, a homeless or a 15 year old black kid! You always got the feeling that even if a city in LA wich is crowded like hell, you are SOMEONE, you're not just another invisible whatever, you are THERE! Let's take the Supermarket as an example, you come in, most of the time there is a security guy standing in front of it, asking you how you are today. You're standing in someones way, and you are definitely the person who block the other one, they will excuse them if they want to pass in a narrow situation. And after all is bought and payd they even ask me as a pretty healthy looking kid, if I need any help at my car....so what?!?! I've never been treatened here without respect by anyone, even the 12 year old boys who would spit on the ground in Germany, won't leave you space for passing and probably would have some dumb words for you are just nice here! They ask you whatever they are interested in, say Hy and get out of your way....
"Hey how are you doing" - Smalltalk
You don't answer on this question - WRONG! You will pretty soon figure out if they expect you to answer and tell em how you really do, or just say: Good how about you. But even the question itself is so much more personal than a "Hallo" what you normallywise get by a german service member. And it's a pretty good way to start a conversation, you can start talking to your cashier or whoever, even if it's just smalltalk, why not do it, maybe you find out some similarities, if not, who cares. What I want to say, you feel a lot more welcome everywhere here, cause even talking about the weather can be fun here and it's not that unpersonal and stiff like back home.
"Hey you got a nice haircut, a great ride and an awesome surfboard" - Grants
About this experience I'm acutally not 100% sure, but as far as I can tell it's this way. The thing I always hated about Germany, and I think especially southern Germany is the fact that nobody grants anything anyone. It's always the question, "how can my neighbour effort this new car", "this house must be made with tons of debits" or "look, she went again to get a new haircut and colored it".... SO WHAT!!!!! What is the problem on saying something POSITIVE about someone?!?! What about grant somebody his pool in his garden, his new car or his new surfboard, why always talking bad and expecting bad things about each other?!?!? I just don't get it! I always got the feeling that people in Germany let their happiness depend on others. If we would care more about our own lives and try to get them going the right way and be HAPPY, we would let our neighbours, friends or whoever be happy. Just think about that, tell somebody that you like his haircut, his new sneakers or that you are jealous about his pool, maybe he will tell you that he always wanted to have a wife like yours or whatever, I think you get my point on this one.
"Could you please?" - Help
People really try to help out each other here, its taking and giving and not only in the holiday season. If you need anything, be sure you will somehow get it! It doesn't matter if you know the person a long time, they will be thankfull if you help them out and if you need something you don't have to wait to ask, just do it! As an example, if you take the bus and have a bike with you, there are this special stands in front of the bus you can mount your bike real easy and take it with you. If you are dumb and don't know how to get it, the busdriver will shut down the bus, get out and help you without one single sigh. I always think about how it would be in germany, how a busdriver would get out to help you, let's call this never!
So yeah, that's it for today. I'm not sure if you got all my points, it's really hard to get this to words but I hope it weren't all myths I was talking of. So far these are the differences in life here, I love them but I do know that in a couple of months I have to come back to Germany and right now I'm not sure how I will be able to step back to all the german values, but somehow I'll figure it out!
I've also had a good weekend, I try to blog about it, maybe even video-blog about it this week when my christmas present arrives. And remember, just one week left and my dearest Josie will arrive and we'll hit the road for 2 weeks! This is gonna be sick!
All the best you lousy germans, haha, just kidding!!!
Don
This was ment to be my first video blog entry, sadly my computer screwed it up big time. So be prepared, the next couple of days you will see a very handsome boy showing up on your desktop!
Allrighty, is there anything interesting to mention about my last week?! Yeah to be honest not really, just some other days in paradise! Well there are always some things to mention! Work is still great, not that much going on right now, still working on some annoying features of my architecture website and fixing bugs on existing pages. But Friday was the day boys and girls! I finally saw NOFX!!! One of the oldest and best punkbands ever shown up on this planet! To get to the concert was a nightmare, I tell you! It was again in Pomona, a 35 minute drive (at night, with Toyota at full speed :-), but if you are as smart as me, or don't have another possibility, you drive friday night at 5pm through Los Angeles and it will take you more than 2,5 goddamn hours to get there! :-) But not enough, I had a willcard ticket, what ment that I had to stand in a line for another 30 minutes to get my ticket....got it! But wait, you got to stand another 30 minutes to get in.....HELL YEAH, that's how you get your fans get stoked bout you!
And so I was. Stoked stoked stoked. But before NOFX entered the stage it was time for a band I've listened to a lot in my youth, probably one of my first punk rock bands ever, the MAD CADDIES. They did a great job, and I had a lot of good memories according to their songs. Then it was time for NOFX. Hahaha! These guys are so fucking amazing. They are old as shit, look retarded as possible and are funny like hell. Probably one of the best shows I've ever been to. Lots of good songs, millions of jokes about mexicans and jews (cause they are on of these) and a little musical at the end of the set! Just awesome!
