Hello, Blog... it's been a while once again. You know how it is, excitement of the moment, promises made, promises broken. I'm sorry I'm such a turd when it comes to keeping my promises to call you back after a date.... wait a minute, wrong blog, wrong topic! So let's start over. Hi! Some people know I was a graphic artist for a large law firm in the U.S. for a while till the ungrateful sons of bitches fired me because they wanted to save a few bucks on not having yet another support staffer get vested in their pension... Continue reading

Dear Blogette, As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm now in Moscow. Arriving here was not as easy as 1-2-3. No "just get on a plane and voila! you're there." After fleeing Austria, I stayed with wonderful friends in Paderborn. During that time, I was offered my job here in Moscow and the arrangements began. To go to Russia, you cannot just buy tickets and go, no, there is a complicated and lengthy as well as costly procedure that has to be followed whether you're planning to visit just a few days as a tourist or to transact some... Continue reading

The carrot dangling on my personal stick was independence, the chance to prove to myself that I was a clever and decent entrepreneur. Continue reading

Hello, Blogette, darling! Instead of just uploading a bunch of pics to FaceBook, I decided that maybe I would blog them all and try to comment on those I can - sadly, as age advances and senility grows ever nearer, sometimes I look at a particular picture or two and think to myself, 'Now where the heck was that?' Well, let's start with the Czech Republic... to make this blog load faster on some of the relics some people are running all pics will be thumbnails. Click on an image to see it full-sized, 'kay? Brno Brno, formerly known as... Continue reading

In the Beirut plane, I sat next to a gentleman who felt the need to gas me with the foulest flatulence I have ever had to endure during the entire three-hour flight, all the while stocking up on more odor-producing legumes in the form of tahini, baba ganoush, and other delights of the Middle East known to cause voluminous gas clouds once digested. He did so quietly, subtly and with an elegance unsurpassed ... Continue reading

Dear Blogette, It has been quite a little while, hasn't it? Well, when I started this blog, I never promised you a rose garden or regularity - that's something that work requires too much of me already, so there just isn't that much left to give anymore at the end of the day. Since I last wrote here, much has happened. My escape plan to return to Germany to take over a Brit-pub from friends there collapsed largely because the two friends involved (while being nice people who are involved in a bitter, sadly failing marriage) are just too flaky... Continue reading

Ah, Bloggette, my dearest... I did promise a second installment on this topic, so here it is. When we last spoke of the topic, the Baronial family was facing the onset of World War II. Franz IV. was conscripted into the regular German army, the Wehrmacht, in 1940 and immediately saw action. His tour of duty, which lasted until the German surrender on 8 May 1945. During that time, he saw active duty in Poland and Russia, and was among those trapped in a pincer movement outside Stalingrad during the legendary Battle of Stalingrad. It was there he earned an... Continue reading

Life was good. Family money was invested in real estate and precious metals. Fritz had two young sons and an adoring wife, Elli, and most of their time was spent traveling between Berlin, Bad Sachsa, a family-shared house in Bad Saarow on the shores of the Scharmuetzelsee, a lake near Berlin where the UFA film stars all had their homes, and a large estate in Brandenburg, as well as skiing in the Alps and otherwise enjoying the good life. Continue reading

After my last blog, which was of course tongue-in-cheek, I began doing some research in earnest into the topic of creating "family sections" aboard long-haul flights in which families with children, say those under the age of 16, would automatically be booked by airlines. Seems I was in no way alone with my "crazy notion" - sources supporting the idea are numerous. Continue reading

Flying With Your Damned "Baby On Board" Is Unfair To The Rest Of Us And Should Be Banned... Or Something! Dearest Bloggymathingy, I already know I'll catch hell from the various doting mummies and daddies about this topic, insisting that their little darlings are oh-so-cutesy-wutesy and would never disturb anyone, coochy-coochy-coo-oh-s/he's soooo adorable! Gag. Why is it that airlines are still stupid and have not figured out that they need to address the problem of squawling, mewling horrible bratty babies in the economy section keeping all the rest of us who either cannot afford or don't want to be taken... Continue reading

