Naturelich

Inside Malgarten Monastery's restaurant Zum Amtsrichter I attended my first monk banquet. A five course menu was served by maidservants in brown cowls. Manfredo von der Paderau aka Manfred Lindner from Paderborn was our medieval entertainer.

After the main course Naturelich enjoyed his first snuff. Manfredo used a wooden device to get the Kensignton snuff (with menthol) deep down into everyone's nose. An enjoyable experience (naturelich) - highly recommendable, especially if you have a bad cold like me.

Kensington snuff was the first snuff to enter my nose

The evening was extremely entertaining and a lot of fun. The food was good although a little bit over-priced. But Shelak, Raven and I agreed that it was worth it. If you compare the price to an evening of theater or musical it's about the same amount and we really had some great laughs.

Especially the lady in the gas station looked a bit startled, didn't she? ;)

More information on the banquet can be found here.

Posted by Naturelich at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today Naturelich returns from yet another week in Basel. This week has been rather stressful. I was in pretty bad shape on Monday when I arrived, still highly infected with a bad cold. It has slightly improved on Monday and Tuesday and is at a state where it no longer hinders me to work 14 hours a day. That's the good news. However, this will probably let the cold drag on. Therefore let's hope I am not knocked out in two weeks.

Tomorrow Naturelich will travel to Osnabrück again. Since the weather report looks great I am looking forward to an enjoyable and relaxing stay in the garden. On Saturday evening I will join Shelak and Raven in a medieval dinner event with jugglers, singers and some fresh meat from the wild boar. Yummie, yummie...

Posted by Naturelich at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Burg Wassenberg was the location for a two day meeting. The hotel is located close to the border between Germany and The Netherlands in a rural but atmospheric area. The rooms are good, with the exception of the bathroom. The shower is definitely not build for larger people. The hotel is a nice country hotel with medieval furniture, knight's armors and several huge fireplaces. This makes a visit worthwile.

In addition to accomodation the hotel features a wellness area and a nice restaurant. Due to a cold I was not able to visit the wellness area (pool, solarium, steam bath, etc.) but the restaurant offered great dishes in a warm and friendly environment.

Posted by Naturelich at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's the bad news of the day: Naturelich got no tickets for the 2006 FIFA worldcup. The team-specific tickets I was interested have already sold. But not only for Germany, also for the other important teams like England, Brazil, etc. It is a real pity - now let's see what those things are worth on ebay...

Posted by Naturelich at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The German Joseph Ratzinger has been elected as Pope and has taken the name Benedikt XVI.

Viva il Papa!

Posted by Naturelich at 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just bought a complete batch of Queen + Paul Rodger's Live Downloads. Similar to Metallica's LiveMetallica website, Queen and Paul Rodgers are offering (parts of) their concerts for sale (i.e. download). Each song is at GBP 0.99 if paid by credit card. The quality is stunning, the audience is terrific. This is particularly true for Barcelona's and Rome's Love of My Life, Fat Bottomed Girls from Paris and Munich's All Right Now. The quality is even better than on LiveMetallica.com. You actually feeeeel like you're standing in the middle of some 60,000 people singing and dancing along. Get a shot at it if you like the band. This rocks!

On a sidenote: saying this is not easy for someone from Düsseldorf *fg*, BUT: Cologne, we love to visit you for this...

Posted by Naturelich at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Possible cover art for The Questionable Truth: Part 1 by Limp Bizkit

Imagine accepting the truth is part of the chorus in Limp Bizkit 's new song The Truth which has gone out to US radio stations a few days earlier. They are back! And they are louder, heavier, cooler. An absolutely great performance is available on their blog. Click here to check out the link to their video...

The album will be released on May 2nd or 3rd. The following tracklist has been rumored on the internet:
01 - The Propaganda
02 - The Truth
03 - The Priest
04 - The Key
05 - The Channel
06 - The Story
07 - The Surrender

For my personal taste they are using the word The a little bit to often in here, but we don't care about the titles as long as the music is great, right? Maybe Part 2 will have all songs starting with "A" or "An"... :D

[addendum as of June, 4th 2005]
The Truth is currently the song which gets played in my iTunes the most often. Play count is at 60 and steadily rising. It's a great metal song with an incredible chorus. Truly a great masterpiece...

