Whenever Europeans board a plane that takes them to the US of A, strange things are more likely than less likely (did I just coin a phrase?) to happen. There is this little something that’s called cultural difference whose line (Is it a tipping point line?) is clearly drawn by a big pond called Atlantic ocean. It’s been a while since the Pangea supercontinent unified Eurasia and North America, thus it left plenty of time for customs and the way things are usually done to develop in their unique fashions.

One of the differences that both Europeans and especially a threatened professional minority (two million waiters are said to still exist) North Americans have to learn the hard way is “a hot button word like sex, politics, or veganism. Everyone’s got an opinion on it, but no one truly understands it either.”*

We are talking about T-I-P-S. Yet another hot-fuss creating four letter word. It’s a word that Europeans and Americans seem to comprehend differently.

…this would be pretty much it. Hazy Manhattan Dreams, nothing to add from my side, what about you? This, is wallpaper material.

Hazy Manhattan Dreams · photo by eqqman on flickr.com

The freedom to make decisions in life is something essential. It might be even so basic so that people don’t realize the real value of this human liberty unless the freedom of deciding themselves, voting for instance, is taken away from then. Please, go vote, even if you have the feeling that nothing is happening anyway (see Austria and the reelections in fall 2008).

Your voice matters, so does your vote. Thus you do, too.

Vote · Declare Yourself

Screw that acoustic guitar you had to practise on in middle school. Guitar Hero is way "funner" according to user experience polls.

Amazon.com: Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bundle With Guitar: Windows & Macintosh: Video Games.

Usually this time of the year I would spend a large amount of time in front of a Playstation playing video games with my host brother. He’s in the lucky position, since he possesses a Wii, Playstation, Game Cube, Nintendo something thingy. You name it.

Stuck in Austria, I don’t really have any of these time-consuming but fun-giving (fun-emitting would be the fancy way to say it, I suppose) products. I “only” have a Mac, so what am I gonna do then? I’ll go with waiting for Amazon Germany (nearly and almost Austria) to ship the Guitar Hero bundle (Mac version, preferably) to my house. More on Guitar Hero after the jump…

American teenage subcultures are featured in the majority of American teenage movies. As a result, teenage movies are loaded with stereotypes. We’ve seen American Pie, we’ve watched Mean Girls and most Europeans love to watch American TV productions. You name them. Shows and movies dealing with teenage troubles automatically are set in a world that is divided into social groups, the so-called cliques.

American High Schools evoke stereotypes in our heads, don’t they?

It was only a matter of time for a bilingual blog like mine to pick up a myth shrouded in legend like the one we’re looking at today. Here’s the thing: According to stories that a lot of German teachers tell their students, German lost out to English in a vote on the official language of the United States in the 1776. Time for the myth-busting Philipp to check whether German really nearly made it as the official US language.

Is it true that we could have had the term VSA (V for vereinigt) instead of USA (U for united) on today’s maps?

like bad news (what a Modest Mouse reference) like conspiracy and deception about oh so accidental natural deaths, Terry Hatcher (and not just because she was Superman’s first choice), (somewhat) black humor evoked by acts of hypocrisy and backstabbing cellulite moms everybody would like to fool around with, and suburban garage sales where middle age women want to get rid of, say the waffle iron that turned out to be useful when killing their husband who they caught cheating with the 16-year-old babysitter with braces.

Guess what, Desperate Housewives are back on TV in good old Austria. Isn’t that exciting. They will start on 11 February, 9:05 pm. Do NOT miss it, since it will clear up a lot of the masterpiece cliffhanger finale of season three. No way, I won’t give anything away of what’s happening in the fourth season of the TV series with my favorite middle-aged suburban women. Let’s just hope that the author’s strike in America (WGA- Writers’ Guild America) is over soon, so the holding out for new episodes of Desperate Housewives is not as long as the wait in front of the Finding Nemo Ride in Disneyland (I hear, it’s good, though).

Oh, how could I forget Grey’s Anatomy is back too. I just decided that this series contains to much drama, drama and - oh did I mention - drama! This ever running on-and-off thing that Mrs Drama and MacDramaDreamy are practicing can be watched on Mondays too, after Desperate Housewives: 9:55 pm.

Oh, what a lovely connection. Innocent Scottish sheep meets kinky weirdo Austrian meets perfidiously maliciously megalomanic American. See the brand new bubblesnaps (link to a list of bubblesnaps entries on PHB) from December 07 and January 08.