Going for a quiet weekend

For once I actually seem to manage to spend a (relatively) quiet weekend. The first one in two or three months I may add. My Friday started very late, past 3 p.m., and it was with delight that I woke up and realized that I had slept for almost 12 hours. All thanks to having the very smart idea of turning off my alarm-clock before I went to bed, also something which I haven't done since late May or so. It's not often that I wake up with a smile on my face but that was one of those rare occassions.

Friday evening was again spent in the city, where I had also gone out the night before, and it again turned into an excellent and very relaxing session. While Thurday's discussions with a close friend where pretty much focused on OLPC related matters on Friday we randomely meet three guys from Bosnia who live in Austria since the mid-90s. Initially we chit-chatted about pool and other Irish Pub matters before turning to politics, the upcoming elections and Austrian attitudes and policies towards foreigners. It was a very insightful discussion to say the very least.

Saturday started a little earlier then Friday but I dedicated most of my afternoon watching 4 episodes of a TV series I'm currently hooked on. Then I visited my grandmother for dinner which was, as always, excellent. Now I've been watching some Two and A Half Men while trying to decide what to do with my night. And you know what, watching 5 of the 22min-episodes really took care of that question. ;-)

Tomorrow I will be focused on catching up with the many e-mails that have been accumulating in my inbox over the past 3 or 4 days. Then I'll head for coffee with another close friend before potentially hitting a showing of Michael Clayton. Plus I hope to get some reading done, the stack of books, newspapers and magazines next to my bed is growing taller by the day.

All in all definitely a very quiet and relaxing weekend. Looking at my schedule it might well be the last one for quite some time. Next weekend I'm heading to Klagenfurt, in the south of Austria, for a house-warming party. The weekend after I'll be in Vienna. Then it looks like I'm going to Brno the first weekend in September. Followed by a potential trip to Croatia and a visit of a friend close to Graz (also in the south) on the weekends thereafter. And you know what, then I have exactly one weekend left before university starts so something tells me that I'll be quite busy. So I better enjoy this weekend while it lasts...

13 hours of sleep

Oh my God, I can't even begin to tell you how unbelievably relaxed I feel. It's like I've received and physical and mental refresh. All thanks to the power of 13 hours of sleep which by the way is more than I got between Tuesday to Friday combined.

I know I could have joined my colleagues for the '60 Years of Berlin Airlift' show, spent the day outside in the sun, or gone to a museum. But you know what, sleeping all day and getting out of bed at 5:30 p.m. really was the best thing to do.

Now I'm off to do some Saturday chores such as a quick cleanup of my room, doing some laundry, buying groceries and cooking something. And then I'm off to a friend's party...

Can you tell that I'm thoroughly enjoying my start into the weekend? :-)

Quick summary of a busy week...

What a week! It's really insane how quickly it went by.

I still vividly remember Monday morning and the pain I felt when the alarm clock woke me up at 7.00 a.m.

Then, it was suddenly Tuesday evening and I was pouring wine and pretending to know about wine at a wine tasting at the embassy.

Wednesday morning I went to an interesting panel discussion about homeland security and the evening was spent at the monthly Austrian Happy-Hour here in DC and a concert afterwards.

Thursday started with a hangover but still turned into a very productive work-day which lasted until 7.30 p.m. (hence this comment).

Friday was another incredibly busy day at work but again lots of things got done. The evening was spent at the opening of a photo exhibition at the embassy followed by making the great decision to go to Adams Morgan, my future going-out hotspot because of all the outstanding bars and clubs there.

Saturday was spent sleeping until noon and spending some quality chill-out time on the National Mall in the afternoon. The weather, especially in the early afternoon, was outstanding (26° C) and I was also happy to have finally brought along my real digital camera. While up to now I had only taken snapshots with my mobile phone it was great to be able to use a decent camera to make real photos, some of which I've included below. I'm quite happy with how some of them have turned out and you can find more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/christophd/.

Today I again slept until noon, followed by a visit to Chinatown to grab lunch and some Chai Latte plus sweets for desert. Given that the weather today was really shitty with lots of rain and whatnot me and one of my colleagues from the embassy went to the cinema to see Leatherheads. The movie wasn't too great but quite amusing and the soundtrack was good. So basically the perfect choice for such a rainy day as this one. Now I've spent the past 3 hours just catching up with some of the online-action, reading e-mails and watching the latest episodes of Two And A Half Men. Anyway, now I'm off to finish some laundry and then I'll reply to a couple of the e-mails and other messages I got this week... :-)

Lincoln Memorial

Korean War Veterans Memorial

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

Sunset at Washington Monument

Washington Monument

3, 2, 1... And we're off into the next week!

Weekend Review

I honestly can't recall the last weekend which I enjoyed this much. As previously mentioned it all started off the way any weekend in a new city should, by going out and grabbing a couple of beers. As mentioned on Friday I feel they were well deserved after a relatively long first week at work. So me and some other interns met up at Dupont Circle which we had been told was a good area to go out. And we certainly weren't disappointed as the first place we went to, 'Cafe Citron' which someone had recommended us, ended up being quite a good spot. The minute I looked at the menu (pictured below) and saw the phrase "Dancing on the bar is not only allowed its encouraged" I knew we were going to have a good night. (BTW, this also brings back fond memories of good nights back at my student residence in Vienna, but let's not go there...;-)

Now after having a good laugh at that phrase and basically inhaling the first beer I had ordered I spent some more quality time with the menu. Imagine how thrilled I was to see that they also stocked Cerveza Crystal, one of my favourite beers in Peru. Now they could have only topped that by also offering Arequipeña but I guess that would have been too much to ask.

