Early January we drove around 10 hours (incl. breaks) the about 600 miles down to Sanibel Island. The island "for the reclusive millionaire" was our hope for nice weather -- also this was our first trip with a family of five. Through VRBO we found a great appartment for the week.


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The island is fantastic, no buildings higher than a (three-story) palm tree, no traffic lights, and no neon signs. The Ding Darling wildlife refuge was a great option (birds and few alligators). We enjoyed riding bike (with trailer), great rental options exist on the island. It is popular with german tourists (who usually visit for the day) so, while seashelling, it felt like being on the baltic sea. (On the toll booth for entering the island there was specifically a german sign asking not to use the leftmost lane reserved for the sun pass)
The weather was disappointing (this was the week setting all sorts of temperature records with fruit trees in danger of freezing) but it was overall a very exciting week.

Pictures here

I had to look this up first but this quickly was picked up by Benni (who was cheering for the Saints like me; opposed to the girls who liked the blue uniforms + the horseshoe symbol of the Colts better).
Great game, great show, great commercials. Who maintains stats like: "For the 13th time in a row, the NFC team has won the coin toss!". I thought setting up that kind of database would dramatically improve the attractiveness of other sports, too.



Part of my game plan was creation of a "seven layer dip" -- 4000 calories (no, we did not finish it in one sitting) which turned out to be "yummy".

And finally, the commercials I liked or remembered best.

1. Google (Parisian Love). Must have costed $200 :-)


2. Coke Sleepwalker. So, Atlanta was in the Superbowl, kind of.


3. Dodge Man's last stand. The charger.


4. Bud Light Not too picky.


5. Hyundai It's tough to take orders when you're Brett Favre.

After a long silence I can only bring forward as an excuse that our family has a new member since Oct 7, 2009 (Incidentally, this being the 60th anniversary of my non-existent home country, the German Democratic Republic)



Emma was born in Southern Regional Medical Center in Riverdale, GA.
Emma Georgia is equally sweet as her older siblings and we don't want to miss her. It also gave us an option to compare getting a child in the US versus Germany. I will not easily criticize the german health system anymore since just the minority of many surprises during that discovery process here have pleasant. But of course, overall and as a net result everything went perfectly fine.

On our way to a country fair we discovered Dresden, GA. Unincorporated. I have been told that every crossroad gets a name, not sure if there ever lived someone.


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Plus here are more Dresden references in Atlanta (Dresden Drive, Dresden Park, Dresden Elementary etc).

For comparison, here is the original:


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Yes -- Project Pitchfork actually made it to Atlanta! My last concert with them was in Dresden (Germany! not GA) in late 2005 or early 2006. And -- it was actually great:
The openers (Voodoo Velkro) and especially Deviant UK (a positively crazy lead singer) were good, too. Project Pitchfork took the stage around 10.30 pm. IN contrast to Germany, you could easily go the first row. In total, there were around 100 people in the club (Masquerade, think of Strasse E in Dresden) which matched the music also quite well. The new album (Dream Tiresias) was on sale for just 15$ -- cheaper than Germany. They played at least 90 min, more like 120 min. Mostly their greatest hits, all the classic stuff starting with KNKA covering all early albums (including plus some new titles. This was great, presumably they concentrated on their proven winners -- can you expect that Atlanta knows their albums? Turns out that they knew, big surprise really -- the front row knew all their songs. They did not really talk to the audience (except for "Hello Atlanta" and "thank you", appearing a bit timid here. Overall, it was a fantastic performance, for sure winning them some new fans (you don't see many chinese or black Pitchfork fans in Germany, do you) here.

We were looking for a quick and painless getaway. We went to the Florida panhandle, near Destin, Fl:


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This is one of the closest destinations to reach from Atlanta, but still a 5+ hour drive. We avoided the peak season (it justed ended, and is determined by school schedule of the states Florida, Alabama, Luisiana and Georgia (I think)). I booked through VRBO since these days we enjoy a bit extra of room and a full kitchen when going with the kids. Our area (near the crab trap) was nice since there were no highrises. We got the second floor of a villa between a lake and a beach. We truly enjoyed the view every morning anew -- great to have your coffee watching the waves roll in. Kids loved the beach (Hannah) and the pool (Benni). Mid-August was still hot and humid. Similar to Peachtree City people are using golf cars and work out (run or bike) a lot. In terms of food we also liked the famed McGuire irish pub.

Pictures are to be found here.

Peachtree City, GA is back into the CNN Money list of best places to live in the US -- 2009 it is ranked No 8.

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.

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.

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: