Dec 2006

As the 31st was a Sunday and Germany very strictly observes the resting days, there was not much to do leading up to the time of News Years party later on the 31st.

I thus decided (as it was a beautiful day outside) to take a walk in the city centre, doing the tourist thing and taking a bit of photos in the city centre. It was also obvious that at least 3000 other tourists had the same idea as all in all the city centre was quite full considering that none of the shops were open (not even the souvenier shops!).

Herewith then an extract:

(Bayerischer Staatskanselei)

(Funf Hofe)

(City hall in flemish building style on Marienplatz)

(The Opera building)

MARIENPLATZ WEBCAM: http://www.marienplatz-muenchen.de/

(Some filling up to do after all that hard work!)

(Probably one of the very few africans with his own skiing equipment )

(Who's the hotshot?)

(Sitting pretty)

(What a great view!)

(I am no stranger to sun!)

And so the fay finally arrived where I could once again put my ski's into action - after about 2 years of inactivity. Karin, Claudia and I left Munchen at just after 6am the morning in the direction of the Austrian alps. With 230km behind us we finally arrived just in time for the slopes to open at 9am. It was a quick investment in a day ski card and then to the slopes.

Initially I had a little trouble to get my rythm back, but didn't fall, even on the hard red slopes we went on. The Obertauern resort is really huge - with tons of slopes to really satisfy my skiing needs. A further bonus was the weather - a very pleasant 7 degrees with only a very light wind, which made for easy skiing conditions(no need to stop after every 2 runs because of the cold as in Sweden) - although this also meant that a lot of "fake" snow (or snow made by snow machines for the SA'ns out there).

Pre-lunch I didn't have one single accident but I must be honest that by the end of the day (and one black slope later) I had clocked up 3 quite spectacular falls. I'll blame it on being out of skiing shape - nothing which some practising cannot fix. I don't know whether Claudia was just being nice or whether she really meant it (I believe she meant it) but she said that I really impressed her with my skiing abilities ("for an african", whatever that means!). I'll just take it that at least I didn't look a complete fool

And so, after 7 hours of skiing, we were tired but happy and headed home. This day would definately rank as one of the highlights of my tour!!!!!

OBERTAUERN WEBSITE: http://www.obertauern.com/

Sometimes only a picture can explain what I mean....

Just checking in quickly to contribute a bit to the general worldwide information overload… Had quite a busy time the past few days with which details I won’t unnecessarily bore you… You are most welcome to just skip to the end of this post

The short summary of it all is that I had done the following things in the past few days then scooting off to the city centre again with Karin to her place to do some admin stuff (post my application for Stockholm university!!!!):

- ran on my own on Wednesday from Karin’s flat, without getting lost, a route of just over 10km to an through the gardens of Schloss Nymphenburg (what an incredible route it was: running through these stately gardens with a number of small castles hidden away all over and then the grande finale, the Nymphenburg castle itself)

- had dinner on Wednesday with Karin and a friend of hers, Stephi (whom I have met previously)

- on Thursday traveled to the Bavarian countryside with Karin’s mom (area of Fischbacchau) where we went for another unbelievable excursion (I can’t honestly understand why would Bavarians want to visit SA with its brown veld landscape if one sees the beautiful lush green forests here) – walking up the mountain (actually more climbing as it was quite icy and hard to walk at a number of places) with the most unbelievable views (I’ll post a photo online when I have a bit more time). It took us all of Thursday to walk to the top (1266m) and back down (stopping at a mountain hut with a small restaurant service – only Bavarian foods though, like Kaisersman, Strammer Max, Leberkase, etc). For all our hard work we went to a (apparently one of the most famous) coffeeshop(s) “Winkelstuberl” on our way back, filling ourselves with some real Apfelstrudel and Schwartzwaldkuche [black forest cake for the illiterate people in the vicinity]. When I asked why the place is famous I learnt that it had the biggest portions (think Mugg & Bean portions) for EUR5 per piece and that the place belongs to a famous Bavarian actress.

(Beautiful views)

(Made it to the top!)

- Did some work yesterday at the San Francisco Coffee Company (SFCC) on Odeonsplatz where they have wifi internet access – checking on bond instructions for our firm while the firm is closed. It is actually quite amazing to be able to do that from here – perhaps something to consider when they really bring the “home office” concept to the legal profession

- Had quick McD’s dinner with Claudia and then going for some drinks in Munchen somewhere with Karin and a friend of hers.

- Met some drunk South Africans on Roserheimerplatz (coming from the Hofbrauhaus) who were very happy to hear some Afrikaans...

- Did some work again today at SFCC (some procedure, getting better at it now). That being said, I really am getting into this holiday thing – didn’t realize today is Friday until checking my calendar a few minutes ago (sorry Julia for that dumb sms!)

OK, boring stuff done, here comes some promise of exciting stuff: TOMORROW WE ARE GOING SKIING IN OBERTAUERN!! More reports to follow….

Today was, as it is known in Germany, the second christmas holiday - where I joined Karin's family to go to the little town of Oberpframmern, where Karin's mother's family comes from and still lives.

After a church service (about St. Stefan - to the best of my understanding from the german, the first person to have died after the birth of Jesus and thus reaching the heaven through the "new" way which Jesus made possible... but don't quote me on this as the service was in bavarian German and at some times quite hard to follow) we went from house to house of Karin's family (uncles, brothers, etc), having schnapps to drive away the cold and then some christmas cakes.

