Road Trip

I suppose even bloggers need some time off occasionally and I certainly felt that way during the last three weeks. Now we're well into the year 2010 (happy new year to everybody, by the way) and I would like to return to blogging with a really insane story that took place last weekend.

One week ago two friends of mine, Pablo and Sophie, who are travelling Europe and earn their money by playing chess against passers-by, called me from Rome, Italy, and told me that their car got broken into and most of their stuff taken by the thieves. They had to return to Germany quickly but several things prevented them from helping themselves out of this misery.

First, the route back to Germany had to avoid Austria and Switzerland because in those countries cars are required by law to be equipped with winter tyres, whereas my friends' car only had allseasons put on. Therefore, the way to go was through France but unfortunately Pablo doesn't have a driver's licence at all while Sophie had her driver's licence blocked for two months in France because of speeding. So to cut a long story short, they asked me whether I could help them out by coming to Italy and driving the car through France. What follows is my recount of that road trip, which bore quite some similarities to a suicide mission, given the weather conditions brought to Germany by the trough Daisy.

Sunday, Jan 10th, 1am
I eventually arrive at home after a performance with my acoustic band. The bus shuttle to the Frankfurt-Hahn airport will depart the Frankfurt central station at 7am. So I turn in quickly, because it's going to be a very long day.

Sunday, Jan 10th, 9am
I'm at the Frankfurt-Hahn airport and now have to get my ticket. My friends booked the ticket in Rome and gave me an access code. In theory, I should be able to simply get the ticket printed at the Ryan Air check-in machines. In real life this procedure will cost me an additional fee of €40, which I don't have - neither in my pocket nor in my bank account. It appears that the Ryan Air clerk in Rome excelled in Doublethink when she told my friends that using the check-in machine would not be a problem at all while failing to hint at the additional fee Ryan Air would charge in that case. So with €30 in my wallet, I try to withdraw €20 from my bank account, and luckily for my desperate friends the ATM issues the cash.

Sunday, Jan 10th, 2pm
I finally arrive at Pisa, from where the road trip will begin. By now I'm really pissed off because after having bought a pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee I don't have any money left at all thanks to the business philosophy of Ryan Air. The flight has been one hour late but given the weather at Frankfurt-Hahn, I'm rather one hour late than late. The weather in Pisa is fine, though. It's raining and the temperature is 5°C.

Sunday, Jan 10th, 4pm
After I met up with Pablo and Sophie we had a cup of coffee in the city centre of Pisa. Now it's time to get down to business. We'll try to reach Lyon, France, around midnight. A decision has to be made. Should we drive around the Alps along the Côte d'Azur until Aix-en-Provence and then turn northwards or is it better to try the direct route via the Fréjus Tunnel between Torino and Grenoble? Both routes have their pros and cons. The route via the Côte d'Azur is safe but approximately 400 km longer while driving through the Alps is shorter but not safe at all. Because fuel expenses, road tolls and time are also important factors, we decide to gamble and take the direct route. After all, didn't they say in the news that Daisy is passing through Europe from south to north so it should long be past the Alps, given that it's ravaging Germany right now?

Sunday, Jan 10th, 8pm
After four hours of driving we are finally past the Appenine Mountains and stop at the service area of Nichelino on the Tangenziale Sud di Torino. Sophie has been driving until now while I have been resting on the back seat. The journey between Pisa and Genova offers beautiful landscapes but it is a hell of a drive because of the innummerable tunnels. North of Genova the Appenine Mountains gradually yield to the plains of Piedmont and between Alessándria and Torino there are hardly any hills at all. At Nichelino I'm to take over the driving duty. We're now 90 km from the Fréjus Tunnel and I should get used to the car before we're entering the Alps. After just 20 minutes of driving I'm already pissed off because we missed the correct lane at the next interchange as the Italians are apparently incapable of setting up road signs that are readable well in advance. The road sign at the interchange was in fact located after the lanes forked, and when we saw it changing lanes was already impossible.

