only pictures for tonight... or Johanssen in holiday paradise

Maid of the Mist, Niagara Falls

Johanssen cayaking it up, Kennebunkport, ME

Adrian and Johanssen on top of Acadia National Park, ME

Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA

Johanssen moshing it up, Martha's Vineyard, MA

more $ for skinny jeans...

thanks Adrian

Handed my last paper in today. woohoo

tomorrow I'll drive down to Providence where Dan Deacon is going to play a free show at noon. I'm excited as I wanted to go see him tonight but the show sold out and of course I didn't bother buying tickets... well another chance tomorrow.

I feel like I have more time to post random stuff now. I bet y'all are excited... 

everyday I'm hustlin...

just sold the bike. To get over my grieving period I started listening to some Rick Ross and taking some hustler pictures. haha and fun it was.



One paper got turned in today, the other is due tomorrow. I have a headache, I'm tired, and I have some more work ahead of me...

Auf diesen Abend ein dreifaches Rick Ross... Hurra, Rick Ross... Hurra, Rick Ross... Hurra
Haertester Typ. Aber nicht so der Brutalo, sondern eher so der smarte Hustler.... hahaha

I'm selling my bike... and it hurts

It served me well over the last 10 months. Originally I planed on taking it with me back over the pond, but as Lufthansa would charge 150 Euros for it I decided to sell it here.

This is what it looks like... 

To get over my sadness I decided that I'll put some effort and money into the white Peugot road bike I bought in Nbg last spring... good coping strategy, isn't it? Hopefully that can happen this summer. Tobert, Patrick, I might need some advice concerning where to get parts and your skills...

Right now I'm in the process of finishing my last paper. It's quite a drag but I should be done with the writing phase by tonight. And it's pretty much down hill from there. Deadline is tomorrow. Time to get back to it...

this is what I do when I should rather be finishing my paper.

but it is pretty awesome, and maybe a little scary, too...

check out the world population clock

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

time for an update

NBA playoffs are on. Tonight the Celtics tore the Chicago Bulls apart. As my new roommate got us cable and a huge (and when I say huge I mean HUGE) TV. Well good game it was anyways. Right now the LA Lakers are playing against Utah Jazz... and LA is probably going to win but it's close.

Besides that I got really hooked on the American Revolution this week after I went to the reenactment of the Battle on Lexington Green with my friend Maik from Dresden/DC on Monday morning (5.30 am lolz!). A lot of gunpowder was in the air as the British troops marched into town and fought off the revolutionaries in Lexington and continued marching further west towards Concord. Back in 1775 they had to retreat back to Boston eventually and suffered heavy losses because militia from all the surrounding Massachusetts towns went there to fight the "redcoats". I actually learned this from the 13 episode history channel documentary "the revolution" which I downloaded this week (but only watched 3 of them so far)... as I said I'm hooked. 

I took some pictures and video, but unfortunately they are kind of too large to upload them here. In case someone is really interested, there are videos of the reenactment on youtube. And here are some pictures

dead revolutionaries and the British ranks 

people were actually booohing when the British soldiers marched by. Obviously reenactment is taken very seriously not only by the actors...

Other than watching NBA and documentaries on the Revolution, I drafted my first poster for a scientific presentation this week. The student research conference at my university where I am going to present our preliminary results is going to be next Tuesday and I am happy and relieved that our dataset finally worked out and I found something to present. I am pretty happy with the final results now! 

... I guess that's it for now. Only 2 more months in the States for me now. Feels kind of weird thinking about going back to Germany so soon. But I am currently looking for internship opportunities for the summer and for a thesis topic for fall; exciting stuff! Before I leave though I'm gonna do a big road trip with my friend Adrian (the plan is to drive west, then down the Mississippi all the way to New Orleans and back up to New England... just a quick trip of about 3500 miles, haha!) and present at another conference in New Jersey in June. Also there are a couple of more papers due till the semester is over...

That's it for now, have to go to bed.

More news soon. x

... sitting in my empty room

at least it's way emptier that a couple of hours ago as I drove Verena to the airport this evening. The three weeks flew by like a couple of days... Boston didn't make it very hard for her to say goodbye as it was pouring all day today. 

The last weeks with her were eventful and a lot of fun. When she got here on Monday three weeks ago (together with my friends Lars, Arne, and Hanna) they had a couple of days to explore Boston and I had time to show them around as it was my spring break week. We didn't stay in Boston for very long though and drove down to NYC on Thursday to spend a wonderful weekend in Brooklyn with my friends Ari and Adam to celebrate Ari's birthday. On our way down there we passed at the submarine museum in New London, CT to see the Nautilus, the first submarine that dove all the way under the north polar ice cap and the north pole. It is a museum ship and visitors can actually go onboard and walk around, pretty awesome. 

NYC was a lot of fun as always. Staying with the best people in one of the best cities can't be anything but fun! We did some touristy things like the MOMA, the Staten Island ferry, the Brooklyn Museum but also spend a decent amount of time visiting the culinary sights around the city. Foodwise the highlight for me anyways was Foodswings in Williamsburg, vegan fast food deluxe. 

Tourists, Staten Island

hmmm food, Foodswings Williamsburg

Verena and me drove back to Boston Monday morning and I had to get back to school routine, as much as that was possible at that time with a visitor here that I wanted to spend as much time with as I possibly could. I got the most important things done but will have to start working harder again now that she's gone again. Well the next weekend we spent in and around Boston with a day trip to Newport and Providence, RI where we enjoyed nice weather and a spectacular coastline. 

Seashore, Newport

After another week school and the culinary attractions of Boston (vegan brunch, Grasshopper, ...) we took the car all the way up to Montreal for the weekend to celebrate the wedding of my friends Megan & Alex that got married this weekend and threw a big party with an amazing 80s dance action... the taste of the Montreal kids is right up my alley I have to say!! Apart from all the rain in Montreal this weekend we got a very nice first impression of the city and thanks to the hospitality of my friends we stayed really close to the interesting spots in town. 

Bride & groom, Montreal

Party hard! Montreal

Got back to Boston last night kind of exhausted and spent the day today in bed, packing, running some last errands and meeting with Daniel and Jan who are in town also for some dinner... Now she's gone and I after weeks and weeks of laziness am updating my blog and listening to some live recordings of my band from a show in Berlin over a year ago... actually I am just listening to the final "anstrafen" that my friend Thomas did to the microphone requesting some additional songs... hilarious! Haha!

In the next couple of days I am going to have some more visitors here as my friends Lars, Arne, and Hanna are coming back to Boston after touring the East Coast, before they fly out of Boston next week so I won't be lonely ; ) So long, Johanssen

I'm so laaaazy

A lot happened the last couple of weeks and I didn't take the time to update the blog... 

After Anna left I went back to serious study mode for an extended week and flew off to San Francisco for a weekend seminar. My flight there was 6 hours delayed and at some point I was kind of wondering is the seminar was still going to happen for me anyways but I ended up flying out of Boston and arrived only a little late for the dinner and opening reception that evening. I stayed for 5 days and it was awesome. SF, favorite place in the states so far...

After getting back I had roughly one week until my guest from Germany arrived. Verena, Arne, Hanna and Lars. They got here on Monday and I tried to be a good host and showed them around Boston. Lars is actually blogging in German about this trip also. Just check out the "big old bear" in the friends section. 

That's it for today. Tomorrow we are off to NYC again and are checking out the USS Nautilus on our way there. Nuclear submarine true kvlt...

More news soon. 

WOW!

keeping this series alive...

My sis left this morning back to Europe. I just finished watching "The Green Butchers" and am going to meet with some kids from Denmark tomorrow at school. We'll see how that goes...

NYC/Plymouth/Fairey

NYC was awesome! Thanks to the hospitality of Ari and Adam!!

Will post pics as soon as Felix uploads the pictures he took. This week was pretty busy and I had to let Anna and Felix explore the city by themselves. We were still able to spend the evenings together, though. 

Yesterday we did a day-trip down to Plymouth, MA, the place where the Pilgrims arrived back in the 1620s. Off season, so there was not that much to see. We saw the Plymouth Rock but the replica of the Mayflower was not there. I thing they take it out of the water when winter comes.

No Mayflower to be seen.

buildings

Other than that we had really good Indian food for lunch, went to the ICA in Boston to see Shepard Fairey's exhibition, which I highly recommend seeing!

Felix left this morning back to NYC and my sis is going to stay till next week. 

NYC pictures soon. Take care, Johannes

on my way to NYC

riding the intarwebz on the bus. new experience I have to say. 

I am going to meet up with my sister and my friend Felix and we are going to spend the weekend in the city. 

the last couple of days were pretty busy. my research project is a lot of work already but it is very exciting and I am happy I can spend time with work I enjoy.

last weekend I had to find out that my trivial pursuit skills are far from perfect, especially when it comes to American history and entertainment and that Lowell is actually a pretty nice day-trip destination, even though Jack Kerouac's grave is pretty hard to find under all this snow. Actually we weren't able to find it at all, but looking at a detailed map of the graveyard later that day we figured we must have been pretty much standing on his tombstone, which is more lying on the ground sort of. I hope he didn't mind...

ok the connection seems to be to slow to upload any pictures at this point... I'll take care of that once I'm in NYC.

stay tuned.

pics

I can tell other people were there... probably looking for his grave, too

... no grave, but a piece of paper instead. Just as good!

former mills, now waterfront loft-apartments

who are these people?

update & request

I went to a show last night. one of the bands played a washing trough acoustic bass (in German: Waschzuber). Dear grave shovel when I get back you know what to expect. Also I saw the solo project of Mel Lederman (ex victory at sea) and it was awesome. More than 2 years ago me and a lot of friends went to see victory at sea at the AZ Conni in Dresden. I was reminded of good times! Unfortunately all of my victory at sea records are in Germany and I couldn't find anything online. Please if anyone of my valued readers has any of their records in a digital format let me know! The Providence kids bailed on me, so no brewery today. Better for my liver anyways.
Other than that I am anxiously waiting for the arrival of the guitar I bought on ebay. Can't wait to start playing.
More updates soon.

the ringmaster's beard has changed (Zirkusdirektor content)

icecream for lolz

best thing today, anyways. Bostonians in the supermarket buying cans of clam chowda and me buying tofutti ice cream with ridiculous name and ridiculous cover advertisement. 

what else is there to tell. I got back to Boston alright, had kind of a rough adjustment period of a couple of days. unburied my car from under the snow and celebrated that it still worked. went to a couple of shows. hung out with friends a lot. went to providence to party all night. went to the Institute of Contemporary Art ICA (highly recommended!). Also school started again last week. I'm only taking two classes this term and am doing some research the rest of the time, which I am excited about. Hopefully am going to publish the results. 

Im looking forward to a Sam Adams brewery tour this weekend that is hopefully going to happen if the Providence kids are gonna be able to join me. Looking forward to visiting cemetery where Jack Kerouac is burried that happens to be in Lowell. And last but not least I am excited that my sis and my friend Felix from Dresden are arriving next week to stay with me. I am going to meet them in NYC and we will spend the weekend there before we travel up to Boston.

I guess that's it for now. Good night says the Johanssen!

The Nashville story

still not in the mood to update my blog, but I guess I have to start eventually.

I kinda decided to continue writing in english so my American and UK friend can follow up on the most mediocre stories the intarwebz has to offer...

I got back to Boston last Wednesday and still don't feel too comfortable to be here. But I guess daily routine always has a hard time competing with exciting traveling and good friends.

anyways still one week of my trip to cover. Nashville was the location.

first of all my friend Sean took such good care of me and was the most amazing tour guide one could ask for.

on my first day in Nashville the temperatures were somewhere in the 10s and it was not nice to be out at all, so I ended up getting the tour de Nashville sitting in the passenger seat of Sean's car. In the afternoon we went to the most amazing photography exhibition I've ever seen. The George Eastman collection (founder of Kodak) was on display at the Frist Center, covering everything from the first daguerrotypes, photography of war and society, the first motion studies to more artsy photography. It was amazing and Sean could give me some more insights as one of his majors in college was film production.

The next day he showed me around the Opryland hotel which has several glass domes covering temperature controlled halls with houses, palm trees and even rivers with boats (!) on them. Pretty impressive I have to say.

We spent most of the weekend in Murfreesboro, the the town he grew up in and I got to meet his family, my friend Matt, that I haven't seen since summer 07 and the dolcim drummer Justin who is a cool kid, too. I got the chance to see them practicing and I am excited to see them live this summer at the cry me a river fest in Germany. Check out their band at myspace.com/dolcim

On monday I got another great tour of Nashville and in the evening we went out for dinner and drinks with Sean, his roommate Chris and my friend Ryan, that I haven't seen in years. He gave me tons of presents including a record of his new band sanctions (myspace.com/sanctions1). Thanks!

On my last day in town we went to the Tennessee state museum cuz I was particularly interested tin the role of TN in the civil war as it was one of the main battlefields in the war. The museum was pretty good and Sean took a couple of good pictures. In the evening Sean and Chris took me downtown to experience the "real country deal". We went to a couple of bars with live music and ended up in bar where Sean and his friends taught me how to play shuffleboard and made me play my first match in which I turned out to be a natural ;-) but anyways it was a lot of fun. And I experienced Nashville as a great place to live! 

For additional reports from my Nashville week and tons of pictures please visit seanconley.tk

I got back into Boston Wednesday afternoon and had to unbury my car from under excessive amounts of snow the next day. It took me at least on hour and I am not even kidding. Thanks to my roommate who drove if around the block a couple of times while I was gone it still started up and seems to be fine, which I did not necessarily expect. Utilizing this new mobility I already took the car to buy groceries (big deal without a car) and went up to my school to get books and stuff and went to visit a friend on my way back. Also I went to a Daniel Striped Tiger basement show last night which was a lot of fun!

that's it for now. As soon as I can figure out how to post pictures embedded in the text without messing up everything I might start that as well. For now as usual:

Gaylord Opryland

"country music is music with a lot of class. It's just ordinary stories told by ordinary people in an extraordinary way" - Dolly Parton

dolcim + 1 dolcimite

cowboy boots lined up

Johanssen and Hobo-Sean <3

LA pics

Hollywood sign by night

taking artsy pictures

Hollywood hills and LA

Johannes vor Fisher & Diaz funeral home

Zuma beach

Europe/LA/Nashville

Ok , long time, no blog. Einiges nachzuholen also.

