NFL - NY Jets vs. SF 49ers @ Candlestick Park

Yes... after a MBL game and a NBA match I finally attended a NFL  game last Sunday. (Everyone who doesn't know this acronyms should google it :D)

American Football is quite unknown in Europe, but as far as I got known to this sport so far, I'd tell it's really entertaining and more exciting to watch than most soccer matchs.

The rules are complex and difficult to understand, at least compared with other sports, but if you want to learn something new just click here. 

As I spent the past couple months in SF I consequentially supported the 49ers, the team of San Francisco. Although they're didn't do that well this season, they won on Sunday against the favoured NY Jets with a final score of 24 - 14.

But as you probably aren't that interested in this sport anyway I just post some nice pictures and stop telling about American Football.

The red ones are the 49ers, the green and white guys the NY Jets, the other two guys referees (there are even more of them) and the brown thing in the air the football. :-)

Panorama taken fron my seat (of course it's distorted, in fact I had a really good view over the field) The problem by taking panoramas at such crowded places is that most people just can't hold still... :-) You see what I mean if you take a closer look at the picture.

And guess how the Americans travel to the game? Public transport, yes, exactly! :D

BTW, it's just a part of the parking area...

As always, click on the pictures if you want to see them larger.

The Rock

Finally we got round to visit one of the best known attraction of San Francisco, Alcatraz Island.

This little rock in the middle of the bay has a long and fascinationg history.

First used by the army which built a fort on the island, it later became a military prison. It was America's "gangster era" (during the the of the time of prohibition in the USA, approx. 1920-33) which raised the peoples's demand for a maximum-security prison for the most dangerous and faulty criminals. However, just a couple of the 1545 prisoners who did time on the island were notorious, the most famous ones were "Al" Capone, "Machine Gun" Kelly and Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz".

For everyone who's interested in the fascinating of the island, especially of the prison can find additional information here and here or google it themselves.

We took the first ship to the island, at 9.00 am, with this "early bird" trip you can make sure that the place isn't that crowded.

Once on the island you can walk around without guide, in the prison you can get an audio guide for free and make an intriguing tour through the building and discover the cells, recreation yard, library, dining room and much more.

Here you have some pictures:

Cells in the main tract (remember "The Rock" with Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage)

"Inmate" walking around at the recreation yard during the weekly hour outside. :-)

The cell of one of the three famous escapees, who successfully fled from the rock and since then never have been seen again. In the picture you see the dummy head which fooled the prison warder. Also notice the hole in the back of the cell and the improvised piece of wall to hide it.  Here you find a summary of the thrilling story of them (and here the FBI report :D).

That's the view you have from the island, prisoners could see the city, just out of reach.

Short review for a looooooooooooooong weekend - "regular" part of the weekend

Short summary:

Saturday: Learning and hanging around

Sunday: Learning and hanging around + Twin Peaks

Yeah... actually nothing really exciting... but visiting the Twin Peaks was really cool. The view was breathtaking... combined with the setting sun and the cloudless sky (with Jupiter and Venus clearly visible as far as I'm right) it was absolutely amazing...

Here you a have a little panorama of the scene, it's really worth enlarging it (click on the picture).

Take a closer look at the two "stars" next to the moon... Venus and Jupiter?

San Fran @ nighttime... maybe a bit overexposed, but looks cool :-)

The brightest street is Market St.

Short review for a looooooooooooooong weekend - Happy Turkey Day + Black Friday

... which has been over for quite while. Maybe (or probably) this has been overlooked by most of the non-American readers (consequently by most of them): Last Thursday we had Thanksgiving, also known as "Happy Turkey Day... it's one of the most important American holidays, click here if you want to know more about it.

We had no school on that day (and same for Friday). The majority of Americans use to have a big feast on Thanksgivings Day, with stuffed turkey and so on... We just spent the day hanging around in SF and went to the cinema (Four Christmases.... Angelika wanted to see this movie, but in the end she agreed with what i predicted... that the movie is crap)

The day after the Turkey Day is called "Black Friday" (on this day all stores operate in the black). As a lot of presents are made on Thanksgivings Day there are usually thousands of special offers on the day after... though it seemed to be a bit different this year, probably because of the economic crisis... unlike than in other years there weren't any really fantastic or special deals.

