Bicycles

© Joselito Briones

This was taken around the corner from yesterday's passage. This was taken with the Olympus E500. The original, of course, was in color.


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Kult

© Joselito Briones

This is one of the trendier shops here in Erlangen, Kult, mostly for jeanswear. "Stark reduziert", means it's currently on sale (lit. strongly reduced prices).


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Old passage

© Joselito Briones
These are photos of a small shortcut/passage, close to the clothes alteration shop. These were taken last Friday.


© Joselito Briones


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Hotel Brasserie

© Joselito Briones

This one's just around the corner from the cafe that I showed you a couple of weeks ago.


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Sweet Music

© Joselito Briones

I was passing by this building, the Orangerie (the photo is of the back door) when I heard someone rehearsing a song, a soprano voice, accompanied by a solo pianist, so I stayed awhile and listened.


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Magnolias

© Joselito Briones

This one was taken in the Erlangen Schlosspark, in front of the Orangerie.


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Produce market

© Joselito Briones

This is a photo of the produce market in front of the Erlangen Schloss (background).


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Mark Graf Cafe

© Joselito Briones

This one, of Mark Graf Cafe was taken from the produce market "Marktplatz", in front of the Erlangen Schloß.


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Erlangen Photos

© Joselito Briones

I spent most of the day processing the photos I took last Friday and yesterday, and there's quite a lot of them, so for the next few days I'll just be showing you these photos.


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Grüß' Gott

© Joselito Briones

This museum, the Jüdisches Museum München (Jewish Museum of Munich) , opened recently, but when I was there today taking pictures, it was closed and there was still some construction going on around it. The building was designed by Saarbrücken-based architects Wandel Hoefer Lorchural.

"Grüß' Gott" is a very common Bavarian (not for the rest of Germany) greeting and is used pretty much like anyone would say "Have a good day" somewhere else in the world. I think it literally means "Send my regards to God", or something to that effect.


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Eis day

© Joselito Briones
Lovely day. I went for a walk around late in the afternoon and took pictures. There was a long line at the Eishaus (ice cream shop) so I thought I'd get myself some. "Creme Caramel" and "Blau Bär" (picture, above). As is usual, it was impossible to eat it and keep some sort of dignity at the same time. The entire load on the cone (2 enormous scoops) fell on my bare hands seconds after taking this picture. I held the ice cream on my hand for a split second while deciding what to do, and then packed it back on the cone and pretended nothing happened. Kids, and their parents, who saw what happened, were amused. By the time I found a cafe with a public toilette to wash up in, about half an hour later, I realized that they didn't have to witness the de-coning incident to have a laugh at my expense. The darn ice cream was all over my face.


© Joselito Briones

I went through SchlossPark and the pedestrian zone, and by the time I headed back home, it was already dark but ice cream stores (different ones) were still doing good business. Photo above was taken at the carnival in front of the Erlangenschloß.



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Green Apples

© Joselito Briones

My iMac's back. After half a year. Yep, it took that long for the Nürnberg shop to repair it. And it's not even completely repaired yet. This is one of those ocassions when I absolutely miss living in Hong Kong. Everything there goes instantly. You need something fixed? They'll do it for you the next day, if not later the same day. Anyways, it turned out that the power supply was faulty, and the extra memory card - which I now have to replace, was also causing it to malfunction. Am not sure though if it's worth getting an extra memory replacement, as this is very old (it's the first generation of the iMac with the swivel screen on a half-round CPU. I've been using a CPU-in-the-monitor iMac for more than a year now.

Photo, above, is the Apple store in 5th Av. in Manhattan, taken last month.


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1st year Anniversary

© Joselito Briones

Guess what today is? It's my first year anniversary of moving to Erlangen! Can you believe I've been here a year??? I can't. What I can believe though, is that one can basically be in denial of living in a place for a year, maybe more. HA!