So while I was happily sipping my Crystal and pondering the question of whether I should get some Ceviche, another Peruvian speciality that I haven't had since 2005, I was suddenly very much reminded of some good times back during my exchange-year to Peru. The beer, the ridiculously loud half latino / half techno music, the highly motivated dancers next to the bar and our table, the Margarita pitchers, the fresh mint that was being prepared for the Mojitos,... it was all there. Good times, good times indeed... During one of my later visits to the bar, when I was shocked to learn that they had run out of Crystal I went back to look at the menu and much to my delight the also offered Paceña , a Bolivian beer that I had found to be quite good during my time in La Paz in 2005.

The other weird thing was that I was actually quite motivated to dance that evening. I mean seriously, when does that ever happen? I guess I just hit up the perfect mixture of beer, mojito, lack of dinner (I had decided that I should really have Ceviche the way it's meant to be eaten, after a long night to cure a hangover) and memories of South America. On my way home I also met three of the guys living in the house next door who were chillin' out on their terrace. It was decided to try and get together some sort of movie-night next week, which should definitely be fun. All in all, it was certainly a very good night.

Saturday was also off to a good start as I slept in until ~11.30 a.m., oh my God how happy I was to wake up around 10-ish, briefly glance at the watch and then go back to sleep. Afterwards our new Hungarian housemate and I went for brunch-turned-into-lunch at a nice café relatively close to our house. They had some excellent food there and the coffee plus cheesecake was also excellent. The fact that the weather was outstanding, it was nice and sunny and warm, also put us into a good mood. In the afternoon I went off to see one of the most absurd sport-events I've ever seen, a Roller Derby with the DC Rollergirls. I had only heard about it via my collegue at the internship and I all knew was that girls on rollerblades were involved. Needless to say I was intrigued. I really didn't know what to expect but turns out that Roller Derby is actually quite a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Especially if accompanied by a few cold ones.

I'm not going to go into the details of the game itself because it's really not all that important. What I liked was the general atmosphere of the event. It of course starts off with the various teams sporting names such as Cherry Blossom Bombshells, DC DemonCats, Secretaries of Hate and (my personal favourite) Scare Force One. The player's names go along the lines of Guantanamo Babe, Trampon, Whiskey Tango (with the number "1 too many" printed on her back), Condoleezza Slice, Free Radical and Speedy Gonbraless. One of the team's mascot was this guy wearing an inflatable airplane, you can just about make him about in the photo above. Plus the two announcers were really having a good time and it was extremely busying to listen to some of their comments and whatnot. In general the whole event had some kind of 'underground' and 'alternative' touch to it, two notions that I've been decidedly missing around here in suit'n'tie-afterhour-happy-hour-lounge-bureaucrat-heavy Washington, DC (of course I'm also guilty except for the bureaucrat thing).

Born on April, 6th, 1987? Too bad...

Afterwards we briefly went to the so-called waterfront to catch the last moments of the fireworks for the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Then we again met up with two other fellow interns to look for a nice pub for the evening. We ended up going to this Irish pub near George Washington University were I enjoyed a great burger and beer. However the real highlight of the evening was watching some people who were very much into a semi-final game of some collegue-legue basketball game which was shown on the screens. Especially the one guy who got so annoyingly loud every time something even remotely interesting was happening in the game provoked a coordinated counter-attack by 5 or 6 supporters for the second team was interesting to observe. Especially how quiet he got towards the end of the game when it became obvious that his team was going to lose. Good stuff!

Today again I only got up at 12-something and then we all met up at a shopping mall close to the Pentagon. I wasn't too thrilled by the place and unless there's some really good reason I don't think that I'll be going back there. There's just something that I don't really like about shopping malls. Of course it might be convenient to have a million shops in once place. And yes, I even bought two shirts which I probably wouldn't have gotten that cheaply anywhere else. And yes, a visit to the Apple store was long overdue, and oh my God I love the size and (lack of weight) of the MacBook Air. And yes, the visit to the Johny Rockets dinner (pictured below) was fun. But still, one visit should be enough.

The evening was spent at a barbecue to which Wayan had invited me. It was a good place to be, with excellent food, great discussions about politics and cable-management (I'm not kidding!) and a generally very nice and relaxed atmosphere. The perfect end to the perfect weekend!

By the way, 6 hours from now I'm going to regret having spent all this time writing the blog entry instead of going to bed and grabbing some sleep. This should be another very interesting week, maybe not work-wise (things there will probably only pick up the week after this one) but other that the outlook is pretty good. Especially tomorrow evening's Saul Williams concert to which I'll probably head should be good. Plus I've got a couple of other interesting meetings coming up over the next few days.

Anyway, take care everyone and I hope you have a good start into the week!

Yeah, the weekend is here!

I hope to have some time over the weekend to catch up with my mail, blog a bit, read, chill and skype with some of you. But first I'm going to grab some dinner and beers, I guess I kinda deserve that after a week of getting up at 7 a.m. and working hard all day, right? RIGHT? ;-)

A King's Breakfast

So while I sit here and slowly recover from last night's drinking-session (which left my fridge totally empty except for a single beer) I'm enjoying a king's breakfast. Combined with the fact that I had my last exam 'till October yesterday (and I think I did quite well), the weather being quite nice and sunny today and me general being in a good mood this weekend is certainly off to a great start! :-)