Alle Beiträge von Hendric

Allgemein, Travel

Sailing on the Baltic Sea

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Have you ever spent your vacation in Germany? Have you ever been sailing? Until a few days ago I only could answer this questions with “no”.  Especially sailing never has been an option. Too much summits still are on my hiking list. But you never should say no?

Because of this and because of my family I finally spent the last week in September on  a sailing boat at the Baltic Sea.

In Heiligenhafen we took over the 50 foot Bavaria Cruiser 50 called Marijana1. Since I´ve been never sailing before I do not have any clue about boats. But what I can say is that this boat is huge. Cabins for up to 10 persons plus additional 2 persons backup beds in the living room. 3 bathrooms, kitchen and a lot of storage space. All of this of course in boat size design. Our beds have been in the back where I had to crawl into to avoid abutting my head. Nevertheless everything was bigger compared to other boats laying next to us.

From the harbor we first made a test trip to check if everybody feels comfortable on the sea. So far this test on the first day went well.

On the next day our destination was Laboe which is a little and very nice village at Kiel bay entrance. Beside a submarine you also can visit the marine memorial or simply hangout in one of the numerous bars and restaurants.

On the third day our journey went to Eckernfoerde. This city has been one my highlights at this tour. First time that we have been swimming and relaxing at the beautiful beach. Beside this there is a beautiful center full of shops and bars having a great flair.

Damp has been our destination on day four. Damp isn´t really a village. It is a huge hospital joined with a huge holiday resort. Unfortunately there is no flair. Even the skyline looks like a standard 70s concrete architecture. Nevertheless there is a beautiful beach and some great bars for a relaxing evening.

The next day we went over to Maasholm. This little village stood in a total contrast to Damp. It is a very little Fisher village full of flair. We felt very comfortable and had a great time. Dinner we had at the Schunta restaurant which I can recommend. Here we had wonderful fish.

From Maasholm we went to Orth harbor at Fehrman island.  And from there back to Heiligenhafen. Orth isn´t really a village. It basically just is a harbor having some restaurants and a surf shop. Nevertheless even there we had a great time and wonderful food at the “pirates nest”.

Conclusion:
Sailing is wonderful. With a great crew and an outstanding skipper as well as a seaworthy stomach you will have a wonderful time.

Below please find some pictures of the trip. For bigger resolution please click here.

Allgemein, Outdoor

Three days at Pitztal Austria

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Since ages I´m a member of the German Alp Association (DAV). Getting special discounts when sleeping and eating in alpine huts was the only reason for me to join. In the beginning I never met any other member of my section. This I wanted to change by frequently checking if potential trips do match my schedule. Finally this happened just a couple of weeks ago. A trip to the Austrian Pitztal has been announced by the Baar section.

The tour announced almost matched my preferred hiking level and my company was closed for summer vacation. Due to another Alp trip I missed the preliminary as well as to get to known to them. But since I´m very open minded and love meeting people there wasn´t any doubt that I will find some nice guys in this group.

Once we finally met last Sunday everything went fine. As a result a group of 8 people between 32 and 72 traveled down to Austria having a good time.

In Mittelberg (1740m), below the Pitztal Glacier Cable car station the trip begun. Passing Taschachtal we slowly hiked towards the Taschachhaus, our first destination of the Trip. First half of the path is almost like walking on the highway. Not very steep and well manageable for almost everybody. This does change when reaching the supply lift base station. From there a new created path does bring you up to the hut within one hour. The previous way got damaged by a rockslide recently. This new way is well created. It is a little bit steep and exposed which makes hiking more fun.

The Taschachhaus does belong to the section Munich. Beside accommodation it also is used as a mountain training center. The fittings are outstanding. Sometimes you feel more like being in a hotel than in a hut. For the group we had booked a 10 persons room including breakfast and dinner. Our served meal has been wonderful and more tasty than some food I had in international hotels.

