Meal list!

Let me see... how many eating facilities I already have on my plate... oh, I think there are at least 20! let me look after the pics... ok, let's do that without any order!

There was this Japanese place, called Wasabi! The food wasn't bad, but I myself always need some time to become warm with new things and you already expect that: It was my first japanese meal, and it wasn't the only exotic cuisine I tasted here!

Yeah let's come to the very good ones: i.e. the Black Thorn in Kenilworth, the place where my colleague Michelle lives, we went there only for the best experiences, the SUPERBOWL (YIHAAAA) and of course for St. Paddy's day (even more Yihaaaa *g*)!!! An irish pub or bar is a must not only if you're in Ireland, also if you're in the States or in Berlin, the best live music (yes Basti and Robert, I think about Schönhauser Allee:-))!




In Union itself (what is *pah* the 75th best place to live in the States, but... not really! *g*) we went to, of course a Dunkin' Donuts, and (my best coffee ever) a pub, to have a meal at the NBA allstargame (see the very important and very tasty meal the famous *tattadada* BUFFALO WINGS)

and (this place even would deserve a single post!!! we went to the Van GOCHS Ear (correct english pronunciation would be (in german Lautschrift))): "Fann gohhhhs ihr".

The chinese fish market, very interesting and much overcrowded.

In NY we went to a Italian Place in, of course, little Italy and that was very good. By the way it is much recommendable to go to the US because you have so many things to eat and experience from so many different cultures, WOW!

And I almost forgot, but we went to a place in Greenwich Village (also "the Village") called the garage, when we first came here, very nice Brunching facility, with jazz music on sundays...




Definitely a very recommendable place to eat is the Lonestar Steakhouse, a steak chain in the States, not very big steaks but a very good service and quite delicious!

You want some real american food? Burger, fries, sandwiches, ribs and barbecue? Then you can go to Famous Dave's! Although I never met this famous guy, his food is very good!

What was also very important, was the visit at the Chart House in Weehawken, I guess I already wrote about that one, but it's rather going even better!!! here's the Video!

Additionaly we went to 2 mexican places, a portuguese diner in union, real american barbecue etc. etc. and we still plan to go to the chinese this week and to the Longhorn, a steakhouse which is even better than the Lonestar, let's see I'm already hungry*g*

Almost forgot that one, the Ihop restaurant, open 24 hours, from breakfast to lunch and dinner everything (in a good and tasty quality, too) you can imagine... this picture is out of the window of the Ihop in Boston, next to our hotel.

Last but not least the best philly cheesesteak we found (of course) in Philadelphia, and (OF COURSE!) on South Street *g*

Our "business" trip to Atlanta, Georgia

Hey ho, let’s go, hey ho let’s go…

We’re going south! We that means MJ, Michelle and of course me, Tobi.

Having Barbecue, eating on the bill of the company *hihi* and visiting Isa in Georgia, where all the rednecks are living... (I still have to figure out what the difference between Yankees and Rednecks is... I’m not sure yet!)

Actually, Eve would say, of course only to tease me and making fun of me, Tobi went to vacation, but...

It was not the only reason. Generally we went to conduct an audit of a department down there. So our Team met at Michelles house on Sunday, february 2^nd, to meet the very kind, DRUNK and gross limousine driver, who unfortunately didn’t had a crush on me, but on my other team members... But we arrived at the airport

(our Flightline (??? is that the right word?)... in time and

still had time to enjoy a meal in the irish pub and...

watching the sun going down.

I really have to admit, that I like Newark airport more, so I’ll definitely keep that in mind when I’ll come back to visit these amazing nice people again here and the friends I found here!

