I hated Prague when I first arrived due to all the hills and my inability to ride up them with a polo bike packed full of crap. I did however change my mind after a few beers and some good food.

Prague

Bone Chapel

Old Town Square

Vltava River

Changing of the Guard; Prague Castle

Yoda, what are you doing there is a stormtrooper right behind you! Click here to see more

Hallo there internet friends, it’s been a while. Here are are some pictures to wrap up my time from Berlin. I have been on the road since last Sunday. I went from Berlin to Leipzig, then Prague for a few days. I ended the week in Vienna just before heading to Munich. So now I am taking a break and hanging out in my hotel room watching videos I don’t quite understand (probably cause they are in German). Anyway enjoy the pictures, and I will post my adventures from this week soon.

Don’t forget to check in on Yoda www.zadroznyphotography.com/findyoda

These pictures are from the Fredrichshain vs Kreuzberg battle. For those who don’t know they are two different neighborhoods in Berlin. They lie just opposite each other, Fredrichshain in former East Berlin and Kreuzberg in the former West. The battle was supposed to be a water battle but I saw all sorts of food products being thrown around out there.

Victory Monument

What is it about me that I always get stopped and questioned by the police at airports and train stations?

I have been seriously slacking on my blog duties lately but I guess ive been playing too much polo or something. Speaking of Polo, last weekend I traveled out to Gießen (which is just north of Frankfurt) for a single player shuffle tournament. It took me 5 trains and 8 hours to get there, but it was definitely worth it.

So for those who may not know in a Polo competition you generally go in with a set team of 3 that you have signed up with before the tournament. This tournament is a little different, you sign up as an individual and get a number, then you’re randomly assigned a team for every game you play. You may end up playing with the same person twice but never the same team. I think in the end I played about 15 games. They way you get your score is based on how many goals your team scores as well as if you win, loose, or draw. There were 55 players in the first first two days (Friday and Saturday), and then on Sunday the top 30 moved onto the quarter finals (number 17 right here.) After three more rounds the top 12 played for the semifinals, and then the top 6 from there played in the final game. I got number 6 in the semifinals, and then in the final game we lost 5-1.

On the plus side (for me that is), I scored the 1 goal for our team in the final game.

A welcome addition to the drunken debauchery were the “Special Games.” Every round they would announce a special game with the Rocky Theme Song. These were hilarious! In one game you had to play with a large kiddie play ball. This one looked especially hard because it was so easy to block the giant ball. I believe the final score was 1 nothing.

In another they used tinny goals. This ended up being way easier for the teams playing than I thought it would be.

One game the moved both goals to the middle of the court.

One game they made everyone wear white T-shirts and ear plugs.

The final special game was played after the Final match of the tournament. In this game we played everyone against the 3 guys who put together the tournament. They made everyone except the 3 play without mallets. In addition you were permanently thrown out of the game for a foot down, only the 3 with mallets could tap out.

One of my favorite parts about the weekend was we got to camp out on a soccer field. It was our little polo camp.

Ten or twelve of us camped out there. They had warm showers, and made us breakfast in the clubhouse.

It was like being at my childhood Boy Scout camp, “Camp Horseshoe” all over again.

The rest of the weekend was Polo, grilling by the court and of course Bier trinken. Except for the polo mallet to the face by my new friend Jupp, it was a great weekend. Also in Jupp’s defense he bought me a beer after, so were cool now in my book.

Thats about all for now. Yoda is doing well, and we are leaving Berlin next week. We will mis all our new friends, but we will do our best to make new ones on the road ahead. Feel free to stop by and say hi to Yoda here.

GRILL PARTY

OUCH

Outdoor 4 man urinal, weird but genius!

Yoda hatte viele Abendteuer im Deutschland. Ich habe viele Fotos von Yoda gemacht.

Spaß Haben

More from my weekend in Gießen to come, but for now enjoy the Yoda pictures.