So as my plans to go to Santa Barbara this weekend bursted into air, I decided to do a chill-out weekend combined with surfing. And so I did. Spend lots of time in my bed, talking to my buddies back home, checking the news, listening to some tutorials and checking the surf report. 4 foot waves, perfect for me I thought. Well as always they seemed a lot bigger when you're actually thrown out by them, but anyways. Surfing was kind of good the two days. I didn't really catch these much waves but the ones I did felt very good. What did't feel well was the temperature of the water! BOY, this ocean gets really really cold right now. BRAINFREEZETIME! Big time! The best thing about surfing right now is the feeling afterwards. When you finally, after a hot shower, laying in your bed and watch a movie covered by thousand hoodies, sheets and blankets, love it! For all of you how like dumb college humor, check SUPERBAD, one of the funniest movies I've ever seen.
Yeah, so thats probably it, not that much was going on the last couple of days, but I love to enjoy the pre-christmas time and relax a bit. Lets see what happens next weekend. Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Los Angeles?! Who knows?! Life is good, Kings won tonight, I'm outta here!
Peace and Freedom,
Don
PS: Oh yeah, I just realized that I didn't even mention one word about my title :-) ITS RAINING IN LA! Thats it, wow! Booo!
Hey folks, howzit?! I'm at the San Francisco Airport, waiting for my flight and continuing the blog of the last couple of days.
So lets go baby! After my great gay party night, which (I'm still stoked of haha) I woke up in Downtown SF, tried to grab something to eat, which didn't go so well and headed back home. It went surprisingly well, with just 2 hours of sleep and no idea where I was, I made it on the first try.
The moto for today was already set: GOLDEN GATE, wether it's the park or the bridge. So we went to Height Ashbury (I have no idea how its spelled sorry:-)), its the district where all the Hippi-Movement started (at least thats what they say). We visited a couple of nice stores and went to the Golden Gate Park and YES, this must be the place the hippies hang out. Smell of dope everywhere and hundrets of people trying to find a beat on their bongos :-) But anyway, I put on my headphones and instantly fell asleep. After an hour Aline woke me up, cause all the sun was gone and it already had turned quite cold. Now it was time for the Bridge, sunset in an hour, perfect. We took the bus up north and there she was! Wow! Quite impressing! The two huge, red painted towers high in the sunset sky! Amazing! The shutter on my camera almost started burning as you will see below this paragraph, just check out the pics:
Monday morning I woke up....We packed our bags, thanked Tyler for the place to crash, waved goodbye and headed to the SF Airport. I've booked a car for two days cause we wanted to see Santa Cruz and the Half Moon Bay. We couldn't really believe it as the guy at the car rental station told us, "yeah, just take one of the cars to the right.." We've booked the cheapest category and there we're Dodges, Chryslers and stuff. After Aline was against my plan to take a huge Dodge White Family Van we went for the Chrysler PT Cruiser, a car I always wanted to drive one day. First stop: HALF MOON BAY, for all of you who don't know what's so special about this place, there are two things. It's the most beautiful coast between SF and LA there and the HMB is famous for the MAVERICKS, one of the biggest and most dangerous waves in the entire States. The scene was astonishing, only sad thing, the waves weren't that big, but still quite impressing.
Next stop: Lighthouse... Whatever:-) Just for daddy Bruce who's addicted to Lighthouses. It was really beautiful there, absolutely perfect weather and a nice spot. We took some pictures, enjoyed the view and chilled in the sun. After a while we went again on the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway -> AMAZING) down to Santa Cruz. We didn't know what to expect of this city, just surfers, skaters and chilled people?! Kind of, yeah! We checked in at our hotel, which was quite nice, a pool, huge beds and pretty close to the beach. But the city was almost dead!!! Seams like a summer city. All the attractions near the pier were closed but I ask you and especially Mr. Wingman: WHO CARES?! Wingmans Daddy alias Siggi Scharpf told me during our Italy vacation last year that I had to visit the pier and enjoy the sunset. So I did. The sun went down, the surfers caught their last waves and we went out the pier till the bitter end! Really impressing scenery! Check it out baby:
After some late night Santa Cruz Surf Shop Shoppings :-) we went to the Saturn Cafe, kind of a vegetarian/vegan american diner and I had the best Vegetarian Burger I've ever tasted! This thing was great!!! I definetely have to catch another one on our christmas trip. The night ended with some good RAW Wrestling and a romantic movie, couldn't be better! We haven't been quite sure what to do today, my plan was to visit San Jose, but my colleague Ned told me that it's just another city, not worth spending a single minute. So we decided to visit an outlet center on the way to SF. But one thing i recognized really quick, dude, you have everything you need and after all my outlet visits it was kind of boring to go in and out every shop without letting the credit card glow :-) The result of the day: An american glasses sleeve for my iPhone, a new wallet and a great pair of new balance sneakers...so much to: Dude you have everything:-) On the way back home we stopped in Porto Alto (or whatever), a neat little town, and grabbed something to eat before returning our wagon at the Airport. And yes, here we are, at the airport in SF, the macbooks in our wombs, listening to some great music and waiting till Flight 931 picks me up!