Sunday, Jan 10th, 10pm
We stop at the very next service area in France, directly after the Fréjus Tunnel. The 12 km long passage through the tunnel cost a heavy toll of €35 but we reckoned it'd be impossible to go via the Col du Fréjus where the road most likely has not been salted or even cleared. The highway offered fewer troubles. We hardly saw a snowflake and there was no ice. Now that we are in France, we're in prime Tour de France mountain stage territory. Looking from the service area to the south, the Galibier rises to approximately 2500 metres. Its mountain pass, the Col du Galibier is one of the hardest and most famous climbs in the history of the Tour de France. That is, in the summer, of course. Now the road signs show an alarmingly red fermé (closed), telling journeymen that they'd better pay the tunnel toll.

Monday, Jan 11th, 1am
We have arrived at Lyon safely around midnight and are now sitting in a shisha bar in the city centre. The Tunisian guy who runs the bar doesn't speak English so I use my rotten French. As I already have experienced quite often in France, this immediately breaks the spell. After I had a game of chess with Pablo, I end up playing two games of checkers with the French guys and in the end we don't have to pay our drinks - they are à la maison. Around 3am we finally leave the bar and park the car in the back yard of some company in the suburb Limonest. Time to get some sleep.

Monday, Jan 11th, 8am
My cell phone alarm wakes me up and I notice a snowplough clearing the parking area of snow. While I'm smoking my breakfast cigarette, the overseer asks me when we'd be about to leave. I say we'd be gone in 10 minutes and that's OK with him. He just explains that the guy in the snowplough is at work and needs to clear the lot where we're parking. Just imagine this had happened in Germany. I'm sure I would have got a decent earful about law and order and how could I dare to park here and so on.

Monday, Jan 11th, 11am
After buying food in a supermarket, we have driven to downtown Lyon again because Sophie needs to pick up a watch that was supposed to be repaired by the juweller who sold it. It turns out, though, that the shop has a rather dubious touch. Three different employees tell us three different stories about the whereabouts of the watch. In the end they talk about the warranty being void because of a fault of Sophie's and the thought dawns that she's never going to see her watch again. We finally head off, our mood having hit rock bottom.

Monday, Jan 11th, 4pm
We stop at a service area around Besançon in the Jura Mountains. The weather is very good as the sun is shining and there isn't any fog at all. We're now within 150 km of the German border and hope that the weather will be the same across the Rhine. Pablo's and my mood has become better again. He had been seriously pissed off about the fast increasing amount of money that was being gobbled up by the Péage and I had been pissed off about his being pissed off, basically. Seeing the sun and a clear sky was a good cure, though, and we continued our journey in confidence.

Monday, Jan 11th, 6pm
While we were descending from the Jura mountains into the Alsatian plains, the weather conditions deteriorated rapidly. Now we're around Mulhouse and it's all foggy and raining. Road signs warn about ice and it doesn't get better. As we cross the Rhine bridge between the French Mulhouse and the German Neuenburg, snow begins to fall heavily. Bad thoughts creep up on me. Daisy is still here, and we come to realise that the Alps had been nothing compared to the final 400 km that lie in front of us. Somewhere around Freiburg, Sophie takes over the car, because I'm quite exhausted by now.

Monday, Jan 11th, 9pm
We've been making an average of only 80 km an hour and now we even get stuck in a huge traffic jam at the notorious Karlsruhe-Durlach. As if this had not been enough, after we're out of the traffic jam the road suddenly becomes icy and Sophie loses control of the car. We slide and silently pray that no other vehicle is going to smash into us. Luckily for us we manage to reach the emergency lane and slowly crawl on to the next parking area, which fortunately is just 500 metres in front of us. I get out of the car and smoke five cigarettes in row. Some other cars stop here right after us. Most of them have been behind us and seen us slide. They got frightened and decided to stop, too. One of them gives us valuable advice on how to drive on ice. Tonight, temperatures will reportedly drop to
-12°C and after half an hour of agonising over the choice between freezing to death and risking to drive on for the last 100 km, another car stops and we ask the driver if he's noticed any ice on the road. He tells us the road was alright, which means that the winter service vehicles must have strewn enough salt by now. The show must go on.