Find Yoda

If you haven’t figured out by now I really like panoramas. I downloaded an app called Autostitch which is actually an iPhone app but it still works well and produces High-Rez images on the ipad. Anyway I have been playing around with it and have gotten some varied results but for the most part it does a great job and I highly recommend it. This image was the result of trying to piece together about 30 images, and after a while of playing around I really like the results.

On a side note if you didn’t know I have not brought a computer with me and I am solely relying on the iPad. I must say that I do wish I had my computer for some tasks like Photoshop and the ability to easily back up my files to an external Hard Drive. Besides that and the lack of flash it works great and I am amazed at the speed it can process and post images. I am also waiting on a Hyperdrive which has a built in card reader and can upload images to the iPad.I think in the long run it would have been cheaper to buy a Macbook Air (yes Este I know thats what you said to do) but the iPad has really been working out and its definitely saved me some space in my bag.

Anyway I will be traveling to Gießen on Friday for the weekend to play in a pickup Polo Tournament, so more pictures to come next week. And yes Yoda is playing as well!

I finally feel like I had a few days the last week to go out and take some pictures. I got to play some more polo last weekend. I also got a sweet new tattoo from Mario at Illustrated in Ink here in Berlin. Other than that I have just been traveling around making new friends, and finding new beers to drink. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the last week or so. Make sure you also stop by and see Yoda click here to Find Yoda.

Note the Camera Crossbones in the “A”.

This is not my usual kind of post but I recently made my own SPD clipless (aka Klickie) Nikes and I thought I would share the process with you. If you don’t have any interest move on cause I have some sweet pictures from Germany in the next post.

Side note: sorry for the less than awesome quality of these pics.

So I made these on my last few nights in NYC and it turned out to be pretty easy.

1) I took an old pair of Shimano MTB shoes, and a new pair of Nike Mid 6.0.

2) I gutted the Shimano shoes and stole the plate and insole to mount in the new shoes. I did this by cutting the sole off the shoe and then with a little force and a knife I separated the rubber from the plate.

3) Next I used a utility knife and a ruler to cut a rectangle out of the Nikes. I used the plate as a template for where to cut. I did make sure to test fit and and try on the shoes with the plate inside before moving on to the glueing process.

4) The next step I don’t have a picture of, but I used Shoe Goo to glue in the plate to the inside of the Nikes. It’s just glue I assume you’ve used it before, maybe you ate some as a child, but yeah you just slather it on making sure to cover all the edges and also to not put glue where the cleat will go. I did make sure to get the glue all around the edges of where I cut so I would not get water in the shoes.

5) After I set the plates in place in each shoe, I stuffed the shoes with news paper and left the for 24 hours to set.

So thats really it. Been riding them for a few weeks and they have some wear but the are performing just as well as my Six Six One shoes. I must say thought the aren’t great for a lot of walking. But otherwise they are great.

Its been a few days since i have had a chance to post. I celebrated my 28th Birthday with some German sights, some beers and a film at the Kino, and more beer and some Spätzle (my favorite.) This past weekend there was a Bier Fest on Karl-Marx-Allee right down the street from me. They had some elaborate setups including a full kitchen with cabinets. My favorite part was they give you a glass when you buy a beer (after a 3 euro deposit) which you can than carry around and refill at the various tents. Needless to say I did not get my money back. Other than than not much to say, here are some pictures and there will be more to come.

I started a new gallery of pictures on the go taken from my Post Modern Polaroid aka my Handy. If your not instagram you can see them at my Flickr page or through this link.

My apologies for my last post you may have noticed that when you went to the Yoda page there were no new pictures, I had a problem with the upload and did not notice till a few days later. Regardless there are new picture of Yodas adventures up now, click here to see them (old man).

I was hanging out with Yoda at the Museum of Modern art here in Berlin. As I was taking Yoda’s picture outside the museum two Italians came up to me and said, hey we’re doing the same thing and proceeded to show me the Chewbacca they had been taking photo of around Berlin. What a small world, and a post modern one too.

See more of Yodas adventures here