General

Today, I got my last birthday present for this year: finally, my aunt managed to come to Linz and celebrate my birthday. As always, I expect to get a very original birthday present from her. And this time, it was definitely one of the best presents that I ever got before: Schott's Original Miscellany (actually, I got the German translation, "Schotts Sammelsurium"). This is nothing but a book containing more or less useful knowledge, collected by Ben Schott, and englishman who seems to have way too much time.

What is so special about this book is first of all how it looks: a very nice binding, with wonderful fonts, and also wonderful fonts inside. Then the content itself: it contains a lot of interesting and funny stuff, like how to adjust one's bow tie, which ice thicknesses are able to wear which weights, the different types of sushi and what kind of food is used for them, the nine mortal sins, the correct way through the labyrinth of Hampton Court, the free masons' grades, or the mysterious deaths of some Burmesian kings, and many, many more things.

Especially the last thing is really funny: Nandabayin for example laughed to death, when an Italian merchant told him that Venice was a free state without a king, in the year 1599. Hilarious.