" To be able to determine a course angle in each place of the map, we need vertical lines which indicates the north direction." (Linke: Orientation with map, compass, GPS) ...what's happened so far:
Other activities can be taken from the following summary, which of course doesn't claim to be complete. Postman (Summer 1990)
Bone-Polisher
During a period of my civil alternative service 94/95 I worked on a archaeological excavation. It was the most interesting and instructive time of my civil alternative service. In the beginning my job was to move all kinds of mud, later I scratched profiles and washed off the finds. The builders who had to stop their work because of our excavations, were not amused and called us bone-polishers. Particularly funny and it was the running gag of our excavation leaders: they asked themselves 300 times a day whether that what we excavated was "from former times" or even "from completely former times". Officially, also to the many curious people outside the building fence, there were only these two datings: "from former times" and "from completely former times". Great, if researchers and scientist from time to time kan keep a healthy distance from their research fields. Baker
Transport Worker, Tractor Driver, Fork Lift Truck Driver
In the summer of 1998 I worked for 4 months as a season employee in the car industry, at the VOLKSWAGEN-factory in Mosel near Zwickau. In the beginning I transported bodies with combined Diesel-/E-tractors. After a three-day-long training course I became examined fork lift trucker, got a glaring yellow 2,5-ton truck and went back into production. From there on, by day and by night, I stacked everything that was a little easier than my truck. I supplied the Passat-assembly line with body parts as well as I worked at the railway loading ramp (bodies and empty transportation frameworks). Whenever I drink very strong coffee I use to call it fork lift truck driver coffee since that time. Such a beverage was inevitable during the night shifts: while an inattentive foreign language teacher in the wort case just bores his students and causes comparatively small material damage, an inattentive truck driver can punch really large holes into the landscape.
Quite soon I got accustomed to the use of certain special units, which were taught to me by my colleagues: as long as a sheet paper fits between the trucks's outside edge and any obstacle (e.g. walls, humans, machines), there is absolutely no reason for panic or exitement. Choir Singer
Sopran and Bass. Approximately in this order, between was the breaking of the voice.
Hobby MechanicAfter long, very long desk work it can be very relaxing to lie and to screw under an old vehicle. Not active at the moment. 
Grandfathers first Bulldog. Wartburg Driver, off dutyFrom my pay I bought a used 1.3 IFA Wartburg. Aerodynamic like a wall unit, 58 horses, Vmax somewhere with 132,7 km/h. 
I really loved that car. Although I nearly would have gone to hell with it, when the left rear tire burst on a rain wet country road. The car skided and swerved immediately, I wasn't able to hold it, rushed over to the left side and continued towards a river which rushed exactly beside the road. Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic in that second and fortunately there was a stable crash-barrier between me and the river. I hit the barrier in a very acute angle and continued some meters along it, forging my screeching vehicle. The resulting metal-on-metal sound was one of the ugliest sounds I've ever heard.
Something particularly strange and funny happened in the summer of 1995, when I and my then girlfriend traveled trough Scandinavia by car, with my Wartburg of course. One beautiful summerday we reached the North Cape - Europe's northernmost point which is an over 1000 feet high and very sheer cliff on the north side of an island. On the ferry over to the island there was a large busborne tourist group from the Zwickau-area, the former home of eastgerman car-industries. Well, what shall I say, the landscape up there is really great and very dramatic, but when these tourists saw my old eastgerman car, they aborted immediately all foto and video activities and came over to me for to ask how I managed to ride this old Wartburg all the way up to the very northern edge of Europe, to the Arctic Ocean. They were so fascinated, they found it so stunning and amazing! Well... 
Airplane FreakCan become absorbed for hours in design details and technical data of aircraft. Engine sounds are music. 
Click on the crankshaft bearing, to hear the operating noises of a Spitfire at low-altitude flight (00:13, mp3, 25.5 KB). By the way, the engine represented above is a BMW aircraft engine. Book FanForced to decide, I would rather choose to only eat two times daily, than to separate from my books. 
(Erich Maria Remarque: Autumn Travel of a Dreamer [excerpt], Thüringer Allgemeine Zeitung of 17. 10. 1924) 
(Erich Maria Remarque: The Five Years Diary [excerpt], around 1965)
"It all began with Adam. He was the first man to tell a joke--or a lie. How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before. (Mark Twain: Notebook, 1867) Highland Hiker
Hobby Ethnologist
[My limited English abilities do not allow me to translate the original text under this picture. It is a satire on north German peculiarities and is written in the intonation of an absolutely serious ethnological study. The finely tuned intonation and the word choice of this defamiliarized exaggeration require language and style proficiency, which I unfortunately do not have in English. Sorry!]
Die sumpfigen Schilfgürtel der südlichen Ostseeküsten bieten dem passionierten Ethnologen ein faszinierendes Forschungsgebiet. In einer nun schon mehrjährigen Feldstudie widme ich mich den Norddeutschen, einer Varietät der europiden Subspezies mit beachtlichen kulturellen Errungenschaften. 
Even the eye of the topographically untrained viewer is able to recognize the north direction. "Beside the reproductive instinct and the instincts to eat and to drink, humans have two passions: to make noise and not to listen. Besides the impulse to procreate and to eat and drink, man has two passions: to make noise and not to listen." (Kurt Tucholsky)
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