So thats it for now, I'm still doing great here, it was an awesome trip the last couple of days and it's a bit after halftime of my entire USA trip. Life is great here, I'm really looking forward to the next weeks or lets call it months:-) Next week I'm gonna see NOFX, Christmas is quite near and so is the visit of Josie and our roundtrip. After that one and a half months and then it will be: "Ravensburg, hier Ravensburg!" I'm also really looking forward to this time, there are a couple of people I can't wait to see again, but till then the place to be is CALIFORNIA, MY CALIFORNIA!!!
Have a good one guys, enjoy the rest of the week and see you soon!
Bye bye, Don Thunder
Hey Folks, hope you're all doing good as hell and enjoying the sunny and warm days back home! I send a big hy-hug from San Francisco - home of the gay and city of the bay!
Lets begin with thursday, Thanksgivin, the day the trip began. I stood up pretty early to get down to Manhatten to catch some waves before we fly up to SF. It was 7.30 in the morning and guess what?! All the lots (about 200) where stuffed and I had to wait to park my car. I don't know what the hack is going on with these sucking surfer dudes? Anyway, I went into the water, every 2 meters a local, so I had a really crappy session, but it still was fun. The really really scary thing about this morning surf was this: I knew that there should be a lot of leopard sharks these days down at the beach, and normallywise they don't attack humans so I was pretty relaxed....TILL, I STEPPED ON A LEOPARD SHARKS BACK!!! Goddamn hell! That was scary! I instantly tried to get my foot off him, but I again stepped on him...BOY! I tell ya! This thing must have been about 6 feet tall and felt really weird...yeah, so as my heartbeat went up to almost a million, I went back to the beach and headed home! Scary but really really funny experience!!
So, Kijo, my "Dad" was so nice to drive me and Aline to the airport. We checked in, chilled, and finally went onto the plane. It was a very very short trip though. We started, had a beer and landed, that was pretty much it :-) But yeah, for me as a flying rookie, it still was awesome. I love the starts, feels like a rocket in my.... :-) At San Francisco we took the sub to our hotel for the first night. The hotel was acutally really cool, cheap as hell, a huge bed and a TV!!! Haven't had one for a really long time. So yeah, it was Thanksgivin, all stores closed, the only people on the street were the homeless...so we decided to stay home and watch WRESTLING!!! Hahaha, awesome. At the eve we headed to the movie theater to watch PIRATE RADIO, a really really good film about the revolution of rock music in Great Britain. So for all of you who haven't been in there, do it! It's worth it.
The next day the streets were filled again, bright sunshine and comfortable temperatures. We went down to the fishermans wharf, some kind of harbor and fishermans village, with a beautiful view to ALCATRAZ - the famous jail island. Afterwards we climed up to a some tower, with a nice view over some parts of the city. We planed to cook at the evening for our new host, Tyler, who was so kind and let us couchsurf at his place. So we walked through little italy and china town to catch the sub back home. San Francisco is actually a really really pretty city, couldn't be more different to LA. I like it, especially that u are able to get everywhere with sub or bus. As we arrived at our new home directly at the SF-University-Campus we shaked hands with Tyler and his 2 friends and started cooking. Afterwards we had a little Jam with guitars and "drums" in the flat, but this didn't take to long, cause Don, master of the french-goodbyes went to bed pretty early and slept like a baby till the saturday morning sun woke him up:-) (Should become a writer!!)
Again we did some touristic sight seeing, went to a park, to fishermans wharf and stuff again and finally met Anna, my friend from Ravensburg, and her Santa Barbara Crew at a pretty nice italian restaurant. But wait! Big news, I got my first american haircut (from a korean woman) hahaha. She was pretty nice but didn't hesitate to use the electric scissors and made a new boy out of me! (BTW: Bruce called me Adolf, according to my new haircut hahaha). Yes to come back to the important things in life, eating! So we met Anna, her sister, Steffi, Flo, Melinda and Alex there, had some great italian food and Peroni beer there. The plan was already set: partying in the eve! But where?! WHY NOT GOING TO THE GAY DISTRICT OF SF?!?!?! Very very good idea! Hahaha. Yeah, there are a lot of gay people in SF but especially at the Castro district live hundrets of gays. Steffi had already arranged a date with a german she knows from earlier studies and he wanted to show us his a bit special part of the city. So we went to Castro, met everybody there and went to the first gay-pub I've ever been in my entire life. But hey, it was awesome, very very new, but funny to see 40 year old guys touching and kissing like teenagers hahahaha! Flo and me where probably the only hetero guys there and that shouldn't change for the rest of the eve. Jens was really lovely and showed us everything, so we headed to another bar, I instantly went to order some beers when suddenly somebody whispered in my ear: "Hey boy, just that you know: The Bartender is completely into you" And I was like: "Wow, okay thank you..." Hahahahahaha! Great, the first guy who has a crush on me!!! Awesome!!! And acutally he was a really handsome guy, so I take this as a compliment. This bar also was a lot of fun, we had some nice talks to a dragqueen and an 50 year old gayguy in "Lederhosn". Sadly Aline was too tired to take the next step, which was a gay club!!!
