Last night I spent the time showing my American cousin around the city. And of course I had to test the night modus on my new digital camera. Here is the outcome:

Eisener Steg

For our next issue of the A-Journal we were all thinking about who we would nominate for a Nobel prize. Categories were able to be fictive, so after giving the subject some thought, I decided to invent a new category: “Networking”. My nomination would go to Mark Zuckerberg.

Most of us go there every day and it is the place to be when it comes to networking. You can find nearly everyone and everything there. Mark Zuckerberg turned his idea of connecting his fellow students from Harvard into a worldwide phenomenon – Facebook. Because of him, it is now easy to stay connected to acquaintances, friends and family all over the globe with only a few clicks.
And there are also many many gimmicks and fun stuff you can find there to get your mind off things. Or simply waste time instead of doing stuff you should actually be doing ;)

This week must be the week of my bizarre finds at my university.
This morning I was sitting in one of the student cafés at university where I was preparing a presentation with a fellow student. We had deserved a break so we each got a cup of coffee. Like in each of the cafés, you get a small chip, which you then give back together with your cup, in order to get back the 1€ deposit. At the Frankfurt University, it looks like this:

Great spelling, guys!

Educationalists seem to know better than anyone else, when they’ll be sick. I saw this notice on the door of   the Education Studies library dept.:

[translation: The Educational Studies library will be closed on Thur. October 22nd, 2009 from 7pm due to sickness.]

Surely, nobody just wanted to leave earlier, right…? ;)

What do you do on a rainy, misty sunday in Frankfurt? Right, you grab a friend and go to the annual book fair. Surely I would have went if it had been sunny, because what the Oktoberfest is to beer-lovers, the book fair is to book lovers.

This years guest of honor was China. Walking through I was not really aware of that; they were not as present as the last guest of honors had been in the past years. A reason for this may be the controversy concerning the human rights, or maybe I was just too busy with avoiding all the offers for magazine subscriptions. Continue reading “Books, Books, Books!”

The first week back at university is over. Well, actually today is my second day of the weekend already, since I again was lucky enough not to have any courses on Fridays. On monday morning I was happy to go back to university again – new courses, familiar faces, meeting friends and also simply having a daily routine again. You do need that from time to time. At the beginning of the semester (it is my third already, yikes!) everything is exciting, since it seems like everything is new again.

Right in my first seminar (the third part of a language skills course I have to visit) I knew again, why I just love my major: The professor walked into class with a mask on her face – like the ones from a carneval in Venice. Continue reading “3rd semester – week one.”

Bang on time for the new semester on monday, the new issue of the A Journal will be published. This issue is all about maybe the greatest city on the world – New York City! Since I was there last summer, I was able to write a two page (yes, two pages!!!!) report. The focus I set in my article are the two faces of New York City – the tourist and the native.

New York, New York!
It’s a wonderful town!

Welcome to New York City!
The plane ride to New York City itself is an adventure. Many have not flown that long to any country before and the sight of New York City from the sky shortly before landing amazes most people. When standing on the street, there is nothing to do but to look up in awe how far a regular office building rises up. Tourists want to see all the typical sightseeing spots: the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Ground Zero, Tiffany’s, Fifth Avenue, the MoMa, and Central Park. And all this in less than a week. Which is actually possible, since the city never sleeps.

But beyond the high skyscrapers, a tourist experiences a totally different definition of “masses of people” and noise. Continue reading “New York, New York!”

This morning was actually like every other morning – after checking my emails and Facebook, I briefly wanted to check what was new in the world. The headlines I then saw were surprising: Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. My first thought was „WOW – this is so cool!“ . Now, a few hours later, I am thinking about it again and wondering, if it really is that great.

The Nobel Peace Prize was given to him due to„his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples“ (source: CNN). Did Obama really do this? Continue reading “Obama and the Nobel Prize”