We arrived in Atlanta, directly in time, had our preferred member car at avis car rental and so I thought everything was supposed to be great that week, but everyone of you should know me, it wasn’t! At first, we had a small problem with MJ’s GPS. We passed a lot of Highways, but the GPS never told us to drive on one of them. That was strange, because Alpharetta is about 45 min away from the airport :-??? MJ told me: “Tobi, please check if there are the highways excluded in the menu!” I did so, but unfortunately I had a little language problem, thinking that the check at the exclusions box should mean that sth. is excluded, but what was strange was the word enabled, because I thought it should mean that it’s not excluded (I know I am confused and confusing you, now you see how confused... ahhhh it doesn’t matter!). But every child knows that it’s the opposite way. So we didn’t drive 45 min, no, unfortunately at least 1 hour and 15 min, but this was at least a very nice and of course better drive through the neighbourhoods (very nice city, all of the drug dealers and empty houses and industries.... just kidding;-).Until I reviewed the menu and found out what enabled really means. And again at least I learned my lesson, at first what enabled means and secondly, women even question the gps even when they not have a clue where the hell they are (ok, sometimes it’s a good idea to question *g*)! I guess the both of them are still angry with me about that, because it went later and later, but we finally arrived at about 11:30 pm at our Marriott in Alpha with these nice fresh baked cookies. And be sure that these were not the only very delicius thing we ate down there...

To take a small shortcut... we did our work down there,

(see Tobi in his suit here for the first time!!!)

very satisfying, even though we couldn’t spend the originally planned 2^nd week there, because of some weather difficulties.

As I’m speaking now about these, I have to tell anyone reading my blog something. Okay we had one of the strongest winters, with a lot of ice and snowdays over here, even though everybody says that it’s everything than normal. But americans are a lil’ bit strange when it comes to weather. Normally they drive very rude, always launching the horn if someones going on your nerves, taking shortcuts when there is none at all, changing lanes without looking in the mirror, everything drivers from Berlin are very famous for in germany *g*

And the problem is: THEY STILL DRIVE THAT WAY, WHEN THERE ARE THE WORST WEATHER AND STREETS CONDITIONS!!!

That’s why the employers here have something like an agreement, they’re telling their workers that they don’t have to come to work that day! So they’re working from home, or as Sue getting a day completely off, without taking your vacation days for that. That is great, but only if you know that there would be no one in the office and if you’re then staying at home! I had it twice that I was almost the only one (except Joe, who seems to live in the office, he’s there when I’m coming and he’s still there when I’m going, it doesn’t matter when that is...!) in our whole office and there are at about 20 people normally sitting there!

But back to the first week in Georgia, we went out almost every day, for lunch as well as for dinner, I had my since now, single drive with a car here in the US, additionally we had a small fitness studio, so almost everything we would need here! It was really unfortunate that we didn’t came back the next week (really bad weather conditions, they shut down the whole Newark airport!), because I promised my fellow student Isa, who I met the week before there and who was very excited about me “visiti...” aehhh, “meeting” her there.

Let me take this possibility to give you a short guide of how, where, when, with who and of course what we ate over the last months here...

Let's start with the Alphaweek:

Our pub at the airport, a nice salmon sandwich and a good irish beer, is there anything better???

In Alpharetta we went to the BG, with some friends from Michelle and MJ, Nancy and...? I'll let you know when her name comes back into my mind! But to come back to the food, very expensive, but very tasty and a very huge variety of foods (I guess I had frutti di mare and some chicken wings, I know 2 meals, that should be too much!!! But it wasn't,I somewhere lost my feeling for being full! :-)

Cracker Barrell the most real american place I've ever been to. Not referring to the food, but definitely to the inside of the restaurant with all the old guns, equipment and furniture. We went there before we left Alpha. And we we able to take our plane even though we arrived 15 minutes before our plane had to leave, but we were lucky, because it went late!!! (The first time I was happy that a transportation service was late *hi*) But even though MJ and I could check in our bags, Michelle didn't, she had to take it with her on the flight, we weren't lucky, because we lost our luggage in Atlanta! Or it would be better to say, that the plane company didn't send it on our flight, because they searched it for terroristic activities! But I got it lateron, what means, about 5 hours after we arrived here in Newark and it came directly to our house! Very good service Delta!