Posted by Naturelich at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gerhard Richter: Rosen, 1994. Oil on canvas, 46 x 51 cm, private collection. © Gerhard Richter

Yesterday evening I visited a phenomenal exhibition in Düsseldorf's K20 - Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen: Gerhard Richter. Richter is one of the most important artists of our time. He has created beautiful paintings with representational motifs as well as completely abstract images. His landscapes are absolutely magnificent. Taking photographies as the basis he creates blurry images of the present. The title of the painting does not always match what we see. Waldhaus (House in the forrest), for example, shows the house only partially at the right border of the picture, the rest is forrest and mountains. You feel like you are drawn into the picture and yet you feel strangely repelled by it: the bluriness, the smeary yet clear painting technique. This makes his paintings very interesting and absolutely great to have in your living room. However, one needs to have big cash to afford this as Richter is the most expensive living artist.

The exhibition not only showed the realistic paintings but also his abstract work, like the different variations of Grau (Grey). I am extremely suspicious when it comes to abstract art. I simply cannot see anything, it does not give me anything. There is no purpose in it (Unless, naturelich, you want to predict you are an art expert). It's not fun looking at it. Why is a completely grey painting exciting. It is nothing, it's dull, it's grey. Wonderful, you can do this with your computer. Even MS Paint is able to give you quite a lot of shades of grey. Below is an example pf one of Richter's abstract paintings: at least they are colorful.

Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Picture), 1992. Oil on aluminum panel. Private collection. © Gerhard Richter

Richter has some true originality in his work. I find this striking: Vorhang looks so real you can really see it moving (it won't come across in the picture below). He is versatile and cannot be restricted to just one style. That's probably what I like best the diversity and richness of his works.

Gerhard Richter. Vorhang III (hell) | Curtain III (bright), 1965, Oil on canvas, 200 x 195 cm. Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

And here is my absolute favorite (which is unfortunately not shown in Düsseldorf but is currently exhibited in the Louisiana museum (located close to Copenhagen, Denmark). Richter's Lesende is such a wonderful innuendo towards Vermeers paintings - I simply LOVE it.

Lesende (Reader), 1994. Oil on linen. Collection SFMOMA, purchased through the gifts of Mimi and Peter Haas and Helen and Charles Schwab, and the Accessions Committee Fund. © Gerhard Richter.

Additional links

Posted by Naturelich at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Düsseldorf's art scene is preparing for todays Nacht der Museen (Museum night). 2005 will be the 5th anniversary of this annual event. More than 30 museums and galleries will be opened tonight. I am planning to visit the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen which is currently showing an interesting Gerhard Richter exhibition. For internet junkies the SFMOMA offers a section on Making Sense of Modern Art focused on Richter's work.

Posted by Naturelich at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Inspired by Shelak's review I have bought The Incredibles on DVD. I also bought Collateral with Tom Cruise. I hope to find the time to watch those movies this weekend.

Posted by Naturelich at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today the first wave of FIFA worldcup tickets have been drawn by lot. Naturelich had applied for one of the 147,000 team tickets. As the final results will not be made public until April 22nd, I still have to wait another week.

However, there is some good news: I was able to get tickets for the match between Germany and Russia on June 8th in Mönchengladbach's Borussia Park. This game is in preparation of this years Confederations Cup. Accompanied by my godson and his father, we will watch the game starting at 20:45 hrs. Germany has played Russia 16 times so far and won the majority of games (12 victories, 3 losses, 1 draw). I just hope they'll do the same this June.

Posted by Naturelich at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We went to Prickynoo - Düsseldorf's extraordinary Thai restaurant - before our badminton match. Naturelich, it is strange to have dinner before the actual sporting event. But that's the way life goes if you spontaneously try to get a badminton court at Cosmo Sports. On Monday afternoon we decided to meet on Tuesday for our weekly dosage of badminton. The only time-slot Cosmo had available was 22:00 hrs.

Yeah, what can you do? Eat first, and work-out then. And I can tell you: the more food inside your stomach, the funnier the badminton event. I believe we had so much fun that the serious players next to us were a little bit ... shall we say... annoyed. But that did not stop us from having a real good time. Next Thursday we'll return to more serious business...

Posted by Naturelich at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today, my family and I visited Tutanchamun - The Golden Beyond in Bonn. I had already seen the exhibition in Basel's Antikenmuseum on August 15th, 2004. The exhibition which continues to run until May 1st, 2005 is hosted in Bonn's Bundeskunsthalle. Similar to Basel, the exhibition was crowded with people.