Since we arrived quite early there also was time for a short hike towards the glacier. It takes another 45 minutes to get there. Especially in summer seeing a glacier is overwhelming. Underneath some dirt you can see 20m deep crevasses. From inside they are shining deep blue. Please note that you need to be absolutely gutsy and sure-footed when going there as well as well equipped if you also want to walk on the  glacier.

On the second day our plan was to walk on the Fuldaer Höhenweg (Fulda trail) toward the Riffelseehütte. From there our final destination was the Kaunergrathütte. From Taschachhaus you need to climb up another 200m to reach the Fulda trail. From there it takes you along the Taschach valley giving you a beautiful view on glaciers and summits around. Due to the rockslide here also some areas have been rebuild. Secured by chains you can easily walk this areas.

From the Riffelseehütte our path went up another 300m. Now the real adventure started. This trail is called the Cottbuser trail. And whatever exposed path you have seen so far in this trip now becomes ridiculous. The first 5km are very exposed including a well secured climbing section (Video). For everybody not being 100% gutsy minimal climbing equipment is recommended. Once you have managed this the trail keeps challenging but also gives you a phenomenal panoramic view.

On the final 350m it gets a little boring. After all this ups and downs all you see is a steep way up. Since there is no adrenaline involved for this section you need to have a good fitness. Once you reached 2817m every effort is gone. Looking at the glacier and the panorama makes you feel happy.

Kaunergrathütte is the highest alpine hut at Pitztal. Supplied only by a helicopter you can imagine that everything is build for a low resource consumption. Some of the equipment seems to be almost 100 years old. Nevertheless it is very comfortable and the food is good.

 

On the final day we went up another 200m to pass the Steinbockjoch. From there we had a beautiful view and a good position to say good bye to this area. The trail than takes you down to Plangroß. 1600m above sea level this is the final destination.

Have fun when doing this three days hike.

Allgemein, Reviews

Review – Written in Bone by Simon Beckett

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20120810-235037.jpgIt took me quite some time until I started reading this book. I bought it in 2009 at an airport somewhere in the world. For some unknown reasons it packed it in the shelf to all my other books standing there and waiting to be read. Finally a couple of weeks ago And after some biographical books I decided for this Thriller to be my next.

A lot of books need a lot of time until the story finally speeds up. It takes almost ages until you know the persons and their history. Not so in this Book. You get tied up within the first pages.

Written in Bones is the second Book about David Hunter, a pathologist living in the UK. Due to not enough manpower he gets asked to support the police for investigating a potential crime. But at this point, I don’t want to go into more details. There are tons of websites out there giving you a brief synopsis of the story.

Here I will tell you if this book is worth to read or not. To make it short and simple. Yes it is! as written above it tides you up real quick and it does not let you go. Simon Beckett has a wonderful style to write his stories. You can easily follow his characters and sooner or later you start guessing who the murder might be. But of course this seems to be planned. I‘ be no doubt that this is one of the biggest aspects Simon Beckett is considering when writing his books. Knowing this you soon will realize that he also is playing with you.
Without telling to much I bet that no one reading this book ever would have expected the final end!

All over all I can recommend this book to everybody looking for an exciting thriller that makes you wanting read the whole night long.

You can get this book all over the world: ISBN 978-0-553-81750-8

For the full story I would recommend to read his first book first: The chemistry of death.

Enjoy reading.

Allgemein, Outdoor, Travel

Three day solo hike through the Austrian Silvretta

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In a whole bunch of hiking guides a 4 day pass through of the Silvretta area is recommended. For some reasons I had to shorten this tour a little bit. Since the three days result anyway was outstanding it is worth to put it up here.

Starting point of this tour is Bielerhöhe. On 2037m above sea level this is a well know spot that easily can be reached via the “Silvretta Hochalpen Strasse”.

Day1: Starting at Bielerhöhe I walk along the south bank of Bielersee towards Ochsental. For people only being reasonably fit walking through Ochsental is a short distance walk to reach our first destination “Wiesbadener Hütte” comfortably with low effort. But my way went different. Instead of following the Ochsental path, I make a left towards “Bieltal”. After a couple of meters I make a left towards “Radschulter”. This way also is the official connection way to reach “Hohes Rad” summit. Of course who still didn´t run low this would be a nice summit to put on record. But be careful you only can reach it by climbing.

The “Radschulter” path is a great track passing the summit south. There have been two reasons for me taking this way. First of all is the beautiful view that you can get quite early. Secondly due to a steep scree slope this trail is a wonderful challenge. Once the Radsattel has been reached there´s only a short way left to the “Wiesbadener Hütte”

The Wiesbadener Hütte is equipped wonderful. Beside warm shower and a wonderful atmosphere also a delicious food is served. Whenever I do hikes on my own I do a single room reservation. So I can´t rate the dormitory.
http://www.wiesbadener-huette.com/

 

Day2: Starting at “Wiesbadener Hütte” my way goes approximately 60minutes back to the “Radsattel”. From there the way goes down following the signs towards Galtür. Down in the valley there is another junction introducing our way to the today’s destination. A bridge needs to be crossed. The estimated walking time to “Jamtalhütte” is three hours. This trial is a connection trial to the „Edmund Lorenz Weg“ which will be reached after another 45 minutes. The upcoming path is a great mix of heaven and hell. As always it starts with heaven. Green hills small rivers build up a easy to walk high surface. But after a couple of minutes everything is changing. The track is getting steeper and steeper approaching an even steeper boulder col. Once you come closer you will realize that is not as difficult as expected. Nevertheless you need to watch your step and you need to keep an eye on the signposting. Finaly I reach the Getschnerscharte (Getschner notch, 2839m). High up there is a beautiful view 700m down towards my today´s destination. The descent equals ascent is almost true. Even if my way up took a lot of power and has been extremely steep, descent feels like being even more dangerous. The red mark path, in some areas seems to be almost vertical. So if you are planning this trip, please be aware that you need to be footed and vertigo. Down in the valley there is a last 20 minutes ascent until I reach my final destination for today.

Jamtalhütte I rate to be one of the better accommodations. It is a little bit more expensive. But to be honest you shouldn´t care. Each cent is worth it. Beside regular dishes also a afternoon soup is served as well as free snack and vespers.
http://www.jamtalhuette.at/

Day3: As mentioned above day three is my last one. But this isn´t really a problem. Even if I´m underneath a glacier it only takes a two hours walk to reach the next village. So even if this tour is recommended to do in four days with adding a trip to the “Heidleberger Hütte” also three days is possible. Instead of walking down you simple can walk east towards “Kronjoch”. Besides being a great fourth day trip you also can do it as a single trip. Stay tuned for an article explaining that tour.

Thanks for reading and enjoy hiking.

Tips

Continental who´s who – are they serious?

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A couple of days ago I did receive a letter from a company called “Continental Whos´s Who”. Content of this letter basically was a list of compliments regarding the goals that I did achieve in my profession. I now should feel honored because they are about to approve me becoming part of the “who is who” in my industry.

Indeed I did feel honored and I did not doubt that this is a serious association interested in having me in their group of successful professionals. Since they are based in the US we scheduled a meeting at 3pm to avoid inconveniences caused by the time difference.

In this call a Lisa started to ask some questions about my career and about the way I´m doing business. At that point I still had no doubt about their professional attempt. After 20 minutes she finally congratulated me. “You are a real professional that we want to work with, having you in our exclusive group of executives and professionals from around the world”. Man, I really felt proud about this. After all the years of hard work finally somebody was proud of having me as a member.  I almost felt like a celebrity.

Unfortunately this conversation did change dramatically.  After a couple of more questions she than explained that there are two different memberships. Lifetime which goes for $ 899 and a five year plan going for $ 599. Of course all professionals are choosing the  Lifetime plan.#

At that point the red light in my head already did shine and blink like on judgment day.

I was angry at myself. I knew best that nobody in the world ever will give you something for free. Everything in live does cost. Even for death you have to give your live.