Weekend review (I'm becoming a faster poster ^^)

Saturday's gone... though it remains in our hearts, lol.

Ok, short summary: We checked out the Golden Gate Park... I already drove through across the park with the bike, but I actually didn't see much of it... First we got to the Japanese Tea Garden, the name is self-explanatory... it's a cozy place to hang out. Well, to be exactly you can't actually hang out there... just walking around and taking some pictures is possible... not to forget the 5$ admission fee.

Nevertheless it was nice to see all the little trees and streamlets. We also saw the M.H. de Young Museum (from the outside) as it is just near the Garden.

After hanging out in the Park for a while, we went to Chinatown and bought some groceries... yeah, actually nothing really exciting, but it was a cool day... and btw, I nearly forgot to mention that we went to the cinema in the evening, "Role Models"... nice movie, but not more than that.

Today is more an easy day... a bit learning and stuff like this.

Here some pictures from Saturday:

 
Japanese Tea Garden

 

    de Young Museum

...

And... I nearly forgot: We saw a nice little squirrel...

Religulous

Oh yeah... this is a great movie! I've no idea wether non-Americans ever heard of it, but I really recommend to watch it! (You know, there are ways to see it... even if the movies isn't showed in a cinema near your place)

Religulous is a kind of documentary, but very entertaining! As the name impliesl, the movie is all about religions, their believers, wrongs, human stupidity and conflicts which arise from the different beliefs. Although there is sometimes a lack of some more scientific arguments or specific points, the movie is brilliant!

Sometimes there is some resemblance with Dawkins "The God Delusion", but more entertaining and maybe a bit less clever... which in my opinion is good (as it is a movie and not a book)

This is a must for everyone who's interested in the topic of religious beliefs and their aberrations.

It's probably the best movie I've seen this year.  Click here to see the trailer.

Weekend review Part II

Saturday we finally came around to visit the Coit Tower while there wasn't any fog... The weather was awesome... it was nearly 30°C. Seeing the sunset from the top of the tower was nice, but not as breathtaking as when we saw it two weeks ago from the other side of the bay.

Afterwards we headed to (s)Nob Hill, together with Claudia and Sandro, who're also at the same school. The showed us a nice little Italian Restaurant... which gave a bit variety to the traditional American food (Mc Donalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Jack in the Box, KFC, Wendy's...) ;-)

Still not tired (we slept quite long that morning) we went to Lombard to see how it looks at nighttime. Before going home I went to Border's where I found some nice comic books (Get Fuzzy and Pearls before Swine , check it out if you've never heard of them before) 

Here some pictures:

View from the Coit Tower

Coit Tower at night, seen from the end of the crooked part of Lobard St.
(used a parked car as tripod :-D)

Weekend Review... finally! ... Part I: Friday & Quantum of bullshit

It's been a while since the last post and a lot happened during this time. No, let me reformulate this, actually there didn't happen that much, but we had quite a good time...

After hanging around with some friends Friday afternoon (Angelika was playing tennis) we went to the cinema to see the new Bond movie, Quantum of solace. I assume that you read the title, so I don't have to point out separately that it won't be my favourite film.

Let me give you some reasons:

- Bond is never ever saying "My names Bond, James Bond." during the whole movie

- he's never gambling 

- there are no gadgets!!!

- ... and no Q

- no appearence of Miss Moneypenny either

- not the old, traditional scheme with the two "Bond girls" (good and bad)

- and no exaggerated story about a man who want's to rule over the world or to start      a new world war

... and by the way, what happened with the sex scenes?

So, you see, enough reasons to be disappointed, I mean this is simply not a Bond movie. 

In addition to that, Marc Forster isn't able to make action movies... Men, it's absolutely unnecessary to shake the camera during a pursuit or just a simple action scene... You can't see anything, like in "Eagle Eye".

