I'm Pitsch! And I want your beer!
While I’m watching retarded shows on TV where people embarrass themselves in front of the whole nation for 1,500 € I thought I share the latest “Papp of the Week”. I’d like to thank my former USAFE co-worker Mr. C. Murphy for this wonderful discovery.
Baseball season is getting closer and closer and I can’t wait! Then I have a reason to stop watching football and concentrate on following baseball. Saturday I relived most of Grantland’s Brian Phillips’ thoughts on “Soccer”. It was horrible. Tragic. A huge disappointment.
It started so good. Know the feeling when something hasn’t even begun and you know it will be great? I had that feeling. When I walked up the stands and heard the music (Bläck Fööss – Du bes die Stadt) they were playing I was getting really excited. Then the hymn of the club (Höhner – Mer Stonn zo dir) and if it didn’t happen already I get the creeps because it’s an amazing thing to hear 50,000 people chanting and waving their scarves during that song. And even after song when the game is on the fans continue and it’s even more amazing. I love it. I love to go that place. I have great memories of the RheinEnergie Stadion and I know I can’t stop returning and paying money (where I sit I usually pay 37€) for it.
The game begins and it took Cologne three minutes to score the first goal. They played excellent! At least for the first 20 minutes.
An ugly game. It’s the worst thing for a fan to see an ugly game. A 0-0 can be good, although a goal is always better but the way both teams played was an insult to football. Both teams made lots of mistakes, stupid mistakes that can easily be avoided by actually playing the game it is supposed to be. DO NOT pass the ball to the players of the other team or if there are some players waiting for you to pass the ball to them you SHOULD NOT pass the ball to the player who is covered by two defenders. Oh, and if there is a defender you SHOULD NOT try and run against him. In the first 20 minutes I thought that winning this game seems realistic, after the first half I thought that we can be happy with a tie and then when Schalke scored the equalizer I knew we will lose.
Flipboard it is! It’s a free app I found a couple weeks ago and it became one of my everyday tools. While I use it for news and sports updates only I read about people who use it as the primary facebook and twitter app.
The app is quite simple. Install, start, select a category and add the channels, feeds, boards or whatever you want to call it (I’ll call it channel for now). Flipboard offers channels that cover all publishers of a category or you just pick single publishers. If you don’t like the selection go and search for it! If you search for “mpitsch.com” you’ll see my inactive tumblr page, tweets mentioning the URL and RSS feeds. Just watch out when you selected a bunch of channels and want to add a few more. Don’t select channels you already have as duplicates could appear.
The design is great and whoever came up with it should get 100 years of free Dunkin Donuts iced coffee. It’s simple and it looks fun because all you have to do is to flip the pages. Just like a flipboard… Guess where the name comes from! Haha… Funny indeed. The first page shows a big box with an image for “Cover Stories” and it’s a mix of the latest updates. Two smaller boxes underneath the bigger one showing whatever you selected. You can sort the channels by dragging them in the “Your Flipboard” options. The pages are limited to four pages though so page 2 to 4 show up to six smaller boxes and if you have more than 20 channels you have to select “more” on the last page. Too bad. Once you selected a channel you can flip through the headlines. Select a headline and you get to the article where you can continue to flip through the content. I’m this app rocks on iPad…
flipboard.com
Friday it’s time again to get on a plane and fly over the Atlantic to visit my girlfriend and spend Christmas and New Years!
It was quite a pain in the ass to get the ticket as I had to check with the company I do my intern at and couldn’t book before but it all went well. Then I did a mistake with the booking but everything is fine and Friday I’ll get on a Air Canada Airbus 330-300 to fly to Boston with a stop in Montreal, Canada. The flight from Montreal to Boston is with a Canadair Regional Jet 200 and I’m quite excited, to be honest.
The flight back to Germany will be with a Boeing 737-700 from Boston to Newark and to Frankfurt with a Boeing 757-200. Both planes operated by Continental. I’m really excited as I used different airlines and airports every time since I visited the States from 2008 on.
1. US Airways: Frankfurt – Philadelphia – Boston – Philadelphia Frankfurt
2. Air Iberia: Frankfurt – Madrid – Boston – Madrid – Frankfurt
3. Iceland Air: Frankfurt - Reykjavík – Boston - Reykjavík – Frankfurt
4. British Airways/American Airlines: Luxembourg – London Heathrow – Boston – London Heathrow – Luxembourg
5. Air Canada/Continental: Frankfurt – Montreal – Boston – Newark – Frankfurt
By the way, this is just the chronological order of my flights from old to latest. Air Iberia was the worst regarding flying, London Heathrow was the worst airport and the best tour was with Iceland Air.