So she left with a cab and me, flo, jens and steffi went (already pretty hammered) to this gay club. And this was it, PARADISE FOR DRUNKEN DON!!! Jens introduced us to his boyfriend and a couple of other ones and it was time to PARTY OUR ASSES OFF hahahaha! The club was packed with probably 200 people, 10 of them girls and 2 of em hetero, me and flo! And believe me, gays are offensive like pigs on speed. I've never had so many hands on my butt and chest...hahahaha! But it was such a funny experience! I was hammered and kept dancing with my gays and steffi....really really great! But as always, the party stops at 1.30am....that sucks! We all had the perfect level, were in the dancing mood, had some really great conversations and then Lights and no music...damn! But what would be a gay night without an "AFTER" Party, hahahahaha! Yes, so we crushed at a flat near the club, drank and ate the rests of a 40est birthday. Nice nice! But yeah, the times changed, it was time for the boys to find their bed partners for tonight, so it seemed the best idea to get off haha, just kidding. We caught a cab and I saluted the driver with a drunk friendly: "Hey DJ, could you please turn up the volume?!" No sooner said than done, he turned Lady Gaga to the fullest and we 6 danced in the cab with open windows through the nights of San Francisco....GREAT!!! The hard core was left then, me, flo and steffi. After a long search for a possibility to grab some beers and dance till sunrise we landed at their youthhostel. It was already 5 am or something but we still had some talks, and tried to drink beer but that was a bad idea....I don't want to tell you all the details of what happened then...just imagine:-)
I slept about 2 hours and this is probably the reason this blog is so confusing and not right written. But I don't give a hit :-) I think you get my points and I will update everything tomorrow. But for now I need a hard cut and go to sleep.
Good morning lovers! It's 8am, I'm lying in my bed and enjoy an absolutely beautiful morning with sunshine and a perfect blue sky.
My weekend was so awesome, especially sunday! I went surfing all day, had a lot of fun and had an amazing conversation with a hawaiian Dude. He also took the photo of me below. I still look a bit uncomfortable on my board, but believe me, it's so much fun. I really enjoy it!
Beside my surfing carreer I'm doing more than well, I really love my life here, but convince yourself and tell me if you could think of a better view through your rearview mirror.....I can't!
That should be it for now, only 4 more weeks till christmas and our 2-week-trip with Josie! Awesome!
Tomorrow last day of working and then flying up to San Francisco for 5 days, stoked stoked stoked!
I'm outta here, see you guys, take care and go windsurfing if it's so windy at home!!!
Bye, Don
I gotta tell you, I got such a hangover, all I need right now is a warm, cuddly bed, some coke and a hockey game. I'm watching the Sharks vs. the Ducks right now, NHL is just awesome, these guys are soo good, fast and technically perfect, awesome sport. But not to bother you any longer with some lame story nobody's interested in I start my weekly update.
My week was pretty good, but time flies by so fast, it's crazy. I go to work at 9am every day and get out of the office at 6pm, sadly it's pitch black, so no surfing during the week. Work is still fun, we're working at some interesting projects and I'm almost done with the website I do for an architect. Ned, one of my new coworkers is just awesome, we have tons of fun everyday and hopefully he will show me the Hollywood hood, he used to live at, one day. Beside work, Aline is still here, also worked during the week for a watch salesman at beverly hills. So we both were pretty exhausted in the evenings and chilled most of the time. On sunday we've seen the new Roland Emmerich movie called 2012. Pretty awesome to see your neighbourhood flooded and sinks into the ocean. A really entertaining movie, if you looking for something intellectual, it's of course nothing for you then!
Yesterday night was pretty much fun. We went to The Echo, an alternative club in east LA to pardy hardy. Gautham and P, some buddies from LA, joined us and so we met in front of the club. I already had a couple of beers and Aline was so nice to drive that night. The club was pretty cool. Bunch of bands were playing and the girls were pretty handsome! We had a really good time, drinking, talking, goofing around and was getting drunk as hell. Gautham and P didn't stop giving me their drinks so I had a bad bad mixture of pretty much everything. But again, I need one of you buddies from hometown here! We need to hunt the girls down, it would be sooo much easier with one of you! So get your stuff packed and come over!!! We left at about 2 or 3am, I don't really remember;-) The only thing I remember is falling onto my bed, putting my doze-off-music in and falling asleep in seconds.
The bad thing was, I've already planned to get to Manhatten Beach at 7am the next morning for surfing. So just after an awesome "rush" (feeeel the rush ooooohhhoo....(goes out to Matti-Katzebohle)) and few hours of sleep I stood up, didn't even dress, just put my wetsuit on and headed with a very dizzy head down to the beach. And guess what?! I had my first american car accident!!! Awesome ah?! But it wasn't my fault, the guy in front of me wanted to pass the intersection and I followed straight behind him. For some reason he stopped and backed off, maybe to let some pedestrians get over the street. But he did't see me and my nice car, so just at the moment I hit my horn he crashed into me! Damn!!! So we went to the next alley and looked at the damage. My blinker and front bumper are busted, but it's not that bad. So we exchanged insurance information, he apologized and we all went down to the beach to catch some waves, cause he and his friends also were a bunch of surfers.
I expected only a couple of surfers, cause it was 8am on saturday morning. But yeah, actually it was as crowded as I've never seen it before. Lets say at the whole Manhatten Beach there were about 150 surfers in the water, just sick! Don't californian surfers pardy hardy?! Or are they just "hard-dogs" :-)??? So I went into the water and my head and body asked me: "Dude are you serious?!?!?" and I wasn't that sure if I was. I still felt so dizzy, my stomach was a mess and the waves did their part. Even I felt really really bad I had one of the best few catches though. After getting home again, I showered as hot as possible and went to bed to take a nap.
At noon we went to East-Downtown to walk around, but it wasn't a pretty nice place there, so we decided to head more west to go to the California Vegan restaurant to grab some awesome food. So we did, enjoyed and went to the famous LA Guitar Center. It's such a huge store with guitar, PAs and DRUMSSS!!! They had a bunch of electronic drums there and it felt soo good to play my instrument again! Awesome! After my jam session we drove back home and here we are. I'm tired and exhausted as hell and looking forward to tomorrows surfing with the Santa Monica Surfers.
Take care, and see you in San Francisco at Thanksgivin!!!!
Bye bye bye! Thunder
DON AT THE FAMOUS HANDPRINTS OF SICK SICK IRON MAIDEN!!!!
A wonderfull evening boys and girls, mum and dads, dudes and chickichikichickens!!! How the hack is it going?! Do you remember me?! Its me, Mr. Don Ailinger!!!
I know it has been a while, and I really want to apologize that you fewer and fewer entries, but as I start getting rid of my tourist life here and really getting used to my daily life, not every single minute of my life is that "awesome-mind-blowing-worth-to-blog-about" any more. So weekely updates seem to be the new trend here :-)
Lets start with the last weekend. As my buddy Greg left this sinking shipwreck :-) I needed to take some rest and get my batteries reloded again, cause we've been a lot on the road the days before. So my weekend was a mixture of sleeping, some digital work and of course surfing. Manhatten is my new beach to be. Its beautiful there and the waves are really good and sometimes turn out to be tooo big. Like last sunday. Boy, I gotta tell you. These waves were the way to big for me. I guess like 10 foot or something and the tide was so agressive that I decided to quit being the playball of the waves after an hour and went back to the beach completely exhausted. Dude, never underestimate the power of waves, I got tons of respect of em....
What about the week?! Yes! Actually, work is really really fun! I enjoy to work with my new colleagues and at some great projects. It feels good to be a member of a team, taking responsibility and figure out solutions for difficult tasks. Awesome. Right now we're doing some websites for a movie company called Participant Media. To name some: Website for Al Gores An inconvient Truth and for Oceans, a Disney movie about the life underwater. Yeah, and thats possibly another reason why I like this work here that much. Very very good clients and interesting projects. Just Awesome. So the work week starts to pass by a lot faster than in the beginning.
Friday night - Time for a show!!! It was friday morning, about 11 am and I was wondering what I'm gonna do at night. So I went to my concert schedule and found out that the amazing Every Avenue stopped at the Avalon in Hollywood that night. Great! Bought my ticket, waited for quitting time and went to Hollywood. The show wasn't that crowded as expected but the show was good. The first 2 bands did a solid set and the crowd started to get in the mood some good music. Every Avenue was awesome. Thumbs up for the singer, a: his a really handsome guy and b: he can sing like crazy! He killed it completely, the songs are great anyways, but he did such an awesome job! Thumbs thumbs thumbs!!! After the White Tie Affair - who were a bit too gay for me - I headed home and fell asleep like a baby!:-)
Saturday was a good surfin day, better then I've expected. Sunny weather, almost the 25 degs and no cloud as far as you can see. I decided to check Manhatten Beach again, drove there, attached the leash and went into the water. We were about 25 surfers and the guy next to me looked somehow familiar to me...but I thought, yeah, dude, how should you know him...but after 2 hours still thinking that I know him from somewhere I took the opportunity and asked him where he's from! After a couple of word exchages the biggest coincidence in my entire life was out!!!!! I knew him, he is from Germany, he is from Ravensburg, he's from the Westside and he lives in the fucking same 30-Zone than I do!!!!! Dude!!!! What the hack is going on?!?! How small is this world?! Not even a village any more!!! It's a 30-Zone!!! :-) And the funny thing is, we don't knew each other, I just knew his face from somewhere....and yeah, my brain seems to work better than ever. We decided to hang out the whole saturday. We went to Hermosa Beach to grab some food, headed to Santa Monica, checked out the pier and the surfshops! After this great hours I picked up my dearest Aline, who is on a America-Trip right now. It is awesome to have her here again after a long time not seeing each other.