Dear Blog, A while back, I shared with you some of my experiences at the entirely fictitious airline known as Teutonic International Transportation Service (or TITS, for short). Apparently, some people decided that despite my careful insertion of a disclaimer, they should take my posting seriously and I was actually approached by someone about the post, telling me that describing any place of employment as Merde Hill was just too horrible and disrespectful and that therefore this person would have to "defriend" me on FaceBook... Alas, some people have their senses of humor so carefully buried under layers of I... Continue reading

Dear Blog, it's amazing what 10 days off can do for a body in terms of relaxation. I wonder how long this feeling will last when I go back to Merde Hill and TITS on Friday afternoon? We'll see. So let me tell you what I've been up to, since I've been neglecting you during the past few days... First off, I've been busy going to take pictures again. Some of them came out quite nicely, if I do say so myself... So, on Day 1 of Photo Safari, I took off in a southerly direction from Muizenberg. It was... Continue reading

So how often do you get spam? What kind of spam do you find most frequently in your e-mail inbox? Do you know where the word "spam" takes its origins? Yesterday, as I was wading ankle-deep through the mountain of spam that my various mailboxes routinely accumulate, I started thinking about this topic and thought it might be a good thing to ponder (or belabor, depending on your point of view) here. So let's start out with what Spam actually is. In the original sense of the word, Spam is a product made by an American meat-packing company, Hormel, which... Continue reading

Dear Blog, Yesterday, I broke one of my cardinal laws of existence - I went to see a movie alone, something I very rarely do as I find people who go to movies by themselves just sad. Somehow it radiates the message, I'm such a loser, I can't even find anyone to go see a film with me. Well, Karen from the Internet Cafe wanted to go with me but had to work, so nyah! nyah! - I wasn't radiating loserness. And the movie I went to see, Sherlock Holmes, was on its last legs here - yesterday was the... Continue reading

Wow, you're thinking, what a boring topic... Continue reading

Dearest Blog, As you know, I work for a large international airline here in Cape Town. Let's call that airline Teutonic International Transportation Services (TITS for short) - just for fun. We have lots of fun at work some days; other days are closer to what I imagine Hell, if there were such a place, would be like. Today was one of those days. Allow me to elucidate. We (my colleagues at TITS and I) are all "agents," i.e. worker ants (or bees, depending on your point of view). Each morning we are given a list of the flights we... Continue reading

So what should I do with the rest of my life? Have you ever asked yourself that question? I did before coming to South Africa, I still do and probably will continue to until I am old and dribbling somewhere, being sponge-bathed by rude nurses and wearing diapers... Continue reading

I really must remember that while I may have inherited some of my father's innate engineering skills, I am not a mechanic. Continue reading

A while back, during my unfortunate car-less period, I was forced to spend a few weeks in backpacker hostels in Cape Town as my shift hours at work kept me in town until after the notoriously poor commuter rail system had ceased operations each evening (which it does surprisingly early - the last train on the South line leaves Cape Town station at 8 p.m. - truly not a very cosmopolitan operating time... tsk, tsk, tsk!). I stayed in three hostels and have decided to share my adventures with you. Most hostels are designed for people to be able to... Continue reading

One of the fun things about moving anywhere new is learning the local slang and expressions. South African English, apart from its sometimes bizarre pronunciation, has its very own and some of the colloquialisms are truly odd to me... then again, being a foreigner here, they must think my English is very strange. Sure enough, often people cannot understand me at all, although that is more accent- and pronunciation related than caused by slang. Being a melting pot all its own, South African English is strongly influenced by British English as well as Afrikaans and Indian English. Most of you... Continue reading

The airline I work for doesn't seem to cope too well with snow... Continue reading

A former boss once told me she felt I had the highest intolerance for morons she had ever come across ... Continue reading