Monday, Jan 11th, 11pm
Finally we made it back to Frankfurt. The first thing we do after getting off the highway is stop at a gas station and buy alcohol. After I'm back at home, I immediately down the small bottle of liquor I just bought at the gas station. The following two bottles of beer could now be consumed in a more tranquilised state of mind - phew!

Mitä me juomme jouluaattona?

While I was getting my head kicked in at the Christmas blitz tournament of Fitschel's club, he suggested that I could also write some posts in Finnish (yet also give the translations, of course). This was most likely a reaction to my explanation that I'm writing in English here because I want to improve my writing skills.

His idea has some merit but I don't think I would be able to write in Finnish without causing native Finnish speakers' eyeballs to fall out. I surely could write correctly in an orthographic sense but I don't think that I have got enough experience with the Finnish colloquialisms to make reading worthwhile.

What I'm going to do instead is presenting a recipe for Glögi, i.e. the Finnish version of the infamous Glühwein that is keeping the lot of us alive while we are wandering across our favourite Christmas Market.

I got hold of this recipe 5 years ago when my Finnish teacher asked me to prepare Glögi for the Christmas dinner of our Finnish class at university. Since then I made a pot of Glögi for my family's Christmas dinner every year. So here we go:

Ainekset (1 1/2 litraa)
Ingredients (1 1/2 litres)

• 1 pullo punaviiniä
  (1 bottle of red wine)
• 2 dl kirkasta viinaa
  (2 dl of clear schnapps, i.e. Korn)
• 1 kanelitanko
  (1 cinnamon stick)
• 4 kokonaista neilikkaa
  (4 whole cloves)
• 1 inkiväärinpala
  (1 piece of ginger)
• 1 dl rusinoita
  (1 dl of raisins)
• 1 dl kaltattuja manteleita
  (1 dl of roasted almonds)
• sokeria
  (sugar)
• suikaloitua appelsiininkuorta
  (orange zest, i.e. grated orange paring)

Valmistus
Preparation

Kaada viini ja viina kattilaan. Lisää kanelitanko, neilikat ja inkivääri. Kuumenna juoma varovasti kiehuvaksi (älä päästä kiehahtamaan). Lisää kattilaan rusinat ja mantelit ja makeuta glögi tarvittaessa sokerilla. Koristele glögi suikaloidulla appelsiininkuorella.

Put the wine and schnapps into a pot. Add the cinnamon stick, cloves and ginger. Bring the beverage to the boil carefully (don't keep on boiling). Add the raisins and almonds and sweeten the Glögi as you please. Decorate the Glögi with orange zest.

Cheers and Merry Christmas to all of you!

PS: I think I wanted to say "Kippis ja hyvää joulua kaikille!" (-:

A Freezing Frenzy

As temperatures in Germany fell to -20°C I spent my weekend in Bad Homburg, where I worked as an arbiter and chaperon at the Hessian Under-8 Youth Championship. Carrying my heavy rucksack as well as my guitar, I was lucky to reach the youth hostel, which is located at the bottom of a steep slope, just minutes before the heavy snowfall set in.

After preparing the playing hall, I made my way back to Frankfurt Friday evening in order to participate in my club's Christmas blitz tournament. This turned out to be a hell of a journey because it hadn't stopped snowing and the temperature had fallen even further. In the tournament I clinched second place behind Lather and won a nice chess book. Eventually I made it back to Bad Homburg without freezing to death on the walk from the train station to the youth hostel, which must be considered my most successful endeavour that evening.

Saturday and Sunday kept me occupied with my duties, which wasn't too complicated because children are usually able to settle disputes fairly on their own. All in all there were only two issues that took some care to handle.