Sure there were some cool scenes, especially when Anatole Taubmann is talking in Swiss-German while he makes a phone call. Let me quote: "Ja Mami, s'isch scho chli heiss da...!"

(I hope I remember it properly...) We couldn't stop laughing after this, and all the people in the cinema were wondering what the heck made us do so :-)

But as I'd say this was the highlight of the movie... the rest was really disappointing. The movie might be not that bad, but it simply can't be called a "James Bond".

 PS: In the US, the movie was released just last week... 

American curiosity part II

After yesterday's post about Spam I wanna post another strange thing I discovered here... You probably know that there are a lot of fast food restaurants here in the states and that healthy food in general isn't very common everywhere... but nevertheless a lot of people try to live in a healthy way. That's the reason why you find a light version of almost every product you can think of... but I'll stop beating around the bush and post what I actuallly wanted to show you:

Uhmm... yeah, it's a bottle of water...

Veterans Day - no classes!! ^^

Hehe, we had the day off due to Veterans Day (according to Wikipedia an " annual American holiday honoring military veterans").

We used the time to buy some food and learn... (to be exact, I wanted to learn during the afternoon, but I fell asleep, so I still have to do some homwork).

To go grocery shopping in the US is each time a funny experience... Let me give you an example:

Yeah, there's nothing you can't get... they even have canned spam over here (I wonder who buys this :-p)   Nevertheless... I would prefer having Spam lite in my incoming mail instead of this common high-cal Spam. ;-)

In fact today I discovered EMMI cheese in Safeway...    but it's quite expensive, about 8$ for 0.22 lb! There's also American cheese, but usually you can't even look at it... it's mostly orange, I should post a picture once, otherwise non-Americans wont believe it.

Week(end) review - Sunday biking

Finally the weather improved a lot again (actually it was a perfect day), so we eventually got round to take our bikes out of the storage room and drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. We planned to visit Sausalito, but we realized that this would be too boring, so we headed for the Muir Woods. Unfortunately the maps we had were quite bad and so it was already too late when we learned that on the way we've taken just some trails were leading towards the woods... no chance with my nice road bike. As we're flexible we checked out the area around Point Bonita, including the beach and the lighthouse, before we headed for Sausalito.

Sausalito wasn't that interesting at all, very touristic and a lot of rip-off stores. Nevertheless our little trip was great. The lighthouse was really fascinating... the landscape and the whole scenery were breathtaking. In addition to that I had the chance to get some pictures of the GG bridge after nightfall. They may not be as good as pictures taken with a DSLR, but they're ok.

Point Bonita Lighthouse

No need to explain... (hopefully) *click on it*

The IMAX experience - part II

"I like to move it move it!" - Oh yeah... Madagascar Escape 2 Africa came to the cinemas last Friday... On Saturday we went to the IMAX to see it. The animation of the movie is breathtaking... absolutely fantastic! Of course in the IMAX it's even better than anywhere else, but I'm sure you won't be disappointed when you see it in a normal cinema :-p

Some parts of the movie are simply hilarious, especially the penguins... but also the monkeys and the lemurs of course, but I don't wanna spoil anything.

Not every single scene might be funny, but nevertheless it's a movie I really recommend to see (best in the IMAX, hehehe).

Week(end) review - Saturday

It was foggy... real SF-fog everywhere. So foggy it was, some people even walked around with umbrellas, ni kidding!! However, actually we had planned to go biking... Sausolito or something like this, but because of the weather we decided to sleep a bit longer and to check out some objects of interest in the city we didn't see so far...

(But before doing this, I went to a guitar store at Van Ness... it's called... (as far as I remeber) "Guitar Store" :D... I had to get my hands on some guitars, I didn't play for weeks as I don't have my loved Warrior here :-( It seemed that electric guitars are a lot cheaper here!!!)

We decided to go to the Coit Tower... this doesn't take too much time and it's something we really wanted to see... but admittedly, it wasn't the best idea (did I already mention the fog?)

Nevertheless I post a nice picture:

Actually we didn't get to the top of the tower... it didn't seem to be worth the 5$ at all...