What was at first glance even worse, was that the Limo driver was, even though we especially ordered another guy, the same as it was the last sunday and I was unhappy, because I sat up front, but I already told you, he unfortunately didn't have a crush on me ;-)

Additionally we went to an Italian place, which was almost back in Atlanta, and for lunch we went once to a room in our buildig, where they had very nice hot-dogs and to another Italian place, where I had my first Calzone *mhhhh*.

The Move

To stay in line, I now would like to speak and I am going to (thank you Mrs. Brink for bringing me that deep in touch with the english language in my elementary school, but unfortuantely there's no difference between "will" and "am going to"...) speak about the move of my department in Murray Hill. As it's the task of every Auditor, to analyse, understand and know everything before even our boss vig knows it, we already knew that we would move from far far away, to very very close.
From for me, tomorrow on (today on monday, the US was stopping! because of some single snowfluffs) we'll stay directly at the Main entrance of Murray and what's very important directly above the cafeteria YEAH!!! I missed my Muffins desperately last week in Alpharetta, but more about that in the next post.
Back to the essence of this text, our ove in Murray, here some pictures of that big event and I couldn't believe it but our department looked even worse than before the move:




The most important person in that move, the german intern, and now he knows the reason, why the department in Murray wanted him so much for this job: packing boxes and carrying them 2 miles through the site in Murray Hill ;-)




That's the waste of only one department here, now you can imagine how much waste Alcatel-Lucent produces all in all




MJ's cubicle, and that's before we started to pack boxes *g*


That's it for today, I'm now excited to see our new place in Murray and to enjoy my Muffin again tomorrow... hmmmm!!! But now it's time to eat, Eve prepared a hopefully very good meal, spaghetti bolognese, let's see if she poisons someone (me or simon, hmmm... I'm excited who will win???). Ciaociao

The Metropolitan

Hi everybody again,

hopefully this would be my last summary of what we experienced some weeks ago!!! But it's like always with us poor men, we have to care about everything. Women would be almost lost (not in Plano, Nico *g*) without us (Sue I'm just teasing;).
Of course Eve forgot to mention our trip to the museum in NY! It's one of the most famous ones in the whole world, every single child has already heard about the MET, or the long form Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was on a rather cold winter day, the saturday after Eve arrived here in the US. MJ picked us up with her nice BMW, from which I missed to take a picture, but fortunately I made a picture of my future car, or should I rather call it truck...




One of the last new Ford cars ever seen in the world, before they'll run out of business ;)


Let's come to the essence of our visit here in the MET. Stealing of european cultural elements. And I can understand that...
America has almost no culture, or the europeans which came over about 300 years ago already destroyed the native americans culture. Thats why they took some european art and brought it over to enjoy it. And I have to admit, if all of this art would still be in europe, we wouldn't have enough space to exhibit this! And I myself, don't like art that much, so maybe our american friends would like to have more of that... take it!!! *g*
But now to be serious, here are some very interesting things from the MET and what was almost most impressive was the building itself, huge and built with lot of marble.




Modern Art. The name? Probably black and white *g*




The temple of dendur, a "gift" from egypt




Andy Warhol, self-portrait




In my eyes one of the best and most realistic pictures I've ever seen.
Red sunset on the Dnieper (Oil aon Canvas) from Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi




And of course the self-portrait of hummm... what was his name again Eve...?
Ahhh, yes, of course Picasso!




And here he is, the incredible, impressive, wonderful and inimitable Picasso itself!




And Picca next to some dancing girl! (What was the name again MJ? It wasn't dancing Queen from Abba?!)




Modern art, a little bit corny, because it had a lot of glitter, but looked nice (actually I wasn't allowed to take this picture, but of course like Nico would say, you're not allowed to do something and it's human nature that you try it anyhow *hi*)






Wo ist die Hand??? Oder auch ein schöner Handrücken kann auch erzücken!




Afterwards we drove with our nice BMW through the Times Square. At night even more exciting and impressive... more to follow!


I guess I summarized the most important facts of this trip. All in all it was a very nice day in NY and definitely not the last...