In Between II

A few hours after the last post I went to drink something with the girls from Unilever at the terrace of the Surstoffbar. Actually, only Ulli and Renate worked or better still work at Unilever, Nathalie is just a friend of Renate and lives in Zurich. It was pretty funny and I guess we consumed rather much but paid rather less. The evening was even more special because they spontanously asked me to join them for a hike up in the mountains. Not in a weeks time, but 10 hours later! Naturally, I could not turn down that offer, so the next morning we met at the old busstation in Schaffhausen and drove up to the mountains by car. In between we stoped for gas and had to fill our bags with something to eat and drink. Anyway, our hiking tour was perfect, the weather beuatiful and we had a bath in the Seealpsee, which was so refreshing in the heat of the day.

In the evening I had to watch the 100m final at the world athletics championships in Berlin. It was insane. Usain Bolt set another fable world record with 9.58. Unbelievable. And actually I still remember Donovan Baileys 9.84 in Atlanta or Leroy Burrells 9.85 in Lausanne. Then an improvement of 1/100 was considered as huge, compared now to the 11/100 improvement by Bolt, this seems to be as little as nothing.

One evening I was at a concert of Big Zis at Kaufleuten in Zurich. Thomas won two tickets for the evening, so we just had to go. First, I went to the gym, took the bus to get to Thomas' place, left my belongings there and soon after we left for the Kaufleuten. But before we got our free entrance tickets, we went to eat a Tiger Prawn Salad at an irish pub and restaurant at Sihlstrasse. Funny enough, as everybody was talking english, the waitress also talked english with us. Okey, the concert was fun but over pretty soon. All the same, I was happy that I could sleep in Zurich and didn't had to worry about trains and buses.

The day before I intended to join some friends for BBQ at Flurlingen, but as a thunderstorm came up shortly before, we changeed the location and went to the tallest building in Schaffhausen. There you can overview the whole town and we saw fascinating flashlights far away. The terrace on the 15th floor had a roof, so we had a great evening up there! Actually I was the only local, all other were either from Germany, Austria or any other country.

On Wednesday I met Michael for ice cream as the therometer hit the 30 degree mark. We then met some friends at Güterhof and talked about anything but nothing. On Thursday I intended to go for a swim with Jonathan, unfortunately I had to work longer, so we had to cancel this. Besides, the train ride back home was sometimes pretty displeasing, as it was extremely hot inside the trains, as only the ICE has a good air-conditioner. It was much hotter inside the trains than the oustide and we had outdoor temperatures of more than 33°C. That day I watched the 200m final with the astonishing 19.19 world record set by Usain Bolt and then I went running at 9PM, when it was already getting dark outside. However, the temperature was still very high... Anyway, it was just great running at dusk with Bolt's dream run in my mind!

Yesterday I went to an openair concert for the first time in my life. It was the Bodensee Hegau OpenAir located in the little village of Aach in Germany. It's actually not far away from Schaffhausen, by car it takes you a bit more than half an hour to get there. The acts playing were not less famous than Reamonn, Sunrise Avenue, Milow and Maria Mena. The weather was just perfect and the location out in the nature too. We had much fun there and all in all that was a great evening!

Last, a little bit about New York:
We just changed our swiss francs into US Dollars and as Kai is working for a swiss bank, he could change them at a rather good exchange rate! Well done, Kai! Besides, I checked out my Lonely Planet and found some good spots, for example rooftop bars or lounges, where you have fabulous views on New York! If that's not enough, we will climb the Empire State Building at night and make some stunning pictures of NY by night!

This is the last post before I leave for New York. I will update you as soon as I've made some pictures! See you soon!