I thought one thing missing here would be the the type of music I came to like in Dresden. Turns out that two of my favorites are coming to Atlanta!

VNV Nation -- July 23 (masquerade)
Project Pitchfork -- Sep 13 (masquerade)

Great news.

Back from DC and NYC. Long car trip (1900 miles total), this was our route:



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All pictures here.

Florida is next door. Well, it is about 800 km to Orlando and significantly more to Miami, Everglades and the keys. Still, it is our favorite place for short trips. Looking back at a number of trips (including earlier ones without kids) now I conclude the following:

1. Disney: Kitschy? Yes, very much so. Expensive? Kind of, too. Still, I would not want to miss the memory of Hannah greeting her fairytale idols (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty in particular). If you are around, you must go to Disney. Even for adults it is fun, with some planning you get a lot for your buck, I think.

2. Beaches: I never liked the beaches I knew on the Atlantic Coast (Miami Beach for example). On the Gulf coast, beaches can be great. I tried Sanibel/Captiva (shell collectors, not sure about swimming); St. Pete and Clearwater (crowded, but quite good and of course good infrastructure). The panhandle (Ft. Walton Beach, Pensacola) had great soft white sand -- good to visit when it is too hot in main Florida. Sarasota (Siesta Key) was overall most impressive (infrastructure, not crowded, very nice beach). If you look for a bit of everything - Siesta Key would be the place I would like to visit again.

3. Culture and Sights: Everglades and Keys are most impressive. St. Augustine is a very pleasing change to the european eye, but at the same time not that special when coming from Europe. Engineers, IT geeks, school boys and the like probably must see Cape Canaveral.

I like the concept of the flexible tennis league. Players are grouped geographically and skillwise. Three seasons per year plus playoffs for the best 256 players. It was immensly satisfying to barely reach the playoffs (I play 3.0 this year which means I hit every other shot and have as many double faults as aces). On that occasion, in the third and final set I had a match point (4:5 games, 30:40 points) against me. It was just great to hit an ace just then and go on to win the decider 7:5 (2:6, 6:3, 7:5).

On the other hand, in the second round of the playoffs I learned that it is not advisable to look ahead to the 3rd round opponent too early. Completely unfocused, the low point of my young career was a straight 2-set loss (3:6, 2:6). Embarassing. I will be back.

From professional support of a commercial product of a well-respected software vendor:

"I discussed this with our Development Group. They have indicated that they have not seen a problem such as this before, as most clients bounce the web server daily or weekly."

I will not disclose the identity to protect the guilty, but could not help sharing the information that in 2009 there is a need to restart web servers (this relates to some web app on tomcat really) on a daily basis. Go figure.

Sitting by the fireplace, watching Superbowl XLIII I cannot help noticing that this really a super sunday, sportswise. It started with a tremendous final match of the Australian Open (Nadal beating Federer in 5 sets, after he survived Fernando Verdasco in the longest game in Australian Open history so far). As often these days, we got up early thanks to Benni and watched the fourth and fifth set. This was then followed by watching the live transmissions of major chess events: Wijk an Zee (where unfortunately Lenier Dominguez did not continue his run to win the event) and the german chess Bundesliga (where after a long drought SF Berlin scored another win). In between the atlantan weather was nice enough to allow taking up some tennis activities again. Benjamin and Hannah had their workout too:
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Back to the superbowl (Steelers leading 20:7)

Atlanta is a not-so-good place to play chess. Atlanta is a good place to play tennis, though. So I started tennis (basically from scratch) and stopped playing over-the-board chess after the Euro 2007 in Dresden. My former Bundesliga team is back to first league and fighting relegation. I really enjoy watching the Bundesliga (it is transmitted live, so I get to see the exciting Zeitnot phase Sunday morning as part of the breakfast.).

