I stayed in a nice little hostel in Nürnberg (Nuremburg) called the “Five Reasons”. It was cheap and very nice. It is situated right beside the Nürnberg city wall, a relic going back to the 12th and 16th centuries. About 4 km of the original 5 km wall is still standing. The moat surrounding the wall was never filled with water and is now a nice walking path.
I did a flying visit of Stuttgart whilst enroute to Tübingen in Germany. I didn’t stay long, but had time to do a quick tour around the city center and took the following snaps on my way through.
Deep beneath this rather boring looking car park is the location where Adolf Hitler married his wife, then promptly blew his brains out with a pistol on the 30th April 1945. He was then dragged up to ground level, doused with fuel and set on fire inside an impact hole from Soviet artillery shelling. I farted a little, then moved on.
This was going to be a series of posts regarding my visit to the Dachau concentration camp near München in Germany. But when I began writing it, I realised I simply don’t have enough knowledge of the history and events which occurred in this very sad location in world history. So all I’m going to do is post a dump of photos I took during my visit, and suggest that if you are interested in the camp, then do some research and look into the reports on what occurred here during World War 2.
I forgot to post these photos I took of weird shit in Japan. Apparently they like drinking sweat, buying coffee and cigarettes from vending machines, using electric toilets and washing their clothes with devices made by Sanyo.
The weird thing about the vending machines, is that they’re everywhere. They just leave them sitting out on the footpath, so that you can stop and buy stuff as you are walking along. They’re kinda handy if you feel like a quick snack late night.
As of today I have moved away from Norway where I have made my home for the past two years. It feels sad, as I do love Norway, the people, and will miss my life there. But I think it was time to move on. The company I worked for in Oslo has downsized dramatically recently, which involved chopping jobs, including my own.
My chosen career path (WordPress development) involves work which can be outsourced at any given moment, and even though I could probably have found another job in Oslo, there is always a concern that my employers would simply realise they could have the same work done elsewhere for cheaper and I’d end up having to find another job again. With that in mind, I took a job working for a growing company called 10up in the USA. They don’t care where I live, so instead of living in the most expensive place imaginable (Oslo), I have decided to have a crack at living in Berlin, Germany, where costs are significantly lower.
I know very little about Berlin, apart from the fact that I always have a terrific time when in Germany and I think my mindset fits in well with the German way of doing things. I’m hoping this will be a long term move, but I hoped that my move to Oslo was going to be long term (or even permanent) too, but that hasn’t worked out, so I’m not promising anything.
I had a very poorly laid plan for my arrival in Berlin. I have no work visa (the German embassy in Oslo told me to apply after I arrived), nowhere to live (I’m crashing at a hostel at the moment) and no backup plan for if it all falls to pieces and I don’t get the work visa I need. I always seem to land on me feet though, so either things will work themselves out or I’m going to have to haul my butt to some place else until I figure out plan B.
To all my friends in Norway, I will be back! Probably not to live, but definitely to visit. There are too many people I will miss for me not to come visit. In fact it looks likely that I will be back on the 25th and 26th January for WordCamp Norway 2014.
Here are some photos I took during my awesome time living in Oslo …