Ueber Weihnachten und Silvester war ich also bei meinen Eltern und mit Verena in Wien. Total super war's und ich bin echt froh dass ich das gemacht hab. Am 19.12. ging's los und das erste Problem war dann schonmal Boston und dem Schneesturm zu enkommen weil mein Flug ja von NYC aus ging. Also Busse sind gar nicht mehr gefahren und den Zug haette ich dann auch noch beinahe verpasst wenn der nicht auch wie alles an diesem Tag Verspaetung gehabt haette. Also nachts dann dort angekommen und noch in Williamsburg weggegangen und hipster geguckt.
Am naechsten Tag bin ich dann geflogen und zwar von Newark aus, das heisst ich war nochmal ne Weile unterwegs um von Brooklyn dahin zu kommen. Morgens dann in Muenchen angekommen und vom Vatti abgeholt. Die kommenden Tage um Weihnachten rum waren dann eine gesunde Mischung aus gutem Essen, jetlag, wenig Schlaf, Familie, Freundin, Freunde treffen, Konzert spielen (Fotos von Patrick gibts auf http://ljuchtemuzaic.blogspot.com/)und mich von der kaputten Festplatte meines Macs nerven lassen, bis Verena und ich dann am 28. mit dem Zug nach Wien sind.
Das Thema von unserem Wien Aufenthalt war so ungefaehr Kultur und Kaffeehaus. Die Wiener Kaffeehaus Kultur hat schon echt was fuer sich. Sonstige highlights in Wien waren Huehnerkeulen, Krabbensuppe und gebackener Heilbutt im Vegetasia, 60 Jahre Israel Ausstellung, Christian Schad, Paerchentime, Grey's Anatomy und mega Kater am 01. Wobei das highlight da wohl eher party am 31. heissen sollte.
Rueckflug war dann wieder von Muc aus und am Abend davor gab's dort noch ein gutes Essen im Kopfeck und Umtrunk mit netten Leuten in der Suedstadt. Und dank Bas und Doenie hab ich auch meine verplanten merch Artikel und Geschenke wiederbekommen. Hurra!
Ankunft wieder in Newark und dann zwei Tage bei meinen Freunden in Brooklyn. Am ersten Tag dort hab ich bisschen die lower eastside erkundet und im tennement museum ne tour bekommen und war danach noch mit Adam im red bamboo philly cheese steak sandwich essen.
Am Mittwoch ging dann mein Flug nach LA und dort hab ich erstmal Haus und Hund von Colin in den Hollywood hills gehuetet. Wunderschoen war's dort und super Wetter. Ich war ein bisschen erkaeltet und krank von der ganzen action davor und hab erstmal so richtig ruhig Urlaub gemacht. Also war viel draussen in Canyon und in den Hollywood hills unterwegs, mit Chris in Anaheim und hab ihm bei einer Praesentation fuer eine Konferenz dort geholfen. Da ich freundlicherweise Colin's Auto benutzen konnte, musst ich mich ja auch irgendwie im LA traffic zurechtfinden. GPS hilft auf jeden Fall und ansonsten ist es echt wesentlich unstressiger als ich erwartet hatte. bis auf die 10 Millionen anderer Verkehrsteilnehmen gleichzeitig und quasi Stau zu jeder Tageszeit. Aber wie gesagt ich bin erstaunlich gut zurechtgekommen. Den beeindruckenden UCLA campus hab ich mir noch angeschaut, meine Mac reparieren lassen, so dass jetzt auch skype wieder ohne Probleme funktioniert und war mit meiner Freundin Karolina am Zuma Beach in Malibu.
Seit Mittwoch Abend bin ich in Nashville bei meinem Freund Sean und hier ist es zwar saukalt (also im moment bin ich von 30 Grad Celsius in LA auf -10 hier in Nashville) aber sonst echt auch super. Ich werd alle Leute hier treffen die ich schon ewig nicht mehr gesehen hab und Sean kuemmert sich als guter touri guide um mich.
Mehr aus Nashville gibts dann wenn ich wieder in Boston bin in ner Wochen. Das waren so die letzten 3 Wochen in Schnelldurchgang. Puuh.
Freu mich ueber news von allen LeserInnen!
XX J

June Paik

Patrick und io in Muenchen

Spass in Muenchen

Verena nachdenklich im Schlosspark Schoenbrunn

Stephansdom, Wien