Joe’s Blog

Short answer to Mike - go to Franconia (northern Bavaria, in German: Franken). In Berlin, Becks seems to be the beer of choice. There is a beer known as Schultheiss but it was more of an old-mans beer. Berliner-Pilsner was a good alternative to Becks. I heard of Berliner Kindl too but can’t remember it being any good. Certainly didn’t try any green/red Berliner Weisse

Giving an uninformed guess, the beer in East Berlin was horrible and in West Berlin, you were happy if you had coal during the airlift. So a proud, continuous brewing tradition is unlikely. Even the new, hip, organic drink of choice, “Bionade” isn’t from Berlin.

The beer culture in Bavaria and Franconia is much stronger and even the wikipedia page reflects this EN. The German Wikipedia goes into more detail and states that Oberfranken (Upper Franconia) has more breweries than any other European country! Only the US (1383), China (420) and Russia (404) have more breweries but Oberfranken is much smaller of course and there are approx. 200 in Oberfranken and approx. 300 in all of Franconia). See:
Bierland-Oberfranken
List of breweries in Bavaria
www.franconiabeerguide.com

Looks terrible, tastes sinfully good - chocolate, biscuits, baileys, brandy, butter and some condensed milk. I finally got around to making it and thanks to Tom & family for the recipe.

PS: It looks very dark because I used plain chocolate, which I love, but it’s normally made using milk-chocolate

Some stuff that I intended to blog and I’ve finally gotten around to it now.

Went to the Rally of the Lakes for the first time. It was a beautiful weekend and once you accept the fact that there are loads of boy-racers it’s quite nice.

Video from Killarney;

Got the Playstation 2 working again (suffering from disc read errors) following a tip from a friend and this guide Dealing with PlayStation 2 disc read errors which worked a treat.

Windsurfing in Keel Lake on Achill Island was a blast and I can highly recommend the UL Windsurfing Club.
Day 1 on the ’small’ sail

On Day 2 I got to try a much bigger sail

Also got to see the 2008 National Hurling League Final between Galway and Tipp

Also got to visit the European Parliament buildings in Brussels and discuss politics (including Lisbon of course). Got quite a few pics of the city which is quite nice and the beer is really nice. We even visited the bar with the most beers in the world (2004 Guinness World Record) Delirium Café

Thinking of going somewhere for the weekend without leaving a massive carbon footprint behind? How about BallyB! Some of the newer attractions;

The Ballybunion Surf School - www.ballybunionsurf.com

Ballybunion Leisure Centre - www.ballybunionleisure.com

I liked this video and thought I would share - Supermarket 2.0

When I was in Germany, I took part in a driving-safety course at the ADAC Centre in Linthe

The course covered some useful issues such as emergency braking in the dry and the wet, the effect of ABS and ESP and braking on slippery surfaces going downhill and on bends.

This video shows one of the participants trying to avoid jets of water that pop up randomly. You can barely see how the wheels lock up and ABS kicks in to unlock them. Unfortunately for that car, it was on “summer” tyres and wasn’t half as good as cars on the softer winter tyres. Whatever about electronics, the right tyres can make a difference of 40 yards when braking even at a reasonable speed.

One rather unusual thing about the German license too - it never expires! They have a date of birth, a date for when the card was issued and a simple dash for 4b (expiry date).

It also fits nicely into a wallet

29th March 2008
10K RUN/WALKATHON
11:00am Walk start
11:30am Run start
All Contributions go towards the Charities
Milford Hospice, Down Syndrome Ireland
and Croí
(Sudden Death Syndrome Ireland)

Register before 22nd March - Adults €12.00 / Students €8.00 / Over 65 €8.00
Entry forms available at the UL Arena Reception desk or www.plassey10k.com

For further info contact
Catherine dot Dooley at ul dot ie or Phone (061) 213596

oh yeah - the dramatic pause in blogging Seactain Na Gaeilge events was because we went on a little trip to CeBIT.

CeBIT for those of ye that don’t know is the world’s largest computer and IT trade fair - Centrum der Büro- und Informationstechnik; German for “Centre of Office and Information technology”

Quick run down on events:

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Wed: Daren wakes me from my slumber, train to Dublin, flight to Bremen, drive to Bad Gandersheim, pizza and beer (Gilde Ratskeller) in “Pizzeria Gino II”

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Thu: long breakfast, drive to CeBIT, registration, food in the Münchner Halle - a lovely slab of pork knuckle and a Maß (litre of beer) and then back to the fair. TCD actually had a stand where they were advertising the university and looking for Masters/PhD students. We got back to Bad Gandersheim for dinner that evening in Pizza Napoli and after a regular beer (Einbecker Pils), we were treated to a taste of Einbecker “Bock bier” which is quite tasty

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Fri: Back to CeBIT after breakfast but only 5 of the 10 of us, due to sickness. There was a smell of burning from the car on the way too so we called the rental company later that day and the breakdown service who decided to tow us back to the garage

Luckily, there wasn’t much wrong with the car apart from some oil spilt around the engine bay by the people who had rented it before us. After a good steam-clean, we were ready to go again. Mercedes service was actually quite good. Met up with the rest of the gang back in Hannover city centre, where we went for kebabs.

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Sat: Final Day of CeBIT and almost back to our full compliment of tourists. Quizzed the people in Ericsson for quite some time on WLAN, MIMO, LTE and IMS. The final thing I did was some quad-biking and then said goodbye to CeBIT…

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Sun: Headed back to Bremen, via Dublin and the train back to Limerick

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Some photos from CeBIT

Contrasting offers for Love…

Love for the animals

Love from the garden

Happy Valentine’s Day