And here you got some information about the tower itself... I'm too lazy to write it by myself, so just click on the picture if you're interested to read it:

Week review - what else (besides the election)

School is quite time consuming... especially from Monday to Thursday. We don't have classes at Friday afternoon, so that's kind of the best time from all weekdays :D

So what else happened was scheduled this week... ? Actually not that much until Friday... no,  I forgot, I went to the cinema with two guys from school, I wanted to see SAW 5 :-) It's an awesome movie, but you have to see the other parts first... btw I think it isn't in Swiss cinemas yet.

Unfortunately they didn't show it in the IMAX, I'd have loved to see this movie on such a screen!

Being on the subject of cinema and movies... the new Bond, Quantum of Solace, wont be shown in cinemas before Nov. 14th over here!!! It's scandalous!!! Who has seen it already?

On Friday was the birthday of Angelika...  *HAPPY BIRTHDAY* everyone who missed to congratulate on time can write a comment ;-)

We enjoyed a nice and very tasty dinner on a terrace with a great view over Union Square, it was really lovely.

Week review - election

A lot has happened since my last post... and I know that everyone has observed the presidential election here in the US (or at least noticed the results... ) By electing Barack Obama, history has been made! 

Many people here build their hopes on Obama. A lot of expectations and anticipations for big changes were the reasons to vote for him.
As he announced some revolutionary ideas during his campaign I hope he keeps his promises and will do his best to realize his ideas.
Having achieved very good results regarding the Senate and the House of Representatives, the democrats now have an excellent fundament for a succesful time of government.

California actually was never a battlefield during the election... it was always "Obama territory", but nevertheless there were hundreds of people celebrating his election on the streets and in bars... I'm curious what Obama will do and achieve during his period as president.

As far as I can tell, since the election most people here are quite optimistic about the future politics.

Foggy Sunday - at least it didn't rain anymore

Sunday's over -  and with it the weekend. After checking out some stores yesterday (without buying anything on my part) we drove (by bike of course) to the Exploratorium today... actually it's really similar to the Technorama in Winterthur, though not that nice organized and structured... and also not that cool special exhibitions. Nevertheless it was cool to hang around there for a while... the museum store also was worth a visit.

Exploratorium 

 (reflection of me on the silver sphere)

Btw: Not that cool: On the way to the Exploratorium (the last 300 meters) on of my tires went flat... the front one.

 Cool: A guy who was just running there told me that a big sport store with bike repair was located really near, so I went there after visiting the museum. (Yes, went ... damn it!)

The problem seemed to be the worn tires of my bike... I knew that this could become a problem when I bought it, but I hoped it would be just fine for my time here... bad luck.

 Not so cool: I bought a quite cheap new tire for my front wheel and some tire liner (and a new tube of course)... just having changed the tube could lead to new flats because of the bad condition of the tire...

 Cool: The repair guy fixed everything for me (for free! Absolutely great!) . He even fixed a used, but way better tire on my back wheel for free (in addition to the new front tire I bought), so everything should work properly now without any problems. 

HALLOWEEN

Yesterday there were big parties everywhere in the US... Halloween is probably on of the most important days of the year for a lot Americans.

Actually I can understand this.. it's pretty fun to dress up and do some weird stuff you usually wouldn't. Nearly the whole class came already dressed to scholl, highlights were definetly the followning costumes: Elvis (oh yeah, looked awesome!), a cow (sooooo cool), a sailor, Rocky Balboa and more. (At this point I won't say anything about my coustume...)

In the evening there was a party at our school, but just until about 9pm. Nevertheless it was a lot of fun and the place was really crowded. There were a lot of really good and creative costumes, fact is that our class provided some of the best. The sailor won the prize for the best costume and I got the prize for the funniest costume (no I won't tell you... not yet)

It was also really entertaining to walk through the city afterwards and see all the creative and cool, but often also just standard costumes. Everybody seemed to be dressed up for Halloween and just wanted to have fun... it was great.

