• June 9-10 – Berlin
• June 11 – all day off-site meeting
• June 15 – fly to US
• June 16-19 – split between NYC, Englewood Cliffs, and Westchester
• June 20-23 – Dallas, Texas for Doug and Michelle’s wedding
• June 24-25 – NYC
• June 25 – fly to Hamburg
• June 26 – arrive in Hamburg and then go to Berlin
• June 27 – Berlin and then return to Hamburg (or travel somewhere until the 29th)
• July 12th – fly home to US for good

If by chance you don’t happen to follow Dave Rubin, you may want to buy some stock now. Though it has been years in the making, Dave is going big time.

A fellow comedian cousin of mine, Dave will be moving from the small stages of your local NYC comedy shop, to your television with a new show called “The Dave Rubin Project “.

Congrats Dave.

Keep track of Dave @ Rubinville.com

Ps. No he did not ask permission to use a variant of my domain name (The Berger Project ), but I guess as an older cousin he get’s first dibs. Nevermind, screw that… Dave, I want 20%.

For now, stay tuned but updating your bookmarks and RSS feeds and keep coming back to check for changes (such as a new logo, new design, and more), and to keep the comments hitting the site.

Until then…

Today (Monday) was a pretty emotional day. We woke up early and took an hour train ride from Hamburg to Cella and then a 15 minute taxi ride to Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen for those of you who don’t know because I didn’t know anything about it, was the concentration camp where Anne Frank, and sister died after they were found in hiding. Originally Bergen-Belsen was started as a POW camp where the Soviets were held. Here they experienced horrible conditions, basically no food and no showers but worked menial jobs for eventually a small wage. Once the war started getting worse and was taking longer than the Nazi’s wanted, Bergen-Belsen became a concentration camp in 1941. This was considered an exchange camp. It meant that “VIPs” were held here and were traded for Nazi soldiers that were captured. However, as time went on, it became more of a typical concentration camp. Many Jews from Auschwitz were transported here and many people from Bergen-Belsen were transported to Auschwitz. These 2 camps apparently had a “good relationship.” Approximately 52,000 Jews were killed here before its liberation on April 15^th, 1945, one day before Pesach. This was an extremely eerie experience.

After a quiet train ride back to Hamburg, Adam and I went straight to dinner and then just got back a little while ago. I packed up my stuff so that tomorrow morning we can go out and maybe do something quickly before I have to catch my flight.

Happy Easter! You would think that Easter was bigger here than it seemed but it was just another Sunday out in Hamburg. Sunday was museum day. We went to the Hamburg museum and were excited to find out that they had a “Jews in Hamburg” exhibit.  It was also very interesting to learn that Adam lives in an area of Hamburg called “little Jerusalem.” After the Hamburg museum we went to the “Dom.” This is basically Hamburgs “Coney Island” and although it was probably about 20 degrees out, and Easter Sunday it was packed with families. We got to eat a Berliner (donut) and some other good German snacks. After the “Dom” it was lunch time at one of the bistros by Adams apartment since we both grew a large appetite from walking alllll over the place. This restaurant was very good and we had some quiche, salad and soup. And of course we got beers since they are literally cheaper than a bottle of water or soda. Since it was freezing out and had walked a ton and I got to see a lot, we just went back to Adams apartment to thaw out. We stayed in and cooked dinner and rented a movie.

Saturday was of course another long day. We woke up a little bit on the late side but that was okay because I obviously needed my sleep.  From lunch we went full swing into site seeing. We walked by the beautiful government building on through downtown (which is where they have all the 5^th Avenue stores). We then went to St. Michael’s church which is one of the two most famous churches in Hamburg. From St. Michaels church we walked down to the Reaperbahn and then down to the harbor of the Elbe River. It was very pretty and we finally found a ferry ride that also had an English translation tour. After the ferry ride we walked through the park. Since it was cold and we were hungry, our next stop was the bakery to have a snack. After our snack, I was now ready for a nap, which was cut short because we had to get ready for dinner and Adam’s first night out in Hamburg!! We went to this restaurant that basically sat on the water. It was a beautiful restaurant and very good. After dinner we met Adam’s friends Tamir and Felix at a very NY bar (in their opinion) and then to a more german “underground” techno bar. At about 2:30am, I killed the night by saying that I needed to go home.

So this weekend in Germany with Adam was great. Although I was hesitant to come to Germany, I had a good time. On Friday when I got here, I took a little nap because I didn’t sleep much on the plane since I was excited to see Adam. After my nap, we got ready to go to temple which was a new experience for me. On our way to schul, we stopped at the Rabbi’s house to give him giftsfor having us for dinner and Purim (since we can’t carry and the rabbi can’t open gifts on Shabbat). The 3 little girls LOVED all the candy and immediately there were twizzlers all over the place. It was very interesting to meet the Rabbi’s wife and children since they don’t speak a word of english, only hebrew and german. We then went to temple and back to the Rabbi’s for dinner.

Today we played tourists in Hamburg, exploring the whole town. He claims that we walked over 10 miles, I think it was closer to 5 … but who’s counting (besides his aching feet). We walked through the Platen un Blomen (the large park in Hamburg), specifically checking out the rose garden and Japanese garden. Then we traveled downtown to the St. Nikili Church, where we took a elevator to the top. Next up were the botanical gardens. Finally, we had some lunch, relaxing, and dinner.

Tomorrow’s plans are still TBD, but I’ll try to get a better picture (the park isn’t the best back drop for the Berger boys).

1. Study for/take the GMAT. TBD if I want to go to B-school and when, but this is the first step.
2. Seriously consider buying an apartment when I get back from Germany
3. Push myself beyond my comfort zone as I move to a new brand/position with Unilever upon my return from Germany. It is very easy to relate to the Axe target.
4. Enjoy the summer. Get to the beach, my parent’s pool, concert, and more.
5. Learn a bit about coding. The basics/difference of/between PHP, ASP, CodeIgniter, AJAX, RubyOnRails, Java Script
6. Live healthier. Get back in shape, exercise more, east better.
7. Though slightly contrary to the point above, party/do more. I am young, living in Hamburg/NYC, there is no reason to be so boring (besides money). This doesn’t have to be drinking, it can be cultural events, museums, opera/ballet, live music (besides headline acts), reading, seeing independent movies
8. Go somewhere cool. A film festival, a web conference, ski somewhere out of the ordinary, travel to South America, get to TED or All Thing Digital (given my financial situation I expect that I can only do one of the above)
9. Expand my network – make use of technology and face to face opportunities to network with people. Utilize LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, my blog, Pounce, Flickr, and more.
10. …. – I am going to leave this one open-ended, if I don’t I feel like I am trapped in and can’t pick something else along the way.

Do you think I’m missing anything? Any that you would change or remove? I’m all ears.

• Watched the Apple SDK/Enterprise announcement
  
• Watched the Steve Ballmer interview by Guy Kawasaki live from Mix in Vegas
• Followed the ExpressionEngine 2.0 developer preview, thanks to David’s Tweets
• Started (again) to Tweet and Pounce since people laugh at me for updating my status on Facebook
  
• Writing a blog post to follow this one, as well as taping some videos
• Doing my taxes
• Watched the recent Digg Townhall
• Upgraded Dabbledoo’s Google Hosted account to the new Gmail, and installed Better Gmail 2
• Thinking about strategy and what it mean/how to do it (see bullet 5)

If you have missed it, use this link to subscribe to my blog or you can subscribe via email by clicking here.