The first was to explain to one child that the touch-move rule is indeed about having to move a piece once touched, no matter whether the other player complains before or after one touches another piece.

The second issue was a player who allegedly offered a draw and then didn't want to draw anymore after realising that he's a piece up. The boy tried to talk his way out of this by claiming that he'd only said "in this position I'll never agree to a draw". Anyway, after he owned up to actually having uttered the word "draw", we ruled the game drawn. So let this be a lesson to all of you out there - keep your mouth shut during a game as required by the rules. If you don't, surprising things might transpire.

After a horror trip back to Frankfurt on Sunday afternoon I concluded the weekend watching some movies with my girlfriend. Having dodged dying in the snow, I now nearly died laughing while watching Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator".

It's a satirical alienation of the Nazi regime, shot during the high tide of the regime in 1940. This was Chaplin's first talking movie, and gladly so, because I could constantly piss myself laughing at the great dictator's inauguration speech, which is rendered in some German sounding gibberish in order to mock the real one's oratory style.

Hangover Chess

The league match against Bensheim unfortunately brought about a major drawback in my team's bid for promotion as we lost 3.5:4.5 to our strong opponents. We were well on course after taking an early lead but got turned down in the end because of two gross blunders under time pressure, which cost at least one point, if not even one and a half.

This outcome is even more annoying because Lather and I came well prepared. Of course, when I say well prepared, I mean preparation as it was once understood by Fitschel's team SC Steinbach. That is, you simply get rascally drunk the night before the match and make an honest effort not to touch a chessboard while doing so.

I therefore made sure that my rucksack was tightly packed with various alcoholic beverages when I set out for Lather's place on Saturday. The obvious outcome of this enterprise was, of course, that we were badly hung over when we eventually awoke on Sunday. Thus prepared we managed to score two solid wins, although Lather had to work for almost six hours before he had finished the job. Needless to say that we were suffering the whole day from the vicious side effects of this kind of preparation...

I had the good luck to reach a won position very quickly and apparently was not hung over enough to spoil it:

Uwira (2222) - Kargoll (2201)

1. d4 e6 2. c4 Nf6 3. g3 d5 4. Bg2 c5 5. Nf3 Nc6 6. O-O cxd4?!

This is not good because White is able to reach some kind of Grünfeld Reversed where Black has locked up his light-squared bishop voluntarily.

7. Nxd4 Qb6?! 8. Nb5!?



After Black's 7th move, White could also have kept things simple by 8.Nxc6 bxc6 9.Nc3 which sets up the Grünfeld Reversed theme. However, if you're still intoxicated at this crossroads, you might be getting adventurous ideas. My move does not seem bad, though, because it's also Rybka's choice. It relies on the assumption that Black can't really play 8...a6 because White should be able to make his better development tell.

To my delight my opponent didn't sense danger here and in fact played that move, instead of e.g. 8...dxc4 9.N1c3 when White still has a pull because of his strong development.

8...a6? 9. Be3 Qa5

9...Qd8 10.N5c3 dxc4 11.Qxd8+ followed by 12.Nd2 also doesn't look very promising for Black.

10. N5c3 dxc4 11. Nd2 Nd5 12. Nxc4 Nxe3



This zwischenzug must have been what Black had relied on, but White can now reach a decisive advantage in various ways. The simple way would be 13.Nxa5 Nxd1 14.Nxc6 Nxc3 15.bxc3 which I dismissed because I thought it was not a clear enough advantage. What I hadn't seen here was that Black has no sufficient way to defend his b-pawn in view of White's Na5 followed by Rab1. So 13.Nxa5 was the clean way to go. My move is also good, but the position becomes a little messier.

13. fxe3 Qc7 14. Ne4 f6 15. Rc1 Bd7 16. Ned6+ Bxd6 17. Qxd6



Black is done for, because either he'll lose his b-pawn after taking on d6 or he'll come under a deadly attack after 17...0-0-0 18.Rfd1 followed by Qc5. My opponent now went into the tank for almost a full hour and as I was wandering around waiting for him to move I suddenly felt an urgent need to find the bathroom and be sick.

So off I went and prayed to the porcelain god, thanking him that my position was clearly won already! The rest of the game is Black agony and not even a few second best moves on my part could spoil the party anymore...

17...Qxd6 18. Nxd6+ Ke7 19. Nxb7 Rab8 20. Nc5 Ne5 21. b3 a5 22. Rfd1 Bb5 23. Bf3 Rhc8 24. Kf2 Rb6 25. Nb7 Rxc1 26. Rxc1 a4 27. Rc7+ Nd7 28. b4 a3 29. Na5 Kd6 30. Rc3 Ne5 31. Rxa3 $18 Nxf3 32. exf3 e5 33. Rc3 Ke6 34. Nb3 Rd6 35. a4 1-0

Mate! Mate! Mate!

Tomorrow will bring the 5th league match of this year's campaign with my team SC 1961 König Nied. It's an away fixture against Bensheim, a town some 70 km south of Frankfurt and their team is quite strong, as they've only been relegated to our league last season and are now competing for first place in order to move up again.

Two years ago, both teams met in the higher league and I've got fond memories of this encounter. We managed to beat them 4.5:3.5 and I scored the first point after just about one hour of play by delivering swift mate against my slightly higher rated opponent:

Uwira (2293) - Petri (2316)

I had known my opponent for ages as we started our chess "careers" in the same region and also attended the same school. I knew he didn't know much theory due to his job and his other interests but that wasn't to fool me because I also knew that he is a very creative player capable of tenacious defending. In this game he screwed up badly, though.

1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 c6 4. Nf3 Nf6 5. e3 Nbd7 6. Qc2 Bd6 7. g4 Nxg4 8. Rg1



We're playing the Shabalov Attack of the Anti Meran System and now the main line is 8...f5 9.h3 Nf6 10.Rxg7 Se4 followed by Qf6. He'd been out of theory after 7.g4 though and had to think his way through from there.

8...Nxh2 9. Nxh2 Bxh2 10. Rxg7 Bd6

Here White might play 11.Bd2 and leave the h-pawn alone while completing development. Play would probably become very sharp, however, which is why I decided to play it safe and continue with a small but stable edge.

11. Rxh7 Rxh7 12. Qxh7 Nf6?!

In the post-mortem analysis, I was convinced that this is too risky. Nothing has changed my opinion since then. Black's king will be stuck in the centre and this will inhibit black counterplay by means of e6-e5 or c6-c5. I believe 12...Qf6 was the way to go.

13. Qh8+ Ke7 14. Qh4 Bb4 15. Bd2



White has played a couple of natural moves and has now got considerable pressure. Currently the threat is to win a pawn with Nxd5 and analysis showed that the best Black could do here is to play 15...Kd7, impeding his development even more. His position might hold, though, because the pawn triangle provides a solid shelter.

However, my opponent didn't have a good day and committed an incredible blunder by not only missing the threat of Nxd5 but by playing a move after which Nxd5 will even bring about direct mate!

15...Bd7?? 16. Nxd5+ 1-0

Black resigned because of 16...cxd5 17.Bxb4+ Ke8 18.Qh8+ or 16...exd5 17.Bxb4+ Ke6 18. Bh3+. He could not even try to bail out with 16...Kf8 because White will give mate anyway after 17.Qh8+ Ng8 18.Bxb4+.



See also my teammate Lather's preview (in German).

The Curse Of The Webworld

Imagine you were a painter who got hired to paint somebody's house. The client doesn't specify exactly what colour he wants but instead shows you some vague pictures of other houses and says "somehow like these".

