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It’s that time of the year again, hundreds of beer lovers gathered outside of Ludwig’s Garten to celebrate the annual Oktoberfest. After spending a lot of memorable moments there last year and the year before, we had to be there again, and boy was this an afternoon & evening full of fun, beer, shots and (just a little bit of) food. Due to exhaustion it was over at 11 pm, but still another fall day to remember :-)

Uwe already gave recommendations on for whom to vote in Sunday’s German Federal Election; in addition I was the victim of a shameless attempt to sway me into a conservative direction. My future husband sent me this.
I know that sex usually sells, but “In Bed with Angie” is not really what I want to have in my head for the next four years of her as our chancellor. Oh, and by the way: I cast an absentee ballot already, so any campaigning is lost on me …

In addition to all the conferences and vacations I also got to see a lot of friends and family while I was over in Germany. Unfortunately I didn’t always have my camera on me, so not all events were captured on filmSD-card. But the highlights of the parties are captured in this set.

Natalie and I were accepted to speak at the Mensch & Computer conference in Linz this year, so we spent a couple of days listening to good presentations (and a few not so good ones), meeting new fellow UI enthusiasts and strolling around in a cute small town in the heart of Upper Austria. Oh, and not to forget the Linzer Torte, the infamous local pastry.

(via Out 08/2005, click image for hi-res)

Another fun trip to the mediterranean island of Ibiza was on my list for this late summer. It was a very relaxing and lazy trip, even my camera didn’t want to work too hard this time around, especially not in bright sunshine, therefore there are only a few photos to look at. Uwe has more on Ibiza, Café del Mar, and his favorite beach beauties.

Natalie, Susi, Markus and myself went on a Sunday getaway to escape the heat in the city. Bigantine, NJ again prove to be the spot of choice, even though we had to pay $7 per person for the beach tax tags.
The lifeguards seemed to rehearse for a new season of Baywatch and rescued everybody who dared to be further in the water than hip-deep. But then again, they are young, they want the fame …
(apologies for the poor image quality, my camera seems to be too lazy to work above 100 degrees temperature)

Dilbert must have had the same experience I had this week :-)

While aimlessly browsing through my usual serving of friends’ websites and -logs I ran into this pictureset on Julien’s site, and immediately got the impression that my old peer group in Paderborn is going down quickly. Enter Lennart:

Is this the effect of an illegal drug??? Newly discovered feelings? But it gets better - enter Maxi:

What is this??? Not even the cutest Maxi song could save this!
Can you imagine those two together? Horrible, right? Only if you are really sure you can stand it go here for (more…)