I love flying but when I wanted to reserve the seats I noticed that I need to pay $109-$129 for extra leg room. Now I’m about 6’2” tall and it sucks a little bit. In March, just a week before I left to the States again, a hip pointer incurred during PT made flying very painful and some extra leg room would have been so amazing…
And because I love flying, the amazing things like looking out of a window and see some cool stuff or the annoying things like little screaming children, my Papp of the Week will be TheOatmeal.com
It’s one of the funniest pages I’ve seen in the past couple years. Primarily I use this site for the comics because they are hilarious but the creator, Matthew Inman, does a fine job with quizzes and his blog as well. If you like one of the comics you can buy them as posters or, especially for Christmas, you can buy greeting cards from the shop as well.
Here are some examples, all with flying 
Just click on the image and get directed to the comic!
If I shouldn’t post again for this year I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate. Plus a Happy New Year! Stay safe and don’t kill yourself with fireworks! Fire and alcohol are dangerous together
It’s been a good week again. Especially the weekend was great and fun. Not only because of Cologne’s amazing 4-0 victory over Freiburg…
Saturday I went to Perlé in Luxembourg to see the celebrations for the 67th anniversary of the liberation of Luxembourg. In Perlé there is a monument for the crews of two B-17′s that collided and crashed close to the town in July 1944. 18 crewmen died and another crash did cost one more life in November 1944. One local, at that time still young, witnessed all the happenings and build up something great in the past years. Mr Roger Feller, who I met several times in the past couple years, is the head of the group of people who built up the monument and run the museum for more than 10 years now.
The museum is quite small but still impressive. Locals, veterans of the war and veterans of the 385th Bomb Group donated a lot to the museum. Also modern items of today’s veterans are shown in the museum.
But it’s not only the museum and the monument that makes it worth to go there. The way the people appreciate the happenings 67 years ago is amazing. Still today they thank the people who liberated the small nation and that’s why the visit of General Patton’s grandson was so important to them. One moment is probably gonna stay in my memory for a long time. Patton’s grandson met two older locals and one of them showed him a little book, which could have been an old pay book. I’m not sure what it was but for all three of them it must have been amazing. Some might not know but General Patton’s grave is at the American cemetery in Luxembourg because he is the “liberator of Luxembourg” and for the people there a godlike person.
Patton Waters and locals
It’s something special and unique. People nowadays, young men and women from my generation can’t know what it was like. I don’t know either but from the stories I heard and read about I can imagine a little bit about the situation. Both my grandparents experienced the war. Both my grandfathers were soldiers during the war. One of them got drafted when he was 16. The other one fought on the Eastern Front. My grandmothers experienced the war at home and it’s a big shame that today we take our level of prosperity for granted. We can be lucky that things turned out the way they did after the war. That some countries took care of us, although our country started that World War that killed around 70 million people. But back to Perlé!
Besides Patton’s grandson Perlé had another guest. A group of people who attended the celebrations with old US and British uniforms and military vehicles made the whole day even more interesting. It was quite impressing to see some old jeeps, a half-track, some trucks and even a Kübelwagen.
And because this was such a great day for me the website of the 385th Bomb Group Memorial Museum is gonna be this week’s Page of the Week!
www.385bg.com
Thank you Perlé and Roger!
Been slacking lately and after three unfinished drafts I finally convinced myself to get back on the laptop and write a little bit. Whoever is bored enough to visit my page might wonder why I even do this but I want to get to that point where I can write every day. One day I want to become a journalist and this blog plus my other one in German might help a little bit. But eh…
This week I began my internship at the LBB, the estate and construction management agency of Rheinland-Pfalz and I enjoy it so far. At my actual job I work with one of their offices and this experience might help a lot for the near future. From day one I got fully integrated and had to do my part. It’s good to DO something instead of sitting in a classroom for a few hours.
Last weekend was a big fail because Cologne lost against their rivals Borussia Mönchengladbach with 0-3. At home. It was terrible and I’m at the point where I lost interest in football. Yesterday though I went to Trier and watched the game there and now I’m waiting for the Bundesliga to begin. Cologne is playing their favorite opponent for away games at 6:30pm. Since 1996 the “Geißböcke” (Billy Goats) never lost in Stuttgart. I’m hoping for three points…
Next year is gonna be interesting as well because the European Championship is gonna take place in Poland and the Ukraine. And the groups have been drawn. Germany is playing in a group with the Netherlands, Portugal and Denmark. It’s a tough group and it really got me excited. No matter who we kick out, they deserved it. If it’s the Netherlands … because the Netherlands and Germany have a big rivalry … or Portugal because they have diva Ronaldo or even Denmark because we lost against Denmark in the 1992 Euro final, our team should be motivated a lot.