Lisa lost in the second she mentioned the amounts. Nevertheless I did want to see how far she goes. It was impressive how much she did push. It became extremely intrusive. Fortunately I already knew how this is going to end up. I kept on playing. During the conversation she came up with new plans that she only can offer for me and that almost will cost her job.  For some reason it seems that they can´t postpone decisions. They want to close the deal during this call.

Ok, I finally agreed on a $ 99 plan for 2 years.

I could hear her breathing out when she finally nailed it down, she thought. She didn´t knew that I was playing since the second she started to talk about money. What came up next almost would have been good enough for an oscar. But I don´t want to go into to much details. At the end even after not closing the deal and not getting my credit card details nor personal information she stopped the conversation by saying:  “It was my pleasure to talk to you”.

Finally I´m not sure about this company. Online I did found tons of reports accusing them of fraud or even scam.  I don´t want to go that far. I just think the way they did approach me was not the way I want to be approached. In my opinion  becoming a who is who simply should be something that can be achieved  instead of bought.

The funny side now will be that I will laugh for myself whenever I see „who´s who“ listed in someones profile. Now I know that this person did not achieve it, he simply did not manage to stand against the pushy sales person of that company. Something that I would not be proud of.

Please feel free to leave a comment.

Allgemein, Tips

Seven easy things you need to do to become more productive.

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Recently I did find an article explaining 7 things you need to know to become more productive. In this article Ilya Pozin explains what he did learn from his meeting with Tony Wong, a project manager whose client list includes Toyoto, Honda, and Disney, just to name a few. This rules are easy to follow. So if you want to get more productive, here is how it works.

  1. Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks. Writing “launch company website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less: Sketch a wireframe, outline an introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.
  2. Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women).
  3. Be militant about eliminating distractions. Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on completing one task.
  4. Schedule your email. Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your productivity.
  5. Use the phone. Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead.
  6. Work on your own agenda. Don’t let something else set your day. Most people go right to their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day.
  7. Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.

Hope this one helps you to increase your productivity. Further I would like to recommend a book that is even more effective than this seven rules. It goes far beyond them. Please be aware that you need to be willing to change your way of doing business completely. Are you ready? Ok, than go and get this book.

REWORK by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson. 

By far the best business book on the market. Enjoy the rules as well as the book.

Allgemein

How to make a woman happy!

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Today I found a wonderful video on youtube that I want to share with you. Giorgio, singing in this video, is the lead singer of a band called „The interstate life“ . He and his friends are stopping at a drive through counter to place their order. Three minutes and seven seconds later they have made a woman´s day she never ever will forget. Sometimes the small things in live can make the difference. Thanks Giorgio for making my day.

But see yourself and feel free to share this!

Allgemein, Outdoor, Tips

My first article published in the Nikonians eZine

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Yes, I really feel proud to announce that first time an article written by me did made it into the Nikonians eZine. “The Nikonian” is an awesome magazine containing all about photography and of course everything interesting about the Nikonians community. Since it is even more unusual for Back office staff having real article published, I´m even more proud. By mid January almost 190,000 people will have seen my article. Isn´t that awesome? If you also want to know, what I recommend to protect your gear while doing outdoor sports, please feel free to download your copy for free.

Allgemein, Travel

New York 2011 – pictures online

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Today I finally managed to upload a couple of pictures of my trip to New York in fall 2011. Considering that during this trip I crashed my camera and lens, still a couple of great pictures came out of this trip. If you are a dslr shooter you might not believe that most of the pics have been done with a Nikon AW100 Coolpix point and shoot. So again a good example that non picture is done by equipment. It´s done by the guy behind the cam. Enjoy the pictures and feel free to post your link to your pictures in the comment section.

New York in fall 2011

Allgemein

Good friend having me in his New York article

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Today I just would like to share an nice article about the Photo Plus Expo with you. The article is written by my dear friend Darrell Young. He is writing about the Photo Plus Show in New York as well as about his time in Town. I enjoy reading Darrell´s Blog. So I hope you do.

Here is his article.

Brad Berger, Me, Joerg Muehle, Julian Buhler - Picture taken by Darrell Young.