To give you an impression: we arrived a little bit too early and enjoyed a cup of coffee. As we set foot into the entrance hall, they were selling tickets at the box-office for entry at 15:30 hrs. A long queue had already formed and I joked about chances being slim for these guys at the end to actually make it in on that very same day. After a quick stop at the cloakroom attendant in the basement they were already selling tickets for 18:00 hrs. Good luck for us, as our pre-order was filed months ago.

Aside from being crowded the exhibition was great for me. My sister had already visited Cairo's Egyptian Museum and was used to the 3000 year-old cultural treasures of Tutanchamun. But I think she still enjoyed it. I am definitely not an expert on anything Egypt but this exhibition is a must-see. Even when visiting the second time it still offered new things to discover. Oh, and yes, there is one thing which made the Bonn experience a little bit strange:

Deutsche Telekom, the main sponsor in Bonn, accomplished to color the display cabinets in their corporate identity. Can you imagine how strange this looks? A 3000 year-old blue fayence item in Telekom-pink? Yummie, my eye was dying a slow but painful death...

Posted by Naturelich at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today I was in Düsseldorf's new stadium LTU Arena to watch a soccer match between Fortuna Düsseldorf and FC St. Pauli. The two clubs are in the amateur league Regionallige Nord. For a game like this the arena hosted some extraordinary 20,800 visitors. The atmosphere was really good as both St. Pauli and Fortuna fans where giving their best. The game itself was not too bad and the three goals where really worth watching. But some 20-30 minutes it was boring as hell.

Their victory may have saved Fortuna another year in the Regionallige Nord. Fortuna's fans were singing "Oh wie ist das schön" for a long long time. For FC St. Pauli the dream to make it back into the second league has died. We'll have to see what the future brings for both clubs...

Posted by Naturelich at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I arrived in Basel today for another week of business activities. Unfortunately for me, Basel hosts Baselworld one of the biggest watch and jewellery shows. Therefore all the taxis at the airport were already gone and I had to wait 30 minutes in a long, long queue. Also, the city will be really crowded during the week.

This put aside: the weather is extremely beautiful. While sitting in the Taxi I thought: if only this were a week of holidays. But it is not and I have to sit in the office all day long. Baaad luck...

Posted by Naturelich at 3:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Schalke wins 4:1 against Nuremberg. Naturelich saw the game live in Arena auf Schalke. The last game I saw live was against Wolfsburg. Since Munich also won (0:3 in Wolfsburg) these two teams are still neck-to-neck in the premiere German soccer league. The first and last fifteen minutes of the game were rather dull. It felt like an easy victory.

Posted by Naturelich at 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We pray for our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. who passed away today. His moral firmness, his courage, his pleads for forgiveness and reconciliation stand as a shining example for man.
He leaves a world of war and hunger.
Today is not the last day where his virtues challenge mankind. In a time where violent force, death and suffering reach our living rooms each evening, I bow humbly before his strength, determination and foresightedness.

Our hearts are with you, Papa. You are deeply deeply missed.

Posted by Naturelich at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few seconds ago, Naturelich had a(nother) sudden inspiration. While I was hanging up the washing I was wondering about the duration of this process. Doing the washing is a time-consuming process and therefore prone to economic analysis. Suppose you have extremely good friends waiting in your favorite chat and you are absolutely tired. Suppose it is 00:48:43 a.m. Now, you obviously want to spend at least 5.5 hours sleeping and you have to get up at 7 a.m. at the latest. Thus, you have to be in bed at 1:30. The friends are waiting and waiting. Thus, you need to minimize the time to put the washing on the line.

The housewife-readership may forgive us for starting with a simplified process first. We therefore assume the process of hanging up the washing consists of the following steps:

Let's look at the duration of each step. Altogether, the duration depends on the following variables:

Let us formalize the model a little bit. We assume that there is no item in the clothes basket which needs more than three pins to be attached.

As a result we have N = O + A + B + C in the basket.

Let t be the time required to take one item from the clothes basket and putting it on the clothes horse without attaching the clothes-pins. We therefore have to spend t for all N items in the basket.

Let p be the time required to take a clothes-pin from the bag and properly attaching it to both garment and clothesline. For A-garments we need p once, for B-garments we need 2*p and for C-garments we need three times p. Obviously, the pieces of clothing we like the most are O-garments, which need zero p.

The duration D of the entire process is then:
D = N*t + A*p + 2*B*p + 3*C*p

which is equivalent to

D = O*t + (A + 2B + 3C)*t*p

Well, this model should give you a pretty good idea of how long it will take to put the washing on the line...

Posted by Naturelich at 12:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)