We drove home, I showed her around, introduced her to the fam and afterwards we went to West Hollywood to meet Felix, the guy I met at surfing and his friends again. After a bit of a journey through LA, we finally found a club to hang out. We had some 7-$-Beers and good conversations but not that Party-Feeling. Dude, I miss it. I wanna party again!!!! :-)
Sunday started lazy:-) Sleeped kind of long, had breakfast with Aline in the sun and packed my stuff for Malibu Beach. We were supposed to meet Felix and the guys at 2 at the beach. I expected an awesome sunny surf day with good waves...."expected". We came to MB - no waves at all - low tide, so all the rocks showed out of the water - longboarders who caught even the smalles waves. Aline went for a beach run and I lied in the sun, waiting for the waves to get bigger... After a while Felix showed up, it turned out that he has been surfing there earlier today, feel to the reef and cut an arteria of his arm...so he had to get it fixed at the urgent care...for only 600 bucks!!! As I point out later, this day possibly sucked for everyone... I went in to catch at least some waves....I didn't catch more than two, also fell to the reef and these goddam rocks breaked a hole into my board....DAMN!!!! I was pissed, cause it means another 30 bucks or whatever to fix the board and it theses waves weren't worth one cent....dude!!!! BUT who cares :-) We went home, Aline cooked some great food and afterwards we went to 2012. I pretty nice movie. Hollywood on its best, millions of special effects and a familiar story. I like it.
That should be it for now. I'm sooo tired, its 2 am and I need to find some sleep. I hope this entry makes sense at all, cause I didn't double check wether the content nor the spelling. Screw it, whatever, you definitely will get my points. So enjoy it, have a nice Monday and write me postcards dudes!!!
A wonderful good evening family, friends and my other dearest followers. I want to start this entry with some motion pictures from the Santa Barbara trip last weekend. And I have to tell you, as I edited the few clips Greg had captured with his iPhone, and added some of my favourite songs, I recognized what a wonderful life I live here. Check this out:
I think the perfect caption would be something like „Beauty of life at the fullest“. I can‘t believe that I have such a perfect life right now... I‘m really thankfull!
So lets get back to the stories of our lives. I think the last blog entrie by Greg (which was funny as hell) was on Tue or Wed, so I start with wednesday night. We went over to Carlos and had some really good Pizza and a nice talk with him. Afterwards we went back home again to watch the Baseball Finals between the Phillies and the Yankees. And guess who won?! Of course, if I got a Yank named Greg here the Yankees won. Awesome.
Thursday started early, both of us tired as hell but we wanted to start our day early cause it was supposed to be a lot to do. My boss Jochen was so nice to get me time off on thursday and friday, so I was able to enjoy life with my special Greg here. We packed our surfboards and stuff in my pretty little car and headed north, up the Pacific Coast Highway towards Malibu. It was awesome there, beautiful nice weather, no one in the water, a lonely lifeguard tower and some good waves. So we went into the water, which isn‘t that warm anymore, but hey, we got balls:-) Surfing starts to get better and better, I made it a few times up on my board and caught my longest ride ever. Greg is also doing better, even with the shortest shortboard of all time:-D
Time to leave the ocean, dry our surferboybodies ;-) and head to Beverly Hills. It was great, we went up and down the streets to see some nice houses where probably a lot of stars live...And also a lot of great cars on the streets...so we saw this sportscar and both of us: „wow dude, look at this car..“ and instantly after that greg and me were yelling „ DUUUUUDDDEEE IIITTTSSS LLIIIONNNNEEELL RRIIIICHHHIIIEEEEE“. Hahaha! And yes it was, Lionell Richie, so I hit the breaks and u-turned my car on the 6 lanes Beverly Hills Main Street, haha all the guys out there probably thought we‘d be insane...and they are right:-) So we pushed the Corolla to its limits and raced as fast as we could go! And there it was, our chance, the lights turned red and we stopped directly beside Lionel. We both waved, thumbed up and he was perfect! Smiling into the camera, waving back and also put his thumbs up! That was awesome!!!
The plan was to get to Travis Barkers Famous Store, but sadly we lost the adress, we had no idea where to go. So we decided to drive down to Manhatten beach to surf to the sunset. Again one of the experiences I will never forget. A great beach, a pier and the sunset and me, surfing directly beside the pier seeing the sun go down...look at the picture and you will know what I‘m talking about!!!
Time again to get out of the water. We went home to shower hot hot hot and left for Griffith Park. Before, we stopped at the shopping mall near my house and did some shopping for ourselves and gregs family. The drive to Griffith Park should turn out to not be that easy. My navigation system turned completely crazy, the guy told me to drive up roads which don‘t even exist hehe! But yeah, it was no big deal, cause we drove some little streets up the hills with a view completely unbelievable and insane houses - just wow!!!! Awesome! Finally we made it up the hill to Griffith Park, which is an observatory on top of the hills of LA, with a great view at the Hollywood Sign and over whole Los Angeles. Just take a look at the pics below and you will see how mindblowing this view is!!! Sadly we lost a lot of time driving there and so we only had a couple of minutes left to enjoy the view, but believe me it last! Time to head home to go sleeping cause friday was also supposed to be a long day!!!