Tennis is a nice option to keep moving (I am not riding my bike a lot here), so I prefer this to playing Golf which is the other school of thought around here. Both options are not elite sports really here. Costs for both are reasonable, but Tennis works better for me since you get to sweat, at least... So - I am getting fast feed training in the Peachtree City Tennis Center by Frank who indeed feeds balls faster than anyone on the planet and was once ranked No 277 in the world. Impressive. To apply all this, I joined one of the many options to get competition. I choose Ultimate Tennis which makes me play once a week. I am playing 3.0- level (Beginner - mid). This is fun. My first match went 6:2, 6:0 and the second 7:6, 6:2 so this looks like real tennis already. Obviously, way to go.

There are a couple of things which are very true (and have been said before):

1. Yellowstone is beautiful. Grand Teton is even more picturesque. Yellowstone is very diverse: It has wildlife, beautiful woods and fresh water, but also vulcanism which appear like gates to hell, canyons (yes, multiple) and waterfalls.
2. You should not plan to spend only a day there (which is possible in many other parks, but not here).
3. The area appears sometimes crowded, but when leave the parking lot areas, you will find yourself quickly alone.



This is what we did and liked
* Some horseback and pony riding (Hannah and Elli)
* Watch in awe into the deep, colored pools of hot water
* Do some hiking (usually around 5 miles a piece since Hannah and Benni had to be carried) in the morning
* Seeing wildlife: Bisons were everywhere, especially between Canyon and Lake. Moose and Elk were visible along the road (although I cannot tell them apart at longer distances). Yeah, we ran into bears during hikes. This was somewhat scary. It is different to see a bear from the car along the road or bumping into a bear family in the woods... Also, deer are not necessarily put off by Benjamin crying, instead there were seemingly curious at that.



This is what I regret to not having done
There are some things which are hard to do with the kids, like:
* Go for longer hikes. Such as a 20 mile loop through death canyon and granite canyon. Map I read that an iceaxe may be required even in July to cross the pass.
* The Yellowstone NP has a very remote area called Thorofare in its southeastern corner. The trail is sometimes more 30 Miles away from the nearest street.
* Go for more swims in the fantastic mountain lakes
* Get up very early and watch wildlife
* Being able to make a selection from 500 fotos. All of them are here All pictures online (These are the size-reduced versions).

Something about the trip in general: We had direct flights at regular hours from ATL to Jackson Hole.

The route looked as follows:


View Larger Map

or as a link:

Our route

In general, it was quite difficult to find hotels etc. It is also pricey ( I think I said that) but summer in that area is short; some roads will close again in October or even September. So we had to move around a bit, during the whole duration we stayed at five different locations. The trip as planned was good, couple of remarks and potential improvements:
1) Staying in the parks (Yellowstone) is much preferred over staying in Jackson, Gardiner and the like (we have not been to West Yellowstone)
2) We all liked Cody. "The Cody" was a very nice hotel, Buffalo Bill History Center, and Rodeo provided enough things to do.
3) Flagg Ranch ("ideally situated between Grand Teton and Yellowstone") was good (both Cabins and the friendly work-and-travel staff). But for families some of the places in Grand Teton (Jackson Lake Lodge or Colter Bay) looked even better due to its locations and amenities.

Some more highlights and pictures to follow, I think.

We are escaping from the Heat in Georgia (35 degress centigrade plus high humidity) and are within the Yellowstone area. Yellowstone and Grand Teton are somewhat hard to reach; and so this is one of the parks I have not had the chance to go previously. In addition, there is a direct flight from Atlanta to Jackson Hole which seemed to make this adventure bearable even when taking the little kids with you.

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We have finally received our furniture. Some things which we have been warned about turned out to be false in our case:
1. You are not always in a holding loop when calling Comcast.
2. The contractor delivering the furniture were exactly on time, the company doing the move was very responsive and reliable.
3. The people unloading our container (Imagine a big truck carrying a single standard shipping container saying "Hamburg Sued" parking in front of a very standard suburban american house) were careful and knew their stuff. They knew equally well why the Dallas Mavericks will not succeed and that the Spurs are going to win game 7 on the road (they did).

