When looking for the easy way out, people come up with the most ludicrous of excuses to warrant their hornswoggle doing: house on fire, dog dead, car stolen, wrong place/time/mood, worst bad-hair day ever, princess all of a sudden. Once the procrastination pole has inevitably run out of length, the dreaded task just has to be tackled, no matter what. Translations, for instance, can develop into a painfully tedious exercise. Isn’t it perfectly legitimate then to employ one of those servile robots available online in order to alleviate detested assignments? It is – if you can live with the results. We have put some of these practical computerised interpreters to the test, feeding them with stretches of German articles published during the early stages of goodmeetings.com’s young history. The English-speaking majority of our readership will have to think in meanders to unravel and realign the contorted texts back to meaning. Even though some of the pidgin might remain a secret forever: as long as no-one has been harmed, reading complete nonsense once in a while can be a great pastime.
Bhutan and Nepal: Mountains, Monks and Tigers
A guest post by Marko Roth
We succumbed to the fascination of Buddhism and Hinduism and eavesdropped on monks praying in Bhutan temples. We admired indigenous people performing spiritual dances in colourful fortresses, traversed the valley of Paro on horseback and cooled down while rafting in Chitwan.
We lived with the indigenous tribes of Taro, were allured by rhinos and tigers on a safari through Chitwan National Park and took a bath with elephants in Barauli Rivers. We crossed mountain chains at 3,000 meters above sea level, fought with bumpy winding roads, watched the cloudless skies of the Himalayans and Mount Everest and marvelled at crazy Kathmandu streets.
And now, we are back!
Flight Sharing: Hitching a Ride aloft
Those for whom regular vehicle sharing, be it as drivers or passengers, has always been a welcome option, may be aiming to raise their transport variety to a faster, higher and more sophisticated level. The services of Wingly, a French-German flight sharing start-up, could be an interesting pick. Their website offers private pilots and passengers a common marketplace based on a simple concept: pilots publish their scheduled flights, potential clients choose their destinations and directly place their bookings. At present, connections are offered from and to locations in France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Scenic flights (“Fly Arounds“) and balloon rides are part of the programme as well.
Berlin: The diplomatic legacy of a luxury hotel
Tales of a building: Das Stue in Berlin
Upon setting foot into the hotel’s lobby area, guests are greeted by a gigantic crocodiles’ head sculpted by Parisian artist Quentin Garel. Walls around the premises hold fine examples of black-and-white vintage fashion photography collected by one of the hotel’s owners. Artwork and objects placed throughout public spaces vividly pay tribute to a prominent neighbour, the fabled Berlin zoo only a hop away: an enormous giraffe and two gorillas made of painted chicken wire are complemented by fellow animals ready to serve as poufs or practical footrests.
Who might have anticipated in the late 1930s, that the sophisticated edifice erected to house the Danish diplomatic mission in Berlin, would see it being converted into a stylish luxury hotel more than 70 years later? To transform a repeatedly abandoned building into the fashionable spot Das Stue was destined to be, it had to go through extensive refurbishment. It received a novel wing now attached to its former back courtyard and a completely new contemporary identity enhanced by a blend of old and new elements.
When Das Stue opened its gates in December of 2012, it already looked back on a changeful past.
TED Talk. Daniel Levitin: How to stay calm when stressed
You had a lousy night, overslept, cut yourself shaving, ripped off a button, left your flat in a flurry, forgot to grab the door key from the shelf, got stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the airport where you cannot produce your passport for check-in. You now realise, that you had placed it next to the keys on the shelf to remind you of putting both into your wallet … Mishaps like these tend to trigger a chain reaction, if not a vicious circle. Why? Because under stress, our brain releases cortisol, which disables logical thinking and leaves us disoriented in a blur. But we can train ourselves to plan ahead and to get more organised in our daily routine by utilising the power of our hippocampus. A „pre-mortem“ could also help minimise the damage – by anticipating what might happen before it actually does and by having a rescuing scenario ready. One that has been conceived in a calm and controlled situation.
“We all are going to fail now and then,” says Daniel Levitin, the neuroscientist. “The idea is to think ahead to what those failures might be.”