Ein Stückchen Bayern im Herz von Silicon Valley

Our friends suggested Hardy's Bavarian Restaurant a couple of weeks ago. This is a small, almost hidden place at the CalTrain station in downtown Sunnyvale. I recognized the München and HB neon lights before driving by, but never had the confidence to try it out. It was a huge mistake!! If you lived in Munich, and you miss the good beer and Bavarian dishes (as I do) this is the perfect place!

Die Kellnerin spricht Deutsch, also ich konnte auf Deutsch bestellen! :) I had a Schweinshaxe and Ruß'n Maß and a small bottle of Augustinerbräu beer (my favorite)! The Haxe was better then the most you can get in Munich's Biergartens. First of all it was not a half but a whole one. And while they don't broil it perfectly in the Biergartens leaving the tendons quite tough here it was perfectly prepared. Almost like the the best one I ever had in Restaurant Karg in Murnau. The reasons while it was slightly less professional then Bavaria's best Haxe was a) the gravy was American, something like in KFC b) the tendons were slightly tougher. The size of the dish and the pain afterwards (from eating 1-1.5kgs of meet) was the very same I experienced multiple times in Murnau.

To prove, I'm telling the truth, some pictures:

There it is, my beloved Schweinshaxe!

Ruß'n Maß, tastes just like in Munich

My favorite: Augustiner

Echte, original!

Yummie

Look at the size! OMG!!

Zum Wohle!

World's air trafic

This video is just simply über-cool:

Talent shows - you need one judge with British accent

There're several talent shows on air these days. And they're quite entertaining. We just finished American Idol a couple of weeks ago, and that kicked off many other shows to start, like:

• America's got talent
• The voice
• So you can think you can dance
• Master Chef

And I'm sure there're many others I don't know about. These shows are very American. You most probably have their franchise versions in your local TV and even though they follow the guidelines and rules the result is not the same. I've seen the dancing show on the Hungarian TV2 (Megatánc) a couple of years ago, and the story was the very same, but the whole package from around it was missing.

Tell me, could you come up in Europe with  anything like an offer to have your own show in Las Vegas? Dancing in the Moulin Rouge? Have your show on a cruse ship? Sing in a club in downtown London? Nah, you cannot compare those to America :)

So it's cool, the prizes are great, you got the American flavor added, but it seems, to make the audience believe that what they say is culture and authentic, you need at least one judge with a British accent. They even topped it with a British show hostess in So you think you can dance.

Cat Deeley
Hostess of So you think you can dance - British TV announcer, actress and model

Nigel Lythgoe
Judge on So you think you can dance - British TV and film director and producer, former dancer and coreographer (BTW he seems like the figure Mike Myers formed Austin Powers. At least his accent and smile and mimic is very similar)

Piers Morgan
Judge on America's got talent - British journalist and television presenter

Gordon Ramsay
Producer and the show itself on Master Chef - Scottish chef

The Hangover Part II

Critics didn't like this movie. And because of that I didn't wanted to watch it. But after we went to the Wine & Art Festival in Sunnyvale this Sunday our Brazilian friends invited us to see it. And I would have sorry if I didn't see it! The basis of the story is the same, but the jokes are new and even better.

So anyone who was/is hesitating, don't listen to the critics and what the newspaper says, you have to see this!

Basically, it is like, you know...

Just like that. Every 2nd sentence. I would ban this phrase :) The second 'a' in basically must be pronounced!

I so hate laptops

Laptops are for managers I say. Why on Earth is it then, that I have a Dell Latitude with 4 gigs of RAM and Core 2 Duo P8700 CPU running at 2.53Ghz and a freakin' java build takes almost a half an hour? In max. performance mode. I bet if the same config was in a desktop PC it would be half the time.

And now I need to start this hybris server up, and do a system initialization. I think after that I call it a day :)

Trip to Yosemite National Park on Memorial Day weekend

Yosemite is just amazing! It is 2.5-3 hrs drive from the bay. The weather is much colder than at the ocean, the mountains are beautiful. The wildlife cannot be compared to the one in Europe. I did hike in the Tatra and Alps but apart from seeing birds or squirrels I didn't meet any wild animal there. Here the first evening a coyote was crossing the road in front of the car looking at us as intruders. He didn't really mind the car and took his time to cross the road. 2 days later when we wanted to do a short 2 miles long hike we had to stop right at the beginning because a huge North-American brown bear aka. grizzly bear was crossing the path looking for something to eat.

So yeah, it is very much different, and I just fell in love with the whole place. It fits in the American way of things: everything must look like in a fairy tale. In the suburb grass is perfectly cut, the houses look perfect etc. so is with the national parks here. The Yosemite Valley cannot really be described using words. You need to see it. So many waterfalls and not tiny ones! Huge rocks, green oak and pine trees, white creeks. Breathtaking.

I was quite surprised that even though it was the last weekend in May, so technically it was June, in some places there was at least 1-1.5m thick snow. Even though the weather was not that cold, something between 15-20 centigrade... One day it was snowing quite heavily. It felt like winter really :)
This time we covered the most important things to see, but the next time we go there we'll get out hiking gear and do a couple of hikes in the mountains for sure.

The places we wisited:

• Yosemite Valley: This is the downtown with the information/tourist center, places to eat, souvenir shops and many nice things to see. All you need is to look around :)
• Hetch Hetchy Water Reservoir: The whole SF Bay area gets the drinking water from this project. Public transportation and government buildings in SF are using the electricity generated here.
• Glacier Point: Elevation 2199m, with a 980 tall rock wall straight down to the valley
• Wawona Pioneer History Center: Some buildings from 100-150 years ago showing how people who discovered the area lived back then.
• Mariposa Grove: Home of the Giant Sequoias. 1800-2000 years old pine trees. Did you know, that they need wildfires to regenerate? Their shuck is fire resistant protecting the trees, and smaller plants killed by the fire blocking small Sequoias to grow. With the fire helping them reach the sun Park Management now sets part of the forest on fire on a regular basis. They just discovered this recently realizing that with preventing wildfires these trees started to disappear. Crazy.

Some pictures I took:




The same pictures placed on a map


Our route track for the long weekend