Unfortunately I haven't got some good photos yet, as I didn't take my camera with me, but I'll update this probably as soon as I get some nice pictures.
(I just have some pictures from the morning, which aren't that fun... but maybe I'll post these if I can't get the other pictures soon)

NBA: Warriors - Hornets

Last Thursday we went to our first NBA game in our life, the Golden State Warriors against the New Orleans Hornets... the game took place in Oakland, just over the bay. It was easy to go there by BART.

As it was the opening game of the season we all received a mice yellow Warriors opening shirt for free. This was pretty cool as a lot of fans wore the shirts and the whole viewer area was in glaring yellow.

The game was (in my opinion as basketball noob at least) pretty cool, although we had quite cheap seats. It was a pity that the Warriors lost the game... final score was 108:103 for the Hornets.

Enjoying a NBA game live was really fun and for everybody who isn't familiar with basketball: it's really worth seeing it once!

I took some pictures, as a reminder: click on them to enlarge.

  

Devildriver & Death Angel @ Regency Ballroom

Yesterday was another concert. I had bought my ticket already weeks ago, just knowing that Devildriver were going to play... Last week I found out (to my surprise)  that Death Angel was scheduled as support... awesome!!!

I arrived early (by bike of course)... I wanted to be in the front. Actually there weren't that much people there when the doors opened, so I had time to check out the merchandise stuff and talk with several people who also wanted to be near to the stage... it was very entertaining.

The opening act was a band called "Straight Line Stitch" with a women (!) growling and singing the lyrics... but it wasn't the kind of music I really like... it was too colorless,  several riffs were quite similar and all in all nothing seemed to be quite innovative. Nevertheless they played a solid show.

Death Angel, who were playing next, were fucking amazing! Their show had power and full of energy, the setlist was awesome and the solos (most of them) fantastic... and very important, the sound was perfect (although, the vocals were quite low... but I really didn't care about this).

What's interesting to know is, that this band roots in the beginnig of thrash metal and actually comes from Daly City (as far as I heard) which is really near to SF. They still have their very own, old-school style... I love it.

Death Angel...

...performing a fucking cool show.

Setlist of Death Angel (thanks to the girl who got it and let me take photo)

I've seen Devildriver in Switzerland before... they played an awesome show in the Rohstofflager in front of just around 250... 

I really like this band for their groundbreaking guitar work and also the great drum play.  Unfortunately the show yesterday was really disappointing. Although they had a great setlist (see below) and a nice performance (all in all), the sound was absolutely awful. You couldn't actually here the guitar... at least not when the drummer was playing (and else it was everything else than loud). 

I have no idea what stupid soundman they have, but it was very frustrating... it could have been such a cool show, with all the great songs they performed. (Actually I don't know what the sound was like farther away from the stage (there were other boxes for the back), but I can't imagine it was better.)

Nevertheless it was a cool evening, especially because of Death Angel and their cool show.

Noiseless Devildriver guitarist (I guess his monitors worked, so he could enjoy the show...)

Devildriver's awesome Setlist

Fire!!

Oh yeah... finally some action. Today we had a fire alarm in the building where we have our accommodation... Don't worry, it was a false alarm, but I couldn't figure out yet who or what caused it. As the horn sounded, one of my first thought was: "Oh, no way, the Spanish morons can't be in the kitchen at this time... must be a false alarm."

As soon as we were in the lobby it was confirmed that there isn't a fire or anything similar anwhere... I just told to Angelika "Let's wait a minute here... the firefighters must arrive in a second." Barely said so, they arrived with siren wailing and blue light flashing in front of the building.

Always prepared, I had my camera in the pocket and took some pictures. It was quite amusing seeing the firefighters running into the house and coming back disappointed some minutes later.

(I've no idea how many false alarms there are in SF per day, but it must be frustrating for the guys.)

(As always... click on it to enlarge)

Weekend review - Sunday

The day after the trip to Santa Cruz, the fog seemed to have reached San Fran... (for the first time since quite a while). Nevertheless we decided to bike to the Kezar Stadium, respectively to the Golden Gate Park (which is far away from the GG Bridge) to do some sports /learn for school.

Arriving at the Stadium I had to realize that I was unlucky again... there was a Football game of some kids and I couldn't go into the stadium to do my track & field stuff... Exactly the same story as last friday, when I wanted to practice in the afternoon. I hope I'll be lucky tomorrow.

