life in athens

athens, first post

2008-08-25T03:27:00.004+02:00

i think it's a good way to start this athens part of my life with a few shots from a bike ride. only this time i have a real bike. it's not pink. it's purple. dark purple i should say. much better than the one i bought in berlin. i ride it everyday to terrapin. i only live 2.4 miles away from there. more hill than berlin though. the first shot i hope some of you can recognize. i haven't eaten there yet, but i will. just checked the resolution and you'll have to click on the picture to see the sign. it was closed when i found it. just sort of ran into it one day. the second one is for dave. pretty cool looking train tressel. think that's what you call it anyway. then there's a picture of the oconee river. i lived close to it for the first three weeks in athens at my cousin sam's house. not much of a river and i still haven't found a swimming hole. the last 2 are going into terrapin territory. the first is a concert the brewery got tickets to at this really cool place outside of athens called ashford manor. could be misspelled. some latin jazz band was playing(grogus). not my kind of thing but they were good and we had a really good time. brought lots of terrapin bier with us and bob the filter guy made these killer paninis. the last shot is us getting a group picture made for the website or something. i got someone to take one for me. it was at this employee appreciation party we had a few weeks ago at the brewery. had some good pork butt and ribs. no good sauce. storebought. i'll have to do something about that.

a little more tennessee

2008-08-14T20:23:00.003+02:00

first we have a shot of my favorite dog roxanne. she lives in tennesse with my friends rhyan and lindsey. my cousin down here in athens has a black lab named cocoa that comes in a close second but you just can't beat roxanne.
brother andy with a penny on his head at centerhill lake. he really wishes he was an indian.
this is micah. also at the lake. just a weird looking picture. it's like he's up in your face. and below is fred on top of the house boat. he only has a head. no body.

it rained alot on us and i took alot of pictures of the rain. thought this was the best. i had to sleep outside because all of the beds were taken. it rained like hell off and on all night but somehow i didn't get wet. we had fun with the jetboat and tube until micah let the rope go up in one of the jet engines and we had to cut it. we gave him hell the rest of the weekend. he takes gettin hell well, but he usually deserves it.

three waterways in tennessee, all connected

2008-08-07T02:08:00.004+02:00

first and last is centerhill lake. the lake i grew up on mostly. does not look like a lake bigger than the tegeler sea in berlin but it's pretty damn large and deep. 200 feet in many places.
this is my nephew preston. he just turned 10 a few weeks ago. he's a nut. this was over a month ago. my mom lives on a small lake called city lake. cookeville used to get it's water from it. now we get it from center hill. under this damn is the falling water river which ends up in center hill.
here's preston, my mom, and my brother's girlfriend's son caleb at burgess falls park.
that's burgess falls. you can see it better in other shots i took, but i think this one looks the coolest. this also dumps into centerhill.
from the left is maddie, preston, mom or "mimi", and caleb. maddie is caleb's sister. that's one of the worst things about leaving cookeville. i won't get to see these three, among other friend's kids, grow up as much. everytime i go home i will have missed alot. you can't brew beer in cookeville though, unless you're rich as shit. maybe not even then. this is from the overlook at burgess falls. i want to keep on doing this blog, but it seems like maybe no one is looking at it anymore. if you do still look at it, make a comment or something. this will be my last tennessee post but i allready have some good pictures of athens to put on this thing. let me know if you want me to keep this shit up. prost.

a little tennessee time

2008-07-14T04:27:00.003+02:00

well...........i'm down in athens, ga now but i wanted to throw a few tennessee pictures on here. i think i'll make a few tennessee postings and then move on to athens. so far i haven't even taken one photo here anyways. too damn busy. i got to stay at my mom's house in tennessee for a month before actually having to work again for a living. had a great time. these first five shots were taken at my mom's house at a sort of welcome home party for me. i have a few crazy hillbilly videos i will be uploading soon to the threeajk site on youtube. they are must sees for sure. that's me in the horn rims first off. these are my friend scott phipp's glasses that for some reason we passed around and put on. next is my good friend larry McKelvey. he recently moved back to cookeville. hopefully i'll get to move back too some day. the next one is my brother andy. in this shot he looks like he's been drinking a few shots and that's exactly correct. then it's shea on the left and scott on the right. shea just finished his 1st year at vanderbilt law school. we played in one band or another together since we were 15 until last year. scott came up with his girlfriend kim from dunlap tennessee. he likes to talk about politics while drinking and kicking your ass arm wrestling. then there are woody and christa boyd. woody worked at the cabinet shop i did and then graduated ttu and moved to knoxville. he's supposed to have long hair though. can't believe he cut it off. that's all for now. i'll get back on this thing when i have more time. right now i'm pretty much like an educated mexican except i work for free. well, i guess i work for bier. all the low fills and high fills i can drink.

final germany post

2008-06-30T17:24:00.004+02:00

this first shot was taken at a bier garden in berlin a few hours we were done with our exams. this post is mainly for Katrin, our former Chemical Technical Analysis teacher. i say former because she is no longer a teacher at the VLB and by next year she won't be working in the VLB's lab either. her husband Ingo will be leaving the VLB as well. this is all because of a stupid insident in CTA lab. there's this little stuck up bitch from somewhere south of the border. let's just say south of columbia and north of peru, but not brazil. she is not used to being corrected even though she probably gets corrected everyday of her life. i guess if she was on fire i might piss on her but not enough to put it out. she also has no ass. i guess you really could say she has negative ass. maybe some of you think this is a little harsh. if so, comment on it. the point is that the VLB lost one of their best teachers just because daddy's little girl got mad and was determined to get revenge. if you're reading this, you know who, GROW UP! enough ranting.
katrin in the middle. we all love you.
this here is also one of the best at the vlb. Heinrich. microbiology. this man knows what organisms like to eat and he's also seen jimi hendrix play on an island. what more can you ask for in a professor? see anyone in the background uninterested in our celebration?
this is mike from england on the left. he is an assistant for the CTA class. mike was very helpful in lab and a pleasure to talk to outside of class. the last photo is just a fun one of a few of us in hamburg. burghard and john bryce are on the left but not in the frame. from left, vinicius, simon, me, erica, felipe, and koji. as you can probably tell, we were having a pretty, pretty good time. bier and jager. this is also about 10 minutes before i almost get my ass kicked by five hamburgers for asking them why the hell they care so much about obama winning the democratic race. that's what jager does to me. got out of that one though and live to argue another day.

after this post i don't think i'll be putting anything on here about germany. that is until the next time i go there. i think i'm going to keep the blog and change the name. haven't really thought about a name yet. i'm also unvailing my secret you tube account to you guys. i wanted to get enough junk on there before anybody saw it. the videos are mostly very stupid but funny. more so if you know me and especially so if you're a new brewmaster or teacher from the VLB. just type in "threeajk" without the quotes. don't ask me what the name means. you'll never get it out of me. i had alot of fun doing this blog thing and i hope you've enjoyed reading it. stayed tuned for some american postings in the near future.

last of the brewmaster single shots

2008-06-24T19:38:00.004+02:00

none of these really need any introduction. first is felipe from brazil. he graduated second in our class.
erica from canada sitting on a dock bier garden. erica was the third best in class.
and who's that guy with the ten day beard? that's right, it's me!
these last 2 are (above) the group of new brewmasters that decided to celibrate our exams being over by drinking more bier. of course. then below is a group of us directly after our last exam at the imbiss. all brewmasters happy to be done with exams.

even more brewmasters

2008-06-24T18:58:00.003+02:00

this first shot is of Shinichiro Takeda from japan. we call him shin. sorry, it's the best one i could find of only shin.
then there's Vinicius Micai Nunes from brazil. we call him vini or vinicius. there's better shots of him but i chose this one for the action in the background. i'm pretty sure that black foot under the blur in the upper left corner is Thomas G. running to turn a pump off or something. others are goran and gokhan. both with 2 dots over the "o's".
here's the only loas guy shot i have. there's 2 of them. their names are Phanthanouvong Khamvathana and Somchanh Oupaxay. don't know which one this is. sorry
this is my favorite picture i took of john bryce, the other american.
to finish this post out and have enough singles to do another post i chose to put a picture of the class clown in for good measure. burghard. he's pretty, pretty,..... special.

brewmasters revisited

2008-06-24T18:26:00.003+02:00

this first picture is blurry i know, so james gets 2 photos. this is Mr. James Sullie from Liberia man! i can't seem to find a better shot of him. i know i have one somewhere though. i also have a great video of him and felipe at our graduation party. be on youtube soon. i know i keep saying that but it's true. you just don't know the address yet.

this here is Serkan Erkan from turkey. i don't think i have a good picture of the other 2 turkish guys. sorry.
then here's our only german brewmaster from the course. Simon Siemsgluess. everyone put this hat on at the bier garden that night. i wonder who ended up with it. some say he's a piece of shit. sometimes i say that.
this is the best picture i have of Grace. this is early on in our german bier college experience at green week. grace is from brazil.

more brewmaster portraits

2008-06-24T18:00:00.003+02:00

i know this first picture is Mapho. that's his last name and what we call him. his full name is Ardisak Mapho. he's from thailand. the next 2 shots are also thai guys, but i'm not sure which name goes with which face. i'm going to take the 50% chance that the first guys name is Songsak Hengprathanee.
then we have who i think is Sahachon Boonjit. sorry guys if i got your names switched. you didn't really talk all that much. by the way, did the thai guy above who i name as Songsak, did you get any of that nbb? you seemed to be trying pretty hard at the boat on the harbor. nbb is your dancing partner. i'll call her out fully in a day or 2.
then we have the other chinese guy who sang that beautiful chinese song on the boat that i recorded and the smallest chinese guy erased from my camera. you could have been famous. his name is Guoquan Zhang. we call him Zhang.
last we have Mr. Koji Onoda. he's from Japan. he's very smart and really knows how to use his head in a fight. that will be on you tube soon.

pictures of brewmasters

2008-06-23T20:01:00.003+02:00

this is the start of the brewmaster portrait series. i still have many pictures from berlin and germany so i'm going to try to get some of the best ones on this damn thing. i was planning on getting a close-up of all the brewmasters from our class at the VLB, but i didn't get around to finishing what i started. i did get alot of them though. heres a few to start. number one photo is the classic swedish bombshell, Goran with two dots over the "o". if you see this goran, email me with your swedish email. the we have Mr. Dejan Vatovic from Serbia. he finished as the top brewmaster of our course.
next is Mr. Peiwu Wang from china. we called him wang. he was the tallest chinaman and was pretty good at soccer.
i have a bone to pick with this little guy. his name is Xiaohong Sheng. we called him sun or sheng or joy. the smallest chinaman. the bone is on our class excursion after our exams we went to this little boat in a harbor by the baltic sea. the whole class minus 2 and burghard. we took over the boat and proceeded to get drunk and sing songs from wherever we were from. well......
this chinese guy, Zhang, who i don't think i have a picture of, sang this beautiful chinese song by himself. i filmed it. i filmed everybody's performance and i will be uploading the videos to you tube shortly. anyhow, this guy sheng, asked me 3 days later if he could see my camera to see some pictures. when i get home to start uploading zhang's video is somehow not there. hmmmm. wonder what happened to it. go ask sheng.

lastly we have Mr. Sarunyoo Songkram from thailand. i think that's his name anyway. we call him "you". very nice guy. gives a good back massage.

more berlin by bike

2008-06-09T18:38:00.003+02:00

even in berlin they know who's going to win. i'm a poet and i know it.
three aluminum fighters fighting while standing on water.
nice view of the spree.
german people trying to play country music.
bridge to a little island on the spree.

travels to and from a bier garden

2008-06-09T18:03:00.002+02:00

well.... i'm back in tennessee now after a very long day and night of traveling and in the next few days i will try to finish up the documentation of the berlin part of my life. i think i'll keep the blog, but i guess at some point i need to change the name. i will also be working on getting the best videos i took on youtube. there's only about 5 on there now so i don't want to say the address yet. these shots are just some of a few of us going to a bier garden one day. i can't remember if it was after a test or why we went there other than to have a few biers. the last few weeks have really been a blur. we are all brewmasters now by the way. can't remember if i mentioned that or not. the first one is claimed by many brewmasters to be my best picture. i think it's pretty good but the first one who said this is one of the 2 in the shot. guess which one. he is sort of known for saying things that include the words "this is the best". next is erica, mahpo (could be misspelled), goran with 2 dots over the "o", felipe, McJohn, and koji on a bridge we were just under. then guess who on the other underside of the bridge we were just on top of after many biers at the bier garden. lastly, felipe doing something to some sort of statue. could be a lion. could be a goat. you can make up your own mind.

no more pictures for a week or so

2008-06-01T17:10:00.002+02:00

i'm sitting here in this turkish internet cafe cheking emails. my internet connection is down at my apartment and i will be leaving for a class excursion at 5:30 am tomorrow morning until thursday. i will be leaving for home on the 8th of june. i guess i will have to finish up the german part of my life then. check back after the 8th.

kreuzburg music fesitval

2008-05-26T13:13:00.000+02:00

this is a music festival i went to a few weeks ago in kreuzburg with shin and goran with two dots over the "o". we had a really good time but most of the music wasn't so hot. i don't really think people in berlin know anything about music. for instance, this is not pictured, but there was this band billed as a southern rock. i wanted to check them out to see what they think southern rock is. turns out it's heavy metal. the lead singer looked like a fat james hetfield and the bass player looked like bruce dickenson. they were terrible. funny thing is i think they were from america. they all spoke to their soundman in english. now for the shots i've chosen from this afternoon of drinking and eating jerk chicken. first is a lady on stilts. there were 4 or 5 of these walking around trying to get you to go to a play i think. at least i think they were ladies. then you have some drummers drumming. a terrible sunbleached shot of goran with two dots over the "o", shin and me. really just a terrible shot of me. then this aztec ska band. that's right, an aztec ska band. they were pretty good if you like ska. probably the best thing there next to the turkish dancing flute and drum music. i have a good video of that, which i think later i'm going to start a you tube account for my videos. i already have, but i have not put enough on there to tell you the address yet. the last shot is the riot crowd that aparently always show up at 6 and starts protesting something then starts fights and breaks stuff. i think there was over half the berlin police force there. we left before anything happened. we were tired and dehydrated.

random shots

2008-05-22T18:07:00.000+02:00

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yes, i'm fat as hell now. you should see me without the beard. my excuse is you go to bier college in germany for five months and see if you don't gain a few kilos. the first one is a nice picture of my roomate, daniela though. she finally came to one of our brewhouse parties. the second one is from the nicest bier garden in berlin if you ask me. then we have some biscuits that i made for the brewhouse party. they look good, but they really sucked. too doughy. i was really missing biscuits so i got a recipe from mom but it called for self rising flour. they don't have that stuff here. at least i couldn't find any. the last 2 i just threw in for color. i know they are a little fuzzy, but so was i when i took them. just a little.

art, i guess

2008-05-22T17:40:00.001+02:00

this crap is from a few weeks ago. maybe a month. it's whenever erica's sister was here, which if your reading this kristin(still could be spelled wrong) your pretty, pretty, pretty......good looking. don't kill me erica just yet. can't help myself with this power of the world pen under my fingers and nobody here to stop me from writting stupid things. anyhow, we ended up going to this sort of multi floor art gallery/bar thing downtown. i didn't much like the art, but it was a cool place and everyone else liked the guys stuff. i though it was a little too much junk cluttered on big canvases. a like the door shot and my favorite is the last shot of a step. probably nobody saw that but me. i already know someone who is going to ask me, " what the hell was that man? "

bike trip around another lake

2008-05-22T17:13:00.001+02:00

this are pictures of another lake i found on the northern outskirts of berlin. it's actually very near the tegel airport and very small. really a large pond, but it had some nice beaches. you couldn't go all the way around it though. it was blocked off by police and airport property. there were alot of cool trails on one side of it. seems like you could get lost there were so many connecting trails going everywhere but then you just have to remember you're in berlin and which direction you are from town. this is hard for some people like felipe. he going to tell you all about it on the blog he is going to be starting soon. nothing to really explain about these shots except one of the beach scenes there is a nude guy ( looks just like jack tucker to me. blow it up and see for yourself if you know who that is ) that i didn't know was nude until after i took it. felipe pointed it out to me. i did purposely take a picture of a nude sunbathing girl on another small beach, but you'll have to ask me to see that one personally.

bike trip around a lake

2008-04-25T22:08:00.000+02:00

a few weeks ago we finally got some nice weather for a change. it's been getting up to at least 15 degrees C pretty much everyday. these pictures are from about three weeks ago. most saturdays, if it's a decent temp and not raining, i go out riding for a few hours. it's really the best way to see the city. alot of the time i just pick a direction and stumble upon different things. this day though, i wanted to find this lake and as you can see, i did. there are concrete boardwalks around part of it and then it turns into dirt trails. i actually got to get a little muddy! the trails kept going, so i kept riding. i ended up going about half way around the lake. not a very big lake by tennessee standards, but i think it's the biggest one around berlin. i plan on going back and riding around the whole thing just for kicks. i had more good shots, but i think these are the best. the first one is really the last picture i took of the lake (forgot to mention the name, it's the tegeler see) the next one is from the beginning of when i found the lake. not the best picture because i blew it up. some sort of heron i think. then cool bridge architecture, sailors sailing off in the afternoon(also blown up), and then this cool little boat island. i bet that gets pretty rowdy on hot summer weekends. as long as everyone has enough bier and brats.

more berlin by bike

2008-04-18T09:54:00.000+02:00

on saturdays, if the weather's nice enough, i usually ride my bike around for a few hours. sometimes it turns out to be all day. i think it's the best way to see the city. these are just a few shots from one of those days 2 or 3 weeks ago. the first one is inside the sony center as is the second, but the first one is from a movie premier they were setting up for this film called the red baron. there's a great cinema there that plays movies in the original language. i've been there many times. this film is actually a german one i think. anyways, the rest of the pictures are just things a wanted to take pictures of. time for cta lab. prost.

john and felipe go to egypt

2008-04-18T09:38:00.000+02:00

berlin got a little boring a few weeks back so felipe and i decided to go to Egypt. it was really cold there too for some reason. no rain though. if you could take a look behind the left pyramid, you would be able to see me and my dog when i was five. on another note, you can see that brew school is putting a few pounds on felipe. he is now taking my advice and growing a beard. that's about all you can do. i don't think it's possible to lose weight at the VLB. unless your name is john bryce. i can't really tell that he's gained a pound. maybe he's a pullover diet specialist.

back log from Kulmbach

2008-04-18T08:58:00.000+02:00

well...... the next few posts i put up are going to be old for me and our class, but still new for you who are not here. this one is from over a month ago. the whole class went on an excursion to a town south of Berlin called Kulmbach. there was a brewers conference where there were a bunch of speakers speaking in code, german that is, about new technology for brewing. they didn't tell us before hand we would have to where headphones all day to hear a sometimes terrible translation. that's all i'll say about that. we also got to stop in Bamberg to visit Kasper Schulz, the oldest brew kettle company in the world, but no pictures of that as they would not allow picture taking. It was a cool place though. they make brewing systems for smaller breweries. pretty, pretty, pretty, ...nice one at that. i think they're the most expensive. anyways, as you can see in the people pictures, we are dressed up. i didn't get a good shot of me with the jacket on and everything, but i think maybe john bryce has one on his site. we had to where the suits the whole damn time too. that part kind of stunk. Kulmbach is a nice little town, but we didn't get to see much of it. the first shot is john, john, and felipe having a bier the day we got there. then one from my hotel window. then a nice church or monastery on top of a hill. i didn't get to go up to it. a few of us did though. the next is outside the Kulmbacher brewery. we got to take a tour on the sencond day, but when i got inside, my camera ran out of juice. that's the biggest brewery i've ever been in. i especially liked the bottling line. 70,000 biers and hour! vinny, from brazil says that's nothing, but it's something to me. the last shot is from the welcoming party the first night. we had a whole table to ourselves. that's it for kulmbach.

half marathon in berlin

2008-04-11T17:43:00.000+02:00

last sunday there was a half marathon in berlin. daniela, my roomate was running in it, so i decided to ride my bike to the race and see what a half marathon looks like. i got there just in time for the main race. there where also other races like people riding these wheelchair type contraptions that have pedals for your arms. they were actually the fastest of everyone. they had people roller blading too. by the way, do you know what the hardest thing about roller blading is? tell you later. the main race i found out had over 24000 people running. it was pretty amazing seeing them all whiz by. the first shot is the group of kenyans that won the race. they were way ahead of everybody. the people walking in black were the last in line. a waited for every one to go through the bradenburger gate then rode my bike towards where the race started. this was only 1 and a half km or so (a half marathon is 21km). i stopped to get a curry wurst and by the time i got to the finish line the kenyans had already finished. it took the first guy exactly one hour. the wheelchair racing winner finished in 36minutes and the rollerblader in 38. the last picture was the first guy i saw finish. i did get to see the first woman finish. guess where she was from. Kenya of course. lastly, the roller blading trivia. the hardest part about roller blading is when you finally admit to your dad your gay. how do you like them apples?

graves for lease

2008-04-11T17:00:00.000+02:00

well...... last monday we had our water exam at 10 am, which was easy by the way. thank you professor Ahrens. anyhow, we got done early and had about 2 hours before the next lecture. what are you going to do for 2 hours between classes when your at brewschool? go get a bier of course. the regular group of idiots and i went to the snack bar and bought a bier a piece then i said we should walk over to this park across the street. turns out it's not really a park unless you're dead. now i'll try to get to the point of the pictures. we started walking through the cemetary anyways and kept seeing these stickers on the grave stones. luckily, we had our trusty hambergian german translator with us. he said the sticker basically says that your lease has run out and it's time to pay up or else. we kept walking and in the last shot you can see what the or else amounts to. don't know what they do with the bodies.

wall art

2008-04-04T20:19:00.000+02:00

here are just a few of the pictures i have of berlin wall art. there is a pretty long section of wall down by the language boat on the spree. people call this the east side art gallery or something like that. some of them would be really cool, but they are too old and chipped. i had to put the second shot in even though it's rough. you can tell what it used to look like can't you? you should click on some of these to blow them up. i think the first one is the best.

the many faces of john lane

2008-04-02T17:41:00.001+02:00

ok, i finally got a haircut and beard trim. first time for that. i brought my clippers over here but they don't like the power supply. sounds sort of like the worst sound in the world from dumb and dumber. here's some before and after photos for ya. first, my passport and student card photo. isn't that a great shot of me? i get all kinds of flack from this one. the jerks i hang with still don't believe it's me. then you have the demented lumberjack. don't know where i took that, but there's a weyerman bag in the background. next is my new turkish haircut and beard trim. stop salivating girls. after that is a pre-turkish john lane patiently allowing simon to get a sample of bacteria from his beard. about a week ago. we get to see what kind of critters roost in my nest in 2 weeks. lastly, another shot of my tasteful turkish haircut. fantastic.

football, Hamberg vs. Munich

2008-03-27T21:52:00.001+01:00

ok, here's the last of the munich pictures finally! just got done with a malting report so i decided to finish this up. munich that is. well........on our last day in munich simon talked us into going to see Hamberg and Munich play football. we didn't have tickets, so we had to wait at the gate and buy one from a fan. they don't have scalpers over here which in a way is kind of cool. i think it may be illegal to sell your tickets. why would you want to if you bought them. you are supposed to have round footballs in your blood if you are German. anyways, we got tickets. the four guys did. Erica opted for going back to the hoffbrauhaus by herself. she should have come with us, but then she probably would not have had as much bier. i didn't drink any bier at the game. they don't take cash at the concessions. you have to go to another booth and get a card with credits you pay for. they didnt get any of my money. the stadium looks really cool at night. Simon told us that it's not alway's orange. sometimes it's blue or something else. he's probably going to tell me that it was red, but who cares. and the second shot is real. it looks like we were pasted on there, but no, we really are standing there. none of us has any bier in them. sad. the last shot is one of the many U bahns leaving the stadium. no room to move at all. this was about a month ago. now i can start posting pictures that are more recent. this should do you for a few days though. prost!

more soccer pictures

2008-03-27T21:34:00.001+01:00

the guy in the first picture is probably going to kill me for calling this soccer, but i had to just once to fuck with him. he's from Hamberg and the reason we went to this game. Simon, the german multi-language learning future brewmaster.

more munich for ya

2008-03-27T21:16:00.000+01:00

well, here you go. more pictures of munich. first we have another church that i'm pretty sure i allready put a night photo of on an earlier post, now you get to see it in all it's day light glory. wasn't it worth the wait? the rest of this post is all pictures of the world famous Hoffbrauhaus. it was cool and i'm glad that i got to go there, but i was expecting something more. it's pretty big. supposed to hold thousands of people or something, but i though it would be bigger. there was a bier garden in the middle or the back that was opened because of the heat. didn't get any shots of that and i don't remember why. the bier was good though and so were the pretzels. not to mention a few of the barmaids.

bier garden in Munich

2008-03-21T19:42:00.001+01:00

it's not really time for bier gardens, but i guess they just had to since it was so hot. it was pretty cool except for the fact that i didn't feel very good. i choked down half a liter and then i had to go pull over. use your imagination. or maybe you shouldn't. anyhow, they had this brass band playing in that oriental structure in the middle. we all wondered why it was there. it was Hoffbrauhaus bier and you only had to pay for the bier and a 1 euro deposit for the glass. would have been worth keeping one except i would have had to lug it around all day. the horse gives carriage rides maybe. we didn't see anyone getting in one, so just assuming here. then i had to throw in this shot of the 3 most photogenic dogs in Germany. they were nice, but they didn't really want me to pet them. they didn't know what to think about that. dogs are weird over here by the way. none of them give a shit about being petted. sort of makes me mad. i think all their owners must beat them. most of them walk within a few feet of their owners without a leash. tennessee dogs are better. you can't take them anywhere and think they will behave, but at least they like affection.

Munich by daylight

2008-03-21T19:18:00.000+01:00

we got kicked out of our hostel at 10 am i think. but it made us get up and walk around. the first shot is pretty close to the hostel. then we went to this little cafe and ate breakfast outside. this was the warmest weather we had seen since being in Germany. it ended up being over 18 degrees celcius. hot. sort of. so we walked through this park and ate ice cream and looked at all the sun bathers. no one topless that i saw. the last shot is on the top of this little hill overlooking the park. some sort of pavilion up there. don't know what the buildings are in between, they just looked like they wanted me to take their picture.

Munchen, sort of

2008-03-15T20:06:00.000+01:00

ok, this is only the first post for Munich and the only one i'm doing tonight, because i need to leave to meet some people. we got to Munich maybe around 9:30 or so and didn't get out on the street until after 10. the first place we went was this small Paulaner brewhaus. as far as i can tell, they brew with the same ingredients as the big Paulaner brewery, but on a small scale. i ordered the weis bier and i think it was the best weis bier i have ever had, period. we also ate some weiswurst and i think pretzels. after that we went to find the Hoffbrauhaus, but when we got there, it was closing. 12 midnight. that's when almost everything closes in Munich. keep that in back mind if you ever go there. it took us forever to find another place that was open and 5 minutes after we ordered a bier they started trying to kick us out. then we went down the strasse to this Irish pub that stayed open enough for us to have 2 biers. we should have gotten into town earlier i guess. first 3 at Paulaner, a church in a platz, and the last, some drunk German riding a stationery fake lion. that was about all we could do that night. more of Munich later.

festival outside of Mainberg

2008-03-14T17:21:00.001+01:00

here's what i'm leaving you with today. after we went on the hopsteiner tour our guide told us about an annual festival the have in this small village next to Mainberg. maybe 1000 people live there. probably not. i think almost all of them where at this festival. i had to put this first shot in because it's the biggest rack on a deer i've ever seen. this was outside the festival. i made Simmon pull over. the other pull over story you will just have to hear about. at the festival, i met this guy who's lived in this village for 18 years, but he's from Biluxi Mississippi. maybe biluxi is not spelled right. who knows. they had strong bock bier. very strong! then, hop fields at dusk. the next post i think we will finally be in Munich. time for chemistry right now though.

Hopsteiner

2008-03-14T16:58:00.000+01:00

well... i've really got a ton of pictures of this place, but i won't bore you people that don't really give a shit about hop pellet manufacturing. the first one i believe is some sort of sorter or something. nice sentence. the next picture doesn't look like much to the average person, but this is where they form enriched pellet 45's. they first take away most of the stem and flower of the hop cones and pretty much leave just the lupulin glands. the good stuff. this is where they mix the lups with some of the flowers to make pellet 45's more expensive, but you don't have to use as much of them, therefore less storage space. then we have a hammer mill that hammers. and a die that forms the hop pellets. finally they have this huge cold storage room. couldn't get a real good shot of this because we were not allowed in the room. the one you see is only about half the height of the building. again, use your imagination. we also got to visit the building they make hop extract with ethanol, but our guide did not really know that much about that process, so no pictures for you on this subject. ask to see them the next time you see me. lots of pipes and valves.

hop farm in Mainberg

2008-03-14T16:33:00.000+01:00

sorry it's taking so long to get through all these pictures. there are just too many of them and i only have some much time on my hands for this kind of thing. excuses excuses. after Nuremberg we traveled down the road to Mainberg where people pretty much live off of hops. it's too bad that no hops were growing when we came through. the first picture is one of the many empty hop fields we passed. i think they look much cooler when hops are growing on them. maybe later this spring i'll be able to take some better shots of them. we had a tour set up at this place called Hopsteiner where they make hop pellets and hop extract. pictures of that will actually be posted before you reach these. you just have to take it the way you can get it. the second shot is the front end of a hop plucking machine. you feed this machine hop vines and it plucks off all the hop cones. wish we could have seen this working. next is a room where they dry the cones and then guess what's in the bags? part of last year's harvest. all these shots looked better in person of course. just use your imagination people.

more of Nuremberg

2008-03-07T18:26:00.001+01:00

the 1st is late night john lane about ready to fall asleep. the rest are from Saturday morning walking around by myself and getting some breakfast. they are creative here in Germany when it comes to chocolate bunnies as you can see. the last two are of a church on top of this hill that you can see the whole town from and a pub right next to it, actually touching the church. nothing wrong with that. America needs to learn a few things. i would of had shots from the top but my camera ran out of juice just as I got up there. it looked nice though, you just have to imagine it I guess.

shots from Nuremberg

2008-03-07T18:07:00.001+01:00

we left Bamberg and went to a town called Nuremberg to meet the other John's girlfriend's Dad's friend who own a brewery in northern Italy. he was going to take us out for dinner and we never pass up a free meal. it turned out that he thougt we were meeting him the next weekend, so we had to buy our own food. he is coming to Berlin in a few weeks for a raincheck dinner and is taking us to the most expensive hotel in Berlin for drinks. this is the hotel that Michael Jackson held his baby out of the second floor window. Nuremberg turned out to be pretty cool though. sort of like Bamberg, but bigger and a little more touristy.

Weyermann maltery in Bamberg

2008-03-07T17:47:00.000+01:00

these are all from the Weyermann maltery in Bamberg. the other John from Virginia gets his malt from them and was able to get us a tour. we got a really good tour, but were not allowed to take any pictures of the actual process they use. they produce mainly special malts with alot of roasting. the first shot is a new building that is really just a warehouse and an office. the second picture is an old roasting oven and then an old brew kettle they used to use in their pilot brewery. then a group shot in front of the pilot brewery the y use now. they had some pretty good bier. a rauchbier that was just a little smokey, and IPA that really was not an IPA and some sort of strong bier that i can't really remember the name of, oh well. they were all good. then bags and bags of malt of course.

more pictures from Bamberg

2008-03-07T17:39:00.000+01:00

this stuff is sort of going to be in the wrong order but you people probably don't care.

traveling in Germany

2008-03-03T18:46:00.000+01:00

ok, two weeks ago me, the other John, Erica, Simmon, and Felipe rented a car and set out to see some of Bavaria. we went to Bamberg, then stayed the night in Nuremberg, then went to Mainberg and finally Munich. the pictures here are first, Felipe caving in to his need to try getting milk out of fiber glass cows. he can't help it. I think it's a Brazilian thing. then you have Erica making it all the way to 10:18 am to pop her first bier. she doesn't have a drinking problem, she can stop any time she wants. the next 3 photos are selected shots of Bamberg. I think this town was my favorite. Felipe would tell you it was a fantastic town. the first of the 3 is the outside of this small pub that sells rauchbier, that means smoke bier for you people not in the know. Bamberg is known for this style of bier, and I've had it before in America. it was terrible there, but here it was great. we only had time to drink one, but i think i could have drank at least one more. Bamberg looks like the Germany from hundreds of years ago. little winding streets that don't make much since and are easy to get turned lost in. lots of bridges and hills. wish we could have spent more time there.

my new salsa machette band

2008-02-26T18:31:00.000+01:00

a few weeks ago a found a new band that lets me sit in with them sometimes. they're a little stiff, but once they warm up you can bend them a little. from left to right we have Tito on the fiddle, Rico playing the strings off the paper guitar, on the top is Zorro playing some brass, his brother Guapo spanking the paper flute, then you have Sanchez, and Grandma. Sanchez doesn't really play anything. he just stands there alot and almost starts singing every five minutes. Grandma is their manager. she's kind of mean. no, she is mean.

raw meat eating, bier drinking, and bier making

2008-02-25T16:53:00.000+01:00

that stuff on the bread is raw pork with some onions and spices in it. i ate it and it's really pretty good except the part where the fat gets stuck in your teeth. this was on the first thursday in feb. our pilot brewery has a sort of social every first thursday in the brewery with food and bier. there was a big 10 pound bag of the raw pork just sitting on the table with a spoon in it. yum. the last 2 shots are from the eschenbrau brewpub the next night. this guy makes a monthly special bier and we went to try it out. the first one was good. but then he switched over to another keg that was full of diacetyl. none of us could drink it. had to send it back. the foamy shot is his open fermenters. i can't believe he let us in the room with them. sorry it's been so long since i've posted anything, but our connection has been down for over a week and i also was studying for exams. found out today that i passed all of them! more pictures soon.

bunker shots

2008-02-25T16:26:00.001+01:00

these aren't the greatest pictures in the world, but it turns out bunkers are not so cool looking. this is from a few weeks ago when a few of us went on a bunker tour. the first shot i just put in cause it looked the coolest. it's just some jump suits they used when going down in the sewer. the next blurry shot was taken in the air lock room you have to go in before you can enter the actual bunker. we went to 2 bunkers and this one was not really going to help you in a nuclear war. our guide told us these type of bunkers were built only to make people think they had a chance. the other bunker was nuclear proof or whatever, but only for 2 weeks. then you had to go out and die. the 3rd shot is of the door to the air filtering system in the first bunker. behind

the blocks on the right is a room full of sand and maybe some charcoal the filter chemicals out of the air. problem is this filter only works for 48 hours. the next one is a photo of this model one of the history buffs made of the bunker. looks good when you're standing in front of it, not in this picture though. and the last shot is room full of beds that you had to put together yourself and then sleep on in shifts. there were 3 shifts. the rest of the time standing around getting pissed off. there was a bunch of cool pictures that were hung on the walls we could look at, but they didn't want us to photo them. oh well.

that's me in the corner

2008-02-08T11:12:00.000+01:00

last weekend i went to this weird interactive art showing with my roomate and one of her friends. the first 2 shots are from there. this guy had somehow made these different tv screens film you as you are looking at them and broadcast your image in diferent ways. in the first one my head is in the upper left corner, and i'm in the center of the other one. the rest of the art there was not that good, so i didn't take any more photos. the last picture is a bunch of lamb heads i saw at a grocery store the other day. ummmmmmm. also, i typed the wrong address for my buddies blog site. it's supposed to be brewschool.blogspot.com

Carnival at Lowenbrau

2008-02-06T18:19:00.000+01:00

well.... a group of us went out sat. night looking for the Lowenbrau (probably not spelled right) brewpub, or at least that's what we thought. turns out it's just a pub that sells alot of Lowenbrau bier. they like it large here as you can see. those are liters not half liters like all the other girlyman pubs serve. the first photo is finally a picture of me. before now you might have thought that someone else was posting all this crap, unless you have found your way to my fellow American wannabe brewmaster's blog site. some of me on there I've noticed. you can see his site at brewschool.blogspot.com Yes, his name is also John. anyway the first shot is not only of me, but also has my five favorite girlfriends with me. they told me not to write their names on here because all of them are married. don't tell. as I said, this is a carnival sort of. in Germany they celebrate a thing called carnival. one of our teachers said they don't really do it justice here in Berlin, but in south Germany they dress up like this and drink, sing and dance all weekend. sounds like fun. we danced with them a couple of times around the room then sat down and drank a few liters. also, this is for mom, that sausage that you thought was so weird, it's pretty damn good. called weisbraut. I've had it at 2 places now. the first place you had to take it out of the casing because it was actually intestines. luckily they told us before we bit it.

stupid fun after cta lab

2008-02-03T20:51:00.001+01:00

i think these pretty much explain themselves. Erica, Felipe, and Simon molesting a piece of cardboard. what's got into these people?

shots from the lab

2008-02-03T20:27:00.000+01:00

we had a lab on friday where we were supposed to analyze a malt in a few different ways. 3 ways, actually, all at the same time. the first shot is the other John from America, sporting his brand new Rayban safety glasses. then there's Simon, our only German, who is wearing his Stevie Wonder safety specs, and our Swede, Goran with 2 dots over the "o". i think he made those shades himself. then you have my favorite guy from Thailand burning down a buffering tablet and some ammonium sulfide along with a few grams of malt. exactly two grams, nothing more, nothing less. his name is Songsak I believe and in the last shot the him checking for saccrification in our mini mash.

One chromosome too many

2008-02-01T17:41:00.000+01:00

this chick is singing Mongoloid by Devo. this was taken last Wednesday on a boat in the Spree river. My roomate and I went there. It's called a language party. this guy from Seattle started it a few years ago. pretty fun. it only costs a euro to get on and they have free bread and homemade hummus and of course bier and wine for cheap. basically, you go in and tell them where you are from and what languages you can speak and what languages you would like to hear. I say I speak English and would like to hear English. Most people do speak English there, but some want to speak French or something. Last week we went also, and a few people came with me from the brew school. A girl from Canada and a guy from Brazil. he ended up talking with this German dude that wanted to speak Portuguese. think I might have spelled that correctly. prost!

nice hair dudes

2008-02-01T17:22:00.000+01:00

# 1. possibly Charlie Watts mixed with Dave Grohl or how ever you spell his name. #2. I think that may be Joixkene Phenix, I know that ain't spelt right. #3. Believe that's Eddie Vedder and Mick Fleetwood. #4. Two dudes named Santos and Lenny. They are not gay, they just like to comb each other's hair. #5. That's Lenny's brother who is also named Lenny. He is gay.

memorials

2008-02-01T16:50:00.000+01:00

The first one of these is from the Berlin war memorial. It's the only thing in the building. It's a women holding her dead son who was a soldier. The original is only 6 inches tall. The next four are photos of the Jewish memorial made by an architect from New York. It consists of 2711 blocks rectangular in shape. Each block is a different height and put into the ground at a different angle. They represent the 6 million Jews killed by Hitler. Our tour group walked through it on a diagonal from one corner to the next. It was pretty amazing. In the middle it slopes down into the ground so that the columns are very tall. You only see in one direction and can't see what's around the corner. Makes you fell like your underground and getting closed in. It was a weird felling. Some people are pissed about this memorial, but I think it's great because it's interactive. Maybe that will be all for the depressing shots.

hitler's grave site

2008-02-01T16:24:00.000+01:00

I know this picture looks like some dirt, grass, a few parked cars, some trees, and some apartment buildings. Well, where I'm standing while taking this is on top of Hitler's personal bunker. It's buried 15 or 20 meters down. This is where he killed himself. Along with his wife and dog. His wife took syanide ( probably misspelled ) , but in orderto make sure it would kill her, they gave it to their dog first. The dogs name was Blondie by the way. Then she took it and Hitler may have too, but he blew his brains out also. After that his posse took the bodies out of the bunker and put them in a shallow grave between those 3 trees that you can see there. Then they poured something like 240 liters of petrol on them and fired them up so no one could do anything to the bodies. They know it was Hitler because of the dental records. Our tour guide said it wasn't unusual for someone on the tour to go over and piss on the spot after he told them this. How do you like them apples?

remains

2008-01-26T19:07:00.000+01:00

today I went on a 3 hour walking tour with 2 other people from school. it was free, but they wanted tips which they deserved. again, I have more pics for later. the first one is the western outer wall with two people on the tour. the guy is on the west with a "w" gang sign and the girl on the east. turns out the wall consisted of two wall with sometimes as much as 200 meters between them. also there was barbed wire, mines, trip wires attached to automatic machine guns, and guards with guns on towers that had to try to kill you. the last picture is this row of bricks to show where the western side of the wall used to be. you can find this all over the city. I 've seen it in other places but didn't know what it was. this gos out to Dave Henderson.

pub shots

2008-01-26T18:52:00.000+01:00

last night a few of us went out to eat mexican food at a restaurant we found online and it turned out it closed down over a year ago. so we ate somewhere else and ended up at this small pub. i have other shots of it for later, but i did want to point out the last shot. yes, those are two turntables. they were actually playing vinyl. mostly American music. they even played freebird. prost!

beer is good

2008-01-24T19:40:00.000+01:00

this is some pictures of a small brewpub a few of us went to last Friday night. the guy in the stripes is the owner and brew master. he gave us a tour. the other people at the table are, on the left: the other John from America, Goran with two dots over the "o" from Sweden, and Erica from maple leaf loving Canada, on the right: a German guy who sat with us, brew master, a Croation and a Swede that Goran has befriended. Prost!

Jesus likes to rock too

2008-01-24T19:27:00.000+01:00

this proves once and for all that the rock sign is not satanic no matter what ronnie james dio says. these are just some pictures of a museum I stumbled upon while riding my bike. turns out it's a christian history museum or something like that. it cost too much though, 8 euros.

what a nice looking bier

2008-01-24T19:12:00.000+01:00

just some more pictures here, but I did want to say that used to be a whole pig in one picture

great advertisement huh

2008-01-21T17:30:00.000+01:00

our class went to a food and beverage fair yesterday in this big ass building. they had everything you could think of in there. there was only one American booth though. an ice cream booth. I guess we don't really have any food we can say is American. the first pic is an add for beer saying it's good for milk production. how nice. there will be other adds on here later. the middle two are you can guess. the last one is a group of Bavarians raising hell. we dank a few biers ourselves.

our fearless leader, Burghard in leather

2008-01-19T11:35:00.000+01:00

this is the kind of clothes that Burghard likes to where when he is not giving lectures. with him is Goran the Swede. the rest is pictures of my roomates dryer. yes, that's right, we dry our clothes in the attic on a rack which my roomate calls a dryer. I just learned this yesterday. maybe my clothes will be dry now.

introducing the Speed King!

2008-01-19T11:28:00.000+01:00

you may say, "that's a pink bike", but that's just paint. this thing is a city man bike. it's just pink sort of.

world war two bunker pictures boys and girls

2008-01-18T18:33:00.000+01:00

I was riding my bike yesterday and saw this actual hill across this bridge. since it was the first hill I have seen in Berlin I had to climb it. pretty steep. it went up to this old ww2 bunker. the first picture is a sculpture in the middle of one bunker and the the safety fence around it. great view of the city. I'll be back.

more bunker pictures

2008-01-18T18:19:00.000+01:00

these are more pictures from the bunker. the sunset is looking down towards Mitte and the smoke stack on I think is towards Prenzlauerberg. the last one is part of the inside of the bunker.

makin this guy famous

2008-01-16T20:06:00.000+01:00

this guy needs to be on his side like this. I think he was playing "oops I did it again" in Deutsch.

sometimes you get thirsty in class

2008-01-16T19:55:00.000+01:00

yes, apparently sometimes we get to drink a few beers while listening to a lecture. cheers!

hard at work

2008-01-16T19:51:00.000+01:00

photos from the lab

2008-01-16T19:28:00.000+01:00

these are from the microbiology lab today. the first is asbestos at 40x, some bad shit. next is some diatomaetious earth(DE) at 40x that you can use to filter bier. it's bone of milions of years old dead things. nice image huh. then the last one is cellulose at 40x. you can put your camera up to the eye piece on a microscope to get these. I looked at more stuff, but my camera ran out of juice.

boxer taking a dump

2008-01-13T20:45:00.000+01:00

I just found that if you click to enlarge the photo of my new disco rock punk band you can see a boxer taking a dump. see if you can find it.

2008-01-13T18:53:00.000+01:00

This is some building that you can see from the 3rd floor of the brew school. then the other one is my class waiting for a train to take us to a brewpub down in Mitte. the guy standing next to the tracks with the big hat is a teacher. the coolest one I guess. he's the one teaching us about barley, hops, and malting. he can also play the bag pipes and is into sword play. pretty odd cat.

2008-01-13T18:39:00.000+01:00

here's a picture of the first bier I had over here. got it at a little pizzeria. very good. the other two are of the area in Berlin known as unter den linden. that means under the lime trees. don't really know why, but it leads to the Teirgarten park where Hitler was known for having his troops in formation.

2008-01-08T19:32:00.000+01:00

this is a famous Catholic church in Mitte in the Alexander platz, and some big crazy tower that is close to it. And a picture taken on a bridge over the Spree river.

2008-01-08T19:26:00.000+01:00

2008-01-08T19:15:00.000+01:00

here is a monument of the disco rock punk band that I have joined. what it looks like outside my window, and how many stairs I have to climb each day.

2 from atlanta, one from jfk, the rest from Berlin

2008-01-05T15:41:00.000+01:00

1. picture at night, drunk with cousin Justin on Uncle Paul's front porch. 2. the lobster claws that Andy missed out on because he would rather spend the night in a cave instead of drinking all night eating lobster claws and oysters in Atl. 3.Hannah the Shark (a Berliner I met in JFK) 4.the start of my str. when I first got in town(snowing) yes I sort of live in the ghetto. 5. just down the street from the apt. that green thing is were you recycle stuff.

2008-01-02T14:11:00.000+01:00

i can't find a cafe where i can use my computer yet, so i will wait to write anything else. cheers

last night in cookeville for a while

2007-12-28T01:05:00.000+01:00

last night for me in tennessee for a good long five months, maybe longer, who knows. think it's time to drink a few beers. I can't say how good I'll be at writing this shit on here, but I'll give it a try. drink one for me on new years, for I will miss it over the Atlantic.
cheers!

2007-12-25T17:34:00.000+01:00

here's all my junk