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Open Cafe season

© Joselito Briones

Spring's here. The weather's beautiful and everybody's out and about. I took pictures of several cafe's in the city, all of them full in the early afternoon, and I'll show them to you in the next few days.

The one above is the Hotel Brasserie in the pedestrian zone, corner Henkestraße, next to it, left, is a small cinema. And no, the colors aren't like this naturally, naturally. I'm experimenting again on giving my pictures an old look.


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Long My

© Joselito Briones

Long My, the Asian grocery store that I usually go to for fresh ingredients when I cook Asian dishes, recently opened a small fast-food restaurant (photo, above), right around the corner from their grocery store, next to the Turkish grocery store (photo, below) where I usually buy fresh fish. It's a very basic, no-frills, Asian restaurant, and the entries on the menu are standard offering for any Asian restaurant here in Erlangen, or Germany, for that matter, but they do try to serve the best food that they could. As is my usual taste-test in such eastern-combo restaurant, I ordered Knusprige Ente, here available in three different kinds of sauce (I went for Hoi Sin sauce, recommended by the owner - #22 in the menu), and it didn't disappoint. The best thing about the restaurant though, just like the Asian grocery around the corner with the same name, are the owners - they're supper friendly.




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Boxers and Glass Boxes

© Joselito Briones

Everybody here in Mannheim is talking about a new store - the flagship store of Peek & Cloppenburg (photo above and below), designed by "starchitect" Richard Meier (known for his glass boxes), opened today.


© Joselito Briones

Meanwhile all the buzz today isn't just about the new shop. A big sporting event was held here in Mannheim - big in that just about any German sports celebrity was there - the boxing match between Germany's adopted son Wladimir Klitschko (watch out, Borat!) and Ray Austin for the world heavyweight title. Klitschko won.


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A pause

© Joselito Briones

I took it easy today, knackered from all the cooking the past two days.

Our new cleaner also came today for the first time. Cathy Rose, nice as she is, is a bit clumsy and is always dropping things. This new one is called "Näke" and is local (Cathy Rose is originally from Cebu). She ironed clothes and cleaned today. I hope it works out with her.


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The picture is of one of Inay's orchids, in Carmona, taken last month.

How do I melt this snow?

© Joselito Briones

This is just an extra photo of the past snow weeek here in Erlangen. The snow has since melted, of course. It's bright again. Luckily this kind of snow reacts to changes in the weather. The other kind, the personal kind, it keeps one cold long after it's melted.


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Snow

© Joselito Briones

We got snowed in! I didn't think this place could have so much snow, but it did. First thing we saw on TV are videoclips of kids playing in the snow, so early in the morning. I guess they've been waiting for this one. The city looks so different and feels so different. It's so nice and bright and pretty.

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Ein Brief

© Joselito Briones

Erlangen, den 30.11.2006

Lieber James,

vielen Dank für deinen netten Brief. Du hast richtig gehört, ich wohne jetzt in Deutschland. Die Stadt, wo meine Wohnung ist, heißt Erlangen. Diese Stadt is nördlich der Gegend, wo die Leute Lederhosen zu tragen lieben. Ja, ich lebe in Bayern.

Erlangen ist eine schöne Stadt, aber zu klein. Es gibt kein kino für Filme auf Englisch. Es gibt auch kein Geschäft mit dem A3 Fotopapier.

Die Leute hier sind nett, aber manchmal gibt es auch hässliche, alte Damen in den Geschäften. Ich glaube, sie sind wirklich unzufrieden mit ihren Männern. Sie sind ganz, ganz unfreundlich.

Meine wohnung liegt in einem roten Haus, das Gebäude ist sehr modern. Du musst mich besuchen.


Herzliche Grüße,

dein Joselito

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Yep, another homework sent to you. My Lehrerin, Aline, has corrected the mistakes I made in the text.

The photo is of a house, right in front of the building where I live. It will soon be demolished, to be replaced by a new multi-family building, similar to ours.


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