Also I didn’t forget to look for a new page I can present. This seems to be an uprising star in the funny websites category. In the past three days I stumbled over it three times. One time on a website, one time on facebook via a friend and even my girlfriend did show it to me.
It’s
The host of this blog is basically taking screens of the text conversations he has with his gangsta cousin Bennett. The tumblr page is relatively small … yet but I’m sure it will fill with really funny stuff, f.e.
Anyways, enjoy Bennett’s texts and kudos to the guy posting it! Thanks for sharing!
Have a nice weekend! Drive safe!
While the Texas Rangers made it back to the World Series again the St. Louis Cardinals are battling against the Milwaukee Brewers and only need one more win to advance the Red Sox are preparing for next season. Things will change a lot. The duo that brought the World Series trophy back to Boston after 86 years, Terry Francona and Theo Epstein won’t be in Boston any longer. Theo Epstein will be heading to Chicago and try to help the Cubs to win the World Series after a gazillion years.
I don’t know what to expect next season. Due to my job and constant absence from my home I wasn’t really able to follow the MLB. I checked scores and so on but didn’t read many news about Boston and other teams. Neither I wasn’t able to follow many games via MLB.tv because during the week I use a data stick with a 3GB limit of traffic. After that they slowdown my speed. So I watched on the weekends. Sometimes. I most likely won’t get another subscription. Kinda sad because I’m a subscriber for years already and still think it’s the cheapest price for sports TV. In Germany you spend lots of money to watch the national #1 sport: football. But it’s only 34 gamedays for our two highest divisions. Of course you can’t just get that package, you need to get sky’s basic package and one other package as well. If you’re smart you get the sports package as well, so you can see the associations cup, the UEFA matches and some matches from other European leagues. Altogether it’s 46€ per month. Right now that’s $63. MLB.tv was – I think – $130 for the whole season including playoffs and preseason. With sky you pay 552€ for a whole year which are almost $758. I’m sure though there will be a big change because the European court allowed international decoder cards for broadcasting of the Bundesliga. NHL Gamecenter is $160, good price, and NFL costs 150€, average price, in my opinion. 16 regular season games per team is just not a lot.
Back to baseball! Well, as I said, I don’t know what to expect. It will probably the most worrying season I will be following. 2000 was the first time I got in contact with this sport and became a Red Sox fan after being a Yankee for a day. 2001 I quit with football and 2003 I began with softball and baseball and it was the same year when I began following the MLB and especially the Red Sox. Except for 2003 I’ve only known Terry and Theo as the not-on-the-field-leaders. I don’t even know what players will still be with the Red Sox and which new players arrive in Beantown. There have to be some changes, for example the pitching staff. Hopefully the Red Sox get rid of Lackey and Dice-K. Lackey didn’t play well at all this year and Dice-K has been a disappointment for years.
This leads me to my Page of the Week: MLB Trade Rumors
MLB Trade Rumors keeps you up to date with latest happenings in the MLB. That’s my #1 source for trades and especially rumors. That’s where I read first about the compensation talks for Theo Epstein’s move to the Chicago Cubs.
Besides the general talks you can subscribe to a team’s feed via RSS, twitter and facebook. Another feature is the forum, a list of free agents, transaction tracker, agency database (let’s go Scott Boras!…), a widget and a iPhone app which I haven’t tested yet but will look into it in the next few days.
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com
Once the postseason is over this will be one of my most visited pages. You should take a look!
- Martin
Another crazy weekend over, another week begins!
But quick review of my weekend first. It actually began weeks and weeks ago when three of my comrades and I decided to meet up for Oktoberfest in Wittlich.
That’s why one of my friends spent the weekend at my house. Friday evening we went to the local pub and watched Germany’s 3-1 win over Turkey for the Euro Cup qualifier while having a couple beers. Call it a warm up because Saturday was time for the Oktoberfest.
The Oktoberfest in Wittlich is the biggest one in Rhineland-Palatinate and I usually go there on Fridays because it’s less crowded. But Saturday one of Germany’s big so called party musicians, Mickie Krause, sung at the festival so the tent was packed. Here is a picture I took and there were even more people on both sides of the stage.
The fest is actually pretty cool. If you’re not a fan of the Oktoberfest or hate party music it’s probably nothing for you but for me it’s fun. I like the Oktoberfest and I enjoy celebrating occasionally with that sort of music. Sometimes they also have some cover bands that play rock music. And the prices are reasonable. 7.50€ for a 1 liter cup and 3,90€ for a pint.
Now I’m gonna jump to my latest Papp of the Week…
Years ago I stumbled over a page that has lots of unreal joke news but they present it really well. They also sell a book, The Onion – Our Dumb World, which pretty much makes fun over many nations in the world.
I forgot about it meanwhile. Sometimes I notice facebook updates from The Onion but I didn’t really care that much until today! OnionSportsNetwork.com does the same with sports. My favorite two articles so far were about the Red Sox, of course.
#1 Red Sox Sell Out Of Commemorative “Collapse 2011″ Hats, T-Shirts
#2 Tim Wakefield Admits Knuckleball Just Fastball He Throws Very Slowly
But they cover many sports and it’s worth to jump in and take a look!
Good night!!
YES! You can be TOUGH!
Thanks to Zero Cool you can tell the world about your tough actions. It’s one of my favorite fun apps on my phone. Of course you’ve heard about the Chuck Norris jokes. Everybody has. If not you should be ashamed and wondering what you did wrong in the past years. At www.chucknorrisfacts.com you can check out most facts you’ll read in this app.
But the facts are so much cooler when you’re the one counting to eternity – twice. That’s why For Real Men Only (the name of the app on my phone is Tough Guy but the AppStore’s name is For Real Men Only – Toss out your paper dolls, get this app, and shazam! – INSTANT MANHOOD) is so amazing. It let’s you put in your own name and show off the facts about YOU! Anytime I’m bored I usually post some amazing facts about myself on facebook and I just know people are jealous.
Tough Guy App
So it’s October and I got over the Red Sox disaster. Watched a few innings of the first Texas – Tampa Bay game but for now I got enough of the playoffs. For now I relax, especially today on Germany’s national holiday!
Enjoy your day, if you’re in Germany, enjoy your day off and if possible take a look back in history why this day is so important to Germany.
- Martin
So here’s a quick review of the past two weeks.
It all started with the long awaited final match in Mainz. We played against Saarbrücken and we lost. Yes we lost. Kinda unbelievable. But we started badly and we improved slowly. Their batting was very good and they got lucky a few times while playing defense. Then in the 6th inning it started to rain and the game got cancelled. So we lost 4-1. I’m sure we would have scored a few more runs, maybe even turned the game. But eh, in the regular season we didn’t loose a game and we also won against them. I’m sure things change next year.
Last weekend was a bit more eventful. Friday the German Hockey League (DEL) started off andthe Cologne hockey team lost but a day later the football team won sensationally against Leverkusen, a team they haven’t won an away game against in the past 16 years. More surprising was the performance of Lukas Podolski. He played really disappointing so far and I was hoping Cologne would sell him for lots of cash but Saturday was his day with two goals and one assist. I was happy.
Then I went off to Bitburg for the night. On the old base one of the shelters has been functioned to a party place. It basically still looks like a shelter plus a crappy bar and a stage. Two bands I know because I went to school with two of their members, played some songs and I met up with a few more friends.
All in all there were four bands. Lock 7:41, Ave and then my friends’ bands Homecoming Kings and Xplorer. While three of the bands were able to play their full list Xplorer got told to stop after four bands so the one of the guys who organized everything could do the DJ stuff. Organization really sucked. And it was just disrespectful towards the band. Still I had a good time. Bought Xplorer’s album “The Wolf-Rayet Mirror” and didn’t get home before 5am the next day.
And because I haven’t posted a Papp of the Week I’m happy to present you Badassoftheweek.com. This page is so bad ass it could write about itself.
Author Ben Thompson is a graduate in political science and history and he knows what he is talking about. I really like his posts about important people in history, for example of how much of a bad ass Erwin Rommel is (“He quickly proved himself to be the most balls-out commander in the Wehrmacht, as his tanks tore ass head-first across the hedgerows covering something like 100 miles a day, busting through the French lines and hitting them from behind with massive large-scale assaults designed at crippling the enemy’s combat capabilities.”) or Frederick Barbarossa (“Amazing, heart-warming stories about the triumph of the human sprit through the medium of homemade artillery are cool and all, but every once in a while you need to sit down and sink your teeth into a straight-up, no-bullshit medieval ass-annihilator who responded to dissenters with a crushing mace-wound to the balls, clawed together an empire by punching people in half with a steel-plated gauntlet, and enjoyed drinking lager amid giant steaming piles of broke-to-fuck corpses. Frederick Barbarossa is one of those men.“). But also fictional people like John McClane, Han Solo, The Punisher or Batman or objects like the A-10 Warthog, the Panther tank or the S&W .500 Magnum are very well described. Thompson also wrote two books and I’m already thinking about ordering those.
Anyways, more than 50 interesting persons or objects are waiting for you and I promise you’ll laugh and learn!
But for now I’ll keep rocking my brand new PS3 games! Got the 2012 versions of NHL, Madden, Tiger Woods and MLB The Show and FIFA is on the way. Was some cash but worth it so far. My friends and I here in Idar-Oberstein enjoy these games and it’s a time killer. My week is going by so much faster
- Martin
