Getting to Munich takes a good 6 hours under normal circumstances.
We had no normal circumstances. It was snowing, it was cold, and it was the last day of the holidays for many parts of the country… so the trip took 10:30 hours, which puts our average speed at something like 75 km/h. Not that satisfying, but as you can see from the picture, we were still in a good mood after arrival!
Had great dinner that day and a good nights sleep. Yesterday I went to Munich's center to do some shopping while Gwendy was at work. Found the most unbelievably crammed, narrow and downright stupidly planned underground parking ever. Survived it without damage to the car somehow. The day was beautiful – not too cold, sunny all over… so I took some halfway nice pics with the big camera, but the upload will have to wait until I am back at decent bandwith.
In the evening we went to two cool bars ("die Bank" and "Ksar") and finished the day with a "le Üwe" at the 'Bergwolf". If you know what that is, you know we had a good time

Today I drove over to Augsburg to visit Brandi. She already gave me a thorough tour of the city – I had totally forgotten that Augsburg is the town of the Fuggers! On a sidenote – I bought a book that I THOUGHT was about Consulting. Well, it is. But the German "Beratung" has, as the english equivalent, a very broad meaning…. the book is about counseling people with personal issues, not about management consulting. But hey, it was discounted, and one can always broaden the horizon, right?!

Now we're off to grab some mexican food, and then we'll hit the bowling alley. Tomorrow: Frankfurt!

Start of the trip, originally uploaded by floho.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, long time no see, etc.!

In a few minutes I’m starting a week-long trip throughout Germany to visit some of my dearest friends. First stop: Munich. I plan on blogging some pictures from every location.

Cool twist #1: I’m taking my new car (Bizzie, she’s called), which is sweeeet!
Cool twist #2: For the long trip to Munich, I’m taking Gwen, so it’s gonna be fun from the getgo. Also, she lives there, and I’m visiting her, so it makes some good sense.
Cool twist #3: Instead of delayed christmas presents, I’ll be taking some cool photos of everyone I visit. Which they don’t know yet. The car is stuffed with all my photo equipment, and It’ll be fun for sure!

Now off we go – come and ride along!

Today, though, a late Saturday night – I’m trying again. This, as I am on vacation for the next three weeks, is one of the things I want to do right now: Get my fun and ease of writing back.

My life title You’ve been wondering what that “life title” thing is, right? Well, most people have a job title. I’m a “Consultant”. That says something – though not terribly much- about what I do for a living, and it describes that part of me… but that is not and shouldn’t be all there is to me. Over the last weeks, I have stumbled across two little things that came almost as a revelation to me. As most great things, they are terribly simple – almost mundane – but they have a profound impact on me.

Little thing #1: I read an article of the author/trainer/old school “management guru” Tom Peters, where he states:

Enthusiasm is the sine qua non of success … at anything. Hence, I command: The Very First Item on EVERY job criteria list shall hereinafter be: “Enthusiast.” Every. Job. Enthusiast. First. Period.

That rang a bell with me. That was me. An Enthusiast. I am at my best when I am enthusiastic about something, and I live for moments, ideas, people, things, plans, projects, visions to be enthusiastic about. There’s a good reason why I chose the saying by Charles Kingsley (which is often falsly attributed to Einstein) to be my motto in our graduation book:

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

That’s me: Florian Hollender. Enthusiast. But WHAT am I enthusiastic about? Is there a common theme? A denominator that carries all through life? I found it, that is…

Little thing #2: As I said, it is really simple, no surprise at all, but I never saw it in that light. Lying awake in bed one night (cheese, but not made up), I realized the common thread that spans through all my hobbies, all the things I carry a torch for: It is people, and it is technology. I love climbing, because it requires technique, technical equipment and teamwork. Same goes for diving. I love photography, because it enables me to a creative outlet through technology. I love computers, because they enable me to a whole universe of possibilities and activities, to connect and communicate in new ways. And so on, and so forth. Technology in itself is great, but when you put people and technology together, the world changes. Mine certainly does.

There you have it, my life title:

Florian Hollender. Enthusiast for people and technology.

big moon, originally uploaded by floho.