It all ended in a restaurant where all the various family members met for lunch. I had "tafelspitz", which is actually an Austrian speciality but as we are quite close to Austria here, it is quite a well-known dish in this area as well. Tafelspitz is basically meat which has been cooked very very long in a type of minestrone soup until it is dried out - in effect basically cooked biltong. This was served with a type of cabbage and fried potatoes, all really excellent!

After the big lunch a nap was called for which was very welcome indeed (it is the time to rest after all!). With a lazy afternoon and some TV we now face a light dinner, nice german breads, cold meats and sausages. Tomorrow I will definately have to go for at least an hour's run after the nice eating that I've done the past 3 days!

And so I finally made it to München! After quite some travelling I reached Haar (suburb in München where Karin's parents live) where it seems I'll be for the next few days at the very least.

I've had very warm reception here, which is very nice. The traditional thing for Karin's family is to have trout and potatoes for lunch on the 24th and fondue for dinner, as we did this year as well. This is actually the 3rd Christmas I am spending in München and in all fairness, Christmas in the cold just makes so much more sense than Christmas in the blazing SA heat.

To get back to the point - we decorated the Christmas tree yesterday, had the trout lunch which Karin's grandmother prepared for us after which I had a long overdue nap (I can never really manage to sleep on a plane - despite having sleeping pills and all). At around 18h00 we exchanged presents and moved over to the fondue. Having a fondue for Christmas is in my opinion a really excellent idea: it is very sociable and, since one eats for so long, one rarely overeats as much as one would do with the typical Christmas meal in SA.

At around ten-thirty we set off to the local church for the Christmas service. The catholic way is quite a long affair compared to the protestant way to which I am used. It really was great to take a walk in the -2 outside, reach the warm, cosy church, filled with beautifully decorated christmas trees and tons of candles. Having to partake in the german songs and prayers (Onse Vader, or: Vater Unser) is, although a bit difficult, very "romantic" experience (at a lack of a better word - any suggestions?).

Today is a nice and lazy day, with a run planned a bit later.

As parting words I wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS

For those of you that don't know yet - I won the award of Erkel at our end-of-year office party... Yep, I'm your regular gadget-boy gone lawyer in the day... but just give me half a chance and I'll jump at the chance to play with any gadget around (or, as my one friend puts it - if it has a screen and buttons, heinrich's happy). I mean, look - I even have a blog which I now also keep updated!

Anyway, just couldn't resist posting a blog from mid-air. Yep! You read it! I'm currently somewhere over the bunch of islands in the middle of the Mediterranean (Ligurian according to the map, wherever that is!), cruising at 39'000ft and at 909km/h. Temp outside is -45 degrees C. All while updating my itunes (hey, way not take advantage of the broadband connection while we're at it! For the other IT junkies out there: I'm downloading at 11.2kb/s from the itunes servers whils browsing and listening to streaming audio) and listening to 5FM on streaming audio. Probably it is only I that am impressed with the fact that I can do all of this while flying....

We'll be landing in just over an hour in 809km's time

Laters.

/hs

Ps: I just want to place on record that I also won two other awards at the end of year office party - the "Fast and Furious" award and the "Gunther the barista" award...

Thanks to the very kind assistance of Karin, who did a pre-checkin for me, all the admin stuff went quite fast. I was done with check-in, passport control, security within 15 minutes (with pre-checkin one can skip the queues and go to the business class counter to collect one's boarding pass - what a bonus!!!). Definately the most relaxed way of flying ever!

Now I'm sitting on the plane and writing my last blog from SA for a while. And what a relief it is! The last month (and the last week) was incredibly high pressure at work, so I am looking forward tremendously to this holiday. The only sad thing is that I will miss my family and friends (ja Dirk, ja De Klerk, dis nou julle!) over this next month, of that I'm quite sure. I am of course looking forward to seeing all my european friends (Regi, Louise, Rach, Nik, Sophie, Karin, Claudia, et al) this next month.

Although the seats are quite tight (smaller than SAA it seems, but I might not remember it all too clearly) I think this flight will be quite ok- I had my dealer get me some fixes to while the time (read, my med student friens get me some sleeping pills) and I got (thank you again Karin!) a prebooked aisle seat far away from the toilets. As good as it gets here in cattle class

We'll have to switch our phones off soon, so siging off from the tarmac of CPT.

Sent by Nokia Mobile Mail.

This blog should come with a health warning. A warning against terrible boredom which might lead to death. But, despair not faithful readers - I'm off in less than a week. 5 Days to be exact. I've been throwing my stuff together (it's not that I really ever need my skiing stuff and thermal underwear here in sunny SA), have done my Christmas shopping for my hosts in Germany (where I'm going to spend Christmas day) and have booked all my inner european travels (do you know of www.megabus.com?? it's like ryanair for buses in the UK - £2.50 return London to Sheffield).

Now all that is left to do is the find my darn skiing socks (any suggestions can be placed in the suggestion box - your anonymity is gauranteed).

By the way, just a short moan quickly. Does anybody know (or should that be does anybody care?!) how many power plug adapters one needs for travelling!! Especially with the 3-pronged SA plugs! It's a SA-euro adapter, SA-UK adapter and euro-UK adapter (for the cellphone chargers). They should allow an extra kg for SA'ns to take along adapters, just as they now make allowance for fat americans flying (I'm sure you've heard of the bigger seats story...)

Okies, before I face serious lawsuits for libel and defamatory statements (or causing pain and suffering!), I'll sign off. Probably till next time from the airport!

/hs

Sent by Nokia Mobile Mail.