Harzen and The visit

It has been a while since my last blog and several things have happened, so this one will be long. The main reason for the long wait comes at the end of this blog (so you have to read on!).

Harzen

First big thing is a holiday trip with my family. This summer I went to Harzen in Germany with my parents and little brother. We stayed at a large hotel that didn't fit in to the area at all, it was kind of boring, and obviously made to serve guests at winter where there is snow in the area. The hotel are used to serve Danish people as many of the posters telling us about their summer parties and stuff were written in both German and Danish, but not English! No employee we met however knew Danish, and we only heard one say some english words. She were our waiter for our first meal, and she left before she took our order - so we got stock with another that only spoke German. During the whole trip we only met one other who spoke English words to us.

We drove in my parents car all the way down there. The trip down and back and all the driving while being down there were done by me and my brother, so my parents could drink beer and whine ;) . For those who don't know, Harzen is full of mountains so a lot of driving up and down - which is quite annoying in a 1.6 litre car. It is way inland so no ocean and they have placed dams at all the rivers they have.

We ate out at every meal, except breakfast. One weird thing we noticed is that apparently Germans like to have their salads before the "real" food comes to the table, wtf! It doesn't make any sense to eat salad alone, there simply has to be a huge juicy steak next to it!

Throughout the trip we visited several smaller towns, but not as many churches as usual. We also visited a small coal mine not in use any more. Here it was possible to drive a small train down into the mine and then take a walk while a guide talked about it. He spoke German of course and we only understood around a quarter of it. He constantly asked "sie verstehen?", and we just said "yeah". The train was small, I could only just fit in it, width-wise. The tunnel was only slightly wider than the train so a wrong move and my arm would be ripped off - cause he drove fast!

On the drive home we met a lot of rain. Apparently there were a major pileup involving 259 cars only about half an hour after we drove on the same piece of road. The rain was so extreme most cars where blinded. We only ran into a tailback near the Elbe tunnel at Hamburg, but saw at least two major once in the other direction - one where caused by an accident. It is kind of weird that the Elbe Tunnel is basically the only way for people from all over Europe to get to Scandinavia. They have just opened a fourth tube so there are now 8 tracks handling the 110.000 cars a day. Other routes go through Hamburg, through minor roads or by ferry.

The Visit

The day after we got home from Harzen I got a visit. I rarely do that but it were even more special this time. The visitors were J0k3 and his girlfriend Antonia. After living together a year in Germany they wanted to move to Sweden and on their way there they wanted to visit two of J0k3's old friends from Sands of War, me and Zacker. They arrived late in the afternoon and the first thing said where by Antonia, "Oh, red hair" ... After they settled in we had dinner and as the very unsocial people we all are we talked, a lot (compared to my normal standard). Well mostly Antonia, so I really don't see from where she get the idea that she cannot talk. After dinner we went on a small car drive through Svendborg, over the bridge to Tåsinge where we saw Troense, Valdemar Castle, Landet church and many houses with thatching roofs which to my surprise where new and weird to both of them. The trip ended at the nearby ice cream store where both me and J0k3 wanted liquorice ice cream. Apparently something very unusual in Germany, but what do they know down there where "Danish ice cream" is vanilla with chocolate sauce?!

The next day nothing big happened. Antonia got attacked by a spider (I made lift off from my chair from the scream) and we watched Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different. Yet another surprise for me was that neither seemed to know much about Monty Python. During the whole visit I forgot to use my camera! So right before they left I made a quick shot of J0k3 and me, but haven't get any good of Antonia (so don't know if there is any real proof of her visit!).

Both of them ordered me to start watching Weeds, so I have.

Gaming

When I first heard about a new version of the classic Secret of Monkey Island game I knew I would most likely buy it. And so I did. Shortly after the visit from J0k3 I visited the Steam shop. There I found three games of interest:

• Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
• LOOM
• The Dig

All classic LucasArts adventure games.

LOOM was way to short, it took me around 2 hours at most to complete it. It is however quite unique in its puzzles and the way to solve them, using codes of four sounds to de a magic with an object. The bad thing about this however is that you have to write them down on paper as soon as you learn them, as they are randomly generated at game start, but with several of the spells you only use it right after, making it a bit redundant.

The Dig had a much larger story and many more puzzles. It's a classic adventure type with a bit more seriousness compared to the other LucasArts adventure games, but still many funny elements. The concept for the story where originally made by Steven Speilberg to be used in an episode of a TV series, but he found it to expensive at the time. He then gave it to LucasArts to make it into a game. I think the story it self is great and could be used for a movie, but radical changes have to be made as for most of the time you walk around alone discovering an alien world. That would be pretty boring to see in a movie.

Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a remake of the first Monkey Island game. It is made in such a way that you can switch between the remake and the original by pressing a button, pretty cool. The remake have improved the graphics extensively, but not some of the animations as they have to follow the original I guess. The remake also includes voice acting which where not present in the original. It also have a new interface which sometimes is better than the original but sometimes it kind of fails. The arrows to move the inventory up and down do not have a correct "hitbox" which is a bit annoying. The original game however shines through and most puzzles are great and the humour is at its best. In the first bar there is a pirate with a sticker saying "Ask me about LOOM", this joke where completely lost with me the first time I tried Monkey Island several years ago but now I get it and the several other references to LOOM.

The last game I want to talk about this time is Sid Meier's Pirates! It is part of the 2K Huge Game Pack I got a month ago. Just like Colonization it is a remake of an original Sid Meier game from the 80s. There are several elements in Pirates! which are the same as the even older Danish game Kaptajn Kaper i Kategat. That game is legendary in my book, and I've made several attempts to recreate it, and I'll probably make more attempts in the future. A little danger with Sid Meier's Pirates! is however the repetitive tasks. You basically do the same thing over and over. This is very visible with the fact that you chase down the same bad guy over and over again to get more information about your lost family you try to save. They could at least have given the same bad guy more names. Another task you do a bit to much is dancing with the governors daughters. It is very different from the rest of the game. Every dance consist of a collection of dance moves combinations. After a while you learn all these combinations and can do it in your sleep after watching the first step. When you get the special dancing shoes you don't even have to try hard to score on the dance floor as most of your mistakes are made good by the shoes. The last annoying thing is that the wind always comes from the east. It might be because of difficulty settings though. This makes it very boring to sail east thereby you tend to avoid any "quests" on the east most islands.

Sick

During my trip to Harzen I were still a bit affected by my allergies, meaning something up my nose (what the hell is the proper word for this place) were not completely recovered. This meant that there were very little airflow to my ears, which apparently is important :P . Harzen is full of mountains so driving around there means a lot of changes in air pressure. This combination resulted in my ears going crazy shortly after the trip. All of the ear doctors in the area have chosen to go on vacation at the same time and when I'm in need of them - typically! So I went to a "normal" doctor. She told me that there was low pressure inside my ears and that meant that my eardrum where pulled in and where sticking to everything in there like vita wrap. The only thing she could recommend where to use nose sprays and try to even the pressure by holding my mouth and nose closed and blowing out. This have not been effective and several days this thing have been really painful, making it almost impossible to sleep. God damn allergies.

It is basically gone now when I have arrived home at my apartment again - now I only have that damn heat problem :P .