So you spend some time mixing colours and paint little drawings with them before you start the real painting. You show the drawings to your client who mostly says "All's well, go ahead". On other occasions he doesn't give any feedback whatsoever. So eventually you decide to get going and use the colour you think he's been most fond of.

Of course, once you've finished painting the house your client doesn't like the colour and wants you to change it.

You think this is farfetched? You think this doesn't happen in real life? Oh buddy...

Exactly this happened to me this evening when I was asked to change the colours of a web site I had designed. This also meant altering the graphics considerably and the client apparently wasn't aware of the fact that their little request was not little at all. And the design looks worse now, but I guess this is just my personal opinion.

Anyway, this is not the end of it. Web design customers can be much worse, as the following illustration shows:

The Curse Of The Webworld

An Exciting Day At The Pub

When it comes to the football club called Bayern München, I'm usually in two minds, probably aided by my zodiac sign, which is Gemini. When Bayern faced their worst nightmare at the Nou Camp in 1999, I was actually the only one among the friends I watched that match with who dearly wanted Manchester United to win. I also expressed this opinion pretty straightforwardly and got some sharp looks by my friends...

Ten years from then I have become wiser, as I gradually came to realise that success in the Champions League is vital for German football. It doesn't actually matter which team has got success as long as there is success, which would eventually lead to a better standing of the Bundesliga in the UEFA ranking and thus to more German participants. And as we all know, it's raining star thalers in the Champions League, which are desperately needed around here since we can't have sugar daddies from Russia or Dubai to pimp our clubs due to the 50+1 rule that forces clubs in Germany to hold more shares than any potential investor.

Thus I found myself to support Bayern tonight in their encounter with Juventus Turin. And I also found myself to support our current holders VfL Wolfsburg in their bid against Manchester United. I did this even though they have been pimped by Volkswagen during the first decade of the millenium but still I'd rather see them advance than bloody Juventus, who really shouldn't be playing in the Champions League only two and a half years after having been relegated because of match fixing. Imagine what would have happened to the Boors from Kaiserslautern if they'd committed that deed - they surely would not be playing in the 2. Bundesliga these days, but far deeper down the pyramid. Besides Juventus are also hyped by a car manufacturer...

Still, the other self of me still wanted to see Bayern lose, and after 30 minutes of atrocious Bavarian play, this other self was on its way to be satisfied. After 19 minutes Bastian Schweinsteiger and Holger Badstuber were watching in awe as David Trezeguet took the ball and hammered it home just from inside the box.

The game turned around 10 minutes later when Bayern got a penalty because the otherwise magnificient Ivica Olic made sure his ankle stayed where the foot of Juventus defender Caceres was going to be a couple of milliseconds later. The score was subsequently levelled by Hans-Jörg Butt, the most dangerous goalkeeper in the world when it comes to scoring, who put an awesome penalty beyond Gianluigi Buffon.

Bayern now seemed a different team, as they really pounded on the Juventus defense for the rest of the match. It didn't help Juventus to bring on an additional defender at half-time in an attempt to hold on to the draw that would have seen them through at the expense of Bayern. There was no kidding with the Bavarians in the second half. They played as if they were rabid maniacs, taking their chance to vent all the grief that had accumulated since their last and only Champions League victory in 2001.

So they went on and put another three past a side that, according the the TV pundit, had not lost a game after taking a 1:0 lead for 76 consecutive 1:0 leads. Ivica Olic played the match of his life and even Mario Gomez managed to score - something that has become rare in recent times.

Unfortunately the perfect evening didn't transpire because the Wolves were turned down 1:3 by Manchester United in spite of a very good performance and incredible fighting spirit. Being by far the better team, they got hit three times by Michael Owen, who had already done that deed back in Munich in 2001 when England thrashed Germany 5:1...

Anyway, I hope Wolfsburg are not going to despair. I'm sure they'll prod serious butt in the oncoming UEFA league playoffs - they've come to stay. As for Bayern: I hope you'll appreciate my rare support and will now bloody go on to win the thing!