It is time to get back to blogging and open floho.com up again.
After so many months of not writing anything here, it was really difficult to decide what to say… the amateur’s form of writers’ block, I suppose.
Luckily, this picture gives me a short story to tell that might even convey some sort of meaning.

I took this picture in the early morning hours of January 11th. Although I had heard before that there was a grand photo opportunity of the moon coming up – it being the closest to earth for a long time – it had not crossed my mind to really act on it. As luck has it, I had a nightmare that night, and thus woke up really early. Before going back to sleep, I walked around in my room, and saw the big moon. I mean… the BIG moon. It was incredibly present in the sky, and brighter than I could have imagined. So I scratched my head and decided to take that opportunity right there and then. On came some clothes, the tele-zoom on my camera, the tripod on the balcony and the camera on top. as I started shooting away, switching hands in operating the trigger and warming the other one up – it was bloody cold – my next idea was to take an HDR to capture the whole beauty of the moon as it was. An HDR requires shots being taken at different exposures (I spare you the details), so I set the camera for it, pulled all screws tight on the tripod and took those exposure rows to then later put them together into one, hopefully pretty, picture.

The next day, I opened up the images on the computer and tried to combine them for that HDR I planned to create. What did I find? Bollocks. The head of the tripod must have slowly sagged under the weight of the camera – the position of the moon was shifting between the three images. So I cursed and went to the tripod – not to give the metal a good beating, although I felt like it, but would have lost – but to see what my error had been. I couldn’t find it. All screws were still in position, and no tugging and pushing could move the camera position.

This is when it dawned on my. There had been nothing wrong with the setup. The camera had not moved. The moon had, or rather: I had, because the world kept turning while I took those pictures.

Some things you cannot control. Sometimes, doing everything you can does not change things the slightest bit. That’s nothing to be bitter about – it is something to learn from.

So what did I do? I forgot about the HDR idea, looked at all pictures I had taken, and selected my favorite. The one you are seeing here. And now, it is not only a picture of the big moon anymore – it is the symbol of a little lesson that it taught me.

(from the “Sunscreen Speech“)

It was off by a day and a few hours, but these lyrics are ringing in my head constantly right now. I guess I won’t be posting much in the next days, weeks, months, who knows.

these weeks have been packed with exciting stuff. On the first weekend of August I visited Tine in London (she did an internship with WFW). It was awesome! We loaded the two days with all the sightseeing you can imagine, and then some – but all in a relaxed fashion, so it stayed fun. If I could convert them RAW pics on my work machine I would have uploaded them all ages ago… but there were some JPGs, so I can give you a short preview already…. ahhh, no. Uploader doesn’t work probably here. I’ll check that later in the hotel and update the post if possible.

On the work side of life, my project in Zurich is in its final week, and we close it with a big bang – a two day workshop with almost 100 people involved in Lucerne. We spent over a month in preparation, so I am really looking forward to it. With lots of fun comes a lot of work, too – so I’ll spend the Saturday on location to help finish up the documentation and will get back to Hamburg on Sunday, just in time to pack new clothes and get ready for the next week. What’s next? Well, nothing certain yet, but interesting projects on the horizon.

Gotta run, catch you later!

Apart from that, I am well under with work in the last weeks, and it seems to be getting more, not less. I am currently located in Zurich during the week, so if any one of you happens to be there or in the area, give me a shout!

I can’t stop being fascinated by this hero of Internet fame. After the initial “where the Hell is Matt?” dancing video, he made a second, and now – he is back!

This wakes all my urges to go out, see the world, and have fun. I know you’ll like it too.

Almost everyone who saw the assortment of NERF guns which is loaded and ready right to the door of our apartment had a puzzled look on their face.

Almost everyone who has been to one of our parties knows that they are a lot of fun (and Michael knows that they even work in a pool – unfortunately, that pool is in the US and not next to our apartment in Hamburg).

What you can find here, however, is so much better a full fledged NERF-office-war! I need to go stock up on NERF guns immediately! I don’t feel safe anymore!