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.