Some things were true:
1. Comcast needed two tries to come to the house, so far I have been unable to get a definitive answer as to what the connection fee and the monthly rate really is. I called at least three times, and got never the same answer.
2. The actual transfer of the furniture did not take 3 or 4 weeks, but rather 6-7 weeks. We have been warned about that. But, everything has been packed really well, nothing broke (as far as I can tell up to now).
3. There is no magician in the movers team reassembling the furniture easily. We were skeptical, but let them try on a very simple bed. I admit this was not easy (screws and wood not always being perfectly paired) but the team failed here. So I thanked them and re-assembled the stuff myself. At least I have some idea how it should like then.

Finally an advice when re-assembling your IKEA stuff: Get your internet connection first! I looked up the instructions on the IKEA site and had a much better time from that moment onwards.

... is about the first things we did in our new house. Peachtree City is famous for its golf cart paths, which can be used for walking, biking, strollering, and rollerblading as well. You can easily get lost on the network, it is an almost independent overlay to the street map. So, a GPS does not help much. We have been told that people, when going by golf cart all the time, tend to get lost with a car -- or worse, using the cart paths for driving a full-size car by accident.

Some experimental / analytic research about the cart path system.

So, here is our beauty:

One of my preconceptions is that you don't want to mess with your phone or internet service provider. A corollary could be that this holds true in the US and Germany equally. So, if you are a simple customer like me, I have some recommendations.

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This is how it looks like if you go up I85 from the ATL Airport to through Atlanta downtown towards Buckhead.

So, don't let the planes distract you: Up to three might land in parallel:

I85 merges with I75 for the downtown connector. Looking at the ATL skyline from the south can be impressive:

After going through the Grady curve and passing the Varsity I85 and I75 split again:

Although not the greatest drive, it is nice to see Dresden Drive (and Dresden Elementary, Dresden Park, Dresden Creek etc.) in northern Atlanta:

Many things have been happening again. We (as a family) are out for an adventure, so we decided to move the whole family to Atlanta, GA. Everything went smooth, these were the steps taken:

1. Make a big fare-well party. This worked out very well, thanks to the staff of the Treibhaus in Dresden-Striesen. Nice buffet, everything taken of for us (including doggie-bags for the considerable remainder of the food). Oh, they do not seem to have a web site. BTW, Ronald the DJ and tireless dancing instructor, if you are reading this: I forgot half the steps already :-(


2. Have a company take care of packing and sending off your things.


3. Move to a interim apartment (much preferred over a hotel) until your flight leaves and the remaining beaucratic obstacles have been taken (they were only few, if you have web access |and are used to do many things online).


4. Have someone deal with the kids. We had Hannah in Kindergarten all the time plus aunt Christiane babysitting when required (which was almost always)


5. Pick a Sunday for your actual flight. This went very well: Left the house at 6:30 in Germany, landed in Atlanta around 4 pm local time (which would be 22:00 german time), expected the worst on immigration, customs and security (if you ever entered the US through ATL you know what I mean), so this was just slightly better than expected. But Hannah did great and Benni slept solidly.

During the next days Elli, Benni and Hannah adjusted to life here and the apartment in particular. Every day provides something to discover, and until everyone is doing fine.

Living in an apartment, even in Buckhead, is not very family-friendly, though. So we are checking houses in the suburbs, like this:.

Hannah is looking forward to going to local day care, speaks some english already ("Hi", "Bye bye", "Doggie") and adapts very quickly. Check this:


Last weekend, while my chess team Schachfreunde Berlin accomplished the promotion to First Bundesliga (last year we bit the dust after 10 years in what used to be the strongest chess league in the world) I was practicing my Tennis game in one of the many free and well-maintained public courts
View Larger Map.

Later on we enjoyed life in Centennial Park.

Elli and Hannah also went to see the Georgia Aquarium.

So, life is good. Last week even a colleague paid me a visit in ATL which we visited for semi-private reasons. Now the rest of the family just got back from seeing another family + kid in PTC, so I have to stop now...