55/356: Störtebeker Atlantik Ale

A regular day you might call it. I had an exhausting day at work so I didn't have time to think about what I could do today. More beer it is then. This time around it's German; Störtebecker Atlantik Ale. It has a really nice unique taste that I can't quite place. Usually the Beer I try for this project is better than your everyday stuff you can get at swiss supermarkets. I think I will be spoiled after this year. 

It's swiss national day in thursday so I will try to come up with something else than a new beer for that day. Until tomorrow, cheers

54/356: Hot Sauce & Granola Bar

What an exciting day. I got a new type of granola bar and a new type of BBQ hot sauce.
Both had a practical reason. I ran out of the hot sauce that I got a few weeks back and loved so much. So I had to get a new one, naturally. This one is quite awesome as well! Gotta admit, I love my sauces. Recommended!

The nut/granola bar I got because I workout after I get home from work and need some energy for that. So what better than a granola bar stuffed with nuts. Mmmmm yummy....Well, it gives me energy, that's what it's supposed to do I guess. Chocolate would be better though. Everything is better covered in chocolate.

Bonne appetit.

53/356: YB At Stade De Suisse

Went to see a great football (soccer) game at Stade De Suisse Wankdorf yesterday. It was the first time that I saw YB (the local football) club and the first time that I have been to that arena. It was  a really pleasant experience. BSC YB played FC Thun, the local rival. That was a promising premise!



The Stadium was more than two thirds full and the game was exciting. The home team was trailing by two goals at half time. In the second half they actually managed to score three goals and go on to win the game. It was proper dramatic with many good scenes. I couldn't have picked a better game to go see.

On a side note, Since I started this little project, I have been using my phone's camera very often. I am getting very annoyed by it. It's time for a new phone!

play on.

52/356: Mythos, Greek Beer

It is the hottest day of the year. So what would be better fitting than to try a cold beer? Today it was my first Greek beer. It is called "Mythos". It's a really nice beer and best of all, it was ice cold. What better than sitting outside on a sunny day with a cold one? With temperatures like today, not much!

I don't have any drink sampling planned for tomorrow. Let's see if I can stick with the plan!

Don't sweat too much my friends!

51/356: Dinner With Sis

I went out for dinner with my little sister today. The only thing I regret, is the fact that she had to get to 18 until we did something like this. I don't know why we never did this before, I had a blast. Let's do it again soon sis!

We went to a thai place in the city of bern. She was here for some work, so it was a given that we should meet if we could make it.

50/356: Random Act Of Kindness

It was a RAK day. What is a random act of kindness you ask? Well the name says it all. You do a total random act of kindness. Usually it is for somebody you don't know. Me, I payed for someones snacks today.

There are two snack vending machines at the main train station in Bern: 

I had 20.- prepared in coins and loaded both of them with 10.- and walked away. Now I hope people will actually notice that there is some money in them. I should have put up a sign or something. Ah no matter, I am sure somebody will notice and claim the free snacks. 

Pay it forward!

49/356: Same Same But Different

I had the ultimate Bern experience today. I ran along the river Aare for about 7.5k but then instead of running back down, I put my stuff in a water proof bag and let the river carry me back down to where I started. It was epic!

Drifting along in the Aare is something that is very popular among the locals and I can really recommend it to anybody. I have never swam so far in the Aare or any other river for that matter. I am positively destroyed right now but also feel great. I did have my phone with me and so could have taken pictures before getting in the water, but shame on me, I forgot to do so. I guess I was too excited.

I can tell two things, you haven't seen Bern until you swam in the Aare and this is not the last time that I did this variation of my runs. Actually can't wait to do it again!

48/356: The Fancy Box Arrives

I got my first fancy "Ashton Kutcher" subscription box in the mail today. I didn't really think about getting this soon in the last few weeks so receiving it was a pleasant surprise.

I am kinda dissapointed by the contents. Some items like the t-shirt and the socks are nice but they are way too big. The socks are size 10-13 and I am 8 1/2. The t-shirt is a L and I usually wear S. I am a little dissapointed because I let them know when I ordered that I was an S. Too bad, I really like the t-shirt.

The USB power adapter is a nice idea but no good for me because it needs an american outlet. Maybe I will gift it to a visiting couchsurfer.

the last item, a book, I am not too sure what to make off. I'll have a deeper look into it.

All in all I would have been happy if the sizes would have been good for me. I will write fancy again about my sizes and if they mess up again with the next box I will cancel this subscription for sure. Meh, I guess not all firsts can be great.

47/356: A Thing That Cuts The Middle.

In the news today; I made Zucchini filled with minced beef. It was really good. Did take me a bit long to make it and since I did some workout earlier.. well let's just say I will not sleep for a while yet.
The grand new thing is, that tool I bought which lets you get the middle of fruits or vegetables out. This weird contraption:

No idea what it is called in English and pretty sure I will never use it again. Never had one before though so this is my new thing for today. Hurray it's not food! But I will show you a picture of the food I made anyhow. You know you love it.

Omnomnom...

