New York – again

First and foremost: A great big honest SORRY to Sas. The Library was closed. Proof: This picture. Notice the closed doors in the background.

Other than that, we were at the Museum of Modern Art, which contains, well, a lot of modern works of art. Now, I’m not exactly a fan of modern art, especially the kind that I don’t understand. And that seems to be more than I’d thought, because I went through some of the expositions constantly shaking my head. There was however one exposition that really was worth it, which was the Dalí-exposition. The topic was Dalí and film and it showed some of Dalí’s film script autographs, some sketches for film scenes that he wrote and a few paintings that showed his affinity to the medium of film. Also, there were screenings of some film scenes from movies such as „Un chien andalou“. I know, I’ve never seen it myself, and it is quite wacked, but since that applies to almost all of Dalí’s work, that came as no surprise.

This time around, we also stayed overnight. All I knew up front was that we were staying in a hostel that just opened a few weeks ago. What I did NOT know, however, was that this hostel was in the middle of Harlem. What I also didn’t know is that Harlem is not a bad part of New York at all. As a European, the first thing that came to my mind were crime, gang violence and drug dealing. But it’s really not like that at all. Actually, apart from the occasional run-down parts that you have in almost every city, it was pretty nice. During the last few years, the city of NY invested a lot of money to bring Harlem back on track, and it seems like these incentives showed some results.

What else…concerning my arrival back home, it will be on the 4th of October at 12 noon. I am still looking for a victim to pick me and my seven bags of luggage up from the airport in Nuremberg….so, if anyone’s still interested…(Jon?)

That’s it for now, I guess I’ll be getting back to you later this week if there’s any more interesting stuff.

BAAMM!

It’s official, I’m stayin’.

See you all in October!

I’ll change my flight tomorrow, it’ll probably be the 4th of October. So be ready, my parents won’t be there to pick me up, and someone’s gotta do it, right?

This is gonna be awesome…

It ain’t over til it’s over…

It’s over. Almost. Not quite. This could have been one of my last entries. I could have written about my farewell party next weekend, about my last trip to New York, also next weekend, and I could have written the last time from the US just after I packed my suitcases and just before I drove to the airport on September 1st.

Instead, I’ve applied for an extension of my internship.

There are reasons, of course. One: My team needs me (for entertainment purposes, as well as workforce). Two: I won’t have anything to do in September. Initially, I had planned it exactly this way, so that I’d have September to ‘get home’. But the more I think about it, the more I fear that I might regret not taking this chance. Now that I’m here anyway, I might as well stay as long as I possibly can. Three: I really love it here. I don’t want to go home now that I’m having such a great time.

The bad thing is: I won’t see me mates back on Olde Germany for another four weeks. I hope you’ll forgive me. It’s only four weeks. If I consider how fast the last four weeks went by, that’ll be absolutely nothing. But something tells me that this is a chance I should take.

I’ll keep you updated with details. As I said, nothing’s carved in stone yet, but there’s a good chance. Ah, and by the way, my new arrival date could be the 4th of October, 12 noon, Nürnberg International Airport;)

Planes, graves and dates…

Sorry for not writing anything for so long, but I was busy. I know, bad excuse. Okay, let’s put it differently: I had better things to do than update my blog. I’ll refrain from losing myself in ramblings about how I don’t want to come back but stay here and give you some insight into what I’ve been up to instead.

Two weeks ago, I took a fellow intern up in a glider, which was something he’s been begging me to do for some time and so we took one of PGC’s 103s and went for a nice 47-minute ride over beautiful Pennsylvania;)

Staying with airplanes, yesterday we went to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. It’s a branch of the National Air and Space Museum that is located next to Dulles International airport. Since not all of the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibits fit into the Museum on the Mall, they had to relocate the „big things“ out there. Among the planes exhibited there are an SR 71 Blackbird, a Space Shuttle and the B-29 „Enola Gay“, which came to be known as the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

The most interesting of all – at least for me as a glider pilot – was this:

That’s right, an example of high-performance German engineering right there For those of you who might not know: This is a Grob 102 „Standard Astir“, which is today mainly used as a trainer for student pilots who transition from two-seaters to single-seaters. Hanging from the ceiling of a museum, however, the uninformed layman might think that this is the cutting edge in glider design or some kind of classic. Neither of which applies.

For aviation freaks, this is definitely the place to go. Imagine it like the „Flugwerft Schleissheim“, only twice as big and with waaay more interesting planes in it.

The next stop on our itinerary was Arlington Cemetery, known to many from countless movies such as….I don’t know, was it in Red October? I believe so….

Anyway. Lots of white marble gravestones, a very dignified atmosphere and a great view over Washington. We found out that there are around 250.000 gravesites there.

In the next few weeks, I’ll try to keep this site updated more frequently as some might be wondering how I spent the remainder of my stay here. But be assured: I won’t be wallowing in grief

In two weeks, I’ll be going to NYC for the last time on Saturday and celebrating my farewell party on Friday, along with a few other people who’ll leave soon. Until then, as mentioned, I’ll try to write something every once in a while, even if it’s only pointless blaa blaa.

Peace, I’m out.