As we couldn't excersise and it was too windy too hang around in the Park and learn, we decided to drive though the city with our bikes.

We ended at Fort Point, just under the Golden Gate Bridge and our way home lead us once again up the whole Hyde St.! I've never seen such a steep street before... it's unbelievable. The most amazing thing is that the street is dead stright.

On the top, the intersection point with Lombard St. to be exactly, there was a Cable Car standing just on the crossing... so there was not a single car driving down the crooked part of Lombard.

It's self-evident that I snapped this chance and that I turned left (illegaly) and drove down the famed twists of Lombard, without having a car on the street... really cool :D

Some impressions of the day:

The Golden Gate Bridge in the fog with some kite surfers and normal surfers

Hyde Street (it's even steeper than it looks)

It wasn't foggy everywhere... (s)nob hill had quite good wheather and blue sky all day long...

The reason why Americans must have BIG cars

I was wondering since I arrived in the States about the use of the usual size of cars Americans have... then in Santa Cruz last Saturday I finally found the reason as I saw the car pictured below...

*click on the picture to enlarge*

I wonder why i didn't strike on the idea... I mean it's obvious that there must always be some space left for the quad bike!

Weekend review - Saturday

It's monday - time to mourn after the weekend... On Saturday we went (together with some guys from school) to Santa Cruz. "Went" maybe isn't the best way to describe this... we actually took the Greyhound Bus (ca. 2.5 h trip).

Leaving San Francisco behind us, we also left the blue sky behind us... Although it was quite warm and agreeable in Santa Cruz, there was a lot of vapor and fog. (Take a look at the pictures)

We had some relaxing hours at the beach, throwing around a football (not soccer) which isn't that easy at all, as I realized, and checking out the stores there. (The whole village is of course very touristic, but it was fun.) 

After some late-night shopping in the town (I found some awesome, second-hand and very cheap guitar songbooks in a crazy bookstore... ) we got back to SF with the Greyhound at 10, arriving at 1 am.

Arriving @ the beach... the fog in the neck.

Hangin' around... lazy in the vapor :D

Waiting for the Greyhound bus back to SF

ICED EARTH - live at Grand Ballroom SF

This evening I was at the Iced Earth concert... seen them for the first time live. I really like this band, Jon Schaffer is just a phenomenal guitarist... his rythm guitar playing is unmistakably and exceptionally. The rest of the band of course also are highly talented musicians, but as guitarist (as I am), Jon Schaffer and his playing are the things I like most about the band.

Nevertheless I'm very happy to see Matt Barlow back in the band. Although Tim "Ripper" Owens didn't a bad job as singer for the last couple of years, Matt in my opinion has a better voice for the typical Iced Earth music.

There were two opening acts this evening, Into Eternity and Saviours... Actually I've never heard of them before, but all in all they did a nice job. Saviours pleased me more than the first band, but it seemed as if I was the only one in the whole hall who more or less enjoyed this band.

Iced Earth of course was amazing. It's absolutely fascinating how they manage to play on such a high level live on stage... Matt Barlow didn't forget how to sing, although he cut his hair (I guess he had to do so... he became a police officer after he had left the band a couple of years ago)  The setlist was great and so was the sound (although not during the first song, but the technician improved this fastly). There were a lot of songs which I didn't expect at all... e.g. High water mark or Coming Curse... but also Stormrider.

Here some impressions (to enlarge pictures just click on them... as always):

(From left to right: Matt Barlow, Freddie Vidales, Troy Seele)

"Father" of Iced Earth, Jon Schaffer

again Jon Schaffer

The setlist of the concert (thanks to the guy who catched it and let me take picture)

Next Tuesday DEVILDRIVER and Death Angel are coming... and I'll be there of course :D  I also learned that Joe Satriani will come to the Warfield... there are no normal tickets available anymore, but maybe I'll find another way to get one... but I'm not sure whether this guy is really worth 50 bucks... even if he's a great guitarist. But I guess it would be cool to see him once!?