7am: Ringeldidingeldiding! The alarm went down, both again tired as hell but ready to hit the road down to San Diego Baby!!! For breakfast we went to IHop, the international house of pancakes. I had some Banana-Strawberry-Pans....dude!!! Delicious as f***! :-)
After that great morning meal which almost let our stomaches burst we went to Newport Beach. For me as a big OC California Fan a must see hahahaha! Sadly the place isn‘t exactly the beach and pier they‘re shooting the series but dude! Who cares?!?! It was great there, a lot of surfers in the water, some really really nice beach house you definitely could spend your last days...We drove through the streets of NPBeach, looked at the houses, cars and boats and thought, wow, how nice can a place probably be?!?! Newport Beach is definitely one of my favourite towns here in beautiful California. (The one with the blue marquee is my one :-)
Next stop San Diego, but wait, a sign showing to Laguna Beach...alrighty! Lets go there we said! And again, the drive down there, just amazing. The landscape here is sooo beautiful. All the palm trees, the green fields, the ocean and the beautiful houses....paradise! I think in Laguna Beach we probably were the oldest and cheapest car, haha, no wonder, but yeah, a lot of Porsches, Ferraries and Escalades. Seems to be the home of the rich and the famous;-)
Wow, this is probably the longest blog entry ever, not yet finished and worth to spend a couple of more words. Next stop San Diego! As we drove down there, the colors turned from a beautiful green to brown...seems like the mexican border isn‘t that far away any more...:-) We stopped at a surf outlet and I bought some nice stuff for surfing and a new backpack - shopping here is soo sweet:-) After a quick stop at downtown San Diego we went to the famous Pacific Beach to surf some waves. And they were awesome, probably head high ones, with a good break. Paddling out was again the hardest part of the session. Its soo exhausting to get throught the breaking waves, always pushing you back to the beach or ripping you of your surfboard. But yeah, I got to say, surfing gets better and better. I caught some really high ones and rode 3 or 4 completely till the beach stopped me! It‘s such a great feeling to see the wave coming, paddel in, stand up on your tiny board and ride for 10 secs only with the power of the wave. Greg also caught some and had a lot of fun.
For the evening I had some tickets for a show at the house of blues. All time Low, a great pop punk band stopped there with the Glamour Kills tour. The venue was just awesome, a huge building with a restaurant, a bar and a nice concert room. All styled like you imagine an old blues club, great! As we already had recognized the whole day, San Diego girls are very very pretty, and that shouldn‘t change at night:-) May the age went down to mid teenagers but yeah, still a lot of hotties around:-) So as you can imagine me and Special Greg had a lot of fun and the bands were great! The main act, All time low was funny as hell. The singer seemed to be drunk or on dope or something. Kidding all the time but still singing sooo good! Check out the video below:
So guys, that should be it for today. I had a couple of awesome days with my dearest Greg! It was sooo great to have him here. I will miss him, but I‘m sure he will also miss Cali!!! Dude come back whenever you want to!!!
There is one thing left I want to say, I skyped with a good friend earlier this night and for us as real men it was kind of emotional and I recognized one thing again. You don‘t need tons of „friends“, the only thing you need are a handfull of real close buddies you love - and I definitely got em! You guys know who I‘m talking about. Thank you all so much for being there, I miss you and we will have a great time again soon! Keep things going crazy at home for me! Miss you guys, you‘re awesome!!!
Hey, whats up all Don-followers out there,
since my cousin is busy gettin drunk in the corner, he told me to write his blog today.
So get ready for an amazing couple of days told by Greg, Don's Cuz.
On Saturday it was time to get ready for an amaazing weekend in Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful places I've been to. So we packed up our superfly whip (Toyota Corolla), and went to get some supergay stuff for Don's ears so they wouldn't get infected again when surfin. We also got some cool wigs for our Halloween costumes. Me and Don dressed as Lifeguards, David Hasselhof/Napoleon Dynamite Style. After that we headed towards Santa Barbara, where we later experienced a beautiful, mindblowing, fascinating, amazing, unforgetable sunset at the beach sorrounded by mountains and dolphins.
Then we got ready for the PARTY on the UCSB campus, where as we later found out 50000 drunk people would go absoultely crazy including my cousin ;) Lots of beer nice/hot people and pure vodka ;) After the party was over we froze off our asses cause we couldn't find a cab to take us to our superluxurious hotel called Don's backseat in his car. The next morning we had breakfast at Subway. After that we headed out to do some morning surfing. Again absolutely beautiful. 6 Dolphins swimming right nexto us, seals checkin out our surfin skills and good waves at a cool beach. Then we picked up Anna, one of Don's friends. We chilled at the beach and watched some hot chicks surf. Then Don had a delicious In-n-Out Burger with good company. We dropped of Steffi and took Anna with us to the Camarillo Outlet Center. Lots of cheap clothes and cool stores. Don got an Adiday watch, which would usually cost 180$ for 40$. And I got a bright yellow skiing jacket, which would cost 380$ for 110$. Good deals, dontcha think?! We dropped of Anna at the trainstation and went home. On the way back, we saw at least 30 fishing boats all lid up and fishing at the same spot. It looked scary. We got home looked at the stuff we bought and had some good, free pizza. On monday Donski had to go to work while I was chillin at Santa Monica beach, in front of Megan Fox's house. we cooked some good food and wached Saw V. Today I went to Manhattan Beach, which was prettier and nicer than SM and Venice. I gotta go now, cause Don and I are goin to the movies to see the new Saw VI. C yall. Hope you enjoyed my blogging, even though I know that it was thousand times better than my cousin's. Bye. GREG
Hey hey hey whaats up?!