46/356: Pret A Manger

I had lunch at Heathrow today. To be exact at Pret A Manger. Seems to be the hot new chain thing. They are literally everywhere in London. The have some nice food and drinks there.The Sandwich/ Ice Tea I picked were good. I enjoyed the fact that the Ice Tea lacked sugar. The Sandwich was good I am sure. Trouble was that I chewed too many chewing gum at the festival yesterday and now my jaw muscles hurt. I kid you not. Hasn't happened since I quite smoking...

After yesterday's highlight, I am back to doing mundane new things. So far I only have one idea what to do the coming week so you will probably see a lot of food/drink related stuff this week.

45/356: EDC London

Eeeeeepic day! 

I went to Electric Daisy Carneval today. The whole reason why I was here this weekend. There was great music, nice people and not so good food. I had an awesome time.

So many DJ's so little time. The only problem was that some DJ's I wanted to see played at the same on different stages. So instead of going from stage to stage all the time I decided to stay at the main stage through the whole event. I saw Hardwell, Alesso, Steve Angello and Tiesto. If the do EDC again next year, I will be here too!

44/356: Zino Cigars, Upper Crust, Juicy Water and Studios2Let

So I just got to London. This is my second of four stays here this year. I'll tell you more about the reason I am here tomorrow. Or whenever I get back to the place I am staying at. I am at Studios2let. So far I really like the place. It's really close to King's Cross.

On the way here I got something to eat at Upper Crust, got a 'Juicy Water' and bought some Cigars. So there are at least three new things in there. I think that is quite alright for a friday evening.

The baguette was awesome.

Couldn't try the Cigars yet. I think I will bring one along tomorrow

Well, that looks sweet.

Travel on!

43/356: Starbucks Double Shout Espresso

I got this coffee as a freebie at the train main station in Bern. I have had it in the fridge for some time now. I drank it yesterday because I wanted to do some workout but felt so tired that I didn't feel up for it. Since there was nothing else around that Starbucks Double Shot Espresso was it.

It reminded me a lot of Japan. They have many kinds of coffee in small cans like that. If you ever walked past a drinks vending machine in Japan, I am sure you have seen them. If you have never seen on of them, let me show you:

 I liked it but not enough to go out and actually buy one myself. Probably way overpriced anyhow. Tonight I am off to London for the weekend. Let's see what new thing I can come up with.

42/356: Ofen Tomatos With Feta Cheese

I had a very yummy dinner today. I made tomatoes with feta cheese and herbs in the oven. Throw it in the dish, put some spices and herbs on it, leave it in for twenty minutes, grab a Foccacia and tadaaaa ready is your very nice mid-week dinner. 

To accompany that I had a regional beer called "äs Gattlig's" which to be honest, I have no idea what it means. It tasted quite well! 

41/356: Asian Fusion Food

Another day with a full schedule so food it was. I tried an Asian fusion food place called "Nooch". The food was actually quite good. Not to sure where it was supposed to be from though. The names were all fancy made up stuff and the taste, well could have been a number of cuisines from Asia.

All this restaurant tasting does have an upside. Whenever I will host guests, which due to couchsurfing, happens rather often. I will always be able to tell them where to get good food. That is when I don't feel like cooking myself, which does not happen that often.

40/356: Back To Sampling Beer

Tonight's lucky winner was an american beer. The Yuengling Traditional Lager to be precise. Coming from, what they claim to be, the oldest brewery in the US of A. I did enjoy it. It was rather on the light side of taste and so, very much to my liking.

Let's see if I can come up with something more exciting tomorrow but as I mentioned before, this is hard to do when you have a busy life. I shouldn't be making excuses.. I should just get on with it!

Let's drink to that!

39/356: Café Kornhaus

Dinner at Café Kornhaus was on the program today. I had a household / visit the grandparents kind of day so I was rather limited on the things I could do. I didn't plan to go out for dinner but I was so tired after cleaning and washing that I just couldn't be bothered to cook myself.

I just had a Greek salad so there is not much that I can say about the café. The café it is very popular with Japanese tourists though. The Salad was good and so was the beer.

Next week I will be on standby from work so I don't see many possibilities to go all out trying new stuff. I have to be reachable on the phone at all times and need to be able to get an internet connection within 15min.. soooo any ideas?

38/356: Swissbowl VXXII

Broncos 46 : Gladiators 41

What could be the result of a NFL game is actually the result that decided the Swissbowl. The Swissbowl is our version of the Superbowl..on a much smaller scale. There might have been about 1000 spectators. 

The final was between Calanda (Landquart) Broncos and the Basel Gladiators. This was the fourth time in row that these two teams met in the final and the fourth time that the Broncos beat the Gladiators. It is also Calanda's fifth win in row and they made appearance the last six finals.  Not surprising then that the Broncos also won the European final last year. Kinda get the feeling they are dominating the league here in Switzerland. 

I really enjoyed the game. They played surprisingly well for humans. These players are big but they are still humans, not like the monsters playing in the NFL. I guess what you can say that the intensity was the biggest difference to the NFL. 

This was the first of three football games I will attend this year. More about that at a later point. 

37/356: Walking Home

On today's to do list was a long walk. During the afternoon I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and walk home from work. I have thought about this for some days now and prepared accordingly this morning. The walk was about 7 km through woods and the city. I walked at an easy pace and it probably took me about two hours to do.

I really enjoyed the first part that took me past some fields and through a nice wood. The best part was when a deer jumped out of the Underwood just in front of me and sprinted across the path. Mini heart attack right there. Made me smile though. I might actually do this walk again. Maybe not the whole way but the part through to wood. Might evening go running there during lunch breaks.. let's see.

Switzerland really is a beautiful place. 

36/356: Adventure Rooms

I escaped!

..but let me begin at the start. I went to Adventure Rooms today.
Basically you get locked into a room and you have to find your way out to freedom. To find your way out you have to solve puzzles and try not to kill the other people in your team. Think the movie "Saw" minus the gore or an adventure game from the early nineties.

I got to do it because somebody wrote about on couchsurfing and looked for a few more people to join. From all the people tonight I only knew one guy and as weird as this sounds, not knowing each other probably enabled us to solve all the puzzles. Of course I am not going to say more, you should go and do it yourself, it was an evening well spent.

 Some of the stuff that we needed to solve the puzzles.

 Being locked into a room with a bunch of strangers turns people into maniacs.

The key to freedom, we found it! 

We got told that they are looking for a new location for a second room, I will go do that for sure. Can't wait!

35/356: Drinking Beer In The Sun

I didn't forget to do something new yesterday, I just forgot to post about it.

The weather was beyond grand so I went for a lazy but enjoyable first. I got home, put on some shorts, grabbed a beer and went down to the Aare river to drink that beer and do some reading. This is where I went:

The red arrow indicates my exact sitting spot. This is just minutes from my apartment but somehow I never managed to go there. I will be there more often though because the view is great, the bears are just behind me..

... and it's less strenuous to get there than to walk up to the Rosengarten. Also, the view is not too bad:

The reason why I forgot to post.. I downloaded and tried DOTA 2. Maybe not the best idea ever...

34/356: The Long Run

I had a great plan for today but when the weather doesn't play along, well, plans have to be changed. So instead I chose a new route for my runs.

Bike route 1,940,943 - powered by Www.runmap.net

The route I ran was a little longer but this is pretty close. I also raised my usual 5k to 9k. Pretty proud of that actually. I do have to admit that I didn't go very fast anymore towards the end. I think I had about 6min to the km. Next goal, lower that time per km.

Now please excuse me, I have to go crash on my bed.

33/356: Restaurant Thurm Molino

Another day, another food related post. BUT this time there will be no pictures of food! I am getting a bit bored of those myself. Instead I have this wonderful shot of the restaurants front taken from my seat while waiting for my food.

There is nothing fancy about the restaurant, just your normal Italian place in Switzerland. I have nothing to complain about the food though. I had a healthy Caesar's salad and a fruit salad for dessert. I had to go for something healthy because I totally failed my workout goal today. Blame the hot weather!

Oh, I also got rejected by the literature agency. Tomorrow I will contact another one.

32/356: Chrome

I installed chrome as web browser. I know it is weird that I never installed or used chrome before considering I work in IT. So far I have always been happy with Firefox so I felt no need to change. I enjoy the experience, but I miss the list of recent webpages I visited. Does anybody know how to activate that? 

I feel like posting without pictures is a tad boring so just for that reason I also tried a new beer today. This one is called Landshark and from what I can tell it is made in Florida. I really enjoyed the taste. Probably not the last time I had it.

After revising my children book manuscript  over the last seven days, I sent it to an agency today. I am not sure what will come of it but I really hope they like it and that it will be made into a picture book. All I want is for my grandma to see it. If they reject it, I hope to get some feedback what I could improve to try again. 

Since this is day 32 of my grand undertaking, I have officially made it beyond a month...wooooo! Looking forward to the coming 11 months.

31/356: Threefold

This is what my three things for today looked like. I was overcompensating because my initial plan didn't work out. I wanted to go to Zürich because there is a festival going on there. I was sure to be able to try something new once I got there. Since that plan didn't work out, I had to make up for it. 

The spicy lemon tagine paste is beyond delicious. Tried it on some chicken and it really upgraded my meal. That bag stuff went on the salad. Nothing special though. The soda, well I haven't tasted it yet to be honest. I will do right when I start watching tonight's movie after writing the blog entry.

30/356: Playing The Violin

Couchsurfers make you do the darnest things. The guest I have at the moment is busking her way around europe. As it happens she plays the Violin and I have never touched one of those before. So she suggested I should do this for my new thing today.
I did and I felt all musical. But I have to admit, these hands are made for many things, making music is not one of them. It was awesome nonetheless and without having her visit me, this would probably not have ended as one of the things I do during this year. My thanks go out to her.

This is one of the reasons why I love couchsurfing; you just never know whats going to happen.


On a totally unrelated note, I just hit 10'000 page visits.
Thanks for taking an interest in my life!

29/356: iisfee

As mentioned earlier today, I tried something during lunch today. I tried a softdrink that is a sparkly iced tea infused with green tea. Sounds weird, tastes just as weird.