A long time again, no problem, this post will blow you away, I swear (lie!):-)
First of all let me introduce to you: Special Greg! My Cute-Cuz-Katzebohle! Her arrived at wednesday night and I picked him up at the LAX! Feels so good to have em here, but it makes me busy busy busy again too, so don't blame me for not blogging, he cares for it this time:-)
He's enjoying his stay till now a lot, all time out in Venice, Santa Monica or Downtown. I work a lot these days, we got a lot stuff to do but it is so exciting right now. I got two new colleagues now, Ned and Brian, and jokes are thrown from one side to the other, just great! I'm pretty much involved in everything right now and it feels really good to work as a team!
Yesterday me and Greg went to Venice after work, checked out the nice sunset, kissed a bit....oh sorry, not for public:-) Afterwards we went to my fav indian restaurant here and had a delicious spicy veggie food. AND we finally met our first celeb. It's Chris Klein, an actor, took part in American Pie! Great haha! But sadly the spy pic I took was ereased....what leads me to the next point:
MY NEW IPHONE!!! Hahaha so great, greg brought me the old one of my Stinky-Steve! And now I have a great new toy with Rockband, Metallica, Surfreport, whatever!!! And for sure a new mobile camera, what will give me the chance to take snapshots everywhere I am, you'll find some of em here!
Today, I quitted work earlier to catch Greg in Santa Monica! I picked him up and we drove up the pacific coast highway, and it was awesome! The HW is directly on the coast, a "stoiwurf" to the ocean and the sun was goin down behind the mountains. Nice! We stopped in Malibu to hit the pier, real great, perfect weather, no clouds and a wonderfull dusk. Afterwards we drove through the backcountry to Hollywood! Was amazing there, a lot of crazy people, some costumed as monsters, scaring people, nice! We shopped some clothes and trash and walked up and down the Hollywood Boulevard.
Right now we're laying here, chillin, watchin some surfin movies, playin with our iphones and of course bloggin. Tomorrow will be awesome, we'll go shopping at the outlet store, get our costumes and drive to Santa Barbara. And then PARTY PARTY PARTY yeeeha!
We let you know how it all ends:-)
See you soon!
(Not read through, again if you find some mistakes, write an email to: georgundgobo@care.com)
BTW: I miss all my Katzebohles so much here! Catch a plane and come bye! This would be awesome!!!
I feel a lot better than the last two days, I'm moving forward, almost beat my cold and ear, listening to the new Atreyu record and enjoying my new headphones! Really really nice ones!
Seems like all the meds I've taken finally killed the flu and rebirthed my ear! Only one thing left that sucks, I hear almost nothing on my right ear, but I think I found the reason. My ear is stuffed with all this ichords and stuff, so I finally need to see the doctor to get rid of this. I'll check out if I find the one Margaret suggested me and then we'll see wich ear I take for his diagnosis:-) If there is something like: "Don, its no big deal, i just ned a sec" then I'll take the left, working properly, one. If it's something like "Don, this looks bad, ur surfing career needs a break for a few weeks" then I'm surely taking my right one which makes me almost deaf. Cause I'm so stoked hitting the waves right now, it's almost 2 weeks now that I haven't been on the board! Damn! I've already cleaned my board and rewaxed it today, so nothing then my ear is standing in our way ocean-baby!!! But I'll get it fixed be sure bout that!
So only three days left this working week and then I'll be in heaven, which is called Santa Barbara University right now:-) And you know what, YOU KNOW WHAT?! MY CUZ IS ARRIVING FOR HIS STAY TOMORROW!!! Yeeeeha! I'm so stoked! I'll pick him up at the airput tomorrow night and then we're facing 10 days of just going crazy in LA! That is damn nice!!! I can't wait to have him here! This will be a great time! Expect a lot of blog entries, fotos and untelled stories! Great!
That should be it for now!
I'll do some work, cook a nice meal and watch a movie!
Take care buddies, see you all soon!
I'm Don, 22 and ready to hit the road! I run this blog to letting all my friends back home in Germany know what I'm doing here in the states. I'll stay in LA, California for overall 6 month and I'm sure that I'll experience a lot. So if you're interested, follow me!
Here are adresses to my website, my other blog, twitter and actually my flickr account which contains the best shots I'll take:
